Board Thread:Episode Discussions/@comment-1181222-20160225114505/@comment-4646462-20160225142642

Gave a 2 because it had a few promising aspects in the beginning that could have warranted a 4. It took on the question of "What if Minato lived?", which also allowed the Uchiha to live and Sasuke to be a slightly more tolerable person (despite the bitchiness between Itachi and Naruto). It gave Tsunade a dream that wasn't reliant on bringing back all the she lost in the past (Jiraiya still lived, though, and I'm alright with his presentation). It even presented an original arc that, frankly, overdid the shit out of Kakashi's aesop, but it was still okay. I didn't mind the odd things here and there in the beginning, such as Naruto running off a cliff and Jiraiya popping in out of nowhere and giving Naruto on-the-spot 4-tails training. The direction taken with Sasuke leaving for a timeskip for training with the clan was also at least something.

But then the storyboard crew ran out of ideas.

Would have liked this arc better if it continued with the route it was taking rather than straight-up stealing, mangling, and heavily compressing the canon storyline and reskinning certain aspects to make it "original". It could be passed off as Jiraiya's bad writing, but that would be an insult.

Also, I wonder where Tobi was in all this, and whether or not Obito ended up taking the right route, despite Madara's coercing. Him being a good guy would probably have been another big idea to help the arc.