Naruto the Movie: Blood Prison

Released in 2011, this feature is the eighth entry in the overall Naruto film line and the fifth tied to Naruto: Shippuden. It drops the hero into a criminal fortress after a string of crimes he never committed, weaving a plot of betrayal, a cursed relic, and sacrifice around a mysterious warden named Mui and a lone inmate on a mission of her own.

The story opens with the Fourth Raikage examining a mysterious box among his aides, only for sleeping gas to flood the chamber. A cloaked intruder springs at the dozing leader, halts just short of the kill, then trades blows with him as an equal. When the disguise is torn away, the attacker turns out to be Naruto Uzumaki, who slips off while the Raikage reels in shock. Back home, Tsunade confronts Team Kakashi with wanted posters from several villages, charging Naruto with the assassination attempt and the deaths of foreign jonin. Despite his protests, he is stripped of his headband and shipped to Hozuki Castle in the Land of Grass, a lockup its residents call the Blood Prison.

The warden, Mui, brands Naruto with a chakra-sealing art that drops him in agony whenever he fights. A disembodied voice hints that beating Mui will lift the seal, yet every attempt leaves the boy collapsed and hauled back to isolation. A fellow prisoner, Ryuzetsu, saves him from drowning and reveals her own aim: to destroy the Box of Ultimate Bliss, a relic Mui fed his own son Muku to years earlier. She explains that Mui staged Naruto's imprisonment to harvest his chakra. Secretly gathering natural energy for Sage Mode, Naruto joins her cause, but Mui captures him and siphons off enough chakra to reawaken the box.

Granting Mui's wish, the box disgorges a grown Muku, who impales his father and warps into the fear-reading monster Satori. Unable to land a hit, Naruto is bailed out by the sudden arrival of Killer B and his comrades. Tsunade then admits the whole disgrace was theater: destroying the box had been Naruto's true assignment, and Maroi, an inmate and friend of B, had been the guiding voice all along. Realizing Satori senses dread rather than thoughts, Naruto matches it in Sage Mode and ends it with a Wind Release: Rasenshuriken, freeing Muku, who takes his own life beside his father. Mortally wounded, Naruto is revived by Ryuzetsu, who spends her life using her clan's reincarnation art. He later ties her bandanna around her grave, vowing to treasure the life she gave back.

The picture reached Japanese theaters on July 30, 2011, running roughly 102 minutes with Otakebi as its closing theme. Viz Media brought it to North American audiences on February 18, 2014, while a subtitled edition had already arrived on Japanese home video in April 2012. Following the franchise's pattern, a companion light novel by Akira Higashiyama accompanied the release.

Curiously, the movie leaves the Shippuden label off its on-screen title even though it plainly falls after the time-skip, though the logo returns on the DVD packaging. Viewers have flagged numerous continuity snags, since Naruto already commands Sage Mode and knows Killer B despite the war meant to introduce both going unmentioned. The events later earn a nod in the novel Kakashi Hiden: Lightning in the Icy Sky, which notes that Konoha and Kumo jointly razed Hozuki Castle sometime after the conflict.