Naruto chapter 515 The War Begins!

bowl · Nov 4, 2010

Small Talk

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a UFO… It’s a giant flying turtle… It’s Tsuchikage! Bad jokes asides I really like this part in the manga and I will be talking a little more on it on this review but I felt like Kishimoto has been taking classes on the rule on cool when I saw that panel.

Naruto Chapter 515

Chapter layout

Many events occurred in this chapter. I thought that chapter 512 was the chapter that showed all of the chess pieces but I was wrong. Chapter 512 was the tip of the iceberg and something tells me that we have yet to see all of the chess pieces in this chapter for both sides. Anyway I shall start this review with the cool cover, the turtle island and everyone in it, the ninja forces and finally the forces of the Villains.

I really like this cover because it hints at the future of what’s to come as well as naruto’s potential in his fox cloak mode (I still don’t know what that mode should be call so I’m still using the old name. If there is a better name than please feel free to inform me). I know that this is going to sound weird but I was kind of hoping that naruto’s fox cloak would look pure orange since naruto will eventually become konoha’s orange hokage but I can see how that would look lame so instead the color seems to be a fusion of orange and yellow. Naruto’s eyes on the other hand do look orange for me and again I’m down with the whole orange hokage part. It is interesting to note that naruto has created six rasengans which match the number of tomoes on his necklace. This might indicate the number of different things that naruto can do at the same time like he can multitask six different jutsu without trying very hard. But what this cover really indicates for me is that naruto truly does have all of the nine tails power and abilities. Naruto can sense evil, create the fox hand and it looks like he can control his chakra remotely like he (nine tails) did in his four tails mode where small balls of red and blue chakra came out of his body and came together to become a high density ball of chakra in the battle with Orochimaru. In a way naruto’s chakra control has now surpassed the hyuugas since hyuugas are known for being able to use chakra from more places than just their hands and feet. Although for the moment his chakra control might be to sensitive at the moment since he can easily crush rocks with his fox hand.

As for naruto’s friends we now see that in war they no longer have the luxury of choosing to whether or not to wear the konoha vest. Although the vest on Choji looked kind of funny to me since compared to everyone’s vest his is open which reveals his normal clothing. Although this might be because the standard vest might rip apart when he turns into a giant ball or a giant Again this is all speculation. But overall this cover does well to remind the viewers that this is the first time that these young adults will be facing war and it’s kind of sad since during these past four generations (or more) there has yet to be a generation that was lucky enough not to experience war.

The giant turtle who felt like a bird

Look at that big smile on his face. He’s having a good time and it looks like he is also lucky since it looks like Manda’s bite did not have any poison or perhaps the turtle was simply too large for the poison to be lethal. Either way seeing the Onoki carrying this giant island turtle with one hand tied behind his back makes the fourth Raikage look like a weakling. Seeing this feat I believe that it is becoming a little clearer as to how Onoki’s flying jutsu works. For the moment I would argue that his jutsu causes the objects that are infuse with his chakra to loss their weight. In this case Akatsuchi and Kurotsuchi can only remain in the air until Onoki’s chakra inside of them runs out or drops to a certain level but since the turtle is so enormous Onoki is only capable of removing most of the turtle weight and if he stops the constant infusing of chakra into the turtle than it will instantly regain all of its weight. Inside of the turtle we see naruto who is wondering how the hell heaven and earth keep changing places. Fortunately for Aoba and Motoi it would appear that Killerbee knows about the truth of the mission which is to keep naruto in and ignorant of the events outside. This is seen as it was his idea to have naruto train in his fox cloak mode since the only thing keeping him inside of the cave was the reputation of the S class mission which he just completed. If Killerbee does know the truth of the mission than that would explain why he did not react to the giant turtle screaming in pain since his real mission might be to distract naruto which he has been doing a beautifully and funny job so far.

On a side note this is probable already common knowledge but I’m still going to say just in case maybe someone else does not know (And I just realized this but I’m a trainee so don’t be so harsh ok?). From what we see from the tail beasts each one gives the user some kind of special ability. Gaara had his automatic sand defense, Roshi has the lava element, naruto has the healing and killerbee seems to have the power to transform parts of his body into parts of the eight tails.

The chess pieces of the shinobi alliance

This has been an interesting part of this chapter. As one may or may not know the evolution of culture, technology and economy is not a straight line but rather evolution branches out. In the naruto world the base at which everything started to branch of from came from ninjutsu or chakra. It’s because of this that their technology (Chakra intensive rather than electricity), economy (Instead of labor force it’s ninja labor force) and cultures are different from ours and at the same time similar. In this chapter we get the chance to compare how Ninjas in the naruto world are similar and different from our military. Just to let you know I have zero military experience and probable none if just stereotypical knowledge about how the military really works in real life so forgive me if I get a lot of the terminology wrong.

