Source: Wikipedia
“Reunion, The Remaining Time”
“As Sumaru, the rest of the Star trainees, and Naruto’s teammates arrive, Akahoshi takes Sumaru hostage and forces Natsuhi to hand over the star. Neji examines Natsuhi and reveals that she could die if she uses her star chakra jutsu again. After Sumaru awakens, he speaks with his mother, who reveals that, while she knew she had to leave him behind to spare him the pain of becoming an exile, she regrets leaving him. While Naruto and Lee insist on going after Akahoshi, Neji says the mission is over and they, as Leaf ninjas, cannot betray a client. That night, Natsuhi goes to the star temple to steal the star but is killed by Akahoshi and his men. Sumaru, following the Leaf Ninja, senses her death and flies to the temple. Akahoshi declares himself Fourth Hoshikage and orders his ninja to kill the Leaf ninja, Sumaru, and Hokuto if they set foot in the village.”
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Analysis
There were four key aspects found in this episode. First, the episode highlighted the loving and caring nature Natsuhi had for the village and her son, Sumaru. Second, Natsuhi was courageous enough to risk her life once again to steal the star and destroy it, even though it resulted in her death. Third, the episode showed how Sumaru felt abandoned whenever his mother went on missions with his fathers. Lastly, the episode highlighted the proud nature Akahoshi had when he got the star. He remained a static character; he didn’t change at all, and he was manipulative. Other details will be mentioned in the analysis.
As Sumaru, the rest of the Star trainees, and Naruto’s teammates arrive, Akahoshi takes Sumaru hostage and forces Natsuhi to hand over the star. The episode started when Akahoshi and Natsuhi had a face-off using their ninja technique, Kujaku Beast Chakra. Akahoshi seemingly had the upper hand to overpower her beast chakra by biting it, and he was able to do that since he took the chakra from his henchman. As they continued to clash, Naruto was standing on top of a boulder where Natsuhi had buried her late husband in a cave. He stands there, worried about her safety. While Akahoshi had the upper hand, she noted that her chakra was weakening due to the star training. He gets cocky when he says, “I’ve had to improvise my training. Who would have thought that I was more than a match for someone who had the benefit of full and official star training? What’s wrong with you, Lady Natsuhi? What happened to all that awesome power you showed me the last time we met? Hmph, are the after-effects of star training beginning to wear you down?“. The use of rhetorical questions clearly shows that Akahoshi is very much aware of the dangers of star training, and the fact that he still wants to use the star shows the extent of his selfish ambitions. He wants to have a strong village rivalling other villages, even if it means risking the lives of the villagers. Therefore, he is a static character who refuses to change his selfish ambitions.
Moreover, though he managed to overpower her, Natsuhi’s beast chakra overpowered his chakra, and he started feeling pain. Natsuhi said to him, “For what you’ve done, you’ll never be forgiven.” Natsuhi was determined to stop him, no matter what.
As Natsuhi had the upper hand against Akahoshi and Sumaru, the rest of the Star trainees and Naruto’s teammates arrived. Immediately, when she saw her son, she started having memories of Sumaru as a kid. As she contemplates her memories, the instrumental of the lullaby begins playing in the background. First, she remembered the time when she and her husband would leave him behind because they had to go out on assigned missions. Moreover, every time they left, Sumaru would cry and call out to his mom not to go. Along the way, she would look back almost teary-eyed, saying in her mind, “Sumaru.” Last, as she left, Sumaru begged her not to go.
The loving and caring nature she has for Sumaru runs deep, and while she contemplates her memories, Akahoshi decides to take advantage of her weakness for Sumaru by wrapping his Kujaku Beast chakra around Sumaru, and as he tied him up, he started crushing him. Due to this encounter, dramatic music with a mix of intense electric plays in the background signifies the lengths Akahoshi would go to get the star back. His manipulative nature starts to unravel in front of everyone. While this is happening, the Star trainees start to see him for who he is—a monster. They also realised that it was he who knocked them out and kidnapped Sumaru. Moreover, the genin also reprimanded him.
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Akahoshi holds Sumaru hostage.
When the genin reprimanded him, Akahoshi tried to paint Natsuhi as the villain for stealing the star, but crushing Sumaru with his chakra didn’t help with his excuse. Naruto retorted by revealing the truth that she is Sumaru’s mother and that she only stole the star because it was the cause of many misfortunes in the village. Akahoshi responded to Naruto by saying, “Fool! Giving your life for the sake of your village is every Shinobi’s dream. Sumaru knows that one day he will become Hoshikage and put the five great hidden villages to shame. Isn’t that right?” At that moment, Akahoshi was controlling Sumaru’s chakra, and he was further manipulated through hypnosis. While Sumaru is in hypnosis, he reminds Sumaru of his dream of becoming a hoshikage to get him to agree with what he thinks. Furthermore, he instructed Sumaru to stab himself with the kunai.
