To those of you who are tired of listening to me talk about Megaman Battle Network, don’t worry; I’m tired of talking about Megaman Battle Network… for now. Today, we talk about an anime that’s quite popular in America as well as Japan. Time to tie on your headbands and ready your chakra!
Naruto
So here’s a case of baby-gets-demon-sealed-inside-of-him… Wait, that’s not a typical case unless you broaden it from “demon” to “uber power no one else is supposed to have”. Anyway, that describes Naruto Uzumaki. His pal, Sasuke Uchiha, follows a more typical family-gets-wiped-out-so-kid-wants-revenge story. The catch? His brother Itachi is the culprit, so that’s who he wants revenge on. And he’s willing to team up with a psycho named Orochimaru, even if that psycho attacked his village and left a nasty mark on him before. Naruto, of course, tries to stop him, but fails. Other than that, it’s all filler until he leaves the Leaf Village to train with his godfather Jiraiya.
Naruto Shippuden
Two years after that, Naruto comes back to the Leaf Village only to find their new ally, the Sand Village, is in trouble! They let a mysterious organization known as the Akatsuki (of whom Itachi is a member of) capture their leader, Gaara of the Desert. Gaara also happens to be one of Naruto’s friends (albeit after he tried to kill Sasuke and Sakura), so the plot has the Leaf’s leader, Tsunade, assign Team Kakashi, consisting of Naruto, Sakura, and their mentor Kakashi, to rescue Gaara, defeat the Akatsuki, etc. The Akatsuki turn out to be the main enemy throughout this series, while Naruto is trying everything he can to persuade his old friend Sasuke to change his ways and return to the Leaf Village.
Strengths: Naruto has a bunch of characters, good and bad, that are very likable; many of them could probably be described better by the fangirls of those characters. There’s also a lot of interesting interaction between the characters, including some provocative banter between Sasori and Deidara of the Akatsuki. Some of the filler arcs in Naruto Shippuden have good storylines to them, and they have some memorable characters as well. Awesome battle sequences help out a lot also, and Shippuden is filled with them.
Weaknesses: Sometimes the series can be too predictable, especially in fillers since main characters aren’t supposed to die in them (Shippuden movie 1 could be seen as an exception… maybe). Usually, if a villain kills one of the good guys, they avenge the fallen and take out the guy who killed their comrade (*spoiler* to my knowledge that has happened at least twice *spoiler*). Plus they take the predictable shonen elements into the series, i.e. the hero and villain exchange higher and higher levels of attacks, good guy gets pushed to the limit, then good guy comes up with an awesome jutsu to take out the villain, despite the villain’s last ditch effort to take the hero out or defend themselves.
What really slows it down are the obligatory fillers. The original Naruto series gets ragged on for making more filler episodes than main story episodes and for lumping them all together into a long stream of fillers right after the Sasuke Retreival arc is done. Currently Shippuden seems to be suffering from being loaded with flashback episodes as well. Eh, fillers are fillers.
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Up next is another anime about as popular as Naruto is, and I watch the current episodes of both anime every week. They are a big part of my life now. So today was Naruto, and next time will be One Piece! Waving out now!
--Gemini $park
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