It's an interesting subversion of the whole Pokémon-esque genre, and one which had the potential to work out really well. However, Narutaru is held back a number of problems, chief of which is that it only adapts the first half of the manga and doesn't compensate for the loss of the other half. Story arcs are set up and then abandoned, characters get involved and then just disappear, and most of the mysteries go unresolved. Because of this, the majority of the characters' motives and personalities are not sufficiently explored, and as such end up being rather shallow and two-dimensional, making it hard to care about what happens to them.
The art is rather poor and in need of work. The dragon designs are not bad and are fairly varied, but that's about the best thing it has going for it. Everything looks rather bland and uninteresting, and times it looks like the artists weren't really putting the effort in at all.
The background music is well done, helping to reinforce the dark, unsettling atmosphere of the series, which juxtaposes neatly with the deliberately ironic theme tune.
Ultimately, Narutaru is a series with great potential that is let down by some shoddy execution. The story arcs are fairly good, but for the most part they don't go anywhere because they don't get a chance to finish. Had the series been expanded into a 26 episode anime, it could perhaps have resolved the lingering plot threads and allowed some time to analyse the characters and their motives. Add in some better art and this series could have been a quite interesting take on the Pokémon-esque genre. But the way it is, Narutaru is average at best. If you're a fan of horror anime it's just about worth checking out, but don't expect anything spectacular.
