lame with a side of lame. 2/5. They took one of the coolest parts of the manga and just stuffed it full of flashbacks. One if the sakura fight which had v little relevance to the conversation they were having but conveniently took up about 4 mins. Then the made up filled-out sai and shin background with the good old narutoverse "blood-coughing-illness-that-is-only-terminal-at-dramatic-moments", which they love to spam.
was really hoping they would drag out the fight between kankuro and sasori like they did with the team 10 vs hidan and kakuzu. That was one of the best naruto anime fights ever cos they saw potential and drew it out a bit. This time they actually cut out parts of the real fight (sasori puppet's flamethrower for example) so they could stuff in more unnecessary made-up crap! Plus Sai's attack was a central and really cool couple of panels in the manga and here it was just brushed off as a slightly more powerful attack.
like i said, lame. very disappointed. they brushed past this fight and crammed it into an episode. let's see what they do with the booooring silver and gold brothers, bet that one will be epically long.