Konoha Plans Recapture Mission

The Trap Master Arc spans from episodes 197 to 201 of the Naruto anime. This arc is preceded by the Third Great Beast Arc and is followed by the Kurama Clan Arc.

Summary
With so much new construction and expansion going on in Konoha, workers from outside the village were also being hired to help in the project, including an old man named Gennō. Shortly after meeting each other at Ichiraku, Naruto and Gennō became close. Unfortunately, it turned out that Gennō was in fact a legendary ninja from Kagerō Village, who was infamous as a strategist.

One night, Gennō finally began his plan against Konoha and stole several building blueprints. After being cornered by the ANBU, Gennō decided to end things by blowing himself up. Later, after Tsunade sent every available ninja above genin rank (except Shikamaru) on a mission to secure the Land's of Fire border from a possible attack that Gennō spoke of from Takigakure. Tsunade assembled Naruto and the other genin to aid Shikamaru in locating the stolen blueprints. Naruto was horrified to find out the kind man he grew attached to was actually an enemy of the village.

Later, Naruto was taken in for questioning with the ANBU as he possibly would be the best lead to discovering Gennō's plans. Unfortunately even with hypnosis the ANBU were unable to gather any useful information beyond that Gennō was nice to Naruto because he reminded Gennō of his grandson. Later, questions about Gennō's supposed death came up. It was then discovered that Gennō faked his death with a fake corpse. It was also discovered that the Takigakure had nothing to do with Gennō, meaning Gennō tricked Konoha into making itself almost completely unprotected.

The group's search for Gennō soon took them to the Academy, where it was discovered that an enormous chain of expolsive tags were planted starting from it, and leading all over the village. The group then immediately went to work safely removing the explosive tags. Thanks to help from Homura Mitokado and Koharu Utatane, it was discovered that Gennō had actually planted most of them over thirty years ago. This meant Gennō came to the village once before. It was then learned that thirty years ago, Gennō's village was at war with Konoha. In the end, Konoha was able to destroy the village with a sneak attack. Two days later, however, another rival village came and destroyed the remnants of the village. Meanwhile Naruto remembered that whenever he ate ramen with Gennō, he was frequently gazing at the Hokage Monument. This prompted Naruto to go investigate the mountain. Inside, he found Gennō was indeed alive and had planted several explosive tags inside the monument. Gennō revealed that the explosive tags all over the village were just another decoy. Gennō's real goal was to cause a rock slide from the Hokage Monument to destroy the village.

Fortunately, the group arrived in time after Shikamaru correctly deduced Gennō's true goal and disarmed his main means of triggering the tags. Not willing to give up, Gennō summoned a giant bird to activate them manually from the monument of the Third Hokage. Fortunately with his friends help, Naruto was able to stop the bird with his Rasengan. Later, Gennō died as it was discovered that he was incredibly ill. It was also revealed his grandson was actually his son, and after getting to know Naruto, decided instead of revenge to have one last fun "game". He did so by tampering with several of his explosive tags to at most leave a few weak cracks in the Hokage Monument. After learning the truth, Naruto realised that the village has to be prepared for real enemies who desire the village's destruction, and he decided more than ever to train hard.

Episodes