While this happened, Neji pointed out the hypnosis when he activated his Byakugan. He said to everyone, “Something is controlling his chakra. Sumaru’s will is not his own.” At that moment, Natsuhi was worried about his son, and that’s when Akahoshi threatened to kill Sumaru if she didn’t give him the star. As a result, she accepts defeat and opens the boulder where Naruto is standing, which leads to the star. To open the boulder of her late husband’s grave, she used her chakra to create an earthquake to open the grave. While this was happening, Akahoshi’s henchmen woke up just in time. As she opened the grave, she used her purple chakra to give Akahoshi the star of his band. While he got the star, he let go of Sumaru, who passed out afterwards.
Moreover, when Akahoshi noticed that Natsuhi’s chakra had weakened, Akahoshi took advantage by seemingly holding her hostage with his Kujaku Beast chakra. However, he just wanted to swallow up her chakra, which caused her to pass out afterwards. When Naruto saw what happened, he activated his Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu to attack Akahoshi, but Neji stopped him and said that since Akahoshi was the one who hired them, they fulfilled the mission they came to do, which was protecting and retrieving the star, so the rest is none of their concern. In other words, on no account can they go beyond the scope of the mission that Akahoshi hired them to do. After hearing Neji’s words, Naruto deactivated his shadow clones, and Akahoshi deactivated his Kujaku beast chakra.
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Hokuto’s loyalty to Sumaru
After Akahoshi got the star, he gave instructions for the star trainees to go back to the village, where Hokuto proved to be loyal to Sumaru. A dialogue takes place:
Akahoshi: We have the star back, so we’ll overlook everything else that happened here today. Follow me, all of you who would dedicate your lives to serving our village.
Hokuto: But my lord, Sumaru, is hurt.
Akahoshi: Leave him there; here’s nothing but the son of a traitor. Now get moving!
The Star Trainees: Right!
The star trainees and Natsuhi attempted to get up but passed out again. When the star trainees left, Hokuto said to Akahoshi:
Hokuto: Sorry, my lord, but I will not leave Sumaru.
Akahoshi: Then you’re a rogue ninja.
Akahoshi leaves
First henchman: You’ll be sorry, Hokuto.
The first henchman leaves
Second henchman: It’s your funeral
The second henchman leaves. As they all left, Naruto said,
Naruto (angry): You jerks!
Hokuto proves to be one of the realist friends of Sumaru. When the rest of the star trainees left, she decided to stay behind, even if it meant being banished from the village and being a rogue ninja. Moreover, the saying that “when days are dark, friends are few” is relevant in this scenario. The star trainees were close to Sumaru when everything was all right; however, when facing a difficult situation, instead of staying behind to make sure their friend Sumaru was all right, they blindly followed Akahoshi’s orders even though they knew that he was a monster. It seems they are just fickle and scared of Akahoshi, except for Mizura, since he couldn’t be there because of the star training on his body. If Mizura were there, he probably would have stayed behind with Hokuto.
Neji examines Natsuhi and reveals that she could die if she uses her star chakra jutsu again. After Akahoshi left, Hokuto and Naruto’s team brought Sumaru and his mom to her cave, located in the land of the forest of bears, to rest. When Neji examined Sumaru and Natsuhi in the cave, he went outside to inform Hokuto and the rest of his team.
While the group was looking at the red star or the planet Mars, Naruto told them that it was Natsuhiboshi, a star Sumaru named after his mother, as asserted by Hokuto. While they were conversing, Neji arrived and said to them, “They are both resting comfortably, but she’s hurt badly; she was already weakened from the effects of the star training. Fighting Akahoshi may have been too much; her chakra network is failing. All I know is that if she tries that jutsu one more time, she will die.” Akahoshi proves to be the most heinous villain. He still wants to proceed with the star training, knowing the potential dangers it presents. If Natsuhi, the one who finished the star training and became a fine shinobi, couldn’t escape the deadly effects of star training, what more for Akahoshi, who still wants to take part in it? Instead of rationalising that it’s a bad idea, his greed for power runs deep, and due to this, it will lead to his downfall.
While Naruto and Lee insist on going after Akahoshi, Neji says the mission is over, and they, as Leaf ninjas, cannot betray a client. In other words, if they interfere with Akahoshi’s plans, then no other village would trust them again. Therefore, Lee suggested that they should go home and ask the Hokage for advice, and Tenten said they could give Sumaru and Natsuhi better treatment at the Leaf Village. So, the whole team let the matter rest for now.
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The reunion of a close relationship between Natsuhi and Sumaru as mother and son
After Sumaru awakens, he speaks with his mother, who reveals that, while she knew she had to leave him behind to spare him the pain of becoming an exile, she regrets leaving him. An emotional atmosphere is present as the instrumental of the lullaby plays in the background, where he has memories of his parents and hugging his mom. In the present, he started crying. As he cried, a dialogue took place between them:
Natsuhi: You’re angry, aren’t you, Sumaru? I don’t blame you; who wouldn’t be angry if their mother abandoned their village and left them to be raised by others? How often do I wish I had taken you with me? But then I kept telling myself what a cruel fate that would be to inflict on you, wandering the world as a rogue ninja, like your mother, a mother whose failing body could give up at any time from the cursed effects of that star training.
