@Me:
But then, as he reaches back, Naruto trips over a rock, stumbles, and launches the super rasengan genki dama in the opposite direction, misses entirely, thus throwing off all the dramatic build up and tension for a funny comedy moment!
@Luffy:
I really don't think that Kishimoto would be dumb enough to repeat the same mistake twice.
What mistake? Naruto showing up and acting like a total badass and a changed man, with his temporary mentor also noting "Wait till you see how he's changed", revealing his new ultimate technique, and then blowing all tension and build up out of the water and completley failing with the Rasengan Shuriken… only to use it again the very next chapter... is probably the the most interesting plot twist Kishimoto has ever done. Chapter 340 is certainley one of the most talked about and most often referred to, much like the final episodes of Evanglion.
It was truly an amazing balance of comedy and drama on Kishimoto's part, the likes of which few authors have dared try to duplicate. It's the chapter many people point to as the exact turning point in the series for them, where all their opinions about part 1 changed completley and they decided that, from now on, the manga was aspiring to a DIFFERENT level of quality and could never go back to what it was before. Even now, nearly 100 chapters later, it still stands as a watershed moment representing everything that the manga would become.
I only pray Kishimoto can achieve that level of presentation again with this Pain fight, only on a grander scale. After all, if the entire series shifted last time he did it, what would the series look like after he did something similar to that again, only bigger? It could only take our expectations to an all new level, right?