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Naruto discussion thread
What are your thoughts on Naruto as a series? Anything specific you want to highlight (plots, characfers, themes, arcs...). Thoughts on manga, anime, movies, novel... all welcome.
What are your thoughts on Naruto as a series? Anything specific you want to highlight (plots, characfers, themes, arcs...). Thoughts on manga, anime, movies, novel... all welcome.
I was thinking about making a One Piece chapter mega thread, but decided against it for several reasons.
Just curious, what leads you to say that that type of format will never be accommodated here?
It's the best we've got for getting groups of people together and curating sub-communities or sub-groups atm. You seem much more confident than me though lol.
I've read through the rules a few times, and I don't think it's antithetical to any of them?
Edit: The main issue I could see is it might make it difficult for the admin or future group creators to determine how active the tag otherwise would be, which is how they're going to determine if a new group is necessary.
Sorry to detail ya.. Naruto is bad ass :)
Oh no it's not that I think they're against the rules or anything like that. More about the fact that the activity level here is still too low, so chapter threads will quickly drown out all others. The second is even if we eventually have a separate manga group, most of the power users will probably still be on Reddit, so no one to keep up with chapter releases, and sporadic chapter discussions just doesn't feel complete.
Edit: although now that you mention it, some series is just too long to ever wait for them to finish lol. Maybe discussion for each arc may be a nice compromise to stay up to date? Definitely want to hear people's thought about One Piece though (especially since the recent plot development is getting crazy) so feel free to make a thread too. We're all still trying things out around here so anything goes :)
Naruto used to be my favorite piece of Japanese media, and I used to keep up with the manga and anime religiously when I was in high school.
However, shortly after the timeskip i fell off of the series. The pacing just felt different from how it used to be, especially the anime, and overtime, I just followed the series based on spoilers, and was frustrated in the development, or lack there of, of certain characters throughout the series. I think it was the Pain arc when I bailed for good.
I did enjoy what I did read of the manga, and I used to be big into making AMVs out of the anime, including sigh the Naruto vs. Sasuke fight set to Linkin Park.
Naruto and other Jump manga like One Piece and Gin Tama were definitely a big part of my teen years. Kinda wish I still had the passion for modern series as I did during the early 2000s.
This is roughly accurate to my feelings. I liked the initial vibe of nartuo and even thought they did a good time skip. There was a varied cast and all of them were interesting. Shortly after the Pain arc though it became almost solely about naruto and sauske in a manner i've seen before, and just wasn't as interesting.
Part of why I like JJK and MHA so much is because they feel like they've taken some of the spirit of early naruto, with the large varied cast, and actually delivered on it by keeping more than just the main cast relevant.
I love what I've read of MHA so far, though I am severely behind. The last arc I completed was the villains arc, and a lot seems to have happened since then.
The diverse cast of characters is part of the reason i got into MHA, but at the same time there are a lot of characters I wish got more focus, development or even screen time that seem to be side lined for the most part. I never read the vigilantes manga, but I kinda wish class B got there own little side story like that. Many of my favorite characters are in that group, and it's always exciting to see them featured.
Naruto was the first anime I ever watched. I watched right when the dub was released on cartoon network. So I have a bit of a soft spot for it.
That being said, I never particularly liked Naruto that much, or any of the characters really, which kinda hurt the enjoyment factor. I don't think some of the characterization was as developed as it needed to be, and things jumped the shark in shippuden.
For instance, I never felt like Naruto and Sasuke were really that good of friends, and that's something that's really important for you to believe in terms of character motivations going into Shippuden. They basically were just barely on the cusp of getting out of "frenemy" status at the end of Naruto, and I'm supposed to believe that they're so important to each other as to be the primary motivation for the main character for the next series?
There was also a lot of retconning. The first two hokages were just "OK" in the first show, but it was retconned in shippuden that Hashirama is such a god that having his cells makes you god. The "hard work vs talent" theme also got thrown in the trash as the people who are important get increasingly majestic lineages.
The powers got a little silly. I still think all of the Amaterasu panels in shippuden looked absurd. The image of Sasuke shooting fire from his eyes is just... dumb, to me.
Abilities were never that consistent. Substitution jutsu is just obviously broken if you think about it. It gets made worse because Sakura uses it like any video game player would use it (by spamming the shit out of it), and... it works! Just, no one ever does it again.
Is the manga still ongoing, or did it finish?
In terms of Anime, I don't have patience for most shonen productions. The characters are just a little bit too simlear to eachother, and while they can start off well enough they eventually get really long and drawn out. And the thing I like the least is the lack of any real endings.
But I'm a lot more forgiving in general to shonen manga. The thoughtful composition and meticulous artwork helps. I actually read Naruto often when I had a subscription to the nostalgic American print version of Shonen Jump. The only problem with the manga is that they are consumed so quickly and it can be too long a wait for the next one!
I think Naruto is a pretty nifty little world, and magical fantasy ninjas will never not be cool, even when they're occasionally immature brats.
I actually really enjoyed the first movie; the animation was fantastic, it had some memorable visuals, and the story was pretty affective overall even if it were a bit too overbearing on the "just keep trying" message. There are certainly far worse shonen anime movies out there.
I just wish I could erase that stupid toilet short from my memory.
I loved the English print of Shonen Jump. I used to have every issue except for the very first of the physical edition, but sadly they got destroyed in a fire T_T
What drew me too it originally was I used to be super into YuGiOh, and the cover of issue 2 featured Yugioh on one of the sides. That was the first issue to feature Naruto, and it was from there I started reading.
It was always a good day when I got my subscription in the mail. It was practically Christmas if my copy of Nintendo Power arrived with it at the same time.
Oh, and to answer your question, yeah, the manga and anime wrapped up a couple of years ago. They are now making a continuation of the series called Boruto, which features his son. I don't think Kishimoto is as involved with it as he was with Naruto.
I loved Shonen Jump. Even reading through the manga version of Dragon Ball Z was fun even though I think the anime had already wrapped up by that point.
I stopped because my family didn't have money for it, and then they all got left behind alongside a lot of my cool stuff (My Macintosh Quadra 840AV!) when I was forced to move.
I didn't care for the series at first, I found Naruto's character a little too annoying. I got into the plot after watching individual fights, fights were awesome and I had to connect them after watching most of them in disorder.
I feel the ninja world could have been further explored and side characters further developed to properly advance the story, it became too Konoha centered and Naruto centered for my taste (I don't what I expected given the series name).
From the war arc on it felt too rushed, I don't even know how many days the war took place in, it felt like one really long day.
Apart from that, the ninja world was very cool and the jutsu Kishi came with really imppressed my young-adult mind.