Is Naruto hated or something?

[FPLOON]

Well, I would say because it's too long... but, then I spent the last 5+ years trying to watch EVERY Doctor Who episode/special to ever exist that I could legitimately get my hands on, so I can't fully fault the Naruto series on that alone... Then again, like most series that have lasted this long already and is still going to this day, there are going to be more glaring hits and/or misses moments than there were beforehand... The fillers, for example, are a glaring miss while certain battles, if you only watch then in a YouTube-style compilation without any interruptions, are a glaring hit... sometimes...

Now, it more comes down to either a subjective different taste as you grow older and find different anime series to pass your time or an objective dislike to how this particular series has and is being handled to this day... Either you stop watching and/or reading Naruto because you've found other anime/manga series that, in your opinion, are better than Naruto or you stop watching it because you grown tired of how the series is being handled...

More or less, the "hatred" this series gets alongside other series that are grouped alongside with Naruto (like Bleach and One Piece) comes from both the subjective and the objective point of view... You can choose to listen to them or not, it's all up to you... For me, I have no strong feeling one way or another...

 

[FalloutJack]

It just isn't any GOOD. I did TRY to take it with some seriousness, to be entertained, BUT...

There are no ninjas, like proper frigging ninjas. It's not even as though everyone was hit by the conservation law of ninjas. They're just not ninjas. Putting aside dress sense for a moment, how many proper ninja/shinobi shout their attacks (even in shows)? If they're doing that, they're not very good as surprise is very important. If half of the stuff that went on in Naruto happened both quickly and with little explanation or showy-ness, it would be better.

Their personalities all suck. No freakin' discipline at all. There's alot of shouting and arguing and BSing and nobody who is that big of an idiot or that utterly obsessed with revenge or this or that would ever be allowed to become a ninja, truthfully, because they would fail miserably and DIE.

This is essentially an attempt to cross an actual ancient legend with anime in motion...but it's horrible. If it's really from an old Japanese legend, I want it to play out like Rurouni Kenshin, at least. Give me a proper Japanese feel to it. At the very least, less dopeyness and more ominous foreshadowing that leads to a proper pay-off. Oh, and let's not forget one more thing: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1IyIbs3Qo0]

[HEADING=1]PACING!!![/HEADING]

This isn't Dragonball Z here, people! Yeah, all the characters act like it, but that's not what this is. Make stuff happen in your series at proper intervals and STOP PADDING IT ALL THE FUCKING WAY OUT! Because the last nail in the coffin during the time that I attempted to watch this show was that...NOTHING...HAPPENED. And nothing happened for a long time!

So yeah, Naruto is hated.

 

[Cpu46]

I still watch it on and off. It has it's moments and I have learned to know what to expect from it and as such it delivers exactly what I want. It is above a lot of new shonen but it isn't the best anime EVAR.

it is looking less and less likly that Sasuke will be beaten to death with a heavy, blunt object due to the mind boggling amount of fans he has, the guy is king of douche mountain for gods sake!

Please oh Please let this happen. Give him a moment of awesome to satisfy the Sauske fans then have pretty much everyone left in the series pummel him into a puddle.

 

[runic knight]

Naruto started out solid enough, and so long as you put the idea of "orange ninja" in a compartment in your mind and let it go for the sake of mystic arts using teenage ninja, it worked well enough to entertain. Then it kept going. And going. And the characters that were flat to start with never got any depth people expected, instead it devolved into more and more pissing contests about magic eyes and demon beasts. The author has his head firmly up his own ass it seems by dragging the ever loving hell out of everything. When you have swaths of chapters in which single sentences of story development happen, it feels like a slog to get though, loses what made it fun and makes the holes in the plot and amount of disbelief suspended all the more noticeable. To put it another way, when you spend so long looking at the same thing, yopu can take more time to notice the flaws. And Naruto was far from flawless at the best of times.

Compare that to another similar show, one piece. Both are combat manga, long running series and appeal to the same relative audience. Though somehow One Piece still has dignity left since the writer there keeps the story enjoyable, switching from humorous to serious and back again to keep people from being bored by non-stop exposition dumps and bullshit power ass pulls. And I would say they know a little bit more about pacing too. And scaling. Naruto is currently fighting someone who has the power to rewrite the minds of ever living creature with his magic eyes and opposition to that is backed by nearly every other ninja in the world. One Piece has the same relatively small crew it had for a while and character strength tends to be more consistent in growth (often with strange or funny handicaps balancing the scales after they have become stronger then they were if the enemies have not). People who complain about naruto often use the same complaints that DBZ had, that of strength fluctuating quickly to meet the demands of the plot.

Naruto is hated a lot because it is just bad in a technical sense. Bad writing, bad characters, bad story. While that doesn't mean it can't be enjoyable, it does mean that people who can't shut off their brains when watching it will see a lot of mess to complain about.

 

[Snotnarok]

Naruto is truly the greatest Chinese Samurai of all Korea.
I read some of the manga and it seemed pretty fun, I never bothered with the show but I did see a number of scenes were directly stolen from other shows/movies, frame for frame.

