Reviews

With how decent Naruto part 1 was, many people moved on to Naruto Shippuden, part 2 of the popular anime series. While in the manga it is still called Naruto, Part 2 enters a 3 year time skip after the events of Naruto part 1. And here's where it all goes wrong. Not at the start of of course. Actually everything seems to be going the Naruto way (Not that that's perfect or anything, just serviceable). When you have a series that goes on this long, one would expect you to write yourself into many corners, and that's exactly what happens here. Naruto Shippuden taints the foundation of what made Naruto so great. The animation is worse, the story loses focus, action shifts itself into a penis measuring contest where every fight tries to outdo the last with little to no fines or choreography, characters stay one dimensional throughout the entire run time, and of course we shift from a story about ninjas into a story about divine power and who gets to own it. Most people may see this as "upping the ante", but to me, it's just a lazy and poorly written way to boost manga sales and anime views without actually delivering some worthwhile content that can leave a deep impact emotionally, like a story should. Naruto Shippuden also manages to somehow rewrite it's own themes and messages given prior and ruin some of it's lead cast of characters, including Naruto Uzumaki himself. The series succeeds to pull things from out of nowhere, and treat them as standard fare. How was Guy able to even leave a scratch on Six Paths Madara? (I know it was the eight gate, but Madara was basically omnipotent at that point, and taijutsu did him in a bit? Bullshit) How was it that Kaguya's will was used to create Black Zetsu when we saw Madara create it himself? How was Madara able to revive himself with izanagi if he was already dead? How come Obito was able to survive the Ten Tails extraction? Better yet, why the fuck does Kaguya even exist?! And why is Naruto the Child of Prophecy when his characters theme was carving your own path? And by god that horribly rushed ending... I can go on about how Naruto Shippuden really dropped the ball, but it would take too long. In short, Shippuden seems ambitious, but it falls flat in the end with little to no pay off.