Naruto Vol. 15
- ISBN
- 9781421510897
- Publisher
- Viz Media
- English release
- Pages
- 192
- Chapters
- 127–135
- Anime
- Season 2 (2nd Stage) ep. 36–83
The fight with Gaara turns into a biography in this book, and that change is what the rest of Naruto is built on. Chapters 127 to 135 put Naruto in Sasuke's place against an opponent who is becoming the thing sealed inside him, and the middle of the volume goes to where Gaara came from rather than to how he can be beaten. A summoning, a giant toad and the fox's chakra are the mechanics. The argument underneath them is that the two boys are the same case with different outcomes. Season 2 of the anime covers chapters 62 to 144, so a viewer has been through all of this. Viz states that 3-in-1 book 5 collects Vols. 13 to 15, so this is the last third of that $16.99 book.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Gaara completes the transformation into a full-size Shukaku, Naruto answers by summoning Gamabunta, and the volume ends with the outcome open: the last blow is the first chapter of Vol. 16. The scale is not the point. Both boys have a tailed creature sealed inside them, both were kept at a distance for it, and Kishimoto puts that symmetry on the page during the fight rather than after it, so the reader is asked to sympathize with the opponent while he is still winning. That method becomes the series' default. Almost every major antagonist after this one is given a childhood before he is given an ending. The sympathetic antagonist is not a habit the series drifts into later: it is a method installed here, in the middle of a fight, and the rest of the run leans on it hard. The chapters spent on Gaara's past are also why the character survives the arc: he is the first opponent the series would rather convert than finish.
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