NARUTO Chapter 693 Review : Once again...

Written by : FrillyPhoenix

Kishimoto apparently realized chapter 685 was a mistake,
'cause he just took his shovel to bury SasuSaku for good.
Instead, he simply sowed the seeds of NaruSasu/SasuNaru,
watered them with hatred, and will be trying to make them bloom into love.

What's happening in this chapter ?

The manga resumes where we left it last time : Sasuke. Revolution. Yadda yadda yadda.

Naruto asks him to release the Tailed Beasts as they aren't going to do any harm now, but Sasuke lets Naruto know that he wants to eradicate anything that has their chakra... meaning the Beasts of course and Naruto himself.

"I am the seme and YOU are the uke, so you shut up and comply to my wishes !"

So, as Sasuke explains, it is not Naruto and his seal that are needed to set people free from the Mugen Tsukuyomi, it is the chakra of the Tailed Beasts. So he can free people even if Naruto is dead, by using their chakra. Then he kills them (kinda the same thing he did with Karin : use the "item" then throw it away).

Naruto, of course, isn't going to let him do what he wants. Since Sasuke knew this would happen, he offers to go somewhere else to settle the matter.

Kakashi tries to stop them, but him being too weak to even stand on his own, he trips and falls on his face before even making one step.

And then comes the disappointing moment of the chapter : Sakura, who's also witnessing the scene, starts to cry (as usual) and but face takes a very badass expression... all for nothing, because she ends up reminding Sasuke that she loved him, that she would never have thought he'd turn this way and ends up begging him to stay by their (Team 7's) side if he still likes her even a tiny bit.

So much beauty, so much strength, so much rage in her look... and so much disappointment **sigh**...

Sasuke, who hasn't forgotten her confession from years ago, turns around and repeats the same words he told her (twice) before : "You're annoying" before using a Genjutsu that makes it look like he's stabbing her (but it's just an illusion, he is knocking her out... like he did before leaving Konoha).

Naruto, while annoyed at his method for stopping Sakura, is kinda grateful that she is now unable to try and stop them.

Kakashi (as usual, the one who understands Sakura the most) takes her defence and tells Sasuke that Sakura's love for him was genuine and despite not being in love with him anymore, she still likes him a lot and wants to "save" him even if he hurt her in many ways. But Sasuke tells him that he's not interested in her and her love for him, as he never understood it.

Sasuke does understand the concept of "love that hurts", but he says that it is a thing from the past. His "revolution" is for him a way to move on, if I were to give a personal interpretation of the thing.

Naruto reminds Sasuke of the promise he made to Sakura : to bring him back to them, so he is very determined to succeed this time. Naruto tells Kakashi not to worry as both he and Sasuke are heading to their own battlefield.

Hagoromo (who was supposed to "go home" a while ago already but who stayed because of "luv dramu") uses this time to give his own analysis of love based on what he saw with his sons, Madara and Sakura. But he doesn't think Sasuke is going to meet the same end as Madara (understand : Sasuke is getting away alive). He is hoping that Naruto's love for Sasuke is going to transform the latter's hatred into love as well (SasuNaru/NaruSasu ♥).

Just in case you've forgotten how much Kishimoto loves parallels.

Naruto and Sasuke arrive at their battlefield : the Valley of the End. A few words are exchanged about how they're going to defeat each other. Real battle should start next week (if we aren't interrupted by Talk-no-Jutsu or Flashback-no-Jutsu).

My opinion on the chapter :

It could have been a fairly enjoyable chapter if not for Sakura's intervention (as this is coming from someone whose favourite character IS Sakura). I mean, she had such an awesome expression of determination on her face before talking to Sasuke, you could really believe she was going to go against Sasuke (even if just verbally) and scream at him for being an idiot who always ruins everything or something like that (like she somewhat did in the past)...  but no, she had to be the same old whiny Sakura, begging him to come back. To use her own words, it was "disgraceful".

Now, I do think that she's begging him to stay with them for the sake of the team, not for herself only (as Kakashi says : "there's nothing more to it"), but still, that's annoying. On the bright side of things, it's positive for me as a NaruSaku shipper because Kishimoto just put the final nail on the SasuSaku coffin but what is stupid is that he did so by replaying the same scene as before (thus SasuSaku shippers still holding on to their sunken ship), even though the redundancy of that scene is supposed to break the ship even more... Anyway, Naruto reminded us of the promise he made to his "Sakura-chan", so I'm optimistic for the future.

Shitty ship talk aside, I was a bit disappointed that Kakashi wasn't able to do anything (but if he's going to do as bad as Sakura, it's best he doesn't do anything... maybe it was a good thing that Sasuke made her shut up for once). But the rest of the chapter was nice. Not great, but just nice.

Now, I'm curious about the upcoming fight, even thought fights are usually the part I dislike the most in NARUTO. I do hope we're going to see more than just plain old Rasengans and Susano'os.

Overall : this chapter gets 2.5/5.

     Good thing(s) :

+ Sasuke explaining how he's going to free people without Naruto's help

+ Sasuke knocking Sakura out

     Meh thing(s) :

• Hagoromo hinting that Sasuke is going to become all peace&love with Naruto when the battle is over (thanks to The Last's design of Sasuke, we knew he'll stay alive, but maybe he'd still be bad ?)

     Bad thing(s) :

- Sakura... I love you, so please don't give haters more reasons to hate on you...

That's it ! Thanks for reading and see you next week guys !

FrillyPhoenix:  










This NaruSaku (wor)shipper has secretly sworn to take over the world with her fluffy kawaiiness. But since she's too lazy for that, she spends her time playing video games, promising herself that her dominion will start after she's done with this one game. 734853478h4538 games later, she's still in bed.








You may find her in her own kingdom, the only place she has managed to conquer so far: deviantArt.