Review on Naruto (1/10)
--Overrated is for something that still has values. Naruto is purely garbage.   

Two years ago I asked my friend for some good new manga/anime and at that time I still considered DBZ as the best one ever made. And he was like:”Dude, DBZ is so 1990s, right now everyone is reading the manga Naruto.” And I thought I’d better check this thing out because 1. if everyone is reading it then it has to be good and 2.my friend was Chinese and he wore glasses so I thought maybe he knew a lot about anime and he was smart. It turned out that to stereotype people is always wrong. The only thing I want to do these days is hoping that in the future I may forget the painful experience of reading Naruto. It is the worst and ugliest garbage created by mankind to date, right next to Holocaust (no offense to the Jewist community). I’m not even going to use the word “overrated” here because overrated is for something that’s still has values in it. And I’m only talking about the manga here. The anime is generally believed to be much worse than the manga even among the fans.

  

I’ll start off with two quotes from some Naruto-praising reviews on this very website. Due to the general stupidity of the fanbase, most Naruto-praising reviews consist of no more than a summary of the storyline then adding “this show is awesome” or “I love Naruto” to finish off. Critical thinking regarding why they think this show is good are rarely included.

  

Naruto is as good as Shaman King.
Naruto and E7 are my personal favourites.
  

The fact that fans are comparing Naruto with Shaman King, which was on my top garbage list until Naruto came along, again confirms the stupidity of the fanbase. I actually felts good when I saw the quote because I always believe that people who watch Naruto would watch other garbage shows too. I was surprised and sickened by the second one though. It shows that E7, one of the best anime ever made, is being watched by Naruto fans. The thing that pisses me off is that, if one still thinks that Naruto, which is garbage, is a good show after watching E7, which is a masterpiece, then the only logical explanation is that the person doesn’t really understand what is so great about E7. What sickens me even more is that they start to write their own reviews on E7 too like “o E7 is great because the hero feels bad when he kills” and “I love E7 because eureka is so cute.” It’s like seeing your girlfriend getting raped. What is this world coming into? Do people these days get fascinated only by mindless fightings and violence and unable to appreciate the true art and beauty?

  

Anyways let’s start the review. (Note: I’ll try my best to not flame any Naruto fans. However, if it does happen, the insults are not directed toward people under the age of 10 and first-time anime watchers.) I want to discuss the storyline first. Keep in mind that I’ve only read the first 12 volumes and no more than five random episodes on TV. The only reason I managed to reach this far is that I kept telling myself that it’s going to get better and a popular manga like this shouldn’t be this crappy. But I was wrong. Does Naruto even have a storyline? The answer is NO! The whole idea of Naruto is about a bunch of 14-year-olds trying to save the world. Again a typical shonen manga storyline that’s been done so many so many times, which is OK because even though this type of storyline sure is boring as hell it is able to sometimes produce decent works like Bleach. Also I don’t have enough credentials to judge originality right now because I only finished about 15 anime series. Originality is hardly a major issue compared to other problems, however. The major issue is that the story doesn’t have a focus. The story starts off with Naruto finally graduated from some ninja junior high. Then his group did a mission which I don’t see any connections to either character development or the main storyline. Then Bang!!! Junin exam, or should I just spell it out—another DBZ tournament? Don’t we have enough of this shit already? DBZ has it, Yo Yo Hakushu has it. Shaman King has it. What is so good about having a tournament except the mangaka can just drag the story on and on and on? (In case you are unfamiliar with the concept, I’ll explain it now. Say only 20 people are in the tournament. Then they are going to have at least 10 fights. Even if each fight takes up only 5 chapters, he still gonna have 50 chapters to draw. Do these fights even have any connections to the main storyline. Hardly. I don’t see any logics in how fights in a tournament can defeat evil when the villain is not even competing. Nowadays whenever I see something like this I just drop the book and leave. This is retarded to the extreme.) Moreover, in Naruto it’s not even like the ones in DBZ (I’m talking about the manga here which is 100 times superior than the anime. DBZ is basically ruined by its anime) where they have crispy action scenes. No, each fight where you are supposed to get some actions is replaced by bringing up a tragic past of the character. I’ll say more about this when I talk about the characters, but the whole thing just seems so fake and pathetic. Is it really that hard for you, dear mangaka, to develop characters in the main storyline instead of throwing in all these emotional crap that begs for tears and let readers feel sorry for your characters?

