Survivor: South Pacific pre-season thoughts.

Hey everyone, Survivor is coming back ( like it always does, after 22 season can that show die?) and with its new season called Survivor: South Pacific they will future the same "twists" that they did in the last season, which are The Returning players and Redemption island.

The Returning players.


Lets start with a short history lesson shall we?


Last season started this new tradition of putting in two old players along with new contestants, before this we had 2 all stars seasons and one  fan vs fan favorites season, season 20 named Heroes vs Villains showed us one of the greatest survivor rivalries ever, the one between Boston Rob and Russel Hants, as a guy who watched about 15 seasons of survivor ( yes I skipped a few that I hear sucked a bit) it definitely set up season 20 as something special.
So who won?

Russel won their rivalry  ( dont get mad at me, I am just stating who got voted out first) during the reunion show Rob challenged Russel and said he could "kick his ass all over the island" and that comment brought us Survivor Redemption Island.

After such an epic rivalry and indeed epic season CBS decded it cant just end at that, we need more R &R and brought both these players back for season 22.

Unfortunately,  Season 22 bombed.Hard. it wasnt a complete train wreck, but I reckon I'll never watch it again.

Firstly there wasnt any Rob vs Russel, which is odd considering that Jeff Probst in one of his youtube videos said it "plays out nicely, you'll all love it"  Instead they were put on different tribes and didnt speak to each other until Russel was sent to Redemption Island....

After Russel got voted out, the show quickly devolved to focus on Rob and Rob alone, with perhaps a bit of Philip if you're (un)lucky.

“Hell hath no fury like a lion and a gorilla when he thinks he’s been provoked.”

So season 22....a bad spot in survivor really, But unlike my initial thoughts that both the Returning players and Redemption island will be scrapped, both have returned.

So who is coming back this season?

If you havent heard yet, there will be 18 players this season, 16 new contestants and two "Favourites" and who are our two returning players?

Well the first one is a famed warrior, a wizened philosopher, a noble soul,  a man far traveled who has gone to the ends of the world and beyond and trained in martial arts passed from generation to generation,he is a warrior, a poet, a Dragonslayer.

Coach is back for the third time, debuting in Survivor Tocantines coach has been quite a dividing individual, most people either love him or hate him, he's that kind of character where you either despise everything he does or enjoy them.

Is coach coming back a good thing?

Well Coach gets a lot of focus, no doubt about that, not as bad as Rob last season but he takes up a lot of screen time, however to be honest I find coach to be entertaining, I mean who came up with lines like " “Sierra is the bowl movements that comes out of the dragon." Or another like " As iron sharpens iron, so must man sharpen man" Who can come up with gold like that?

I wrote a poem too

If Coach doesnt steal the show completely, then I have no real problem with him, sure its unfair for survivor to put back people who have played before (Twice!) instead of new players who havent had a chance yet, but its their show, we can complain about it all we want, but we cant really change that.

As for the second returning player?

Well he's not really as prominent as coach, he played in the Cook Islands ( an underrated season) and Fans vs favorites and is generally a decent guy, he is probably more famous for his challenge prowess then anything else.

Manly hairstyle

Oscar Ozzy also comes back to play the game for the third time, unlike the other 3 returning players Ozzy isnt as much of a base breaker so there isnt as much to say about him.

Whether this season works better then the last will determine a lot on how much attention those returning players get, Redemption island ignored everyone that wasnt Rob and gave him his own show and while  Rob did some pretty outstanding moves ( throwing a clue into a volcano after reading it? Beautiful) he made the season practically unwatchable after the 4th episode.

Still it remains to be seen how it will play out with these two, its already been announced that they will be on opposite tribes ( Upolu and Savaii) and hey at least one person is happy to have those two back

So thats our first twist, whats the second one?

Redemption Island is back

Redemption island returns this season, with a bit of changes this time.

If you didnt watch the last season, then Redemption Island is where players who are voted out compete against other players who were voted out and return to the game later on at some pre-determined stage.

I liked the aspect of " The tribe has spoken"  and then having that person get voted out, redemption island cheapens that a bit by allowing them to come back to the game, the only other season that did that was way back in the Pear Islands where 6 players who were voted out got to make their own tribal council and vote 2 players back in the game and that caused a lot of fans to rage a bit.

