The animation team wasn't all that special but it wasn't as awful as I anticipated. The artwork got pretty bad on a certain few occasions while considerably decent at other times, and there was a little inconsistency in the animation. Definitely not as great as it could have been, though still somewhat adequate in the big picture.

I loved the flashbacks the studio incorporated. The childhood scene involving Orochimaru and the white snake's skin was included in the original manga, but we're thereafter given a lot of extra stuff Kishimoto didn't bother to represent earlier. The anime consistently demonstrates that Orochimaru's motivation was all a matter of life and death, the whole rebirth theme was added in a more sufficient manner than as it was initially portrayed in Part II. What's especially interesting is that upon witnessing the deaths of Nawaki and Dan, a more humane side of Orochimaru is shown as opposed to his usual cold demeanor. His relationship with Itachi is also further elaborated on, beginning the moment he was there to witness Itachi's abilities as a child when first becoming interested in the Uchiha's Sharingan (he was even preparing himself to rescue Itachi because of his assumptions of the potential danger in that stunt). Everything here is from Orochimaru's perspective, seeing his soft side as well as how his character gradually changed and fleshed out over the timeline due to his fascination with reanimation was an excellent thing to include. Pierrot has my props, yay for character development!

However (and this should be obvious to those keeping up with the manga) the biggest problem I had with the episode's plot was that Orochimaru's "death" felt horribly contrived. While in the Fushi Tensei dimension, Sasuke can utilize the Sharingan's Genjutsu abilities to nullify Orochimaru, no big deal so far. The Sharingan is a visual-based Doujutsu, the manga has stressed on several occasions the way to circumvent these spells is to avoid eye contact. Yet Orochimaru -- one of the Sannin, one of Konoha's greatest geniuses, a then-candidate for Hokage -- simply stares directly into Sasuke's eyes the whole time, effectively allowing himself to be defeated in the name of plot-induced stupidity. That's blatantly stupid, one would think he would have learned the first time when he was subdued by Itachi. I can understand that Orochimaru is one of the manga's most significant villains and I'm fully aware that all villains typically lose the game at some point, but the way in which this was done certainly could've been handled better and more logically on Kishimoto's part.

Overall, despite some of the letdowns, the episode was surprisingly very close to being a thoroughly solid one. Although I strongly disliked the chapters this covered in the manga, Pierrot manages to make things pressingly more captivating by providing amusing, unseen details of Orochimaru's past while at the same time fleshing out his character. I'll admit it was really kind of strange to see the Akatsuki leader's face revealed so soon and randomly (and with bland artwork at that), but it was nonetheless surprising and not really all that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. As a whole, I consider this episode a coin-toss: the flashbacks were pretty great, yet at the same time Kishimoto's mess involving Oro and the Sharingan was truly an unpleasantly significant setback for me. The animation team also could have been a tad greater, but as it stands, Pierrot has managed these chapters better than Kishimoto. 7/10, almost an 8.