  

But back to the point where I say the storyline doesn’t have a focus. Before the tournament the story is about Naruto becoming a good ninja, and I was expecting a magic-school type of thing. Then all of a sudden, in the second stage of the ninja exam, a guy called ochimaru (did I spell this guy’s name right) appeared out of nowhere. What the mangaka did is almost like puting a “This is our villain!!!!” sign right beside this guy and said: ”Hey all the fans listen up. I now give you to the villain of Naruto”. And people actually buy this crap??!!! I mean seriously, WTF, you just introduce a villain like this? When I was reading that chapter I was like who the fk is this guy? There ain’t any signs of even having a villain in this manga before and you want me to just accept him? OK, fine, let’s have a villain, at least let us know him a little bit. But “no”, says the mangaka, “we still have the DBZ tournament to finish off. So I say drop this guy for now and let’s get back to these stuff first.” Then we are taken back to the tournament or the ninja test wutever, still thinking somewhat about this ochimaru dude and knowing he is in the village yet the mangaka has decided to not say anything about him for like 30 chapters. All I want to know is this: what is the point of including this 70 chapter-long Middle-level ninja exam? Cuz I know from the random TV episodes I watched that Ochimaru is trying to take over the village. Therefore is this about him taking over the village? Apparently not, because we don’t even know his true motives until the very last second (I think it’s around the Naruto Vs White-Eye-Dude). Then it must be there for the character development, which just makes this show even worse because if that’s the case then the mangaka is using more than 70 chapters to develop his characters in a most cliché way of all time—DBZ tournament—which has nothing to do with the main storyline. Sadly he failed to even having a natural, not to mention good character portrait. That’s all I’m going to say about storyline. It doesn’t have a point. It felt almost as if the mangaka himself didn’t know where this story was going. It’s like one day this guy was like hey I wanna draw a ninja manga. I’ll have this guy Naruto as my main character, and he is going to become a great ninja. And then several days later he learned by having a cool guy who seeked revenge he might be able to sell more books, thus we have Sasuke. A loli might also work, says the mangaka, and we have sakura. Finally one month later when he doesn’t have any story to go on he was like I need a villain to continue the story. Then Bang, we have the snake guy Ochimaru and the story is changed to saving the world. By writing story based on spontaneous ideas and without making plans ahead, the whole thing feels like fragments that don’t fit. In other words, the story itself doesn’t flow. What’s happening in one chapter has almost nothing to do with say 30 chapters before. And to keep the story fresh new characters keep popping up when we don’t even have the chance to get to know the main ones. Without feeling connected to the characters, how are we gonna ride the story? This is jokes.

  

Enough with the storylines. Let’s move on to the characters. The story is garbage enough, but you haven’t seen how bad the characters are yet. The biggest downfall in Naruto is that everyone is supposed to be a hero, and the readers are expected, or forced to like them. Everyone in Naruto is created to have a tragic past to overcome, which was excessively done in the Junin exam. The first consequence of this approach is for the manga to lose its focus. Even if the portrait were well done which is definitely not the case for Naruto, by having too many of these heroes, the entire work loses its focus and leaves readers such as me wondering which one is the protagonist. Humans are only able to have a certain amount of feelings toward others and we are not allowed to 100% commit our feelings to more than 20 characters. Thus the connection between the readers and the characters are somewhat lost. Now what I said above is based on the assumption that the mangaka actually did a great job on making everyone a hero. But he didn’t. A good character portrait or development is usually done by letting the characters shine in the story by themselves. Ways in which they “shine” include using dialogues, emotions, thoughts, the actions they take, the decisions they make, etc. An advantage of this approach is that you let the readers decide what kind of personality a particular character has, and the story would flow perfectly because it always focuses on the present. A good story is necessary for this kind of approach. What happened in Naruto is the total opposite. The mangaka, for some reasons only known to himself, decided to make everyone a hero. But he lacked the ability to create beautiful stories. So he cheated. Every time he tried to show the heroic side of the character, he created a tragic past for that character, and expected us readers to feel sorry and sympathy toward that character. The problem is that, all these flashbacks he created has nothing to do with the main storyline. Everytime we get these flashbacks, the main storyline is thrown to the garbage can for like three chapters. And then back to the main storyline for several chapters. Then off again when another character needs to be treated in the same way. Because these flashbacks are totally irrelevant to the present, the heroes that are supposed to come out of short memories do not support the characters’ behaviours and the decisions they make in the present time. I’ll give you an example right now. During one of the junin-exam fights, the mangaka revealed to us through the flashback that Sakura and another girl were good friends back when they were young but they gradually grew apart because both of them like Sasuke. Then the mangaka probably thought this is too shallow so he revealed a supposedly-deeper reason that Sakura really respected this girl that’s why Sakura wanted to surpass her. This is perhaps the most unrealistic and fake shit I have ever read. I challenge anyone here to find a person who fights for this fked up reason. I’ll have more to say on realistic characters later on. But let’s leave it for now. So how does this flashback help to develop Sakura? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! The Sakura that’s supposed to come out of the flashback is a girl who is strong and determined, who has a goal in her life at least. But the Sakura in the main storyline is completely not like that. Before this fight, Sakura’s trademark was her weakness and her lack of self-confidence. Even though we do see some changes in her like how she risked her life to save Sasuke when he and Naruto are both down in the forest, a lot of times she WAS the weakest of the trio, and she thought so too. The drastic difference between this Sakura and the one that’s in the flashback is what makes me disoriented when reading the manga. What’s worse is that this flashback doesn’t do anything for developing Sakura even after the fight. No matter how cliché it is, at least most anime/manga character changes after things like this happened. But not for Naruto. That’s why I said before that the mangaka doesn’t have plan, either for the storyline or the characters. After the fight, the mangaka somehow decided to shift the focus of Sakura to her feelings toward Sasuke. Then why the fk do you include this flashback there? It’s like seeing three complete different Sakura: the wimp that’s before the fight, the hero that’s during the fight, and a tortured lover that’s after the fight, all of them have absolutely no connection with each other, yet they were supposed to be the same person.

