C&C - Naruto Shippuden - "Naruto & Hinata's Wedding" [7/6-8/31] *SERIES FINALE*

[Kitschensyngk]

He still has the same voice. He's almost getting married, and he still talks like he never hit puberty.

The ceremony would be pretty sad with nobody sitting on the groom's side.

 

[Nobodyman]

It's always so weird when I see electronics in the Naruto world. It just...doesn't feel right.

Hello side characters who got shafted after the time skip.

Oh hai Orochimaru. Shouldn't you be in prison for crimes against humanity?

Hey Kakashi. You were always too cool for this series.

 

[Kitschensyngk]

And the final scene from the Evangelion TV series breaks out.

Even Lord Gay Pedophile Snakeman?

 

[Nobodyman]

Hey Killer Bee. You also were too cool for this series.

Nice face paint Kankuro. Did you lose a bet?

Shino's good with kids. Who knew?

 

[Kitschensyngk]

I will not miss the rapper guy.

They could have hired a band, but Rock and Guy insisted.

I wonder if Mr. Tadakichi had times like this with Chiyo.

Yeah, I've seen the first part of Boruto. I know you all marry each other.

Couldn't be bothered to attend the wedding? Dick.

 

[Nobodyman]

Well, Shikamaru and Temari fought each other once and then fought side-by-side once, so of course that had to develop into a romance.

Ah, Sasuke. Thank you for barely appearing in this episode.

Going with the traditional Japanese wedding garb, I see.

Aren't the bride and groom not supposed to see each other before the wedding?

And they lived happily ever after and had a son with a disappointing sequel show.

Not a single "Believe it!"? Show, I am disappoint.

 

[animePWNS]

Aaaand we don't get to see the actual wedding.

And, at the risk of ending this on weird note, we get an entirely different Uzumaki in four weeks.

So that's it. After all these years, pre-emptions and denied doubling down episodes, it finally ends. Sayonara, Naruto.

 

[Kitschensyngk]

And it only took 720 episodes, 13 OVAs and 10 movies.

I'm aware that Boruto crashed and burned on this block before, but then again, One Piece came back, so who knows?

 

[Nobodyman]

And thus endeth the Naruto series as we know it.


Next week it gets replaced with...more One Piece, which is fine with me.

 

[Kitschensyngk]

The final end sequence, normal speed and without credits:


And of course, as per tradition...

 

[J'onn J'onzz]

It was a very typical Toonami airing of Shippuden, for a very unusual occasion. No opening, which has been the case for the vast majority of episodes for reasons never fully explained. Even though there was a custom ending for this episode, it was still shortened. Japanese text on the title card and ending card are untranslated. Zero acknowledgment or promotion from either the Toonami Facebook page or on air comments by TOM. In other words, it’s exactly what someone watching Shippuden for ten years would expect. Despite airing more episodes than any other show in Toonami history, it has done so largely without any promotion. A single promotion made in 2022 when the block had little but One Piece and Naruto Shippuden remains the sole Shippuden commercial ever produced.

As for the episode itself, we continue to see a surprising amount of focus on Iruka. I know they want to tie it back to the first episode, but I am not a huge fan of the Iruka push this arc has given. I know one of the benefits of non-manga episodes of Naruto has been that the writers for the filler (and novel based) episodes give a lot of screen time to characters Kishimoto underused. Still, Iruka has been irrelevant since almost immediately after the first episode. This episode even acknowledges it by reanimating his only significant action scene, the battle with Mizuki in episode one. He seemed to only befriend Naruto briefly in the final period of his time at the academy.

His role was almost immediately taken by Kakashi, as Naruto didn’t spend nearly as many episodes at the academy as Boruto. Kakashi, or even Yamato, played a more important role in Naruto’s development. Either of them would be better fits for a father figure. To some extent the third Hokage also was a father (or grandfather) figure to Naruto, as we see in the early episode where the Hokage and Kakashi check up on Naruto’s apartment and see he has been drinking spoiled milk. The third Hokage seemed to feel regret that his successor died in the line of duty, and felt an obligation to check in on the Fourth Hokage’s son. If anything, Iruka is more like an uncle, a relative you only see occasionally but still cares about you.

The scenes with the other ninja at the wedding were nice culminations of the other post timeskip subplots. It seems like Shikamaru and Temari will be getting married soon as well, and probably going to those hot springs they scouted out for the honeymoon. Sai and Ino have also become close, and it is nice to see Ino having moved on from her early obsession with Sasuke. Ino seemed to give up on him when news reached the village of his designation as an international terrorist. While Sakura initially seemed to feel the same anger and sadness at the news as Ino, she lacked the will to carry through and kill her crush, even after he had assassinated the Hokage Danzo.