Many seasons later, we still dont like players coming back after being voted out.

Redemption island takes far too much time from the show and whats worse it replaces the Reward challenge which I always loved, watching two tribes battle it out in some swimming contest then run and do a puzzle or having them navigate blindfolded tribemates to clues is more exciting then watching two players who arguably dont deserve to be in the game, stack bricks or something >.>

Of course we might still get those big challenges as immunity challenges but we get half as many now in this season as we did in previous ones.

As for the changes mentioned? well Redemption island will not have group challenges anymore, they will all be duels, last season we had 8 players competing in the finale, unlike most where we have 4-5 players.
Not a major change really.

For me, I'd have preferred a good old fashioned survivor season, two challenges per episode, 18 new players, no redemption, but who knows this might work out better then last season ( it could hardly get worse)

What do you guys think? will these new twists ruin this season? how do you feel about Coach and Ozzy playing for a third time?

I'll leave you now with a picture of a cat begging for a comment or two :D

Naruto 551 Review

Welcome everyone, its been 2 weeks since the last chapter of Naruto was released, but Kisi defeinitely used his time well by providing one of the most explosive and beautiful chapters ever so lets start our review :D

Our chapter starts off same way as the last one finished with Nagato grabbing Naruto and using his old Preta path ability to absorb ninjutsu, Naruto tries to remember all the techniques Nagato used in their fight so far and decides to go with a rasengan ten seconds after he concludes that it will be useless, Naruto still has ways to go in the intelligence department :/

After realizing that normal techniques wont work, Naruto resorts to talk-no-jutsu to try to get Nagato to snap our of it, but its pretty futile by now, while some people thought that Nagato absorbing Bee's chakra might help him break free from Kabuto, it plainly isnt going that way here.

Nagato summons the Naraka path, apparently Kabuto can use Human path to remove souls and revive them later, Kabuto clearly is no ally of Madara but he states here that he will "Revive" Naruto and Bee later, does he mean revive them as edo tensei or as normal humans? 

Speaking of Bee...

Is the top panel epic or is the top panel super epic? Bee makes one pretty cool heroic entry, but Why he doesnt use Samahada is a bit strange, I would think that if they sucked enough of Nagato's chakra back he would revert to his weaker crippled form...



Bee is spotted by the salamander thing and while it was never stated so far, I think is safe to say now that Pein's summons also share vision with him, that means pein can almost always have full vision if he wants by summoning whichever summon he needs to be his eyes.

Who said two jinchuriki are better then one?

Say what you want about Pein, but he proves himself in this panel, can anyone else play with Naruto and Bee the way he does? though I suppose being dead means usual precautions are not needed, but with his perfect use of the six paths Pein dominates this fight.

Bee has an  interesting idea for Naruto, while Pein is pulling his soul Bee mentions about the way the Kyuubi does something similar, but before we hear the full plan guess whose back from the.....death?

Okay so Bee's entry of falling from the sky was pretty cool, but Itachi takes the cake as the coolest savior in Naruto, even Kakashi cant beat him in that, itachi manages to free Naruto and Bee and protect them from nagato in one swift move,  he even manages to use his famous shuriken techniques to blind all of Nagato's summons, I suppose Itachi's true power comes from protecting others.



Kabuto is unimpressed though and describes Itachi as just one more person to capture, not exactly sure what he means by that, if he captures Itachi will he just edo tensei him again? Hmm........

After his rescue we see the difference between Itachi and the jinchuriki, while they panic he seems pretty calm about Pein coming for them.

Another beautiful panel here, Susanoo and everyone else is being pulled through, Would this count as a weakness of susanoo? that it has to have something to stand on? hmm....

While Itachi hid his personality pretty well while he is alive, here he demonstrates a pretty sarcastic sense of humour, asking naruto how he can survive a move that he said is fatal, Naruto's offers a priceless reaction to that.

Itachi again demonstrates how smart he really is, by identifying the black mass as the problem and that they have to get rid of it with long range attacks, since getting close is clearly out of the picture, when Naruto asks how they are supposed to aim for such a small object at a far distance while avoiding all the obstacles in the way, Itachi merely points out that since the block hole is sucking everything in, you dont Need to aim for it to hit it, throw the attack close enough towards it and it will hit itself.

