Naruto Shippuden Episode 244: Motoi’s Past

Summary

Naruto asks Motoi to get some tips from Killer Bee about training at the Falls of Truth, however Motoi refuses, saying that he has no right to request anything from Bee. He then reveals the story of the various Hachibi jinchuuriki’s, as well as his past and how he tried to kill Bee when they were younger. When the island’s giant squid turns up again and attacks Motoi, Bee jumps into save him and their friendship is renewed.

Impression

Motoi is one of those background people that you don’t really see as having any character depth, so I was surprised to see him getting a “tragic past” story about his father being killed in one of the Hachibi’s rampages. Doing a Sasuke and getting consumed by revenge is totally understandable, but unlike Sasuke he realized the error of his ways and stopped trying to kill his jinchuuriki friend (which Sasuke is still trying to do for some retarded reason). Similar to Naruto, Bee seems cool with it, but I’m certain he knew what was really going on and ignored it. He’s such a good guy though! Bringing flowers to Motoi’s dad’s grave, and even offering to fist bump after a friend betrays him.

I couldn’t help but feel a sense of deja vu between the jinchuuriki cases all over the world. We have a real insight on only three of them – Naruto, Gaara and Killer Bee. In all cases, they were shunned and treated like some kind of disease when they were young, but end up being village heroes (and in Gaara’s case, the Kazekage). All three jinchuuriki are direct relatives of the Kage at the time, though only Naruto had Kyuubi placed in him by Minato after the attack, while the Shukaku and the Hachibi were kept by their villages as “power symbols”.

And I completely agree with Motoi about Bee’s optimism and never-ending cheerfulness. Though I’d like to think the villagers threw eggs at him because of his dodgy rapping xD Many people would have probably gone insane by having to take so much abuse, but Naruto and Bee seemed to handle it just fine. Obviously, pre-Chuunin Gaara is a prime example of madness, especially with all that batshit insane Shukaku rampage thing set up by Orochimaru.

Cool Hachibi was cool yet again, I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of his epic full form. Came bursting out and was all RAWWWWRRR and all that. You’d think that Kumogakure would get it and just keep the Hachibi inside the pot at some point, if they’ve had to ruin so many people’s lives by turning them into jinchuuriki.

I’m painfully aware of the possible situation in which we return to fillers at the end of this season, and so I did feel a bit impatient about getting to the end of the fight with Dark Naruto – which, in the end, wasn’t even shown yet. It looks like it’ll be wrapped up quickly next episode though, moving swiftly on to what promises to be an epic battle in the history of this series – Naruto vs Kyuubi.