Anyway, I'm gonna elaborate my earlier points now.

Of the recent chapters, I really liked Sasori's speech about puppets. However I'm still not content, and never will be, about him getting partially owned by Sakura. I guess Sakura's (& Naruto's) growth in strength is way bigger than we could ever have comprehended. After being useless for so long, it's still very hard to imagine her beating an akatsuki. I stand by that. About Naruto's kyuubi becoming a double edged sword as Elessar said, I like that too. This will prevent him from having nonstop plot device wins (unless Kakashi isn't always there throwing seals on him [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-tongue.gif[/img]). Finally, it pisses me off that Deidara died so easily. Til the end I loved the guy. Partly because of his voice (again, can't wait to see him properly enter the anime) and hell, he's just so cool.

ART... IS A BANG!

With him self-destructing Vegeta style, that makes for two DBZ references (the other one being his scouter, of course).

At least he ends his existance in a flashy way. It's too bad he won't take anyone with him though...
I'm also glad they skipped the clone fights. I guess they were just excuses for team Gai to not enter the akatsuki fights.
Still though, the Itachi & Kisame "clones" only had 30% of the original strength, yet they proved quite a hassle for team Kakashi & team Gai. Does that mean that Itachi/Kisame are way above Sasori & Deidara in strength?

Gah. Can't believe Deidara is gone. I'm so fucking tired of the villain procedure in Naruto. A new enemy pops up and then he dies, no development whatsoever (can you say sound four?). Sasori & Kimimaro were exceptions, but they were still not developed properly. I wanted to see Deidara's past damnit, why did he leave stone village etc. All the villages except sand & leaf are so anonymous. Bah...

btw, a scanlation of 277 is out at narutofan