While I've certainly railed against a lot of the filler we've gotten
since the end of the previous arc, Naruto spends an episode doing a good
kind of filler piece here by actually expanding on the known
continuity. Much of what we've seen has had the small bit of present
time opening piece that then went to some completely new additional
story for Naruto's past which showed that the kid had no time to himself
since it's all likely been accounted for by now. What I've wanted them
to do is to spend time expanding the existing stories with other
characters, and that's exactly what we get here as Neji tells a tale
from when Orochimaru attacked the village.
Going back to the
Chunin exams, it's just after Naruto had beaten Neji and he was
recuperating in the exam room. But it's also the time when Orochimaru
and his group had just launched their attack and were causing a lot of
trouble. Neji's tale has him doing his best to help people along the way
until he learns that Hinata has been kidnapped by a pair of guys from
Hidden Cloud who were at the exams to watch. Neji ends up grouping
together, not entirely by choice, three others to go with him to go
after Hinata and bring her back. The kids listening to the tale actually
ask a good question though as to why none of the Jonin noticed, which
he explains is because they were all whisked off on A-rank missions
dealing with Orochimaru himself.
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