Afterwards, Sumaru held onto a blanket for a moment, and when his mother was about to get up to check on him, he said:
Sumaru: Just stay away from me! Almost every night for years, I’ve had the same dream. I’m chasing after two figures, but I can never catch them. I told myself my mother wasn’t like that; I knew she could never be so heartless as to leave me behind, not willingly. She must be dead, like the third hoshikage said; he told me you would die in a far-off land, and you’d been transformed into a star.
Thereafter, he removes the purple necklace from his chest and shows her, while Natsuhi is almost teary-eyed.
Sumaru: The star, Natsuhiboshi, was you.
Afterwards, Natsuhi removes the purple necklace from her chest as well and shows him the necklace she has. Moreover, there is a moment of silence where both look at each other almost tearfully and after some time, they both start crying.
Natsuhi: Sumaru
They both hugged while crying.
Sumaru (crying): Mother, as you said, I wouldn’t have cared; I just wanted you to take me with you.
Natsuhi (crying): Oh, my son
Sumaru (crying): Mother, I was so lonely.
Afterwards, her chakra encloses both, as the scene shows a memory of her singing the lullaby to Sumaru as a kid. It took place around sunset outside in the woods. She was holding him in her hands. She started singing a lullaby that goes like this:
Natsuhi: Natsuhiboshi, why are you so red / Because I had a sad dream last night / My eyes are red from the tears I shed / Slowly as I cry / Natsuhiboshi why you lost your way / I’m searching for a child who’s gone afar / He can’t be found though I search all day / My sad dreams come once more”
In the dialogue, it shows the loving, caring nature she had for Sumaru. She didn’t want to subject him to the life of a rogue ninja, hence why she left him behind. Moreover, hearing the lullaby makes one emotionally inclined to listen to it. As explained in other sources, it describes Natsuhiboshi’s story while describing Mars, which is red and wanders a path separate from the stars. This scene was so emotional; it rekindled their relationship after so many years. Sumaru felt abandoned as a kid, but now he is happy to have seen his mother.
However, back in the present, Sumaru slept on a table with a lit candle, and when Hokuto and Naruto’s team arrived, they asked him where his mother was, and that’s when they realised she had left to steal the star once again.
That night, Natsuhi goes to the star temple to steal the star but is killed by Akahoshi and his men. Intense music plays in the background once they realise that Natsuhi went to steal the star once again. Meanwhile, Natsuhi used her purple chakra wings to fly towards her destination, the Star Temple. As she landed on the ground, she said to herself, “That cursed star must be destroyed once and for all. I will end my village’s suffering tonight, even if it costs me my life.”
While she prepared to enter the temple, Hokuto, Sumaru, and Naruto’s team were on their way to stop her because if she started using the Kujaku Jutsu once more, she would die. Meanwhile, as Natsuhi entered the temple and saw the star, she said to it, “You were once the hope and strength of our village. I didn’t want to have to destroy you, but what you demand in pain and suffering is too high a price for our people to pay. Forgive me.” Afterwards, she activated her ninja technique, Kujaku, but she got stabbed in the back with a kunai tossed by Akahoshi and his henchmen. When she turned around to activate her Kujaku Beast technique, her attack was unfortunately ineffective as she passed out on the ground. She had blood in her mouth, so she used it to write something on the floor. Before she died, her last word was “Sumaru.” While Akahoshi and his henchmen just stood there smiling, she died. After she died, Akahoshi got cocky by saying, “So this is the end, how tragic.” At that moment, there was an element of death since it is tragic that she died after she had just rekindled her relationship with her son, Sumaru.
Sumaru, following the Leaf Ninja, senses her death and flies to the temple. When they were close to the star temple, Sumaru’s necklace shattered into pieces, which signified her death. The use of symbolism in the necklace symbolises the life of his mother, and since she died, it explains why it shattered into pieces. Therefore, it means that when Sumaru wore it since childhood, his mother was there unconsciously, always looking out for him, and now it’s tragic that he lost his mother, especially when they just rekindled their relationship; hence, they had a close relationship that was that of a mother and a son.
Akahoshi declares himself Fourth Hoshikage and orders his ninja to kill the Leaf ninja, Sumaru, and Hokuto if they set foot in the village. Outside the star temple, Akahoshi, accompanied by his henchmen, said to the villagers, “From this night forward, I Akahoshi bear the title of Fourth Hoshikage, and I now charge my people with their first mission: the traitors Hokuto and Sumaru and the leaf village shinobi who aid them, we must consider them our enemies. Keep watch, and if you find any of them trying to enter the village, strike without mercy.” In response, the people said, “Yes, my lord!“ He chuckled evilly while Sumaru, meanwhile, activated his Ninja Art: Kujaku and said, “Mother, hear me. I will make him pay for your life with his.” As he flies off, Naruto calls out his name, but Sumaru is already far in the sky, ready to make Akahoshi pay for killing his mother. What will happen next? We are left in suspense until we watch the next episode.
The lesson from this episode is that when days are dark, friends are few, as is evident when the star trainees left Sumaru behind, while Hokuto was the only one who stayed behind as a true friend.
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and then Add to home screen.