The animation in this "filler episode" was much improved over previous episodes, but it looks like that's only in parts, like they have more than one animation house doing different scenes of the same episode?

I still enjoy these "filler episodes" because like I said before, it adds to the Naruto story. They could run through and finish the Naruto\Sasuke\Itachi\Orochimaru story in about 100 episodes, but we'd hear plenty of complaints about that from this community instead of the filler complaints.

I'm glad they're showing these side missions to develop other characters, like with Hinata in this episode. A previous poster said this wasn't the real Hinata, and that pre-filler Hinata sucked. Well, without this "filler episode", we wouldn't get to see Hinata evolve this way. I think they should have shown these "filler episodes" more interspersed with the main storyline, but I guess this all has to do with the change to 15 years old for the characters.