Naruto: My opinion

[kentmagus]

-based on Episode 4 and 5, Cartoon Network
My first impression-I hate it.
Naruto's an idiot. He proves this by taking an obvious bait. Does he really think an elite ninja is going to leave the bell out in the open? Here mouse, take this free cheese. Don't worry about the iron bar on the wooden table. Sakura's more capable of understanding the instructions than he is. She actually goes to hide. He proves he's capable of learning by not taking the bloody lunchboxes right away. . A better thought(in my opinion) was when he decided to eat the lunchboxes anyway even if it was against the rules.
Sakura doesn't have enough of a role for me to form an opinion, but so far I don't like what I'm seeing if the illusion was anything to go by.
Sasuke's the only one who actually I might have any good opinion of. He's mysterious, dark, one can see why he has fangirls. The fakeout of letting down his guard was subtle enough to have a potential chance of catching Kakashi off guard. Surprise is the first rule of warfare. Even if one suspects it may be a trap, take the chance. It might not be. Plus he moves after attacking.. Seeing Kakashi replaced with a Substitution Jutsu... umm.. I thought it was little more subtle than seeing shuriken inside a guy's vest and then finding it replaced with a log after the sight. He's spending his life to take down one guy? Aren't there S-class ninjas he could hire to do it while he gets stronger? Force multiplier rather than only himself. If he really wants to kill the guy, he's rich enough to hire ninjas to weaken the guy at least.
Kakashi's either tailoring his words to anger his students or he's really unaware of what he's doing. I prefer tailoring words to anger, because if he's an elite ninja, he'd better be doing it on purpose. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down is a proverb I dislike intensely. If it keeps sticking up, use it in a position that turns it into an advantage, rather than using brute force to fit a square peg into a round hole.
The lesson of teamwork before superpowers is something I agree with. The lesson of loyalty over blind obedience is also something I agree with Respect is greater than fear. Fear is easier to come by. Earth Style Groundhog Technique Decapitation was an example of the first rule of warfare.
One of Squad Seven seems to be an obsessed fangirl, and the other definitely is an idiot. While Sasuke is good, I would prefer him to actually direct their relevant skills, so they keep out of each other's way while contributing to a team effort.
Why the insert random whatever here do they call the techniques jutsus? It's more like magic than martial art techniques. (except for the hand-to-hand combat)
"Evil tends to triumph over good...unless good is very, very sneaky."-Anonymous-

[VladimirTherin]

Wow, if you had to pick the wrong episode to get impressions of the characters, you picked the right ones.

[CattyNebulart]

I don't care for naruto either the manga is somewhat better than the anime (though I watched only 10 eps) but around the chunin exam the manga looses it's appeal.
Lots of good naruto fanfiction though.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[katreus]

The joke among Naruto fans is that the manga should be renamed Sasuke. Kishimoto isn't fooling anyone: he's already said his favorite character is Sasuke and that means Pinball-Eyes really means God-Eyes.
Anyway, I thought that the manga was interesting till after the Tsunade arc. I watched a couple anime ep. but they're mostly the same except with more filler.
Given Konoha's attitudes and actions toward Naruto and in comparison, to Sasuke, let's just say if Sasuke isn't better during the genin test, I'd be amazed.

[Acyl]

tjalorak wrote:

---

The joke among Naruto fans is that the manga should be renamed Sasuke. Kishimoto isn't fooling anyone: he's already said his favorite
character is Sasuke and that means Pinball-Eyes really means God-Eyes.

---

A friend of mine believes that writers - not just Kishimoto, but
writers in general - always make it such that the coolest character isn't the main character.

That is, if a writer wants to portray a certain character as cool...he or she isn't going to be the
protagonist, but supporting cast.

Why? Well, for one thing, if your protagonist just rolls through the story left and right blasting the hell out
of everything and suffering no hardships...that doesn't make for good storytelling. Secondly, if your designated "cool character" is supporting
cast, they by definition appear less frequently. Which means when they DO appear, you can make 'em kick ass - and it stands out all the more, since we
don't see 'em as often.

-- Acyl

[ECSNorway]

That would make sense if Sasuke was actually a supporting character, instead of having taken over the lead.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Acyl]

Yeah, but if you take the long view of it, this is really only a pretty recent development. Sasuke may be
dominating things now, but the post-timeskip arc opened with Naruto and Sakura mainly, not him.

Mind, I agree that the plot seems to be getting way too Uchiha-centric. The whole bit with Uchiha Madara just...I
dunno, what the hell? Eh.

-- Acyl

[katreus]

Plus, Sasuke isn't cool. He's just whiny and a bastard with delusions of grandeur. It's unfortunate that Kishimoto indulges him in that regard. And
btw, haven't you seen Kishimoto's interview? If you still read the manga, you're stuck with a year of Sasuke's angst and god-mode.

"2. What's gonna happen next year?

Kishi : Started with Sasuke vs Itachi battle.

I'm gonna write about mainly Sasuke next year. And Kakashi and

Sakura, after that. Especially Kakashi. I can't tell yet but a huge

event will happen to him."

