The Last: Naruto the Movie

Tsuneo Kobayashi directs the 10th Naruto feature, the first whose main line is a romance rather than a mission. The moon falling toward the earth is the pretext. What moves the story is a red scarf Hinata is knitting, and her assumption that the scarf already around Naruto’s neck came from another admirer. It was his dead mother Kushina’s, and he only says so at the end. Masashi Kishimoto came aboard late. Seeing what the staff had drafted about Naruto and Hinata, he took over the story concept, the character designs and editorial supervision. The knitting came from something his wife had once made for him. He found Hinata’s adult face hard to draw and handed most of it to Tetsuya Nishio. Set years before the manga’s closing chapter, the film redraws the whole cast in mission clothes with older features. It borrows more widely than it looks, with open nods to Tanizaki’s essay on shadows, Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Obayashi’s Lonely Heart. The wedding runs as a montage over the credits; the children appear after them. A good fit if you want the scarf misunderstanding rather than the falling moon to be the thing driving the plot. Not for anyone starting the series here, since the film assumes you know the Fourth War is over.