Does anyone else wonder what exactly were the circumstances by which Itachi's team came face to face with Obito? It just seems so random, especially since Obito generally seemed to work covertly while progressing the eye of the moon plan (except for a few instances). I don't see what Obito had to gain by being on that random battlefield and killing Itachi's team (but sparing Itachi for some reason). Is this explained in the novel for anyone who read it?
What do you guys think?
SP wants people to buy the novels, so they're basically brushing over a few moments. They expect viewers to have already read them, so that things will make sense. Otherwise, if you haven't then things won't make sense right away or hold much significance to you. You need to at least now the major events from the books.
When the episode skips to Itachi reawakening his tomoe, he has a flashback. That flashback is of an event that took place weeks after the cat mission. The purpose of SP's cat mission was to just show the team dynamic and Itachi's skill.
Itachi's skill gets noticed and this results in his team going on higher level missions. They are assigned to go escort a daimyo to a safer location. They succeed, however, Obito came later to go kill that daimyo (Akatsuki would get money through various means, one of which was to take on assassination missions from nations... Obito was doing one). Obito uses a 3-tomoe genjutsu with the intent to knock everyone out and peacefully go past them. It works on everyone bar Itachi (as he's an Uchiha and immune) and Tenma (who had higher tolerance to genjutsu than the others which were non-Uchiha). Itachi is cautious and looks at the masked man with the intent to observe him but Tenma is hot-headed and thinks it's best to try to kill Obito. Obito callously kills Tenma as Itachi watches (who can't react fast enough to do anything). Obito moves past Itachi and leaves. He left Itachi alive as the latter didn't attack him. Itachi is alone looking at Tenma's corpse w/ his own activated sharingan and the rest of his team unconscious. He wakes everyone up after he snaps out of shock himself and tells them what happened. They go home and the girl team member (Shinko) was so disturbed at seeing Tenma's corpse on the ground after she was released from the genjutsu that she decides shinobi life isn't for her, she turns in her headband and picks up a civilian job at a cafe for the rest of her life. She still commonly chatted with Itachi even after she left Itachi w/o a team (as she quit her ninja career and Tenma died- Itachi had to go on missions alone from then on).
SP is cramming everything because they have a limited budget and time for this arc, so things that are not directly pertaining to Itachi's character are cut out (ex: What Shinko does and how she quits being a ninja). SP probably just skipped to the death scene because the novels don't even describe the daimyo mission, they just have a few sentences to explain why both parties (Obito and Itachi's team) are there and they mention that the daimyo mission was a success for the team and Tenma is annoyed since Itachi had to save him during it.
The novels also mention that Tenma made inhuman noises (like a pig being slaughtered) when Obito slashed him up. They censored/skimmed over Obito's kill here due to TVTokyo guidelines.