Naruto Vol. 38
- ISBN
- 9781421521749
- Publisher
- Viz Media
- English release
- Pages
- 200
- Chapters
- 340–349
- Anime
- Season 4: Hidan and Kakuzu 「不死の破壊者、飛段・角都の章」 ep. 72–88; Season 5: Three-Tails Appears 「三尾出現の章」 ep. 89–112; Season 6: Master's Prophecy and Vengeance 「師の予言と復讐の章」 ep. 113–143
Shippuden season 4 ends on this book's opening chapter, which makes it the most awkward point in the run to arrive at from the anime. The book runs chapters 340 to 349, and season 4 stops at the first of them, so a viewer coming from it starts one chapter in. Season 5 then adapts chapters 341 and 342 across its first two episodes and spends its remaining twenty-two on anime-original material, so a viewer who watched all of season 5 has still seen only three chapters of this volume. Season 6 opens at chapter 343, the fourth. The where-to-start form answers chapter 341 for the end of season 4 and chapter 343 for the end of season 5. Box Set 2 covers volumes 28 to 48, which Viz states outright, and at $224.99 it beats buying those twenty-one singly. It is not the cheapest way through this stretch, though: the 3-in-1 line is, by a wide margin.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Two long-running antagonists are disposed of in ten chapters. Naruto lands the Wind Style Rasen Shuriken on Kakuzu and Kakashi lands the deathblow. Sasuke then decides he has learned everything Orochimaru has to teach, attacks him as the body-stealing begins, turns the process around with the Sharingan and absorbs his teacher instead. What follows is recruitment: Suigetsu Hozuki, Karin and Jugo, assembled for one purpose, which is killing Itachi. The book is transitional in the strict sense. A reader loses nothing by reading straight through the seam. A viewer who followed season 5 to its end had seen three chapters of this book and twenty-two episodes of something else.
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