Character (Mediocre = 5)
Enjoyment (Fair = 6)
OK, for the Story, Character, and Enjoyment segment, I'll write it down together as one review because they're link closely to each other.
- The titular character = Naruto has characters that are the most easy for us to fall in love with. He is cheerful and happy character, pure at heart because he's naive, too naive even, that he is very close to stupidity, but he has a very strong determination, values friendship and loyalty, and will do anything for friendship and loyalty.
- PLUS, he has a very touching background that we want to shed our tears upon his lonely, sad, and hard past.
- But that's not all, almost ALL of the characters inside this series are filled with background stories.
- Some of them are sad and endearing background story, some of them provide a strong bond of friendship turned into rival, and some are spiced up with the little emotional background stories ingredient here and there, etc.
- Naruto's character is lovable, and almost everybody has been provided with a deep background story, with a little bit of touchy ingredients here and there, so why only a mediocre score for characters and story?
- Here's the explanation.
- The main protagonist of this series suppose to be Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke, and Kakashi.
- But Sakura rarely "throw a punch", and Sakura doesn't really have anything MAJOR role within the team. In other words, Sakura doesn't do much for and in the team. In other words, why should Sakura be the main protagonist if her role is really-really-really MINOR.
- Meanwhile the other characters, although they are provided with a deep and touchy background stories, I could consider them as being "too much to include many things".
- Why? Because the series put too much characters, but in the end, not all of them made a handfull of active role within the entire story.
- The good example is Ten Ten. They are supposed to be the supporting characters, fine I get it, supporting characters doesn't supposed to have any heavy role in the series.
- But again, just like Sakura, Ten Ten rarely "throws a punch", she rarely fight, she only involves actively in the "Chunin Exam Arc", and afterwards, she just appears as a very-very-very insignificant and minor role.
- In other words, if Ten Ten is supposed to be that insignificant and very minor role, why should be a character named Ten Ten in the first place? Seriously, her purpose is nothing but an accessories and nothing more. And accessories doesn't really have any weight and depth to the entire series.
- And Ten Ten is not the only one, we have A LOT more of the other characters that also have insignificant, minor, not heavy, and not have any depth role.
- That's why in the character department, the series put too much character that doesn't really need to be there because they do not have enough depth and weight in their role in the story.
- Now the story and enjoyment, again, it drops to the mediocre and fair score.
- The explanation is, eventhough the series provide a strong background to almost ALL of the characters, but they inserted the story in a very bad timing - which is during a fight.
- The flow of the fight goes like this: fight - pause for a flashback to describe the background story - fight - pause to discuss technical analysis, and so on.
- You see the flow, during the fight, our mood is "Excitement", but our "Excitement" is being thrown by a "wet blanket" because during the fight, there is this "pause for a flashback to describe the background story". It drops the mood-o'-meter greatly from the heights of "Excitement" into a flat or sad mood during the background story.
- Not to mention about the "pause to discuss technical analysis" during the fight. That is also droping the mood-o'-meter just like the "pause for a flashback to describe the background story", with also the same explanation as described earlier.
- Now then, not only those PAUSES destroy our mood-o'-meter, but it also damage the story pacing into a very sloooooooooooooow pace.
- For example, Naruto and Sasuke's final battle consumes (I have counted the series) 8 episodes.
- I said OMG! 8 episodes to wrap up a duel? what's making it so long? the answer is nothing less then the one I described earlier: "fight - pause for a flashback to describe background story - fight - pause to discuss technical analysis".
- Not only that, as the story progressed, the fight lost its soul as a "Ninja".
- Why? Because as the story progressed, it's getting more and more about "fighting using magic". It's getting less and less using a martial art ninja fighting, and it's using more and more magic and magic.
- And with that trade off between Ninja martial arts fighting and magic, the series getting more and more lost its "Ninja" soul.
- More negative part of the story is some part (even not the filler part) of the story doesn't really matter to the main chain of the story.
- Many times there are episodes just to show what a goofball Naruto is. And that took 1 entire episode to show that? That's wasteful.
- And some arc, like Naruto's team mission to escort that "Marathon" guy really isn't necessary. The weight of the story to the remaining arc and to the rest of the story chain doesn't really significant.
- So insignificant that you won't miss a thing if you just SKIP the arc.
- And that "Marathon" escort arc is just one of many stories that is insignificant, but waste of number of episodes in this series.
- The other most wasteful insignificant story is the filler arc.
- The filler arc, if I count the number of episodes, it consumes 86 episodes of filler.
- Filler never have any significant weight to the main story chain, never did, never is, never will.
- But wasting 86 episodes on something insignificant weight to the main story chain on filler is just plain wasteful.
- The pacing of the story is incredibly sloooooooow, the mood-o'-meter drops from "Excitement" many times, and as the story progressed, the "Ninja" atmosphere begins to fade and fade, many wasteful episodes, even for the non-filler, I can not grade Naruto into a higher score than 5 and 6.
- Because it is very mediocre and I think Naruto is far much too overrated and overhyped.
Sound (Good = 7)
- Sound is good, because much of the Opening and Ending theme are enthusiastic.
- The BGM is also enthusiastic.
- But then again, not all of them are match the mood of the scene, so I'll consider it good, but not "very" good.
Art (Art = 6)
- Well, it just plain descent graphic to me.
So Overall = (5+6+7+5+6) : 5 = 6 (round up)
