Review: Naruto Hiden - Shikamaru's Story - A Cloud Drifting in the Silent Dark

Title: Naruto Hiden
Volume: 2 (of 6) - Shikamaru's Story - A Cloud Drifting in the Silent Dark
Creator: Masashi Kishimoto & Akira Higashiyama
Format: Flipped
Original Publisher: SHUEISHA Inc.
US Publisher: Viz
Release Date: 2/2/16
Pages: 184
ISBN: 1421584417
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, with each volume focusing on a particular clanmate, ally, team…or villain.

Two years after the Great Ninja War, Shikamaru spends his days racing around, hands full as one of Konoha’s key protectors. Then one day a large number of ninja from every region are reported missing. Even Sai disappears. And the place where the missing shinobi end up is the mysterious empire, the Land of Silence.

As a ninja, as an adult, to protect all that he is responsible for, Shikamaru must do battle with the shadow of a new generation.

Contains Four Parts:

• Konoha
• The Land of Silence
• Shikamaru
• End

Review:

Cover Art: Another spectacular representation of the original novel's cover! This cover features a hand drawn image of Shikamaru; he's sitting cross legged with a serious look on his face, gazing at the reader. The background is done in a similar style as the last volume, marble brown with a purple border. What I noticed this time reviewing this is you can see the original Katakana writing on the cover as well to the right of Shikamaru.  The volume title is on the mid-lower portion of the cover, with the novel's writer and series creator under that.

The spine from top to bottom has the Shonen Jump brand logo, the series title, the volume title, the creator and novel writer, and an image of Shikamaru from the front cover.

Being as this is a novel, the back cover is pretty basic, but that is totally fine here! We have the same cover design with the purple and brown marble from the front. The series title and volume title are on the top with the volume's summary under that.

Just like the previous volumes cover, I absolutely love this cover as well. Yes, it is a basic design, but so much care went into this to keep it so close to the original cover with even leaving the original title in its native writing on it as well. The hand drawn pencil sketches are also amazing. Besides the little one-shots he is doing of Naruto here and there, this is probably the only bit of his art for the series we will get for quite a while.

Translation: Another great job in the translation of this novel. The typo's were a bit less this time around but it was extremely great to see pretty much everything left in as close to perfect as possible.

Content (Warning: May Contain Spoilers): I must say this story was a much better read then Kakashi's tale, there are a bit of similarities but let's just jump right in.

There is a great leader in the Land of Silence named Gengo. He has persuaded the entire country as well as several people who visited the country, Sai, to try and elect him to take out the Daimyo's of all the countries in the world. His theory is Ninjas have the power so why should they be the ones who should live in Hidden Villages.

That is where Kakashi steps in as he sees this new radical movement as a possible threat that could possibly cause doom to the entire planet eventually. He picks Shikamaru to go out on an Assassination mission to take out this radical leader. The shadow ninja embarks on a quest with two new characters to the Naruto Universe, Anbu Ninjas Soku and Ro. They are not to tell anyone else about this mission as it is a secret.

The three ninja's venture out to the Land of Silence and they think they have a chance at killing Gengo easily as he is giving a speech to his people, when all three of them fall under a Genjutsu spell. Genjo has not an Ocular Genjutsu, but a Genjutsu that whatever he says people believe him. The three of them get thrown into prison cells. Ro and Soku get tortured, Shikamaru resists the spell as long as possible.

When Shikamaru is about to fall victim to the spell entirely, his friends from the Sand and Konoha arrive and break the Genjutsu. Many battles break out, including one between Temari, Ino, and Sai. Eventually our heroes manage to take out Gengo's tongue and break the spell on the nation he has control of. Shikamaru takes Gengo into custody and throws him into Fushu Castle's prison. The novel ends with Shikamaru gaining some peace as he finally goes on a real date with Temari, and eventually has a child with her.

As a whole this felt like much more of a conclusive story then the previous novel. One thing I noticed was Gengo it was revealed he was from the Kimigakure clan, which was the same clan as Zabuza, as well as the same clan of Garyo from the last novel. It seems so far there is a pattern to these antagonists and I hope I am catching on to it cause it would be cool if we actually have some kind of overall connection to the beginning of the original Naruto manga series.

The new characters Ro and Soku were very interesting as well. I highly doubt they will be in any more of the Naruto stories in the future, but their playful interactions, as well as Shikamaru always pissing off Ro by calling her her real name was pretty funny.

Gengo was also a better villain all around then the last novel. Garyo didn't really do much, although he was someone who was trying to be broken out of a prison, he still was and didn't really cause a threat at all. I really enjoyed seeing his radical views. To me it was almost like he was a Neo Nazi in today's real world era. He wanted to take out the normal humans because they were far superior then the ninjas. Glad he was taken down of course, but I would never have expected an antagonist on that level within the Naruto Universe.

With the overall pacing of this novel, it was much better then the last. I am really looking forward to the next, and hopefully with how well this one was received, maybe VIZ can one day license the final three volumes to the Hiden series.

Objectionable Content:

• Language: No
• Violence: Yes
• Nudity: No
• Sexual Situations: No

Score:

• Cover: 10/10
• Translation: 10/10
• Story: 8/10

Overall Rating: 9/10

Where Purchased: Barnes and Nobles
Original Review Date: 4/16/16