174. I Can’t Believe it! The Celebrity Ninja Way: Kinton no Jutsu

Worth watching as a manga-standard episode? Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha.
Worth watching for the lulz? Kishimoto himself has nightmares about this ep.

Filler writer 2: Number 3? Number 3, where are you?

[Number 3 is in his room, which is also a cave, reading. He covers an ear with a free hand. Number 2 bursts in.]

Filler writer 3: How many times do I have to remind you that if you shout, it echoes for like half an hour. What do you want?

Filler writer 2: Something's wrong with Dave.

Filler writer 3: Is he trying to write an episode where Lee is a time-travelling trapeze artist? I'd say that was pretty normal.

Filler writer 2: I'm serious! I'm really worried about him!

Filler writer 3: What's he done now?

Filler writer 2: It's like Anko's backstory was too brilliant-

Filler writer 3: We had a blob that was the king of the sea or something – let's not go overboard here.

Filler writer 2: I think he's had some kind of breakdown. He keeps muttering to himself about his latest creation, he won't let any of us work on the next episode, saying it's... it's...

Filler writer 3: Are you going to spit it out or can I go back to my book?

Filler writer 2: ...evil.

Filler writer 3: And? We're filler writers, everything we write is evil.

Filler writer 2: This time I think he's gone too far.

Filler writer 3: It can't be that bad.

Filler writer 2: Kane. Bunshin. No jutsu.

Filler writer 3: [The book falls out of his hand, forgotten. The horror sinks in and grips his heart in its icy grasp] ...my god.

This episode is so awful even Naruto can't believe it. I'm not just cashing in on a bad joke either – it's in the title. Any of the following would have been less annoying instead of the brat:

I hate this kid. I hate him with every fibre of my being. His seiyuu is a retarded woman who wandered into the studio seconds before shooting and was given the job because she threatened to keep talking if they didn’t let her 'have a go' at voice acting. Basically, this episode is what would happen if the animators let the show's stupidest, most irritating fanbrat have a cameo.

Kill it with fire.

Little Fucker walks into Konoha – IZUMO AND KOTETSU FAILURE AT PROTECTING THE VILLAGE ALERT, this is their biggest crime of the fillers – and points at every bloody thing, asking if it is real. What the hell? Then he shouts "Ninja!!!" ten times in thirty seconds and already I want to die. Naruto's 'mission' is to babysit for the day and show him the life of a ninja. If he was really going to do that, he'd let him get assassinated by enemy nin or suffer some painful injury during training. That is an episode I would watch.

Little Fucker is flanked by the Blues Brothers because the family is wealthy and his father is happily paying people to keep his son away from him. Naruto goes to clean a swamp as part of his daily duties as a ninja and there's a beautiful moment where it seems as if Little Fucker might drown. But then he snots all over my dreams by using the titular 'kinton no jutsu', where he throws money in the air and a swarm of bodyguards descend to help him. Some other things happen but I was too distracted chewing on shards of glass, which was preferable to watching this episode.

Who can blame them for gouging out their eyes?

Some butt-ugly baddies decide to rob the rick kid. At this point, I would pay them more than LF ever could to stab him in the head and end this episode right now. We get the joyous pun of 'kane bunshin no jutsu' (money clones) which creates this monstrosity:

Gawd, there's a moral and it's painful. Naruto thinks LF doesn't have friends because he thinks money can be used for everything. Wrong! He doesn't have friends because no one can stand more than five minutes in his company without spontaneously combusting in despair. LF runs off but unfortunately the camera follows him and we see him get caught by the old 'fish on a stick' trap. Naruto stops bad things from happening and there is a 'heart-warming' moment where LF finds it is more fun to try and jab innocent fish through the heart with a kunai than it is to go to a shop and buy one. LF runs out of money and the Blues Brothers turn against him as the baddies can pay them. Naruto says he can’t be bought, but if he makes the minimal jump to money = ramen, this kid is screwed.

As the Neanderthal Baddies make chase to capture him for ransom, Naruto ties a rope round LF's middle and makes him swing across a ravine to escape. Snot flies everywhere like the disgusting little freak he is, and he slams into the cliff face. No one can tell if permanent brain damage has been caused because he acts as if he's been slammed into a few cliffs already, if you catch my drift. Back on the other side, the edge where Naruto and the Blues Brothers were fighting breaks up and down they go. LF has some flashbacks within the same episode to drill the moral into us some more and bungee jumps down to save our orange protagonist. LF's irritation defies the laws of physics as he falls faster than Naruto to save him.

WHY IS THERE SO MUCH GODDAMN SNOT?!

Back at his home, in the front garden there is what looks suspiciously like a gravestone. That's his mother after realising she gave birth to that. We end with "If it's pretty, it doesn't really matter whether it has a value or not." I'm not quite sure if this lesson works out. What if Little Fucker grows up and applies this to women? Should the show ever skip ten years ahead, you can bet it will come back to him, with his three dead wives in the basement, on the hunt for more to add to his collection. And now we can rejoice, because the horror has ended.

Team members: Naruto
Number of kage bunshin no jutsus: 2
Number of rasengans: 0!
Next week: Wow, a mission with Naruto, Kiba and Hinata as the team. Haven't had one of those before.