Title: Naruto Hiden
Volume: 1 (of 6) - Kakashi's Story - Lightning In The Frozen Sky
Creator: Masashi Kishimoto & Akira Higashiyama
Format: Flipped
Original Publisher: SHUEISHA Inc.
US Publisher: Viz
Release Date: 11/3/15
Pages: 202
ISBN: 1421584409
MSRP: $10.99
Genre: Shonen Jump
Rated: T (For Teens)
Creator: Masashi Kishimoto & Akira Higashiyama
Format: Flipped
Original Publisher: SHUEISHA Inc.
US Publisher: Viz
Release Date: 11/3/15
Pages: 202
ISBN: 1421584409
MSRP: $10.99
Genre: Shonen Jump
Rated: T (For Teens)
Description: A new series of prose novels, straight from the worldwide Naruto franchise. Naruto’s allies and enemies take center stage in these fast-paced adventures, which each volume focusing on a particular clanmate, ally, team...or villain.
A year has passed since the Fourth Great Ninja War, and Kakashi’s appointment as Hokage looms. But first he heads to the Land of Waves for a dangerous mission rescuing hostages from a top-secret airship. There he confronts a ninja whose heart is frozen by tragedy.
Having lost both his friend’s eye and his greatest abilities, can Kakashi protect anyone from his coldhearted foe? What is the true meaning of the Will of Fire gained in the distant heavens? Kakashi finds these answers and more as he enters a new ninja era.
Contains Chapters 1-14:
- Prologue - A New Order
- Chapter 1 - Hesitation
- Chapter 2 - Historic Moment
- Chapter 3 - Heavenly Attack
- Chapter 4 - Message Received
- Chapter 5 - Execution
- Chapter 6 - Special Attack! Fists of Seasickness
- Chapter 7 - Frozen Lightning
- Chapter 8 - Five Thousand Meters Until The Edge Of Death
- Chapter 9 - Tsunade's Decision
- Chapter 10 - Heart
- Chapter 11 - Tears of Ice
- Chapter 12 - Human Bomb
- Chapter 13 - Stairway To Heaven
- Chapter 14 - First Order
- Epilogue - Dear Sixth Hokage
Review:
Cover Art: The cover for this novel has a green border and an orange background. The image depicted is of Kakashi in his Hokage coat, with his back towards the reader. What makes the image so cool is it is basically a sketch of our Sixth Hokage, and it looks absolutely amazing. The Naruto title is to the right with Kakashi's Story imprinted underneath it.
The spine is black and from top-to-bottom contains the Shonen Jump imprint, the Naruto series title, the volume title, the writer, and the same image of Kakashi used on the front.
The back cover uses the same background design as the front cover with the orange and green borders. The top has the Kakashi's Story, followed by the actual name of the Novel (Lighting in the Frozen Sky). The summary is directly under this taking up the rest of the cover.
The cover was handled very well. It is pretty much an exact interpretation of the original Japanese Light Novel. I would give it full points, but my only issue is I wish they would have numbering since this is actually the first of six volumes in a series called Naruto Hiden. My only reasoning behind why it does not include the Hiden logo is maybe VIZ wasn't thinking this was not gonna sell as well as the actual mangas did, so they didn't include a numbering in case they wanted to stop midway through the series. They also only have the first three novels officially licensed so far as well.
Translation: The translation is 100% accurate. Besides noticing a few typos in the actual story, it uses a lot of sentence structures at times that makes it like like its almost an exact Japanese to English Translation. This can be bad at times cause grammatically speaking it doesn't always look right when reading it, but I myself can't honestly complain with a translation this spot on to the original.
Content (Warning: May Contain Spoilers): The story starts out with a flashback as Naruto and Kakashi are apprehending a notorious Ninja named Garyo, who wanted to start a rebellion of his own six years prior to the events that take place in the novel. During those six years, Garyo was actually defeated and thrown into a heavily guarded prison.
Word is slowly spreading that Garyo's followers are going to eventually try to break out all of the prisoners and destroy the prison that Garyo is being held in. There is also a new type of transportation about to be unveiled in the world of Ninjas, basically a blimp, and it is being made by the people from the Land of Waves. Kakashi hears some news from Tsunade about a possible attack on this new innovative machine, so he goes to investigate it for himself which he eventually runs into Might Guy, who is more into seeing how the new machine works at first then rather investigating the potential threat.
