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.

Thoughts on Yakusoku no Neverland Season 2 Episode 10

I missed Phil so much, it's baffling how they managed to make the moment when they reunite so bad.

I gotta say, I was wrong with my comment on the last episode, I fell for it, I believed the bald guy betrayed them, I was wrong, the writter/s did not try to artificially create an obstacle to make this climax a climax, instead they went full speed the other way, giving even more advantages to the protagonists, thanks guys, it's not like I wanted to be excited about the finale or anything.

They even try to give the perspective of the demons so we get excited or something, trying to make the audience confused about what the actual plan is. this is what happens in season 1, but in season 1 we had smart individuals with everything going against them, here we get demons that are dumb as shit and have everything against them. the thrill of season one came from seeing seemingly weak individuals overcoming impossible challenges thanks to their persistence and intelligence. Here, it's just supposed to be a power fantasy.

It's like playing a game where you grind until you become invincible, and only after that you kill the final boss, it doesn't feel good, there's no thrill, no challenge. but this episode isn't the black sheep of the season, this has been a long time coming, demons have been established to be strong but dumb, even the smart ones are seen failing every time due to not thinking ahead of time, the only challenge has been physical power, so once the protagonists have that, there's no fight, the protagonists have the upper hand because they are smarter.

Take a look at code geass, the story of a man that starts with nothing but his intelligence, and thanks to his strong will he gets awarded the power he needed to take on the world, being at a numerical disadvantage most of the time throughout the anime keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat wondering how he is going to overcome it. By then of the anime, and the climax begins, the protagonist has around as much power as the antagonist, and yet it's not an easy fight because the antagonist is equally smart. That was an exciting climax, this isn't.

Whoever wrote Yakusoku no Neverland shot themselves in the foot because there's no way they could have made this interesting. the closest they could have done would be to have a secret super powerful demon final boss that would be stronger than anyone forcing them to start sacrificing people and forcing them to default to the ideals they have been trying to extinguish triggering some inner conflict in the protagonists. The issue is, they can't do that with 2 episodes of climax, it's just not doable.

With how this garbage season and climax are going I wanna try to predict the ending, here are my options:

1- nothing more happens, they make it to the human world, and a) everything is good, or b) everything sucks there. both irrelevant.

2- they have a final super demon boss like I mentioned before, defeat it and nothing interesting happens, at that point, you can go and watch dragon ball or any other garbage shounen that has these kinds of fights

3- demon lord, but people die, creating stakes for the first time in this entire season making it super artificial and boring and it will feel like they are killing off characters just for the shock value to make the villain intimidating, like JoJo no Kymio na Bouken Part 3

As you might notice, all these suck, but as I said previously, I wanna stick around till the end and see just how much of a mess they make this anime.

Thoughts on Yakusoku no Neverland Season 2 Episode 9

This is going from bad to worse.

Everything is boring, there are no stakes, no risk, nothing, everything is so convenient, it's not fun to watch. Even the whole conflict among humans didn't matter at all, in the end, it was an emotional obstacle that didn't change the plot at all.

And surprise surprise, the character that doesn't do anything was convenient to the plot because sure why not, at least it was an established character that felt important and not just a random background character, right?

I wanna take this show seriously, but I can't, this season compared to the first feels like a joke, I can't help but treat it like one, and the ending of this episode is such a great example: the antagonists lure in the protagonists for a final confrontation that will be the climax, perfect, the protagonists can finally stop fucking around and actually have a goal, but this is a hard task that they don't know how to overcome, perfect, just like the first season, overcoming a problem they know nothing about, but no, why would we have an interesting climax, let's just give the protagonists a fucking guide on how to infiltrate the big evil place, nice job writing, I almost felt like this was worth watching.

And even tho they have the equivalent to a game guide to beat the final boss, the loyal rational dude is the one that betrays them, what in the actual hell, the psycho girl was a much more volatile character, why wasn't she the one betraying them, that would be a more fitting development than "dumb bitch is evolving, dumb bitch just learned empathy".

I honestly don't know what I'm watching at this point. Season 2 is to Season 1 what Hunt down the Freeman is to the Half-Life games.

There are 2 episodes left according to MAL, I'm gonna watch them of course, the ship has already gone down, but I want to see how much deeper it sinks.

Review of Neon Genesis Evangelion (TV)

 Neon Genesis Evangelion is probably the anime I regret watching the most, I've watched many animes, some I liked, some I didn't, but despite not liking Evangelion I kept watching because the public made me feel like I was missing out on something if I didn't watch it, so I kept going until the very end.

A lot of people claim Evangelion is a classic and a must-watch, but the truth is, it's not. Let me explain why that is, a lot of shows mark their medium and genre for generations ahead, sailor moon did that, but sailor moon still stands out, it's not the best, but has its strong points.