  

The second downfall is how unrealistic the characters are. I can probably tell why. It’s the same reason as before that everyone needs to be a hero. Yet for everyone to make these heroic decisions the characters just seems fake to the extreme. For example, during the trio’s first mission, Sasuke and Naruto were trapped in a cage of mirrors and were fighting against Bai. Except for the last part, Sasuke was doing all the fight, and almost succeeded until Bai shot off some needles toward Naruto who really really sucked at that time. So the pure and good Sasuke, who didn’t want to bear the pain of losing such a dear friend of his, rushed in front of Naruto and took all the damage. Oh man, such a little angel!!!!! I bet people around the world cried for this scene. I’m just confused about one thing though, why would Sasuke, who despised Naruto all that long, and more importantly, who only got to know Naruto for less than a month, would sacrifice himself in order to save Naruto? I challenge anyone here again to find such a person. When I was reading this I was like man I’ve see lots of cheesy shit before but this one owns them all. I’ll say this again, no one would risk his or her life for someone they only knew for less than a month. Period. Perhaps the mangaka realized how fake this is too so when Naruto was holding his boyfriend Sasuke’s body in his arms, Naruto started to think back on how he always liked Sasuke when he first saw Sasuke beside a river because he felt that both of them were outcast. What the mangaka is trying to show here is that these two lovebirds actually noticed each other long before the trio was formed and they really really liked and respected each other. What a touching love story this is. But just hold a second here, if he really liked Sasuke and felt the resemblence to himself and we sure know how desperately he wanted a friend, why he treated Sasuke as his rival? I mean, normal people would at least try to talk to him if put in Naruto’s shoes. Why then? Because Naruto and Sasuke were supposed to be rivals and they were supposed to not know each other. This flashback is here only because the mangaka is trying to cover up the chessiness on Sasuke saving Naruto’s life, which just makes the whole experience even more fake. I’ll give you another example. This one is not just cheesy and fake but ridiculous too. Remember the final show down between Naruto and Sasuke on the lake near the end of the first arc? They both used their ultimate skills in the end, and Sasuke was the last man standing. He decided not to kill Naruto, because he doesn’t want to become stronger by killing his friend. Then he ran away, which was ok, except just 5min ago he was trying to blow Naruto’s lung off!!!! Read this carefully all the fans. This was what he said to Naruto when he pierced through Naruto’s body and held Naruto by his throat: ”you moved at the last moment, otherwise half of you lungs would be gone.” That means he was aiming for Naruto’s lung, that he was trying to kill Naruto! So does he want to kill Naruto or not? The contradiction again comes from the fact that everyone needs to be a hero. To show this “tender” side of Sasuke even if he did try to Naruto, another cheesy and fake scene was created.

  

The third downfall is the change in the character. People usually change with what happened to them GRADUALLY. But in Naruto, characters either change right away after a fight or don’t change at all. The first type includes the White-Eyed-Dude, who changed right after he fought with Naruto during the Junin exam. Naruto the protagonist belongs to the second type, who remained as one of the biggest fag of anime history throughout the story. To express my feelings toward this fag the next paragraph is dedicated entirely to him.