Think of throwing a small metal near a huge magnet, all you need is to get it close enough.

Thanks to Itachi's suggestion, we get what is perhaps the most amazing panel ever, I said the art was good this week but this panel is easily the best of an already amazing chapter, its hard to tell which one looks the best, Itachi is using some sort of wind technique, with susanoo looking somewhat birdlike in his panel, while Naruto is standing on floating stones, after firing off a huge rasenshuriken, But my favourite is Bee, the Hachibi looks amazing with its tentacles and its tailed bomb, its really an amazing picture.

After that onslaught nothing is left of Pein's attack, and from a distance Itachi uses his totsuki blade, the same one he used to seal orochimaru so long ago, itachi has provided two new ways to deal with edo tensei, powerful genjutsu and this totsuki blade.

Pein apologizes to itachi while he is given the chance to say his final words, he chooses to direct them to Naruto, telling him about how he is going to go to jiraiya and that Naruto is the third part of the trilogy, and Nagato considers himself to be a failure as the second part, its sad to see Nagato so disappointed in himself but he doesnt let it get to him, he tells Naruto to be so great so that he might wash away Nagato's sins, Naruto's response is an epic "nice guy pose".

Comments.

Not sure what to add here that I havent stated already, this Chapter was mindblowing to say the least, everything said and done and shown was masterful in execution.

Perhaps it was because this chapter focused on Itachi, the more time that guy gets the better the chapter, Itachi was a very dynamic character and seeing the way he fought this week protecting everyone and at the same time leading the battle makes me wish we see more of him.

Nagato also impressed here, he had no trouble till itachi came and still managed to hold on a little bit.

Art this week can not get enough praise, everything was perfect, Kishi used high angles and close up shots, he showed the choas of battle well with all the flying rocks and his image of the 3 attacking the black hole will go down as one of the best images in naruto, I myself cannot wait to see it in the anime series.

And thats all for now, I have no predictions since the story can anywhere next week.

Hope you enjoyed this chapter and this review.

 

Naruto 550 Review.

Hello everyone, Naruto 550 came out early this week, so Luckily I am able to review it early as well,

This week's chapter is called Koto Amatsukami, and deals with the long awaited crow that Itachi put in Naruto, anyways Lets start the review.

Our chapter starts exactly where the last one ended, with the crow coming out of Naruto's mouth, hell it could just be the same scene from a different angle, as everyone but Itachi is confused by the appearance of the crow it, Itachi's eye starts to bleed and we flashback to the scene of when the crow was first given to Naruto and how it was Itachi's final fail-safe for Sasuke.



The blood on Itachi's eye worries Nagato and make him think that Itachi is going to use amatersu, Bee tries to stop Itachi but it turns out that all that Itachi was doing was casting a genjutsu on himself.

Everytime Itachi so much as sneezes, everyone goes "wtf?:

Kabuto reacts with surprise, his degree of control on Edo Tensei has never been completely established, but even with less pawns to control and more Oro chakra thanks to Anko he still cant stop Itachi from doing whatever he is doing.

The crow lands on Naruto's shoulder, and it has one sharingan and one normal eye, how common is one eyed sharingan now? Kakashi, Danzo and Madara each have one, and now birds too? ehh.... the only thing worse is if the sharingan suddenly starts appearing on peoples arms like pimple- oh right...

Itachi uses Amaterasu, but he misses ( or did he?) and gets Pein's dog instead, Naruto's giant rasengan from last chapter couldnt get rid of it, but Amaterasu seems to do the trick, My guess is that if you burn every part of the body it wont have anything to regenerate from, Anyways after burning the pup Itachi sets his sight on Pein.

Kabuto clearly lost all control of Itachi, as Itachi burns Nagato and his poor bird, one thing that occured to me is when Edo Tensei bodies are revived, what state are they in? the state they died in? cause Nagato looks just like when he died, yet Itachi died without his sharingan but he still has it.... or maybe they are revived based on what time their DNA is taken, any ideas?

A confused Naruto asks Itachi what just happened, apparently the crow would use a genjutsu on anyone with Itachi's mangkyo, this genjutsu would compel the person to only perform actions that would protect konoha, like burn Pein or save Naruto.

