Road to Ninja: Naruto the Movie (anime movie), on DVD

Road to Ninja: Naruto the Movie is, obviously, a Naruto movie. Still, I wasn't quite sure what it was going to be like, and the info on the back of the box wasn't very helpful. I vaguely remembered that the production artwork had inspired theories that it was an alternate universe Naruto. Would it be an alternate universe retelling of Naruto's story? The answer turned out to be “yes and no.”

First, a warning: this post contains some spoilers, although I think I managed to avoid the most major ones.

I'm not entirely sure when in the Naruto timeline this movie takes place. Certainly much later than what I've seen of Naruto Shippuden, and I think a bit later than I've read in the manga. Naruto knows who both his parents are, several of the Akatsuki are dead, Sai is there, and Naruto has saved the village from Pain. Naruto demonstrated one ability that I haven't seen yet in the manga: he released Nine Tails' full form and rode on his back during battle.

At the beginning of the movie, Kakashi, Naruto, Sakura, and several others from the village fight the Akatsuki and are confused, because they know several of their opponents have previously been defeated. The fight ends fairly quickly, which is a relief for everyone, but also somewhat suspicious. That doesn't stop the parents of the various chunin from talking about recommending them for jonin-rank. Naruto is once again reminded that he has no parents who could do such a thing for him. After Iruka refuses to fill out a jonin application for him (because he isn't even a chunin yet – you'd think they'd have made him an honorary chunin by now) and Sakura yells at him for not siding with her after she has a fight with her parents, Naruto storms off.

All fights are forgotten, however, when Madara suddenly appears and tries out an experimental jutsu called Limited Tsukuyomi. When Sakura and Naruto come to, Madara is gone and no one even seems to know who he is. Not only that, but everyone in the village is the opposite of what they normally are: Hinata is aggressive, Shikamaru is dopey, Kakashi is gung-ho and overuses his sharingan, etc. There are story differences, as well. For example, Sakura is now the daughter of heroes – her parents, rather than Naruto's, were the ones that gave their lives for the village.

Shows on Hulu, in brief

Here's what I'm working my way through in Hulu right now:

• Baccano - I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this show, but I'm interested enough in the intertwined stories of all the characters to want to keep watching. Its violent, bloody action scenes mean it's not for everyone, though, and I imagine that not everyone would be as interested in its disjointed story as I am.
• Black Butler - Yes, I know I've already watched this, but I want to rewatch it now that I'm watching Black Butler II. Plus, the fansubbing of the last 3 or 4 episodes was so bad that I at least want to watch those, in the hope that they'll make a little more sense.  I do think I'm going to end up buying this one. Even if he is a demon, I like Sebastian. He's one hell of a butler.
• Black Butler II - Sebastian and Ciel are back, this time facing off with another butler and master pair. Alois makes Ciel look perfect by comparison, and Claude creeps me out. What I remembered as being hints of near-sexual content in Black Butler becomes more pronounced in Black Butler II, with Alois having been a boy toy for a disgusting old pedophile and Alois' maid apparently existing primarily as something for male viewers to lust after (I'm thinking there's a kegadoru aspect here - and, no, I didn't know that word off the top of my head, but I knew there must be a word for it, what with the whole bandaged Rei Ayanami craze.).
• Coffee Prince - This is the first time in a long time I've watched K-drama (Korean drama). I can only watch this one a little at a time, though, because otherwise all the misunderstandings, lies, confusion, and people just plain spending too much time with people who are bad for them drives me crazy. Eun Chan is so nice, I want everything to go well for her.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers - I started watching this one after seeing some really excellent slideshows that used fan art from this series. Since those slideshows were so serious and, well, beautiful, I was disappointed to find that the anime is a comedy with just-good-enough artwork and animation. Happily, I got over that feeling, and now I'm almost finished with this show. History was never my best subject, and I once had to retake a geography test multiple times before I got a passing grade - I think I might have paid better attention in both those subjects if I had been watching this show at the time. It might seem odd for a comedy to be set primarily during World War II, but I think this show does a good job of finding the humor in the relationships between the various countries, while avoiding being completely tasteless (apparently there are those who would disagree with me). One thing I really like about this show is that no country is demonized - Germany, for example, is not equated with Hitler.
• Naruto Shippuden - I despair of ever getting caught up with this show. I'm only 24 episodes into it right now, and I've got 150+ to go. On the plus side, none of the episodes have an expiration date. Yet.
• Claymore - I started watching this show because it was in my queue and I realized it was going to expire soon (in 5 more days, actually). As far as I can tell, Hulu only has English dub episodes. I don't know if it's better in Japanese, but, even though I've heard great things about it, I just couldn't get into it. I watched 4 or 5 episodes and, realizing I still wasn't all that interested, decided to move onto something else.

This is everything I've been watching on a regular basis lately, but it is in no way a representation of the full extent of my horrific Hulu queue. That currently has 767 episodes in it. Hopefully at least some of the shows will turn out to be terrible, so I can scrap them.

UPDATE: I can't believe I forgot Moyashimon!  It's probably because I actually keep really up-to-date on that one, so I rarely have any episodes sitting in my queue.  It's cheesy, but incredibly fun, and I am now convinced that I need to read the manga.