That's not the case with Evangelion, what Evangelion does is poor and uninteresting, and the whole time I watched I couldn't help but think about how I've seen it done better. Evangelion might have been unique and might have inspired a lot of things that came after, but if everything about it can't even be considered average then I have to ask, why not watch anything else? I learn a lot by comparing, I've seen ideas work well in some places and bad in other places, by comparing things I learn more about how things work, and sometimes to explain my view I exemplify to be more clear, I started realizing how much I disliked Evangelion when I started bringing up Evangelion for things that don't work.

I even started using a dumb term I came up with as a joke so it was more tolerable to think about Evangelion, I called it the Evangelion syndrome, and here's what it is, a lot of shows have evil or chaotic characters that are sometimes opposing forces to the protagonist/s, sometimes supportive figures, sometimes the protagonist/s, and that the show tries to make the audience feel empathy for, like Voltron, infinity war, joker, code geass, to name a few, but those work because we can feel empathy for them, not in Evangelion tho, Evangelion tries to walk in 2 different directions at once, trying to have a controversial and hatable cast while also trying to make the audience feel bad for them, you can't make people feel bad for monsters, you can't justify wrong actions with suffering, the most you can do is explain. knowing that a murderer was abused growing up explains what he did, it does not justify it, and if your character has no redeeming qualities and you try to make people feel bad for them just based on suffering, you're not going anywhere.

One thing I like in animes is consistency, Evangelion has that, here's the issue: from episode one it looked like the show was gonna move fast since they introduced almost everything at the start, I then assumed it was because the anime wanted to hurry to get to the good stuff, but then every episode afterward was the same, except we already knew everything, they try to give hints for something hiding behind the scenes, a big plot that we don't understand yet, and that gave me hope, made me feel like the anime was going somewhere, but that's where I was wrong. every episode feels the same. and in the end, the big thing that was gonna be super important is not even used it's just there to trick you into thinking the anime is deeper than it is. I felt like I was left hanging at the end, there is no climax, you'd think the anime was building up to something, except nothing ever happens so it cant be called build-up, it's just a string of boring and irrelevant events.

On to the stuff that isn't as bad, visually it looks good, and I don't even care about animation, design-wise, it looks good, it looks old of course if you're not a fan of old anime styles you might not like it but I doubt from all that I've said that's what's gonna make you not want to watch it. I don't really remember the soundtrack, which means it's good, not good enough for me to notice it but not bad enough to break the immersion. And of course, the opening, not my favorite opening, but it is definitely on my top 10, it's outstandingly good. it looks great, it sounds great, it's one of the best openings in all of anime history, it's by no coincidence that even people that haven't watched the anime recognize it or at least find it familiar.

One more section of me complaining, not because I wanna end on a bad note, but because I have been delaying the inevitable by avoiding mentioning these. you might have heard that Evangelion is a serious anime, and that's true, but it also has some light-hearted moments too, but not like code geass where those were used to explore the characters and their interactions amongst each other and to better flesh them out and establish them, no, in Evangelion its just pointless attempts at being funny or having fanservice, both of which are impossible because it sucks at being funny and because even fanservice already being a garbage trait for an anime, it's even worse in Evangelion because just the idea of fanservice from these characters makes me sick, both because they are horribly disgusting people and also because some of them are kids.

I wanna conclude this with my overall thoughts about the show. Evangelion is not a good show, far from it, the plot doesn't work, the characters don't work, the lore is boring, even after hours of research and knowing what everything behind the scenes was I still find the anime pointless and boring, sometimes the show tries to be cool, it fails, sometimes it tries to be serious and deep, it fails, sometimes it tries to be funny, it fails. I respect Evangelion for the cultural impact it had, but that doesn't make it good, I respect the attempt at symbolism, but that doesn't make it good. to the first one I already gave the example of sailor moon, but to this second issue lemme give a different example. JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken Part 5 has a lot of symbolism around fate and death and it plays with them both and how sometimes they are combined forces of nature and sometimes they are used against each other, the symbolism there is only some subtext that keeps the story tied together while also not forcing the plot into motion, it is just something that once you find out you realize how impressive the writing is since it manages to create an interesting story while also keeping it all accurate to the symbolism, Evangelion doesn't have an interesting story and the symbolism doesn't work, It was a noble attempt, but it fell flat. I respect creativity and bold ventures, but Evangelion is a perfect example of when those fail and I have a hard time understanding how people still praise it this much.

As I said before, Evangelion tries a lot of things, but none of them stand out and are not worth watching, in my opinion, you're better off watching anything else. Acknowledge it exists, respect it for what it attempted, but don't praise it like a classic when it truly isn't. If you like it, great, you can enjoy something I don't and id love to know why, if you don't, that's fine too, if you haven't watched it, you're not missing out.

Sincerely, Spoon