Anime Reviews

Naruto

Title: Naruto

Owner: Masashi Kishimoto

Genre: Action, adventure, comedy, fantasy

Rating: 6.5/10

Summary:

Twelve years ago, a giant, monstrous, and powerful fox known at the Nine-Tails attacked the ninja in the Village Hidden in the Leaves and killed many people. The most powerful ninja and the leader of the Hidden Leaf Village, the Fourth Hokage, sacrificed his life to seal the Nine-Tailed Fox into newborn Naruto Uzumaki.

Naruto is jeered at and treated like a pest his whole life, with no family or friends. Due to the law put in place by the Third Hokage, it is forbidden to talk of the Nine-Tails incident to anyone including Naruto; who is unaware of the demon fox inside of him.

Now that Naruto is twelve, he is tricked by a rogue ninja to steal a secret scroll that would teach him a secret ninja technique. He is stopped by his teacher Iruka Umino, who then reveals that Naruto has the Nine-Tailed Fox inside of him.

After defeating the rogue ninja and finally accepting that he is the Nine-Tails, Naruto is assigned to a three person team that will be taught how to be ninja under a sensei. He is paired with his rival, Sasuke Uchiha and his crush, Sakura Haruno; and placed under his sensei Kakashi Hatake to become Team 7.

With this opportunity to finally make friends and have others accept him, Naruto vows that he will become the next Hokage and the most powerful ninja.

Opinion:

Okay, this is something I know you've all been waiting for! Prepare for the long-awaited Naruto chapter!

Prepare for a lot of distractions and spoilers throughout the whole chapter, so I'm posting one spoiler warning here to span the whole chapter. You've been warned--I don't want to hear any bitching about "spoilers" because I've warned you beforehand.

*SPOILER ALERT*

So, Naruto is one of those series that manages to make it to the top, and has lots of obnoxious fans and amazing fans, but seemingly more haters. Now, for me, I wouldn't say I'm obsessed and I don't hate it either. I'm going to fence-sit on this series, because it was alright. It was slightly above average, as are most shows I watch.

Like every other show I've seen, I went through that "obsessed" phase for a bit either during or after watching it. So yeah, I was a bit of a fan and I still am.

I'm going to fence-sit because I agree with either party here. I can see why people love it:

It's hilarious, has an adequate plot, and is easy to get into.

But I can also see why people hate it:

The literal SHIT-tons of filler and the arcs and events are very prolonged.

This show is the very definition of the good, the bad, and the ugly. However, let me jumble that up a bit so it's the bad, the ugly, and the good.

#1: The Bad

Now, I'm not a true Naruto fan because I didn't watch the 100-episode filler arc--I actually just skipped it and watched the very last few.

Next up, turning a cool character (who admittedly was an asshat) into a bad guy (even though we all knew it would happen). Let me pretend for a moment that I didn't have the entire series spoiled for me before watching it. Thanks, Dani.

I'm reasonable though, I know that with a series this old and popular that it's impossible not to get spoilers. Anyways, I kind of liked Sasuke to begin with. He was okay and I knew he was eventually leave; but I still didn't really want to accept it. I can't even justify my point, but let me say this: There must have been some fans who were slightly surprised, even if in the least, and some that were slightly disappointed when he finally did leave the Village Hidden in the Leaves for Orochimaru.