It seems I'm not in heavy company but I thought this whole little arc was overall a better product and experience than the last several dozen 'canonical' episodes. The animation quality/complexity/variety alone was enough to make the show infinitely more watchable than the typical week to week stuff but I think what really sold me was the fact that there was reasonable pacing between episodes after the months of stall hell we've had in the canon. Sure the Chikara story was a giant pile of predictable clichés but then again so is Naruto, however even a crappy story can be well executed and in that regard I think Chikara delivered quite well, at least in Naruto terms.

The whiney kids were annoying, the love story was the height of sappiness, and the villain was a cardboard cutout in every way possible, but for some reason I can't really fathom myself all the silly cliche elements came together in a way that just 'worked'. And in a way that the giant ninja war arc frankly hasn't with the way it's been paced in the anime. I at least am going to miss the animation upgrade and feeling like the plot isn't being dragged along thorugh a mud pit by an army of diseased snails next week.

NOTE: The anime is still in the same arc that is currently ongoing in the manga so I expect no sparing of the stall tactics for the next several months.