Come on. We knew this was coming. Friends, rivals, inferiority complexes... it all leads up to this little taste of hell.

All Naruto wants is to be recognized by his best friend, and his best friend is spiralling out of control with rage at his brother Itachi who killed his entire clan only to leave Sasuke alive. If that isn't enough, Sasuke is driving himself insane with the need for enough power to defeat his insanely powerful brother... and how will he ever do that if this little moron Naruto has already surpassed him in power and skill? It's impossible!

Of course, stuck in the middle of this slice of hell between two best friends is Sakura, who loves Sasuke and can't understand why the three of them are all falling apart.

It's easy to understand things from her point of view. After all, I'm pretty sure that every reader of the series at this point is almost moved to tears feeling the same way.

All those little things that went on between them, whether goading or protective, is now turning poisonous.

It affected me greatly the first time, and this set the stage to make me bawl like a baby later, too.


Now, in full disclosure, I actually watched all of the Naruto anime. For the longest time, it happened to keep up almost perfectly with the manga, and delighted me to no end. And then... over a hundred episodes of pure filler trash... Can you imagine slogging through all that crap? It was just recycling all the angst that had developed between Naruto and Sasuke with never a hope for story development or change. *sigh* My great love of the manga died for a few years because of that load of bollocks. Fortunately, the great solidity of the manga managed to draw me back in and forget most of that trash.

It has now regained all its flavor again. Thank God.
( )

This is predominantly setup for the next arc, and Sasuke being a jerkwad, as per usual. (Character development, I know. It's actually done well. I just don't love Sasuke.)

We do see what some other characters have been accomplishing while Naruto was away, though, and none of the content is boring. ( )