Review of Naruto

I watched Naruto.

I watched it as a kid, didn't like it, just finished rewatching it as an adult, still don't like it.

Here's the thing tho, Naruto is a waste.

And I don't mean just a waste of time, no, it's a waste of a lot of good ideas.

Naruto's world-building is either great or trash depending on what you look at, everything about ninjas is very well written and, for the most part, very well explored, but one of its biggest issues is the setting it's trying to pull. Naruto wants to be ninja times, but also XXth century and also XXIst century, and it just doesn't work, to the point where it's very immersion breaking. For example, how do they have computers, x-ray machines, vending machines, etc, while everyone is communicating with scrolls and birds?

Although Naruto's world is very interesting and having very interesting rules, it's constantly sabotaged with these huge plot holes that could have been easily avoided if the show wasn't so greedy and ambitious.

Moving on to the characters:

I gotta say, I love them, they're great, they are deep and well-written characters for the most part. The main cast has enough backstory and the ones that don't either don't need one or are purposefully left out so it can build up on the mystery, which is good.

However!

There's an exception.

Naruto.

He is the worst character in the show.

And that's another thing that brings it down, the show focuses heavily on Naruto, and him being the worst character in the show just ruins everything.

About the story:

Despite the show focusing more on Naruto, he is not the only important character. I'd say the most important characters are Naruto, Sasuke, and Orochimaru. Which I think is a very interesting idea, to have these 2 very compelling sides seducing Sasuke. That's why Sasuke should be the main character, a la star wars prequels style, seeing the Child with so much potential slowly being taken by evil. But no, it's about Naruto, the guy whose whole script sounds like a copypasta of inspirational nonsense.

Other writing stuff:

Funny moments, bad;

Fanservice, awful;

Inspirational moments (with Naruto present), appalling;

Inspirational moments (with Naruto absent), decent;

Editing wise:

So bad, the shots, the cuts, the filters, the structure, it's all so bad, especially with fights. The fights could be so much better, they are choreographed very well, but they manage to ruin every fight with the editing.

Another problem, the sound design:

The voice acting, sound effects, OSTs, are very bad in the first few arcs. so bad that every scene that could possibly be good or at least decent is completely ruined by them. That's not always tho, around the episodes 40-50 it stopped being that bad, I don't know why or how but it improved a lot, not for good, mind you, but for decent. And, I don't mean what they used is bad, that's hard to tell that. I mean how they used them is bad. The sound Direction must have been very incompetent.

The designs were good for the most part, some are just decent and only a smaller few were bad, overall the show looks nice. It's more so when they ignore proportions to be funny that the show looks ugly. And the visual style is nice too, nothing special about it, in my opinion, but it works and looks good.

The Animation was decent, it looks lazy which is normal for older animes That had lower budgets and worse equipment, but it's not like the Animation was what made the show bad. There are only 3 fights That I remember having actually good Animation, but I'd be lying if I Said 3 fights. What I should really say is 1 episode per each of these fights. The first was Sasuke vs Orochimaru, the second was Orochimaru vs Sarutobi and the last was the final fight between Sasuke and Naruto. 3 episodes with good Animation, everything else was decent, apart from a few which were basically PowerPoint slideshows, like team 7 vs Haku and Zabuza which was the most upsetting one. The fight could have been a lot better if it had better Animation, they did improve the art quality on that episode so it's not that bad, but I would have directed the effort elsewhere.

The Ops and Eds;

Most of them were uninteresting, some of them were surprisingly good tho, I will most likely add some to my playlist.

Final thoughts:

Naruto has a lot of really good Ideas, impressively good, but there are way more bad things than there are good things, I don't rate things based on what they could have been, I rate them based on what they are, and Naruto is a bad show. It's inconsistent, has an awful sense of timing, doesn't know its own strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately wastes all of its own potential.

Will I watch Shippuden?

Yes.

I'm most likely going to enjoy it even less, I know it's very poor compared to Naruto, but the way Naruto ends with the setup for the sequel, I have to watch it. I'll take a break, watch a good anime, rest my tortured soul, recharge my masochistic energy and then I'll sit through Shippuden.

Now you may stop telling me to watch naruto, I did it, it wasn't good and I'm done for now.

Sincerely, Spoon.