Wow, Naruto’s even got himself a marriage proposal now. Maybe I should go around saving villages from evil cloaked organisations.
Summary
Naruto and the crew are about to set sail once more when Naruto is interrupted by the bodyguard of a village heiress, who explains that Jiraiya had been connected with the village, dueling with the then-heiress and having the match end in a draw. The custom there is that any man stronger than the heiress has the right to marry her, and Naruto is asked to duel with Shizuka to win the right to her hand in marriage.
On board the ship once more, Naruto sees a ladybird very far from land, and tries to remember exactly who bugs remind him of.
Impression
I think I’ve gotten into a bad habit of grouping together these filler episodes into two, seeing as nothing ever happens and everybody lost interest after about one episode on the ship. sigh Onwards with the post!
Naruto’s started the “I love Sakura-chan, dattebayo!” thing again, and blindly ignoring any other girl like Hinata for someone that’s still clearly in love with Sasuke. While Sakura isn’t useless anymore and has become much less of a fangirl, there are definitely bigger fish in the sea for someone like Naruto. He’s even got this filler girl after him, who didn’t seem too keen at the start, but was obviously interested by the end of the ep. Not that we’ll ever see her again.
Her name is Shizuka, and according to the tradition of her hidden village, she is destined to marry a man stronger than herself. Since Jiraiya had to go “research” his Icha Icha in a village full of girls, he ended up mixed up in a proposal, which he conveniently passed on to Naruto. I found it kinda hard to believe that Jiraiya would be on an even footing with a girl from <insert minor village here>, since the idea is that he should find that type of battle really easy as a Sannin. But then again, his proposal was when he was still young and travelling, so he could have been a bit weaker.
So Shizuka more or less tells Naruto (or her advisor does anyway) that they are technically betrothed, as the pairing was “destined” to be Shizuka x Jiraiya’s future student. After Naruto rejecting her (and now Naruto deserves a slap) he does the same thing he did with Hyuuga Neji and convinces her to change her destiny and fate, as she already had a lover before he was killed by the village -_-
Shizuka obviously gets pwned by Naruto, who also helps her out of all her other troubles, making her a happy girl (: That’s all very well and good…but I can’t help but remember that Jiraiya had quite a few students…from Minato…to Nagato and Yahiko. And I think Shizuka was beyond lucky that she ran into Naruto instead of Nagato…since one, she’d probably die a horrible death, and two, Konan would have a bitchy fit.
Episode 236 would have fitted better into the Konoha History arc, which was coincidentally another filler arc. Somehow I got the feeling that this was originally planned for that arc, but for reasons yet unknown to us it was cut out of the original run and therefore stuffed into this filler arc. Both this and next week’s ep. Jus’ sayin xD
Well, not really too much to say – we had Shino and his insecurities about taijutsu, as he focuses mainly on ninjutsu with his kikai bugs. Kiba and Hinata then helps him improve, and he ends up beating a jounin that uses awesome fire ninjutsu. Um…yeah, that’s pretty much it. I could bitch on about how I noticed Hinata and Kiba’s art style was drawn directly based off their post-timeskip versions, but I’ll cut Shippuden some slack.
