Naruto Vol. 26
- ISBN
- 9781421518626
- Publisher
- Viz Media
- English release
- Pages
- 192
- Chapters
- 227–235
- Anime
- Season 4 (4th Stage) ep. 132–179
One fight fills this entire book, and it is the fight the rest of the series is measured against. Chapters 227 to 235 run Naruto against Sasuke without interruption, at the place chapter 232 names the Final Valley, each of them reaching for a power he was not supposed to need. Almost nothing else happens in it. The original anime covers the whole stretch inside season 4, episodes 132 to 179, so a viewer arriving here has seen all of it. What changes is what the series is about: Naruto has spent twenty-six volumes trying to be acknowledged by a village, and from here he is trying to take one person back out of it. Where the fight lands is the single fact readers most want to find for themselves, so it belongs in the section below. It is 192 pages at $11.99, the standard shape.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Sasuke wins. He stands over Naruto at the end, considers killing him, and declines on the reasoning that killing his closest friend is the exact transaction Itachi prescribed and would therefore be Itachi's result rather than his own. Then he walks to Orochimaru of his own accord, and Kakashi arrives too late to do anything but carry Naruto home. Chapter 233 is titled 'The Worst Ending...!!' and chapter 235 'Mission Failed...!!', which is the series printing its own verdict on the contents page. That is the unusual part. The protagonist of a Weekly Shonen Jump serial loses the climactic fight of his first half, loses the person he was fighting for, and is beaten and carried home for the ending. The genre convention is that the hero's conviction reaches the rival; here the conviction is heard, considered and rejected on its merits. Everything promised in the volumes that follow is a promise to undo this one.
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