  

There are only two anime characters that I dislike this much. The first one is Seya from Saint Seya. The second one is Naruto. I dislike Seya only because he is the weakest yet he is the protagonist and he never dies (well he died in the end). I dislike Naruto because he is a fag. I will die a happy man if Naruto gets tortured to death in the end. What’s so funny about all this is that I don’t usually judge a work based on whether I like the characters or not. As long as they are real, I accept them. But since all characters in this work are so unrealistic that I can’t connect to them, it leaves me no choice. Besides, Naruto is a fag. I am not even going to comment on his ridiculous costume, his immature yet not funny pranks, and the annoying smile of his. I’ll just focus on this guys’ personality. A recurring theme is that Naruto wanted to become the best ninja. Yet unlike Sasuke who practiced like crazy everyday even after school, what Naruto did was slacking off and goofing around from the start for the sake of getting attention. How does he defeat people during a fight then you may wonder? 90% of time he just shamelessly borrowed strength from the fox. This is what he meant by getting stronger. LMAO. That’s not even his own strength. When all other people is trying to get a little better by working their ass off, this guy just sits here and doing nothing. “Hey I am fking Naruto, I don’t need to practice because I have the fox.” What pisses me off even more is that in Chapter 3 or 4 he even dared to tell a little kid that the only way to become the best is to work hard. Give me one scene where this shameless fag actually practices his ninja skills. What kind of message does the mangaka try to send to all these kids who read/watch Naruto? That you don’t need to work hard, that you can always ask help from other? What a fking fag. Seriously, if somehow this fag is sucked into our world I am going to be the first one to beat the shit of him. Fking hypocrite, the only thing he is good at is talking big.

  

I only watched five anime episodes so I don’t really want to talk about the music. But “GO” was one of the OP sung by FLOW. Now “GO” is not one of the band’s best songs but it’s from my favourite band FLOW so at least I’ll give this much credit to the anime. And even though I only watched five anime episodes I’m already annoyed by Naruto the character’s voice. American dubbing is horrible, I know that, look what they did to Renton in E7. American voice actors/actresses are not involved at all with the characters, they just read off the script (but still better than Chinese dubbings). Yet Naruto’s dubbing is perhaps the worst one to date. I am not going to blame the voice actor because he only did what he is asked to do. But what hell is the producer thinking? Does he really believe that a fag’s voice would attract more fans? To all the fans out there, if you still want to watch this garbage, go watch the subbed ones. At least it doesn’t do damage to your eardrums.

  

The last thing I want to comment on is the artstyle and the graphics of the anime. Artstyle is the last thing I worried about when reading a manga or watching an anime. Yet I am amazed that Shonen Jump actually decided to publish this shit. Bad drawing is tolerable as long as it has some uniqueness. I even like Noein’s artstyle because it’s so unique. Not for Naruto. The artstyle in Naruto is clearly the worst imitation on traditional anime style (big eyes, small nose, like Clamp) of all time with no originality at all. Funny thing is that among all the fans I talked to, 90% of them actually agreed with me on this. I’ll quote a what a hardcore anime fan said one time: ”no matter how good Naruto is, it’s still drawn by amateurs.” The graphics of the anime is decent, but nowhere to be “amazing” as claimed by some people. Tell me one scene where the graphics is “amazing”. Amazing graphics is reserved for the first season of E7, Noein, Basilisk, etc.

  

O btw I can’t stand the humour in Naruto. All the jokes and gags are so immature even worse than the ones in Shaman King. A lot of times I was like wtf…am I supposed to laugh at this? But perhaps the worst one is when Naruto transformed himself into a naked chick, and people are actually telling me this is funny!!!! Seriously, WTF? He is a guy and he transformed himself into a naked girl to seduce his senpai and you fking telling me this is funny????? Are you still going to tell me this is funny if his senpai starts to grope his/her breasts and have sex….I’m just gonna stop right here, this is perverted, and for all the people out there who think this is funny you guys are perverted losers too.

  

Some final words. First to all the fans who are under the age of 10, this show is not for you because it’s too violent and some of the jokes are perverted. There are tons of kids-friendly shows out there, like pokeman, marumaruku and my personal favourite Doraemon. Next to all the fans who are above 10 and only watched one or two anime shows beside Naruto, anime are much deeper than this shit. Don’t let this garbage give you a false opinion on anime. Last, to all the fans above the age of 10 and have watched many other anime shows, it’s not too late to change. You don’t need to watch this garbage only because all your friends are watching it. You know Naruto is garbage, you know the protagonist is a fag, you know the story is going nowhere, so why not do yourself a favour and start to watch better shows like FMA or E7?

  

This is my first anime review so any comments would be appreciated. In fact, I would be more than happy if someone convinces me that this is a good show. Thank you for reading it.