The Soul Living Inside the Puppet

In the woods bordering the battlefield, Mifune's Fifth Division runs into two reanimated foes, Kimimaro and Chiyo. Kimimaro tears through the ranks so ferociously that Mifune orders his troops to steer clear of him. Chiyo enters the fray by puppeteering a captured samurai and turning him against Mifune, who nearly cuts down his own comrade before Kankuro sweeps in and severs the controlling chakra threads just in time.

Chiyo is taken aback to find Kankuro there, especially once she recognises the Sasori puppet he now carries. The sight drags her into old memories and a wave of guilt over the part she played in steering her grandson's path.

The recollections trace Sasori's boyhood after he lost his parents, a stretch when Chiyo maintained a bond with him through Komushi, his one close friend. Komushi's death, caused by a faulty procedure of Sasori's own making, saw the boy transformed into a human puppet at his mother's request, an early step in the tragedy that shaped him.

Back in the present, Chiyo trades blows with Kankuro and calls up a swarm of additional samurai to overwhelm him and the Sasori puppet. Kankuro responds by unsealing the Mother and Father puppets, arranging them in a pose that unsettles Chiyo with its familiarity, and reveals that Sasori entrusted them to him to pass down to later generations. Moved, Chiyo concedes the puppets are in capable hands and appears to fall still, only for the lull to be a feint as she presses her assault with another secret technique.

Episode 319 is set during the Fourth Shinobi World War: Confrontation arc, airing in Japan on 27 June 2013 and in English on 14 November 2015. Its opening theme is Not Even Sudden Rain Can Defeat Me and its ending is I Can Hear.