Naruto Vol. 3
- ISBN
- 9781591161875
- Publisher
- Viz Media
- English release
- Pages
- 208
- Chapters
- 18–27
- Anime
- Season 1 (1st Stage) ep. 1–35
The Land of Waves fight runs through all of this book and finishes in none of it. Chapters 18 to 27 give their front section to training and the rest to the bridge, where Zabuza and the masked boy from Vol. 2 are waiting and Team 7 arrives a man short. Nothing resolves. The fight starts here, finishes in Vol. 4, and this is the worst of the first twelve books to stop on. Viz lists 208 pages at $11.99, sixteen more than Vol. 1 for the same money. 3-in-1 book 1 also ends with this volume, so the omnibus buyer is cut off at exactly the same place as the single buyer, which is the one edition fact in this stretch worth checking before paying.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
The training chapters take the front of the book and carry the least; what the volume is for is its last stretch. Sasuke fights Haku to a standstill, the first time the series lets one of the children hold an opponent of that class, and Haku answers by closing him inside a prison of ice. Naruto arrives to help and is overpowered alongside him. Then Sasuke puts himself between Naruto and the attack that would have finished him, and appears to die, and Naruto reaches the Nine-Tailed Fox's chakra for the first time. Chapter 27 is called 'Awakenings'. That sequence is the machine Kishimoto keeps rebuilding through Part I: Sasuke ahead, Sasuke down, Naruto escalating past him on grief rather than on training. The book stops inside the transformation, which is a magazine break printed into a collected edition, and the clearest case in the first twelve for buying the next one at the same time.
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