That's what you wanted to read, right? I say its only a little bit overrated. Its famous because its original. Leave it alone. You can not say some else's opinion is worse than yours. Its pretty lame to knock down the majority of opinions for your own. Its only a bit overrated because it does not have the best music or art. It has average art and cheesy music. But the story is developed quite nicely and it gets your heart pumping. Enjoyment is the most important thing here. What other reason would you watch an anime for?
Story: The story is amazing! You cannot knock naruto down. There are ninjas with special powers they made themselves! The main character has a sad setup too! It makes it all the more interesting. It even has a world economy built into the story! I know there are only villages in each country, but that's okay. I'd say there are weak points in the story though. There are a couple electronics in this society and hospitals which does not make sense because they do not have cars or planes or ships. It also does not tell us what planet naruto is on or what time period it is based in.
Art: I thought the art was pretty average. It was not spectacular (especially on episode 1) but it was bearable. I thought the noses and ears of the characters looked pretty weird. Ah! Annoying to look at. The fight scenes were pretty awesome and well done though. The art in them was amazing, and made the scenes all the more interesting to watch.
Sound: Hmm.. I say it's fairly done. I thought it was pretty cheesy, but I got attached to it. The soundtrack fits really well with what anime it's going with though. It moves the anime along quite well. If you listen to the songs without watching the anime though, you may find them quite boring or weird. The openings and endings of the show have really well done music in them. I enjoyed all the intro and outro songs. Hopefully you do as well.
Character development: This is not poorly done, but i'd say it lacks a lot. In the second series of naruto,there is a whole lot more development. I just don't understand why they had to have such average development in the first series. There is hardly any character development with anyone besides the main characters. I know you will probably disagree, but it's true. Many are left with a bad after taste after watching this first show. Its really hard to understand where some of the characters are going.
Enjoyment: This series is thoroughly enjoyable. It has a lot of fillers yes, but the fillers are quite enjoyable too. The fillers made me laugh hell of a lot, or made me feel relief from the intensiveness of the real story. It may make a lot of people complain of how repetitive this show can get, but i feel it adds to it. Its not bad to repeat ideas and expand on them. It's only impatient people who get frustrated with repetition.
Overall, it's a good watch. I recommend it to anyone who has time on their hands and wants to watch an upbeat show. It's fairly interesting, and never gets boring (at least for me.).
Warning: There are huge fillers everywhere in the show. Without them there would only be 140 episodes... not 220. I suggest you skip them and maybe watch them later when you run out of everything naruto. Do whatever you want.
