Tuesday, 2024-05-07, 9:58 AM
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"Creativity"

Episode 42 Review (The Ultimate Battle: Ino vs. Sakura, Cha!)

With rivalry as a major theme as it is in the series, I don’t have a problem with them naming this episode "the ultimate battle,” when it clearly isn’t. I have a problem with that annoying "Cha!” They just had to insert into an otherwise fine episode name. The episode however is by far the best since season two started. It’s all towards the Ino and Sakura rivalry, and while the last episode was important for the rivalry development and preparing this, this is the closing to it, and really gets the more emotional moments. The fight actually I will admit is probably the best fight since Haku vs. Naruto. It’s more important that it’s emotional, and not only that it’s actually pretty good for the physical side of it as well. Ino cutting her hair and making a trap out of it was cool, and even though I knew the winner from seeing it as a kid, reading the manga, etc. I knew enough to know at one point it looked like Ino was going to win. I won’t go into details of the fight, but it’s really good and also has flashbacks occasionally thrown without, and Sakura is strong enough she overcame Ino’s mind transfer jutsu. But in the end the fight came down in a double fist draw that knocked them both out cold and neither going to the third exam. And the moment after while they spoke to each other after the dust cleared was another great moment. And like Kakashi said even though Sakura didn’t become a Chunin, the exam was good for her, and this definitely was probably one of the best ways the fight could have gone down, I only wish Ino or Sakura had used another jutsu that had given them more flash, and especially Sakura since she always seems to need one, and now would have been a good time for her to remember some old move Ino had tried to teach her when they were young but could never get it, but got it now that she had "blossomed.” Not only that but the next match between Temari and Tenten is revealed at the end. Anyway a great episode, sitting right between an eight and a nine for me, and a really good for rivalry development. I know there’s like four rivalries or something going right now, but this one between Sakura and Ino is a little more personal and something the female audience can relate to while the male has ones like Kakashi and Guy and Naruto and Sasuke. Anyway a great episode, but I got to give it a high eight, as it still just isn’t super amazing, and could have done a little better.