Naruto

Moments before Naruto Uzumaki's birth, a huge demon known as the Nine-Tailed Fox attacked Konohagakure, the Hidden Leaf Village, and wreaked havoc. In order to put an end to the demon's rampage, the leader of the village, the Fourth Hokage, sacrificed his life and sealed the monstrous beast inside the newborn Naruto.

In the present, Naruto is a hyperactive and knuckle-headed ninja growing up within Konohagakure. Shunned because of the demon inside him, Naruto struggles to find his place in the village. His one burning desire to become the Hokage and be acknowledged by the villagers who despite him. However, while his goal leads him to unbreakable bonds with lifelong friends, it also lands him in the crosshairs of many deadly foes.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Uzumaki, Naruto Main

Takeuchi, Junko Japanese

Hatake, Kakashi Main

Inoue, Kazuhiko Japanese

Uchiha, Sasuke Main

Sugiyama, Noriaki Japanese

Haruno, Sakura Main

Nakamura, Chie Japanese

Uchiha, Itachi Supporting

Ishikawa, Hideo Japanese

Nara, Shikamaru Supporting

Canna, Nobutoshi Japanese

Jiraiya Supporting

Ootsuka, Houchuu Japanese

Gaara Supporting

Ishida, Akira Japanese

Hyuuga, Hinata Supporting

Mizuki, Nana Japanese

Namikaze, Minato Supporting

Morikawa, Toshiyuki Japanese

Kobayashi, Noriko Producer

Simone, Jamie Producer, ADR Director

Hagino, Ken Producer

Date, Hayato Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Apr 27, 2008

TheLlama

Recommended

To be honest, Naruto is the most overhyped show in existence. Everyone goes on and on and on about how great it is; and my expectations for this show was equally high. However, I was really, really let down. Really. This wasn't the best show ever, as I had thought it would be. Don't get me wrong, the show is enjoyable, but it's definitely not among the best shows out there. I hope Shippuden will better than this... much better.

The concept of this show isn't that hard to follow. It's an alternate world in which ninjas live. The ninjas fight by using various skills, and ... they have this power flowing inside of them called chakra. Chakra is used to perform powerful attacks which (usually) belongs to either of the five traditional elements of earth, fire, water, air and lightning. Of course, since they are ninjas, they fight with weapons like shuriken and kunai as well as hand-to-hand combat. As expected of this kind of world, there's evil people, having different goals and reasons behind their evil.

The story follows Naruto, one of these ninjas, as he grow as a ninja, from being a stupid little prank-playing brat to becoming a fine ninja. Along the way, he interacts with and makes friends with many fellow ninja, fighting his way towards his dream of becoming Hokage (the leader of his village).

The story isn't nearly as good as the concept would indicate. Sure, a lot of the characters has some nice background stories, won't complain about that, but they manage to drag out everything so much. It really annoys me. Some fights take several episodes when they could've been done them just as good in one or two. There's also way too much fighting. The story goes like fight, fight, background story, fight, fight, even more fight, half an episode's worth of resting or journeying, fight, fight, and so on. I mean, it's cool to watch fights, but there are just way too many fights, and they drag most of them out to unnecessary lengths. The only really enjoyable fight was the one between Sasuke and Naruto right before the fillers began. Which brings up another thing...

Fillers! Agh, I normally don't mind fillers, but Naruto had some really, really stupid ones. Sure, there was the occasional diamond among the charcoal, but that doesn't excuse the high amount of bad fillers. I mean, just because they are fillers doesn't mean that they have to make them bad. Several shows have actually made decent and at the same time long fillers (especially Bleach, with its 40-episode long Bount arc), but Naruto failed horribly here.

Also, I feel that Naruto is very silly at times. Silly is usually good, but not when it's immature silly. And guess what+ Naruto is silly in an immature way. It's so dreadfully stupid at times that I had to close my eyes, take a deep breath and wait until it got serious again. Now, it did have some good comical moments, but those were far and wide between.

Another thing I feel like releasing my rage on is the animation. It barely manages to get the description “average” to me. At its best, it's slightly above average. However, a lot of time it's slipshod galore with the animation. I still have many very bad memories from having to watch lots of errors in the animation, and I'm not sure if I'll ever get rid of those memories. While the amount of errors decreased as the episodes passed by, at least every second episode before the 100s had one or more moments of slipshod animation. Wonder if they ever considered firing the animators.

As a side mention, they should do something about Rock Lee - even though I've slightly gotten used to his horrible looks, I still feel a burn in the back of my eye every time I see him.

The music is pretty good, though. A lot of great tunes (especially the sad ones are great), and the first few OPs and EDs were pretty awesome. It has some really bad music parts too, like the tribal voice-ish song, and sometimes they could've used better themes during the fights. As the series progressed, the quality of the OPs and EDs decrease too.

The characters are fairly okay, I guess. Some of them are really annoying, like Naruto, because he's so stupid. Agh, he annoys me to no end! Some other characters are annoying too, because of things like their looks (Gai and Lee), or because they are failed attempts at comical relief (at least in my eyes, you might find them funny), like the all too perverted Jiraiya.

That's the negative about them. However, they have some really nice background stories, some which are elaborated more upon than others. Many of the characters also get fair amounts of screen time, which for some people can seem too much, whilst others will be content with it, because their favorite character from the show gets an episode for him/herself.

I also like the fact that most of them have dreams or aspirations, and motives for what they are doing and how they are acting (usually it's tied together with their background stories). The growing relationships between them is also nice, their maturing, and how Naruto is slowly getting accepted by more and more people through hard work.

Basically, they've portrayed the characters very well, and not too over the top, but some of them act stupid and silly from time to time, which drags the character rating down.

