Ooo, scary.
Summary
Kabuto quickly locates the island turtle with the help of a genetically modified Manda II and Deidara, leaving the latter to deal with Oonoki, Kurotsuchi and Akatsuchi while he tries to find Naruto and Killer Bee, who are both still inside the turtle without realizing what has happened outside. When Yamato, Aoba and Motoi try to subdue Kabuto, he sheds his human form and appears as a giant snake, swallowing Yamato and delivering him as a hostage to Tobi, who has taken one of Nagato’s Rinnegan and implanted it to replace his lost eye.
Impression
Urk, this is the first time in ages that the Naruto post has turned up later than Thursday – sorry guys.
Anyway, who’d have thought that Kabuto had gone that far towards being a full snake? You’d think he’d still be at least part-human under that cloak, but right now he’s more snake than human, with his entire body all scaly and a snake for a tail. I’d like to point out that any traces of his previous medic-nin abilities are now non-existent (unless you count experimenting on yourself) and if you compare him now to his form pre-Shippuden, you’d be hard pressed to find many similarities. His form after shedding his skin is pretty icky too, something like a small, bastardised version of what a normal snake would be. At least Orochimaru turned into a proper snake, albeit it being giant and having three heads.
I have a feeling that Yamato was Kabuto’s more realistic goal right from the very start. No matter how strong he is, all he has is Deidara with him and that isn’t enough to subdue two Jinchuuriki’s, who both possess various levels of control over their Bijuu. With Yamato being able to power up the cells-turned-Hashirama with Mokuton jutsu capabilities, both the cells and somehow the 100,000 Zetsu clones get powered up. I dunno, Zetsu’s pretty plant-like, maybe they’re compatible or something.
The fight between Deidara and the Tsuchikage, Oonoki, wasn’t as exciting as I expected it to be. The two pretty much just flew around, with Deidara’s bombs all not managing to kill Oonoki and the latter not being able to fight back, since his Jinton would kill the island turtle. Poor turtle, by the way. Getting bombed by Deidara and crushed to death by Manda II, who thankfully still looks like a snake, even after Kabuto’s messing around with it.
So we have everything set up, don’t we? Naruto and Killer Bee safely within the island while Tobi has his nice new Rinnegan eye with a new mask to replace the old one when he was still a comic character. Next week both the Allied Shinobi Forces and the Akatsuki mobilise, and it’s off to war! Ha, let’s see you stick a filler arc in this setup, Studio Pierrot. No seriously, please don’t.