"6. You said you're gonna write about Sasuke, Kakashi and Sakura. What

about Naruto?

Kishi : Naruto has to wait."

[WengFook]

tjalorak wrote:

---

"6. You said you're gonna write about Sasuke, Kakashi and Sakura. What


about Naruto?


Kishi : Naruto has to wait."

You know, given what happened when he did focus on Naruto back when he was trying to add the wind element to the
Rasengan, I'm not entirely sure that getting the focus back onto the supposed main character is going to be a good thing
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Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.

[VladimirTherin]

I think the reason it has developed so much fanfiction is because its a fairly spiffy premise thats executed in such a half-assed manner.

Thats the pretty much agreed upon reason for so much ranma fanfic, but so little AMG fanfic for example.

[Ayiekie]

There's a lot of Ranma fanfic because it has a huge, generally likable cast (certain poisonous character-hatred movements nonwithstanding) and is
open-ended with no dramatic finale to make it difficult to write fanfiction in the original continuity. Plus, Ranma fanfic was so huge that it took on a life
of its own, with people who didn't particularly like Ranma - and people who hadn't even SEEN Ranma - writing for it because that way their fics would
get read.

I suppose it's cool to say these days that Ranma is half-assed, but when this all got started it was because Ranma was legitimately very popular in the
anime fan community.

Naruto gets a lot of fanfiction because it is incredibly popular and, from what I understand, also had several gaps in continuity to fit stuff. Also, it is
currently "open-ended" due to being unfinished. In reference to the original post, I'm not really a fan of Naruto because I find it disgustingly
sexist which turns me off to the point that I can't really appreciate what's good about it; I also felt it ran out of imagination and became a boring
tournament and super-move fest by the third storyarc, never a good sign for a shounen fighting series. That being said, its soap opera-esque drama,
crowd-pleasing characters and big flashy super moves are obviously appealing to a lot of people, so that's cool - it's a consistant winning formula in
series from Inuyasha to Yuu Yuu Hakusho to Bleach and so on and so forth.

[Morganite]

I'd say that Ranma 1/2 isn't just open-ended, it's open-middled and open-sided. '.' The way the story is set up it's easy to put additional
things in the middle, adding new characters if you need them is easy (all those insane martial artists out there, no one will notice another one), not to
mention the ideas themselves leave a whole lot of territory available to explore.

(I don't really like seeing Ranma 1/2 called half-assed, since it's still one of very few manga that has what I would call comprehensible fight
scenes...)

OMG is a lot harder to work with, because there's a lot less you can mess around with without busting the canonicity, and for some reason I don't get
at all, a lot of people seem to care about that. (To be clear, I care about *characterization*, but I consider canon much less important than telling an
interesting story.) The cast is small, the relationships relatively unambiguous (my strange ideas about Belldandy and Hild notwithstanding)... It's just
not as easy to work with.

From what I've read of Naruto, it seems to have some of the same openness as Ranma. There's a lot of characters who are shown but not heavily
developed, and there's a lot of ideas there for people to play around with. It also seems to be easier in this sort of setting to make relatively minor
changes and see what happens differently. (See "Team 8" for Naruto, which in some ways is quite comparable to the various "different parent for
Ranma" fics.)

Mind you, I'm not really sure why Naruto is so popular compared to Hunter x Hunter, which IMO does all the same sorts of things as Naruto, except a hundred
times better, but there's some good fanfic for it out there, which for me is enough to justify it's existance at least.

-Morgan.

"Evidence without context can be placed into context later."

[Epsilon]

Mind you, I'm not really sure why Naruto is so popular compared to Hunter x Hunter, which IMO does all the same sorts of things as Naruto, except a
hundred times better, but there's some good fanfic for it out there, which for me is enough to justify it's existance at least.

I think Hunter x Hunter gets less play because it has less Cute Chicks.

Seriously, there are no recurring female characters in Hunter x Hunter. Like, none. It's a total sausage fest. No wonder everyone considers it so yaoi.

-------------------

Epsilon

[Morganite]

Yeah, but have you seen how hot a lot of the non-recurring female characters are? Quality over quantity!

...Okay, that sound weird. But still.

Really, I started reading Naruto because a lot of interesting-sounding fic got recommended, and I wanted the background information to appreciate it. But after
a while... it just doesn't seem like it's going to go anywhere interesting fast. HxH just seems to have a lot more depth to me.

-Morgan. And I still think Kurapika looks like a girl, but that's a different issue.

[katreus]

Me personally, I just liked the world of Naruto better. It's just more interesting to me for some reason. That isn't to say I don't like HxH btw (I
do and have read a fair amount of it up to the alien bug arc, which I thought was just weird) and I don't like Naruto canon all that much, but I like the
ideas and the possibilities in Naruto's world -- which is why I tend to like Naruto fanfic but haven't ever really felt the urge to go and find HxH
fanfic.

Anyway, Morg., just read the fanfic. ^_^

[WengFook]

Morganni wrote:

---

-Morgan. And I still think Kurapika looks like a girl, but that's a different issue.

I second that... Kurapika's gender is unclear until a few volumes into the series :O I still remember my friends reaction when he found out
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Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.