Naruto Shippuden: The Movie
In the first of the Shippuden movies, Naruto and Sakura team up with Rock Lee and Neji to escort a priestess to a sacred site. It seems an ancient demon is in the process of being set free, and if its spirit can join with its body, then the resulting chaos will be devastating.
When the squad makes their way to Priestess Shion's home village, they find she is already under attack and with the help of her personal guards, succeed in halting the first assault. Unfortunately, the four attackers flee to plague Naruto and his party for the rest of their journey. Naruto ends up having a little more than these new enemies to deal with as well. When Shion first sees the knuckle-headed ninja, she claims to have a vision of his death at the hands of the demon they are trying to stop. Between his impending doom, the four unusual assassins, an army of stone warriors, and a bratty priestess, Naruto will have his work cut out for him in this adventure.
Naruto Shippuden: The Movie: Bonds
In Bonds, the Hidden Leaf Village has been dealt a devastating blow from the sky. An old foe, the Land of the Sky, has been slowly building their arsenal in secret since their own defeat during the Second Great Ninja World War. Now, their shinobi have used their control over wind to create a formidable flying force that has resulted in mass destruction across the village. While Shikamaru leads a strike force containing Kakashi, Sai, and Shino against the aircraft carriers where the flying ninja are based, Naruto, Sakura, and Hinata are sent to escort a famed doctor and his apprentice back to a small village that was also hit.
At first, Naruto and the young apprentice, Amaru, butt heads a lot, each believing that their own master/apprentice bonds are stronger than the other's, but when Doctor Shinno falls to an attack, the two characters quickly form a friendship of their own. What the group doesn't expect, besides the surprise attack that took Shinno out of the equation, is the increased devastation surrounding Amaru's village and the fact that everyone is missing. The squad search for the villagers in some ancient ruins only to find that those old buildings are far more than they seem on the surface.
Meanwhile, a dying Orochimaru sends Sasuke out to search for a ninja that once developed the technique that is keeping Orochimaru alive. Suspecting that ninja has had time to perfect his technique, Sasuke must retrieve the man at all costs. When Sasuke's mission takes him to the same ruins that Naruto is searching, tension increases and the two end up having to fight side-by-side once again to defeat a bigger threat.
Naruto Shippuden: The Movie: The Will of Fire
In the third movie, a former Leaf Ninja is kidnapping ninjas with Kekkei Genkai in the hopes of transferring the special abilities into his own body. At the start of The Will of Fire, Hiruko, a former friend and squadmate of the Legendary Sannin (Orochimaru, Jiraiya, and Tsunade), has obtained four Kekkei Genkai and apparently needs only one more in order to fulfill his evil plans.
Kakashi soon realizes that his Sharingan eye is the missing piece that Hiruko is looking for and that an encounter Kakashi had with the older ninja in his youth means he won't be able to resist Hiruko when the ninja comes calling. When word gets out that Kakashi has left the Hidden Leaf Village apparently under the control of a puppet jutsu, Naruto and Sakura chase after him against the explicit orders of Tsunade. Following behind Naruto and Sakura is Shikamaru, Sai, Choji, Ino, Kiba, Hinata, Shino, Rock Lee, Neji, and Tenten under orders to stop Naruto and Sakura from interfering with Kakashi. While Shikamaru knows that Kakashi has a plan up his sleeve, he has to keep everyone else in the dark, and that includes the two that are trying to keep Kakashi from falling into the hands of a powerful enemy.
Meanwhile, Hiruko has made his presence known to all five nations and his former association with the Hidden Leaf Village means that the other nations are seeing the new threat as a sign of aggression from the Land of Fire. When Tsunade attempts to start peace talks, an attack on the Sand Village's envoy, which includes Gaara, puts both nations on the brink of war.
Naruto Shippuden: The Movie: The Lost Tower
The Lost Tower is the last movie in this collection and in it, Naruto finds himself in the strangest adventure yet. When Naruto and his squad are sent to stop a rogue ninja named Mukade from tapping into a ley line that can fuel his chakra, Mukade ends up sending Naruto twenty years into the past when Loran, the city that surrounded the ley line, was filled with high towers and cheering people and not the pile of rubble it is in the present.
As Naruto explores the area around him, he quickly learns about his predicament through a squad of hidden leaf ninja that have come to Loran for a mission of their own. They explain that someone else traveled from the future and landed some six years before Naruto's current time. It seems that Mukade has changed his name and placed himself in a position of power in the hopes of manipulating the young queen, Sara, for his own nefarious reasons. What's really bad is that in this time, the ley line Mukade was after is in full force and hasn't yet been sealed off like it was in the present. Naruto must team up with Minato (the future Fourth Hokage and Naruto's father), Shibi (Shino's father), Choza (Choji's father) and a young Kakashi in order to stop Mukade and keep the timeline from getting messed up. Of course, in Naruto's own normal thick-headed way, he doesn't really grasp who he is working with until almost the end, and while Minato does realize their connection, he understands the potential problems that learning too much about the future can cause.
There are special features on-disc for each of these movies, and while the most common items you will find include art galleries, trailers, and variations on the ending sequences, there are a few additional items as well. Attached to the first movie are two music videos, one for "Hero's Come Back" and one for "Michi;" both use scenes from the movie as their footage. The Lost Tower also comes with a 15-minute short featuring the characters from the first part of the series back when they were all Genin and still kids. In this short, "Naruto, the Genie, and the Three Wishes, Believe It!," the different teams are spending a day together on the beach at a bar-b-que. When Naruto finds a genie in a bottle and quickly wastes the first two wishes, all of the Genin start fighting over possession of the bottle in the hopes of making the perfect wish.
As a whole, Naruto Shippuden: The Movie - Rasengan Collection is a solid purchase for any fan of the show that doesn't already own any of these movies, but since there are no new special features for them, then this package gets less valuable with each film already owned. But that's typical with bundled re-releases like this. If you are looking for a gift for a fan of the series and you know they don't already have these movies, then I would definitely recommend the Rasengan Collection, but some shopping around might be necessary to get the most bang for your buck if the intended owner already has any of these films.
