This marks the triumphant return of Wakabayashi to Naruto after too long a wait. It is not quite as good as 133 due to Wakabayashi having to adapt a bit too much material from the manga that drags it all down, but it packs in tons of ambition and action that you don't see a lot these days that makes it all worth it. The fan response has been typical. So they think this kind of animation is bad? Does that mean they also think the rest of the show actually looks good? Don't get me wrong, Shippuden has its moments, But is the fanbases's idea of good animation a pan across a still background with characters opening and closing their mouths for half an episode? I don't know what to say that aside from "you're wrong". I know this might come across as condescending, but people need to realize that they're watching animation and that implies that for it to be good you need to have movement-- whatever that movement might be as long as it's interesting. And to create exciting movement, you also need to manipulate and work around character designs to properly convey whatever action you want to put on-screen.
All in all, though, I'm glad that Wakabayashi is back and it seems likely that he might be a regular again. And by regular, I mean one episode per year. This kind of quality takes time and money.
In less thrilling news in comparison, there's a new ED debuting in this episode. Director, animation director, storyboard, key animation: Yuu Yamashita. Koji Yabuno also did some KA for this one. He was an animator in over 20 episodes of the first series and he's a sub-character designer for Welcome to the Space Show and a character designer for Kshin Taisen Gigantic Formula. As you could tell from the latter's designs, his drawings are characterized by these big eyes which is akin to a realistic depiction of the stereotypical anime eye. My guess is that he did the shot of the wind blowing Sakura's hat away, among other other stuff.