As the airship departs on its maiden voyage, Garyo's forces make it known that they are present. Two ninjas, Kayho and Rayho, with the help of more then a dozen underlings take the ship hostage and impose a serious threat that if the Hokage doesn't release Garyo they will kill a hostage every 10 minutes until the airship would eventually reach the prison and they would crash it into the prison itself. It's up to Guy and Kakashi to try to save the hostages from these terrorists and keep the peace of all the nations without the prison being ripped apart.
I really don't want to do a full on summary for this as it is a very good read and if you are any sort of Naruto fan then it should be read. One thing I specifically enjoyed is although this is a Naruto novel, Naruto is not featured much in the overall story (he is only in the prologue and epilogue). This is entirely about Kakashi, with some added humor and help from Might Guy and Sai. It is also worth noting that the action does not just take place in the real world, but also in Kakashi's head, as he is trying to come to terms if he really wants to become the Sixth Hokage of Konoha.
It was also very cool to see some characters that we haven't seen in quite sometime. Inari and the old man from the very first story arc of Naruto make a cameo which is neat as the boy who was once a child from the first 4 manga volumes is now reaching adulthood himself. The writing is done very well so their personalities are still the same from the original story arc.
So the real question is, was this a worthy read, Yes and no. What I really enjoyed was Kakashi's inner struggle the most. When it came to the overall story that dealt with Garyo's men, it just to me felt like a long episode of the show, maybe something they could pull off as a three episode run if they wanted to animate it. The conclusion felt a bit rushed and anticlimactic as well. So if your looking for a story that gets inside of a different characters head, this might be an interesting read, otherwise it might feel like just another filler to the anime story that everyone already hates since it keeps dragging on for eternity.
Objectionable Content:
Word is slowly spreading that Garyo's followers are going to eventually try to break out all of the prisoners and destroy the prison that Garyo is being held in. There is also a new type of transportation about to be unveiled in the world of Ninjas, basically a blimp, and it is being made by the people from the Land of Waves. Kakashi hears some news from Tsunade about a possible attack on this new innovative machine, so he goes to investigate it for himself which he eventually runs into Might Guy, who is more into seeing how the new machine works at first then rather investigating the potential threat.
As the airship departs on its maiden voyage, Garyo's forces make it known that they are present. Two ninjas, Kayho and Rayho, with the help of more then a dozen underlings take the ship hostage and impose a serious threat that if the Hokage doesn't release Garyo they will kill a hostage every 10 minutes until the airship would eventually reach the prison and they would crash it into the prison itself. It's up to Guy and Kakashi to try to save the hostages from these terrorists and keep the peace of all the nations without the prison being ripped apart.
I really don't want to do a full on summary for this as it is a very good read and if you are any sort of Naruto fan then it should be read. One thing I specifically enjoyed is although this is a Naruto novel, Naruto is not featured much in the overall story (he is only in the prologue and epilogue). This is entirely about Kakashi, with some added humor and help from Might Guy and Sai. It is also worth noting that the action does not just take place in the real world, but also in Kakashi's head, as he is trying to come to terms if he really wants to become the Sixth Hokage of Konoha.
It was also very cool to see some characters that we haven't seen in quite sometime. Inari and the old man from the very first story arc of Naruto make a cameo which is neat as the boy who was once a child from the first 4 manga volumes is now reaching adulthood himself. The writing is done very well so their personalities are still the same from the original story arc.
So the real question is, was this a worthy read, Yes and no. What I really enjoyed was Kakashi's inner struggle the most. When it came to the overall story that dealt with Garyo's men, it just to me felt like a long episode of the show, maybe something they could pull off as a three episode run if they wanted to animate it. The conclusion felt a bit rushed and anticlimactic as well. So if your looking for a story that gets inside of a different characters head, this might be an interesting read, otherwise it might feel like just another filler to the anime story that everyone already hates since it keeps dragging on for eternity.
Objectionable Content:
- Language: No
- Violence: Yes
- Nudity: No
- Sexual Situations: No
Score:
- Cover: 10/10
- Translation: 10/10
- Story: 5/10
Overall Rating: 8/10
Where Purchased: Barnes and Nobles
Original Review Date: 3/26/16
No comments:
Post a Comment