Board Thread:Episode Discussions/@comment-1018594-20150312113454/@comment-1458758-20150313174314

I actually liked the Grass Team, I thought they had an interesting team dynamic and were relatively fun. I wish they'd expanded more on Kazami and Muyami's abilities, but over all I thought they were decent.

The real problem is Team 8. Shino uses way more bugs this episode than he did last, and if he could do that, why didn't he to deal with Muyami last time?

Kiba is way too focused on Naruto. I get that Naruto is the main character and that it's noted he draws people to him, but there was far too much focus on him from Kiba. I mean Hinata uses Naruto's determination as a mantra to not give up, so I wouldn't complain if it was her, but Kiba sees Naruto as a rival and wants to surpass him, so focusing so heavily on his influence here after 2 years is a bit much. They could have left it at the Shadow Clone thing instead of having him permeate everything Kiba did these last few episodes.

Hinata... Her presence over all was kinda lackluster. She's the heroine of Team 8 and certainly the heart of their crew, so while as a Kiba fan I appreciate any chance for him to actually prove himself, these last couple of episodes really lacked for Hinata goodness.

Not to mention, over all I felt that these filler episodes have fallen into Bleach territory.

To explain, fillers in Bleach had a poor habit that whenever a character fought in filler, the most they could do was show off the best ability they could use at the time in canon, often repeating at times fairly case specific maneuvers rather boringly and without the same impact as it had initially.

This is basically all Team 8 did here. Kiba used his Three-Headed Wolf, Shino used his giant destruction bugs and Hinata used Air Palm. No great strategy, no new special maneuver, just rince repeat. I can stress that this isn't normal for Naruto filler, Hinata's entire Protection of the Eight Trigrams is filler, Naruto's combination jutsu with toads is the same, and numerous others who, if nothing else, use their regular techniques in a new and interesting way when prompted by filler. Here, nope, just same old stuff.