After yet another betrayal at the end of the war, Sakura managed to win the bad boy idol of her generation of ninja. All he had to do was apologize, and she was instantly in his arms. Even after he apologized, Sasuke never really treats her and Naruto with respect. In this episode, he doesn’t even show up at the wedding of the man who saved him from a dark destiny he was determined to embrace. She is left alone to raise a child, with a wanderer as a husband. Are they even married, or did he just knock her up and leave the village? He is already gone by this point, and no reference is made to them having been married. I wouldn’t be surprised if she sometimes thinks thoughts like Bulma did on Namek about Goku, that she missed out on marrying a great man.

Hinata was always shown to love and admire Naruto, but Naruto rarely interacted with her after the Chunin Exams. Until the battle with Pain, it is unclear if Naruto is even aware Hinata likes him. Naruto was obsessed with Sakura for a long time, even though it was unreciprocated. Over time, it seems his feelings of love for her become more platonic, but no less genuine. When Sasuke runs away from the village, Naruto promises to Sakura to rescue him, even though it means saving his rival for her affection. Even when Sakura offered Naruto her love in the land of snow, Naruto rejected it because he knew her true feelings were for Sasuke. Naruto was willing to give away his first love to a man who betrayed the village and joined an evil cabal dedicated to destroying the ninja world, because he knew she still had feelings for him. His concern for other ninjas’ feelings and bonds with even the most irredeemable foes were the traits that allowed Naruto to become a hero to the world and achieve his dream of becoming a hokage. His ninja way of never giving up and seeing the best in others also won him Hinata’s heart.

Edit; I also have up my first article on the main page, focusing on the milestone of Toonami completing 500 episodes. It far exceeds the length of any other series Toonami has aired. However One Piece has nearly as many episodes aired, and will likely pass 500 aired by the end of the year if it remains in an hour timeslot.

https://animesuperhero.com/naruto-shippuden-concludes-500-episode-toonami-run/

 

[Otakuninja2006]

And a era that's been here since I was freaking 7 years old end...

I'm actually gonna miss the knuckle headed ninja.

It's been a wild ride.

Sayanora, Naruto.

Believe It!

 

[wonderfly]

From the front page of AnimeSuperhero.com:

"Naruto Shippuden Concludes 500 Episode Toonami Run"​

"Toonami’s longest running anime of all time, Naruto Shippuden, has come to an end. The 500th and final episode aired on the Toonami broadcast for August 31, 2024. The popular ninja anime Naruto Shippuden is set several years after the original Naruto series, and focuses on Naruto’s quest to save his rival Sasuke from Orochimaru and other evil ninja from the Akatsuki. In recent months, the show has moved past the original 700 chapter Naruto manga. Novels depicting the future romances and careers of Naruto and his friends have been adapted, culminated in a final episode featuring Naruto’s wedding to longtime admirer Hinata Hyuga.

The history of Naruto’s run on American television runs nearly 20 years. Toonami began airing Naruto began airing on Toonami on September 10, 2005. The block had been struggling to find a new identity following the conclusion of the Dragon Ball trilogy. Two key shows came along to replace Dragon Ball GT: One Piece and Naruto. Nearly 20 years later, Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Naruto still make up half of the block. Naruto quickly became Toonami’s most popular show. It aired many marathons, with the most famous being the “Hundo” marathon where 100 episodes aired over a weekend to celebrate the 100th episode. Naruto was able to outlast the original Toonami block ending in 2008. While Naruto continued airing for a few months after movies on Saturday nights, the final 11 of 220 episodes never made it to air on Cartoon Network.

Eight months after Toonami revived on Adult Swim as an April Fools Prank, Naruto returned on December 1, 2012. These airings were promoted as uncut Naruto, because they featured scenes that had been edited on Toonami in the 2000s. Naruto proved very popular as a companion to Bleach in the midnight hour during the early years of Toonami’s new Adult Swim block. When Toonami first returned to air, Shippuden was unavailable due to Disney XD having aired the series from 2009-2011. The Disney XD airings were known for censoring violence, language, and sexual content. After a year of Adult Swim airing the original Naruto, a decision was made to rerun the first season. In January 2014, they premiered the sequel, Naruto Shippuden. The original Naruto series vanished 35 episodes through its rerun on September 6, 2014, but Shippuden continued airing for a decade."

Read the full article here.

