Eps 23 & 24
[details=spoiler]So, The Third Kazekage (who apparently has no other name), releases the Iron Sand, Sasori has made this puppet in a special way, so that it retains the chakra it’s body had when it was alive. What a neat trick. The sands speeds toward Chiyo and Sakura and Chiyo directs the ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ puppets to protect them. Sakura and the ‘Mother’ puppet leap away; but Chiyo is in direct line and the ‘Father’ puppet is rendered useless by the Iron Sand when it seeps into its mechanisms.
Sasori then renders the ‘Mother’ puppet useless. He then sends the Iron Sand at Chiyo again and we discover that her right hand is artificial and is now useless as the Iron Sand creeps into it. She discards this arm.
Chiyo has a flashback to when Sasori was born and how his parents loved him, but then they were killed. She then took care of him and taught him how to make and use puppets; he then made puppet-duplicates of his parents, to hold him and sleep with him, to “love” him.
Sakura then offers to be a ‘human puppet’ for Chiyo, saying that the Iron Sand won’t hurt her in the same way. So Sakura attempts to get close to Sasori.
Sasori then forms the Iron Sand into a solid pyramid and a long I-beam. He sends these at Sakura, who punches them right back at him. This irritates Sasori to no end. And he keeps sending the sand objects at her, she avoids them with Chiyo’s help and then sends them back at him. After several hits, the lair starts to cave in. Every time Sakura punches one of the sand object, a little more of the lair collapses around them.
Meanwhile, Naruto & Kakashi are STILL pursuing Deidara who is leading them away from the lair. Deidara is STILL mentioning how he is low on clay, but he is STILL making little clay beings and dropping them down, trying to split up Naruto and Kakashi and failing. Kakashi has come up with a plan, but he has to catch up with Naruto first. He hears the explosions coming from back at the lair, but he’s also out of communications range, so he has no way of finding out what’s happening. Just then, Deidara speeds up and so does Naruto… getting further away from Kakashi.
And then there’s Team Guy… STILL fighting with themselves. They, too, hear the explosions and Neji is able to ‘see’ that the lair is collapsing.
Back inside the lair, Sasori is really agitated that Sakura keeps returning fire. So he turns the Iron Sand into sharp spikes and sends them at Sakura. After the dust clears, Chiyo is partially trapped under some rubble and is shocked to see Sakura on her hands and knees surrounded by spikes of Iron Sand, holding her arm. Sasori laughs, knowing that his spikes were laced with his poison and that Sakura has been injected with it.
Sasori decides to stop playing with Sakura and end it. He could leave her and she would die in three days from the poison, but he’d rather just kill her and get it over with. He attacks her with the Third Kazekage puppet and is stunned to find that Sakura is apparently immune to the poison and was faking being poisoned. She stands and punches the Third Kazekage puppet, destroying it.
All in all, the Sakura/Chiyo/Sasori battle is ok. Nothing I want to write home about. Chiyo now only has one arm and they’ve only faced just the one enemy, who they haven’t even defeated yet. I have this feeling that she’s not going to be around much longer.
I also have the feeling that something stupid is going to happen with Team Guy that will help them defeat their clones, but I don’t know what it is.[/details]
So, even though we got TWO episodes, I was still disappointed at the fact that Team Guy made absolutely no forward motion in their battles. Naruto & Kakashi made no headway in their pursuit of Gaara’s body.
Obviously, we have to wait until the battle is over in the lair.
Ah well, at least the OP remains (which continues to still be a favorite of mine).
Want more.