When an assassin makes an attempt on the Raikage’s life, he identifies Naruto as the culprit! Naruto, of course, is just as surprised by these allegations as his friends, yet before he can plead the Ninja Fifth Amendment, Tsunade banishes him to the most elite prison in the Ninja world: Hozuki Castle.

Despite all his rage, Naruto is still just an orange Ninja in a cage. Hozuki Castle, run by Hidden Grass Jonin Mui, comes with iron bars, tough inmates, and (worst of all) a Chakra-sealing Jutsu that will literally burn an inmate alive if he uses his Chakra or gets far enough away from Mui. Not that any of this is going to stop Naruto, who probably couldn’t even spell pessimism, let alone comprehend it. He’ll escape and clear his name, come hell or high water, which is appropriate considering that the warden wields Fire and that the prison looks over dozens of treacherous whirlpools.

What I love is that, right from the start, the movie starts throwing out the moral curveballs that characterized much of Shippuden. No one could realistically pin this crime on Naruto (seeing as he lacks both the brains and the killer instinct) yet here he is anyway, abandoned by the people who should have come to his defense. His first interactions with the inmates reveal that everyone inside has been cast aside by their villages too. (One guy got thrown here for the crime of sparing one little kid from an enemy village when his own village had ordered genocide.)

Mui also puts Naruto’s loyalty to Hidden Leaf in question: is he loyal enough to slaughter innocent people if ordered? This question gets repeated several times throughout the movie, and Naruto’s ready and willing to let his fists tell anyone just how much he thinks of that!

 
We also have a surprisingly complex set of villains too. Without giving too much away, they all want Naruto’s jinchūriki chakra to break a seal containing the allegedly wish-granting Box of Paradise. In the era of the Sage of Six Paths, the Hidden Grass Nation nearly conquered the world with its power…until they were nearly wiped out completely for what we’re sure are completely unrelated reasons. (Cue the innocent whistling.)  

Mui makes for an interesting antagonist as well. In true Naruto tradition, there’s a lot more to him than we initially see. His icy, control-freak persona hides a multi-layered character that reveals himself more and more as the movie goes on. It turns out that, ten years ago, Mui used his son, Muku, to open the seal, only for Muku to die when it failed. Yet while his goals are ostensibly the revival of his nation, it quickly becomes apparent that Mui’s son has remained on his mind long after his death.

He’s not the only one who remembers Muku, however. Enter Ryuzetsu, a member of a more peaceful Hidden Grass faction who’s infiltrated Hozuki Castle to keep the Box of Paradise sealed. (And if she can also have revenge on Mui for Muku’s death, then so much the better!) Despite being another movie-only character, Ryuzetsu surprised me by actually making me like her. She felt like an actual cast-member and definitely pulled her own weight in both characterization and plot.

Speaking of plot, the movie’s overall story is top-notch. The action flows really well from scene to scene, and manages to compel even though it stands apart from the main storyline. There are a surprising number of plot-twists, all of which are nicely foreshadowed, and the final battle manages to be a surprise. Suffice to say that it shows how some problems are bigger than just one bad person.

Visually, Hozuki Castle wasn’t quite as rich as Loran from The Lost Tower, being a pretty standard Feudal Japanese fortress. However, both the oppressive atmosphere of the place and certain stylistic choices (e.g. having flashbacks all be lit with a dim, fizzling light) gave the movie a decidedly bleak feel. The background characters were also given a lot of attention, even the ones that only a line or two.  And there’s a hilarious riot scene towards the end where the prisoners, stripped of the Chakra by Mui’s jutsu, duke it out the old-fashioned way. It’s slapstick classic that really must be seen to be believed.

Naruto Shippuden The Movie: Blood Prison is a true must-see movie for any Naruto fan. Well-written and populated with interesting characters, it’s definitely a cut above most films that use “The Movie” as a subtitle. Perhaps best of all, it captures the feel of the later main series, both in the epic scale and the sense that Naruto’s world is a place where good is not the status quo, but something that the characters must make for themselves. 

English & Japanese With Subtitles
16X9 Video
Blu-Ray $24.98/DVD $19.99
Special Features: Animated Short: Chunin Exam on Fire! Naruto vs. Konohamaru!
First print comes with special slip case.

You can pick up a copy of Naruto Shippuden the Movie: Blood Prison right here!

by Chris Turner

© 2002 MASASHI KISHIMOTO /2007 SHIPPUDEN
© NMP 2011