The eye of the Crow is a real sharingan, unlike the usual sharingans that itachi puts in his crows during genjutsu's, it belonged to Shisui Uchiha, the same Shisui who Itachi killed and Lost an  eye to Danzo, after casting the genjutsu, the Crow loses its mangkyo and cant use it again, either because of a chakra limitation ( like with Chidori early on) or because of a time limit problem ( like with Pein's shinrei tensei).

Bee recognizes the name of Shisui, just like Ao did when he saw his Chakra in Danzo, we havent been told much of Shisui, but he was apparently famous both for his use of the body-flicker technique and for this genjutsu eye, the most powerful genjutsu eye.

Itachi mentions on what  a true ninja is, a true ninja is one who doesnt seen glory, but who protects his village from the shadows, that is a true ninja.

Shisui gave one of his sharingans to Itachi after danzo took one, Shisui in some ways is like Madara's brother, both gave their eyes to the person they trusted to make them stronger, and both died shortly afterwards, in another irony, Shisui died in a similar manner to danzo, Shisui died to prevent his enemy ( Danzo) from getting his eye, while before he died Danzo crushed Shisui's eye to prevent his enemy ( Madara) from getting it.

Itachi has great faith in Naruto, and in brother in general, in fast Itachi's whole theme has been related to brotherhood, he killed Shisui who was said to be like a brother to him, and killed everyone except for his brother who he loved too much, and the only person he trusted to save Sasuke if he turned evil was the person who also considered Sasuke his brother.

The orginal use for Shisui's eye was to activate on Sasuke if he transplanted Itachi's eye, a decent plan that would have worked, Itachi could not have seen a mass edo tensei, but Bee brings up another point, why not just use Shisui's genjutsu on sasuke from the start?  and Itachi answers that he couldnt at the time, and it will take 10 years for it to be used again unless they have some Hashirima senju chakra around ( I swear that guy's chakra can be used for anything, from charging birds to subduing tailed beasts)

Naruto reassures Itachi, telling him that he will save Sasuke, a lot of people have told Naruto to kill Sasuke lately, so its nice to see someone tell Naruto to stick to his original plan and try to save him instead, coming from Itachi, it created quite an emotional moment, Itachi's life has been nothing if not self-sacrifice for his brother.

Nagato didnt burn completely, thanks to his gravity repelling ninjutsu, Amaterasu can be removed as was demonstrated by the sand siblings during the kage meeting, Pein regenerates and charges for the 2 jinchuriki and Itachi has vanished, what happened to him?

Pein fires a massive charge from a summoned creature, then follows through by charging Bee who responds with my favourite Rap so far and switches to his version 2 of the tailed beast, we havent seen it in a while and it was devastating the last time, but our time with it is cut short when Pein uses Preta path's ability to suck off Bee's chakra, yet with Bee having samahada cant he just suck it back? with Bee taking and giving chakra and Pein doing the same, it will be like a chakra filled 69... :D

Bee's chakra has a very interesting effect of turning Pein into a younger version of himself, and when Naruto attacks Pein he uses Human Path's ability, if you dont know what that is, it was the same ability Pein used to kill anko,  and with the chapter ending ominously with the words " Nagato has become complete" well it doesnt look good for our heroes does it?

Comments


Beautiful, Beautiful chapter, I loved the history lesson of shisui, the uchiha clan having such members as Itachi, obito and Shisui makes me wonder why they ever wanted to revolt?

the fighting this chapter was less then last week, but seeing Itachi turn on Nagato was sweet, two dead guys fighting each other? awesome, although i wonder what happened to itachi after he gave his message to naruto, was he released from edo tensei cause he became emotionally satisfied like some other dead ninja? ( 4th kazekage, sasori)

Kabuto losing Itachi should have been a major blow to him, yet it seemed that Shisui's eye is even more important then that, Kabuto seems crazy prepared for everything.

The art this week had many varied shots, from closeups of character's faces to pictures of huge blasts, burning giant dogs and birds, there was something for everyone, and I thought most of it was well done.

Predictions

My prediction for last week was right, I knew the bird would snap itachi from edo tensei, but I thought it was in the form of living chakra not a genjutsu.

I am honestly lost about next week, but it seems like Nagato has lost all his free will, so I think it will be a serious fight between the jinchuriki and Nagato.

and thats it for today, hope this review has been helpful, and I hope you all have a nice day.