Naruto Vol. 29
- ISBN
- 9781421518657
- Publisher
- Viz Media
- English release
- Pages
- 192
- Chapters
- 254–262
- Anime
- Season 1: 風影奪還の章 (Kazekage Rescue) ep. 1–32
A chase across the desert, and the book where the series puts a name on the thing every later arc is organized around. Chapters 254 to 262 have Team Kakashi and Team Guy running for the Akatsuki hideout while the work inside it proceeds on a schedule, with Chiyo of Sunagakure attached to the rescue. Chapter 261 is titled 'Jinchûriki Host...!!', and the hosts of the tailed beasts are the list the antagonists will be working through for the rest of the series. The obstacles are two fights against copies rather than against people, and the book does not pretend otherwise. Shippuden covers all of it inside season 1, episodes 1 to 32, so any viewer has seen this. Read on its own it is the middle of a journey: it opens after the capture and closes outside a door that is still shut. The book runs 192 pages and lists at $11.99.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
The two fights here are against bodies wearing other people, and the series says so inside the volume rather than saving it. Itachi and Kisame are not present: what Team Guy and Kakashi fight are doubles, sent to hold two squads in place while the extraction runs, and they succeed at exactly that. Guy takes Kisame, Kakashi takes Itachi, and the clock is what wins. What arrives that matters later is vocabulary. Chapter 261 puts jinchuriki in a chapter heading, and from that point the series has a word for what the Akatsuki collect, which is the organizing fact of everything after Vol. 28. Chiyo is the other arrival: Sasori's grandmother, joining the rescue of the boy her grandson took, which sets up the next two volumes as a family matter on both sides. What the book lacks is consequence. The extraction finishes on schedule, nothing the rescue party did in nine chapters altered that, and the party arrives to a closed door.
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