On first inspection this appears to be your typical Naruto film, following a rather familiar path in terms of narrative and story structure, throwing in a plot twist or two to shift the goal posts regarding the antagonist’s motives, ending with a punch up of colossal proportions and topped off with a hearty moral monologue from our orange suited star ninja. Ryuzetsu however says the Box is dangerous and needs to be destroyed but Mui is hell bent on opening it, but needs a powerful chakra to achieve this – Naruto’s Nine Tailed Fox spirit being his primary target for such a power source. She is on a personal mission to avenge her childhood friend Muku, Mui’s son who was sacrificed to a powerful container called the Box Of Paradise which is said to grant wishes.

Still fuming from being framed yet unable to prove his innocence Naruto befriends a fellow inmate Ryuzetsu, a female ninja from the Hidden Grass Village posing as a male. Of course this doesn’t prevent our hero from trying anyway, earning himself a stint in solitary for his troubles. The wanted posters arrive at the Hidden Leaf Village and the photo fit looks rather familiar –yes, Naruto is the prime suspect and is immediately apprehended and transported to the infamously harsh containment facility known as Blood Prison, where his chakra is immediately sealed by the prison leader Mui to prevent Naruto from using it to escape. It kicks off with an attempt on the life of the Raikage of the Hidden Cloud Village and the murders of jonin from other villages. Of course the film needs to be good enough to warrant this expense, even for the most hardcore Naruto fans so let’s take a look. Unfortunately Manga is only releasing this film as a single entity in DVD format alone, so Blu-ray fans are expected to shell out for the pentalogy set if they want to see this film in HD.

We’ve reached film number eight in the Naruto catalogue but the fifth to carry the Shippuden suffix, which also makes up part of a five disc box set of the Shippuden movies to date.

Naruto Shippuden Movie 5: Blood Prison (Cert 12) 1 Disc (Distributor: Manga Entertainment) Running time: 98 minutes approx.

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