I re-watched the third Naruto movie today and it was just as good as I had remembered. Directed by Toshiyuki Tsuru—who’s a regular on the Naruto franchise when it comes to doing OPs and EDs for the series along with a few episode here and there—this one is a good example of a director who’s more in tune with the animation side of things and that he uses that experience to tell a story. Not that this movie doesn’t have its hokey moments, as is customary for these movies based off a huge shonen property, but there are also, in a good way, conspicuous moments where the use of silence is a great asset—using the animation itself to tell the story and to show the character’s thoughts. Tsuru went on to repeat this type of storytelling with absolutely marvelous results as an episode director in ep. 82 of Shippuden and he also did the screenplay and storyboarding—all under the alias Yasuaki Kurotsu (黒津安明; credit to Anipages for that piece of info). Most of the content in that episode is anime-only, yet at the same time he constructed one of the best single-episodes that focus solely on a single character’s development that I’ve ever seen. He’s given the time to methodically build up an effective solution to the character’s state of grief; whereas in the manga, it’s all done rather rushed. It's another instance of the creators of Pierrot adding scenes that make the final result much more satisfying. Of course, that's setting aside the massive amounts of filler from the first series and the horrible pacing that pervades the first 52 episodes of Shippuden, but still....
Going back to the movie, the storyline in particular isn’t one that will leave you thinking for days to come. The director himself states that he wanted to do a movie based on the character of Inari from the first arc of the TV series, so you know you’ve seen a similar variation of this story before. But what you tune in for when it comes to Naruto movies in the first place is for the fights and this one doesn’t disappoint in that regard. Norio Matsumoto storyboarded his own fights (about 15 minutes worth of the climax according to sakugawiki; including Sakura’s and Lee’s second encounter with the bad guys). Of all the fights in this movie, the one involving Lee is the most interesting to watch. Here we get to watch him use weapons and you really get a sense of speed that makes you remember back to ep. 48 of the original TV series (another episode directed by Tsuru). Though, one other section that left me very impressed was the scene with the crew and passengers on a boat trying to survive the storm; it was animated by Takahiro Kishida. Sadly, I do not know who animated the scene during the climax (it’s a pretty long climax, btw; it goes on for almost 30 minutes IIRC) where the soldiers are being attacked by Kakashi and all sorts of mayhem is happening, especially with the tiger. Even the commentary track with the English staff noted that particular scene and felt that it was noteworthy.And listening to the soundtrack makes me wonder why Toshio Masuda didn't come back to Shippuden.
That’s all I got for today. I apologize for my partially incoherent praise of this piece of work. :P