Bikōchū Search Mission

This self-contained anime interlude runs across four episodes of the original Naruto series, slotting in after the Mizuki Tracking Mission and ahead of the Kurosuki Family Removal Mission. It hands the spotlight to Kurenai's squad and turns a favor for a grieving friend into a comedy of errors.

Watching how badly Naruto wants Sasuke back, Team 8 pitches Tsunade a job: track down the fabled bikōchū, an insect said to follow any scent it has learned. With Kurenai laid up in the hospital and nothing else on the board, the Hokage signs off. Naruto gets folded into the group after he is caught eavesdropping, on the condition that he stop begging for search missions should this one flop, and he bristles at answering to Shino. Locating the beetle at its breeding ground proves hard enough before the Kamizuru, an Iwagakure clan hoping to reclaim lost prestige, show up hunting the same prize.

Once the team secures the bikōchū and it produces an egg, Hinata is seized and traded against for that egg. The rescue attempt walks straight into a snare, though Shino had already stashed the insect where the enemy could not reach it. After Hinata seemingly plunges from a cliff, Naruto's fury begins pulling on the fox's chakra, spooking one captor into trying to kill him first. Hinata returns to save everyone, unveiling an original defensive technique that outclasses the clan's bee-based attacks, and Naruto is stunned to learn he inspired it.

Naruto finishes off the last opponent just as the egg hatches, but he cannot locate the headband he brought to give the newborn Sasuke's scent. A panicked, accidental release of gas leaves the young beetle imprinted on that odor instead, and since the species locks onto a single scent for life and will not lay again for a year, the whole venture ends in failure. Back home, an incensed Sakura confronts him for squandering the one chance Tsunade had granted them to find their teammate.