So the companies that we see are Ambush Company, medical logistics, Intel company, Sensor company. We also have divisions of close range fighters, midrange fighters, close/midrange fighters, long range fighters and special ops. In real life I belief that we also have these same divisions with sensory company being for planes and close range fighters begin the soldiers that have to go into an area and take it over.

Besides this we also see the theme of the previews generation surpassing the old generation in that some of the companies leaders introduced are pretty young people such as Kankuruo, Gaara, and shikamaru if something happens to Gaara or if he is away for the moment. The way that each person or division was introduced was impressive for me since kishimoto managed to give it a shounen feeling by adding a gag here and there. My only complained with how this was set up was that besides Mifune I didn’t really see any samurai in the divisions or rather now that everyone is wearing the same headband it has now become difficult to tell from which village a shinobi comes from. Now we have to focus on their vest and facial appearance to determine their place of origin.

As for whether or not these new leaders are ready to take charge is questionable and only time will tell just how prepare they really are for war. Although Gaara being the commander general in a sense has some logic behind it. In my opinion in terms of sensibility or appearance the one who should command the other generals should be a kage. Unlike the other kages Gaara has proven to be capable of protecting a large number people during his fight with Deidara and he is the second most mobile kage second to the Tsuchikage except without the random back pains.

The chess pieces of the Villians

On Madara’s side we can now see some of the potential of his Rinnegan. Madara has the power of human realm but I don’t think that he has the power of all of the realms. For example I don’t think that Madara will be able to open up his head and fire laser beams or pull out his arm to fire missiles (Demon realm). For the moment Sasuke is on standby until he recovers from the surgery on his eyes and it seems that Zetsu has some knowledge as to how it feels like to see through the eyes of the eternal Mangekyo Sharingan. We can also see how Yamato has been used to power up the zetsus which to be honest the Zetsu army kind of looks like they drank a little of that chemical that the Joker from Batman arkham asylum use to make Bane like people. My only criticism of how this was done is that Yamato who is now stuck on the lotus flower has the first hokages cells on top of him which looks suggestive for me rather than dreadful or sorry for Yamato. I would have preferred if they were placed back to back but overall I don’t think that the younger readers will get this suggestive feeling.

On Kabuto’s side we can see that he has been using Edo Tensei to bring back all of the previews shinobi of fame. This being akatsuki, the previews kages, the former Jinchuuriki and other shinobi that we have seen and a few unknown ones. Kabuto also has a poison that counteracts Hashirama’s power and you know what I belief Kabuto when he says he won’t use it on the zetsus. I belief that he will use that poison on Madara in order to prevent him from using Izanagi. With a Zetsu on Kabuto’s side he might even have the chance to take over Madara’s zetsu army if that army is being controlled in a way that is similar to the Borg queen controlling the Borg (Star trek) or how the zerg is controlled by an overmind or queen in starcraft. Last but not least Manda is inside of Madara’s base and with its superior sensory abilities it might be able to find Sasuke if he is in Madara’s base.

Final Thoughts

I liked this chapter mostly due to the fact that it answered many of the questions that I had in the last chapter. This chapter also confirms that we will get to see all of the characters that we heard people talk about but never saw in real life (Old kages, Jinchuuriki and some leaf ninjas). Their way of thinking, the way that they fight will be revealed or at least this is what this chapter is foreshadowing which is a good since seeing these people in action and reading about them in a data book are two different things for me. Although something that I would of like to have seen in this chapter would be the passage of time. The scouts that are scouting Madara’s base are now informed about Manda and I’m curious as to how long it took them to be informed about this information or how long it took to create all of those headbands.

Many events occurred in this chapter and this chapter is showing promise that the plot is heading towards a new direction where instead of the usual a few people fighting together (or a one on one) it will be a mass scale war. There is a lot of potential but at the same time I am worried that with so many characters in play that it will be a challenge to balance out giving everyone there time to shine and having the story progress. Overall I feel that this chapter gave a lot of information which will give the fans much to talk about until the next chapter arrives.

Special Thanks

Once again I would like to thank Blinktopia for this chapter (The fastest chapter released in my recent memory) and the panels that you see here came from them.

Also the first sentence of small talk came from the superman cartoon except as you can see I changed up a lot of the words.