The Last: Naruto the Movie review

The Last: Naruto the Movie is a shounen action-romance movie. It tried to be both but it failed. SPOILERS BELOW.

As an action movie, it failed to get me excited like most action movies can. The fight scenes were nice but there wasn’t a sense of impending doom. Like most shounen battle characters, Naruto is overpowered. In fact, during the Great War in the series, he was one of the strongest people on the planet, on par with gods even. In the movie, he hardly used his god-like powers.

One of the things that made me do a facepalm was the plot. My thoughts were, “Like seriously??? You mean to tell me that (insert complaint here) is happening???” Here’s a rough synopsis of the action plot. The sky is falling. Well actually, it’s the moon that’s breaking up into pieces and crashing into the earth. The enemies are aliens. Well actually there is only one enemy with a bunch of puppets who is actually a descendant of the younger brother of the Sage of the Six Paths and they’ve been living on the moon. The solution that they had was to blow up the moon. The moon is crashing towards the Earth. If the moon crashes, it would cause numerous deaths, possibly extinction. Raikage’s solution is to use a super cannon and blow up the moon. The action plot is really deep. *rolls eyes*

As for the romance part, I wasn’t impressed. To be fair though, I expected this to be a sort of sequel to the manga that would explore the relationship between Naruto and Hinata. Instead what I saw was Naruto falling in love with Hinata while under an enemy spell that trapped them in their memories…because of a “magic scarf”. While they were under the enemy genjutsu, the scarf somehow got out of Hinata’s bag and wrapped itself around Naruto. The magic scarf was able to connect their two illusions together so Naruto can see both of their memories. I wonder why it was only a one-way show. It seems like Hinata wasn’t aware that Naruto saw her memories. Naruto finally understood Hinata’s feelings after seeing her memories. What bothered me was throughout the entire series, I didn’t get an impression that Naruto was even remotely interested in Hinata as more than a friend. But in the movie, Naruto finds out that Hinata likes him then he suddenly falls in love with her. Maybe there were some signs throughout the series but I can’t think of any right now.

It has some cute moments though. When Naruto couldn’t reach the bruise on his back, I wondered why he didn’t summon a kagebunshin to put the ointment on himself. What happened next was a cute scene where Hinata puts the ointment on him. When Hinata realized that she didn’t have enough chakra to blow up the enemy weapon, Naruto grabbed her hand so they can combine their chakra. I thought it was just an excuse to hold her hand. Near the end of the fight, bad guy was draining Naruto’s chakra. Hinata grabbed Naruto’s hand to stop the chakra bleed. I thought, Naruto was hiding behind Hinata haha.

Here are some other things I want to make fun of regarding the plot. The world was supposed to be at stake but there were only 5 ninjas featured. I thought they’d show many of the characters as fan service but story wise, I’m glad they didn’t do it.

From the start I kept wondering, what happened to Hinata’s dad and why didn’t anyone realize that he was missing. Also, where is Sasuke??? These questions were answered in one scene. I wanted more screen time for Sasuke but he only made a cameo. I found it funny but I wasn’t surprised during the scene where a big chunk of the moon was going to crash on Konoha. Rock Lee and a bunch of other ninjas combined to take down half the meteorite by using a lot of power while Sasuke destroyed the other half with a single chidori.

I kept wondering throughout the movie if bad guy damaged Hanabi’s eyes. It seemed like his body was rejecting the eyes. Hinata had a cool moment where she tried to singlehandedly destroy the enemy weapon but then she was easily captured and turned into a damsel in distress. After Naruto rescues her, she gets captured again and gets caged, literally.

Regarding the final fight scene, I found it funny that bad guy was able to slice the moon in half but he completely missed Naruto. Also, Naruto defeated bad guy by going underground and using a cheap shot uppercut. I wonder if it’s a homage to how Naruto defeated Neji during the chuunin exams.

Here are some other random thoughts about the film. I thought Neji had the best eyes in the Hyuuga clan after Hinata’s father but in the film, Hinata was able to see ghosts so ha! Sai had few lines but I found them hilarious. Going back to the magic scarf, how many did Hinata knit throughout the movie? It seemed like they kept getting torn apart or even completely destroyed. One scene that I wanted to see but wasn’t shown was Hinata gouging out bad guy’s eyes.

I like how Naruto progressed throughout the series. When it started, he was a useless punk but now he’s a respected war hero. When Raikage was about to fire at the moon, knowing that Naruto was there made the 4 other kages and Killer Bee hesitate. They had enough confidence in Naruto to gamble the fate of the planet and let him fix this.

I liked the prologue the most. They succinctly recapped the entire series in a cool way. The animation style of was superb. The scene with kiddy Naruto and kiddy Hinata was cute. The ending was cheesy but not annoying. The movie was a fun watch but I doubt it will cater to viewers who aren’t fans of Naruto. It might not even cater to some of the Naruto fans who are hardcore Naruto-Sakura shippers. Since I think this is the last movie about Naruto (not counting future spinoff movies) I had high expectations for this one. I was a bit disappointed. I preferred the previous ones like the one with the prison and when Naruto met his parents. If you’re a Naruto fan I think it’s still worth a watch even though it doesn’t exactly provide closure.