Naruto's Growth

Guy's struggle with Kisame heats up as he brings out his nunchaku to counter the Samehada, yet he cannot connect a clean hit. Kisame drives him beneath the water with his Water Shark Bullet Technique and presses on with Five Feeding Sharks, and though Guy meets each shark with taijutsu, the surrounding water lets them knit their wounds back together. With his teammates near the limit of the water prison and unable to reach Kisame, Guy resorts to the Eight Gates, opening the first six so he can plant his feet on the seabed, mend his injuries, and blast the water skyward.

Neji seizes the moment, releasing chakra from every point of his body to burst free of his prison, then striking the three Kisame water clones with Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms to liberate the rest of the squad. Guy settles into his Morning Peacock stance, prepared to finish Kisame off.

Far from the fight at sea, Naruto grasps that he is caught inside a genjutsu when every Itachi he strikes bursts into crows. Puzzled that he was trapped without ever meeting Itachi's gaze, Naruto learns that the illusion was cast through the ring he glanced at rather than the eyes. As Itachi moves to lull him into sleep, Naruto recalls Jiraiya's instruction on breaking free of such techniques and scatters the conjured crows, prompting Itachi to note aloud that the boy has grown.

The episode falls within the Kazekage Rescue storyline and adapts the manga's two hundred fifty-eighth and two hundred fifty-ninth chapters. Its title points to Naruto's progress under Jiraiya, shown in his ability to recognize and dispel Itachi's ring-cast illusion without direct eye contact.