I have some mixed feelings for the show, which kind of drags down on the enjoyability factor of it. Great concept, not as good story, both good and bad music, horrid animation at times, many characters with background stories, some of them great and some not-so-great; it's hard to completely make up my mind, but I believe the ratings I have given shows my feelings towards the different aspects of the show.

Of course, even though there was things I didn't like, I can easily see why this show is so popular as it is; it has humor that the kids may find funny, as well as lots of fights which appeal to the teenagers and adults. I personally didn't like it that much, though. I'm looking forward to Shippuden, because I’ve heard it was much better… I really hope so!

To 'Not Helpful' voters (and you 'Helpful' voters too): Feedback greatly appreciated =)

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by TheLlama (65)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Apr 8, 2008

Talamare

Mixed Feelings

Story: Naruto is a fairly decent anime that made quite a bit of mistakes, such as turning over half of the show into fillers, and taking the show into "god" level Dragon Ball Z style of fighting. Naruto starts out as a extremly good Ninja anime during its first season where everything you see is unexpected and the story is rather fresh and interesting, the first season including Zabuza had a perfect pace and the fight scenes felt truly of what ninjas should be.

After the first season however we are left with a quickly declining anime, soon the fights becomes my "special ... move is better then yours" and it doesnt really feel like its a ninja show anymore with everyone pretty much using random attacks, which essentially turns this show into another beat em up. After a couple of seasons they start to follow in the footsteps of Dragon Ball Z.

Art: The characters are well drawn, and the moves are flashy and nicely animated fight sequences.

Sound: While many of the music and songs of the anime are amazing, this show became plagued with... DATTEBAYO! ('Believe it' in english)

Character: A large array of characters with each a rather decent background, however because they wanted each character to have such a rich and fulfilling history, we became flooded with flashbacks. Also only a few characters truly stand out in terms of growth and development such as Gaara, Neji, Shikamaru and a few others.

Enjoyment: I decided to rate the seasons individually and then average them, with Season 1 and 5 recieving highest marks.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by Talamare (4)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Dec 19, 2008

donsanman

Not Recommended

ok so I've seen like 200+ series and i have to say that this is one pathetic series. i watched up to shippuden 50. im telling you nothing interesting happens, and like 90% of the series is filler anyway.

the plot is seriously lacking and its a pathetic excuse for a slice of life/action-drama type of show. im writing this for people who legitimately haven't seen the show but the series is just NOT worth the acclaim or watching at all.

the characters are even worse. you have your over-zealous,untalented guy who thinks he can do anything if he tries hard enough. . .and he ... just so happens to get increasingly stronger enemies to fight along the way. than you have your emo broody guy who all the fan girls swoon over while he talks about how much he resents his brother and must AVENGE HIS CLAN! get over it already and last you have your naturally talented good girl who has a crush on the bad boy, even though its obvious he hates her and that the other guy would kill to have her. look people this has been done MILLIONS! of times before so please if you haven't seen the series don't watch it. it will waste days of your life away for nothing. . .literally the series will take up 88 hours of your life! thats over 3 and a half DAYS! you could have been doing something WAY more productive. hell, it doesn't even have to be productive. you could probably have a better time watching paint dry! listen to me people, for gods sake i only watched as far as i did out of obligation to finish a series i started but it wasn't worth it! so PLEASE heed my words and never ever watch this series of overrated garbage!

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by donsanman (2)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Naruto Ultimate Watch Guide (Story Arcs, Movies, Specials, Fillerlist etc)

by TheCoolGuy82

25 Entries · 8 Restacks

New Anime Fan Starter Pack

by Biisoo

50 Entries · 3 Restacks

The Real Big 3

by NightStalker_69

7 Entries · 3 Restacks

North American Anime & Manga Releases for October

Here are the North American anime, manga, and light novel releases for October. Week 1: October 4 - 10 Anime Releases Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya Movie: Licht - N...read more

Oct 3, 2022 11:16 AM by Aiimee | Discuss (0 comments)

North American Anime & Manga Releases for June

Here are the North American anime, manga, and light novel releases for June Week 1: June 7 - 13 Anime Releases Bem (BEM: Become Human) Blu-ray Btooom! (incl. Bakusat...read more

Jun 7, 2022 10:13 AM by Aiimee | Discuss (2 comments)

	Watch or skip the fillers from episode 143 until 219? Sner201 - Nov 12	35 replies	by Ganoh »» Nov 19, 3:25 PM
	Poll: Naruto Episode 6 Discussion Alicia3000 - Jul 17, 2009	36 replies	by Yanette_147 »» Nov 16, 7:50 PM
	Poll: Naruto Episode 29 Discussion Vitka_Lynx - Dec 11, 2008	42 replies	by Morekintoun »» Nov 16, 8:53 AM
	Poll: Naruto Episode 213 Discussion vizhmaster_vizhu - Oct 18, 2011	13 replies	by FedeMetal »» Nov 15, 5:41 PM
	Who is your favourite and cool character ? ( 1 2 ) luckysjjsjsjs - Nov 8, 2023	50 replies	by Prideful_Lion »» Nov 15, 3:27 PM

Ramen in Anime: A Bowl of Nourishment and Symbolism

Come along on a ramen-infused anime journey presented to you by ZenPlus - the site unifying thousands of Japanese online shops in one shopping cart.

by MAL_editing_team

41,135 views

Advertorial

18 of the Funniest Anime Faces Ever

Some characters are funny because of all the crazy antics they get up to. But others just have the right kind of physiognomy, which make them prone to pulling off some funny anime faces - intentionally or unintentionally.

by MisterD98

835,883 views

CollectionFunny