 

[PicardMan]

Half of me about how unceremonious Shippuden's lack of a send-off was, but it always felt like Shippuden's been treated like garbage throughout its history. OG Naruto was Toonami's flagship, but Shippuden has spent most of its run in the back of the block. Sometimes, it aired in what appeared to be a 3:00 AM deathslot. One Piece had a big promo when it was cancelled on Toonami, arc promos, marathons, and the like, and it seems like One Piece got preferential treatment. What's really upsetting was the dub exclusivity deal preventing the dub in its entirety from entering streaming until 2025. Keeping the dub away from streaming only to deathslot the show was one of the worst moves ever.

Okay, now my rant at how Toonami mistreated this show is over, now it's time for the eulogy. Shippuden was much more divisive than OG Naruto, although it included beloved characters like Killer Bee and the Akatsuki. It and Bleach seemed to be the glue that keep the American anime market alive in the dark days of the early 2010s. OG Naruto will always be my Naruto, but Shippuden had its highlights (and lowlights). If TOM won't pay his respects to Naruto, we the fans will.

 

[Neo Ultra Mike]

Let's face it; the high and excitement that Naruto rode on in it's original run on Toonami NEVER recovered after the original Toonami died out and for awhile Shippuden became a Disney series even more heavily edited down which dried out a lot of the buzz. And yeah obviously Shippuden did come back to Toonami and yeah has been allowed to fully air out but by that point excitement in Naruto had pretty much died down. I mean the original manga ended nearly a decade ago and though Boruto is still around it never hit nearly as big as the original, especially in the US. The reason One Piece still is around and still gets heavily pushed despite never being that big a Toonami hit is because OP itself is still this massive franchise which really fizzled out over here. To the point where they aired some of Boruto BEFORE the finale episodes of Shippuden just to try and gain interest which yeah obviously didn't work. This isn't a Dragon Ball/Dragon Ball Z thing where you had one franchise running so hot it was fine to air another part of it out of order and no one would care and even then Toonami waited for both DBZ and DB to finish before starting with GT. Naruto though never got to finish it's original Toonami run, Boruto went nowhere and yeah Shippuden just limped to the finish line.

Still it is an accomplishment it finally did all finish up and you know some long running series won't even get that. And yeah the manga ending was a lot better plus there was a Naruto movie all about he and Hinata's relationship but it still is a nice way to at least and wrap up the regular series and I guess there probably were... worse ways to end everyone's favorite knuckle ended ninja TV run. Well I guess there's still Rewind reruns if you still need SOME Naruto fix on CN but yeah it is an end of an era... a pretty underwhelming end but still again at least it REACHED an ending.

 

[PicardMan]

And yeah obviously Shippuden did come back to Toonami and yeah has been allowed to fully air out but by that point excitement in Naruto had pretty much died down.

Shippuden began its Toonami run just months before Titanmania happened. Whether it be Attack on Titan, Kill La Kill, One Punch Man, Dragonball Super, My Hero Academia, or something else, Shippuden was always in something's shadow during its Toonami run. Still, this franchise meant a lot to Toonami fans being a sequel to the second most popular series on Cartoon Network Toonami. Even if the majority of Shippuden fans seem to believe that it jumps the shark at some point or another (which point seems to vary from fan to fan), the fans were in it for the long haul, and Shippuden made it to the finish line. Naruto holds a special place in my heart even if it became an overconvoluted mess in that 200-ish episode overly-bloated war arc.

 

[J'onn J'onzz]

It is quite the accomplishment to air 500 episodes with only a single commercial made in over a decade. 500 episodes, without the block ever airing a single rerun or marathon, is such a contrast from the original show. Slow and steady wins the race I suppose. The original aired so much that it burned out before the end. Shippuden never really crowded out other shows, the way the original Naruto strangled the life out of every other show on the CN era block, with its constant marathons and encores. Even though Shippuden eventually had double slots at some points in the 2020s, that was only after the 2010s era of plentiful supply of AAA Funi Shonen had dried up and they had little choice but to double down on One Piece and Naruto Shippuden premieres.

 

[A.Magik]

Anyone got any screenshots from THE LAST showing Naruto and Hinata greeting everyone at the reception?



There have been some complaints about ending the series with the wedding. Some preferred him becoming Hokage, etc. Personally, it fits. When I first read the manga, all I focused on was a boy without anyone. Now the lonely boy is getting married, living with someone, and sharing their lives together. The perfect cap to the story.

 

[A.Magik]

Let’s see
macattack did 1-175
I did 176-about 420
CNFan1995 did the remainder.

 

[PicardMan]

For those wanting to see more of Naruto and Hinata's romance, there is the only canon Shippuden movie, The Last, streaming on Netflix. I've heard lots demands for it getting a Toonami airing, but not even the canon Dragonball movies air.