A new arc pits Naruto and an unsupervised Team Guy against a new and dangerous sicko, and gives us cause to think about just how hard it must be to balance anime-original stories that ultimately can't matter but still need to have in the moment emotional stakes. Stories that need to tie brand new characters you'll never see again in with characters we've known for 100+ episodes without just hollowly calling back to character beats and events that the audience is already invested in. Because if it was easy then we'd kinda expect the anime team to be better at it than this.   Covered this week: Naruto episodes 152-154