 

[briankoontz]

Naruto is like what Britney Spears used to be. Popular without being good. There's a lot of resentment toward that, especially with TV shows which could be cancelled at any time - so Naruto gets to go on and on while high quality shows are often cancelled after one or two seasons.

 

[Raine_sage]

A couple reasons I can think of from personal experience with the show.

- Everything suffers from power creep. In the begining the most impressive thing the protagonists could do was Naruto and his shadow clones, followed closely by Sasuke's bloodline ability back when it was still basically just about mimicry. When characters faced off there was an element of tactics to the fights to make up for the lack of raw power. In later chapters you just have characters who can basically wipe out entire villages by blinking and all the fights become boring "my gun is bigger" affairs. Any drawbacks a power might have had for the sake of "balance" seems to get swept under the rug the longer things go on.

For example the ninetails trapped in Naruto was initially an uncontrollable force of chaos and destruction that Naruto could only tap into at great personal risk because each time he did the seal got weaker and more of the fox leaked out. At some point the author thought those high stakes were boring so now Naruto and the Ninetails are total bffs and Naruto can use his power pretty much whenever he wants with no consequences. It just reads like a bad fanfic. "And then Naruto made friends with the fox and was totally the most awesome person in the universe!"


- The fans. Unfortunately since naruto does cater to a younger demographic, and because it aired in the heyday of anime's popularity in the states, it attracted a large a rabid following of 12-16 year olds. Everyone I know has at least one terrible naruto fan story. They were just large and pervasive and loud, and while it's not necessarily the show's fault its fans were terrible weebs, I know they still turned a lot of people off the franchise even before things started going off the rails in the show proper.


Add to the above the fact that none of the characters are that well written. The author substitutes pain and personal angst for character growth. So something sad will happen, people will mope for awhile, and then just sort of either magically get over it or go buckfuck nuts.

 

[Dr. Cakey]

Alright, you've heard the reasons. Now it's time for the real reasons.

Anime fans are extremely insecure. The fact that we watch cartoons makes us very nervous and worried about being made fun of, so they either have to find something that makes them look edgy or insulate themselves inside a subculture like - as a single example - moe, so they can divide their "mature" current selves and their childish past selves. You can even see the same thing happening right now with the awe-inspiring festival of browns that was Attack on Titan. "Oh sure, it was good...for a Wii game shounen series."

Now, let's address Naruto itself. Is it good? Yes. Is it great? Actually...yes, it is. It's better in just about every way than most things in its genre - and when I say "genre", I don't mean shounen battle series, but action series in general. Now, does it have problems? No fucking shit it has problems, but everything has problems. However, Naruto's problems are ones which anime fans as a whole have chosen to deem unacceptable.

This of course creates some really odd situations, where people define themselves by what they haven't watched. Reviewers are especially prone to this, which is really odd when you think about it. Shouldn't that reduce your credibility rather than increase it? Seriously, I like Arkada pretty well, but this gap makes him - and anyone in a similar position who claims to review anime - kind of a joke.

So, guys, please stop. Your attempts to not embarrass yourselves are embarrassing me. And I watch Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal, so I'm pretty hard to embarrass.

P.S. But Naruto doesn't hold a candle to Hunter x Hunter. Fuck that, nothing holds a candle to Hunter x Hunter. That show is godly.

 

[Dansen]

Okay people like to shit on Naruto's lack of depth but there is one redeaming factor. The Pain Arc, everything in that arc was golden(this is in comparison to other Shonen). People died(some should have remained dead), Naruto was actually confronted by antagonist that challenged him physically and mentaly. Two ideaologies clashed, it wasn't a mustashe twirling villan. Should Naruto give in to revenge or honor his deceased teacher by following his ideals? It was some really solid writing. This, along with the itachi arc the are the high points of the series. Too bad the war arc is rushed sloppy BS.

 

[Risingblade]

It's the COD of anime

 

[Luminous Chroma]

I'd say the two main reasons is a lot of people outgrew it. A lot of people who liked it when they were 12 outgrew it or the second reason is the obsessive fans. I liked it until I started meeting other Naruto fans. I'll just be casually chatting to someone about anime and bring up Naruto and I had one girl go on a giant NarutoxSasuke rant, including showing be pictures of yaoi on her phone. The more people I talked to who were just plain creepy like that made me want to associate less with the series.

Oh you poor thing, no one should have to be put through that. I once told a guy that I watched Naruto when I was younger and thought it was pretty cool and he went on a rant about how much of a ***** Sakura is and how awesome Hinata is. While I happen to agree, I think that the workplace is not the kind of place to be ranting about that crap. Then the next time I saw him, he came to work with a pussy deflector and started saying "kage bunshin no jutsu" and other jutsu names and making the hand signs. Oh and he mispronounced all of them.

I'm mostly just curious about the term 'pussy deflector'. Never heard that one before. Mind enlightening me?

 

[cainx10a]

It's the COD of anime

Hey, I came in this thread planning to say that. But hear hear, that's pretty much the truth. It's hated by a majority because it's popular. I think in hindsight, looking back at how the story has developed since Naruto was youngun, I would say it's a pretty damn good Shounen.

I love the story in the Manga, but I would not watch the anime, not because of the fillers, but mostly because how long some episodes can be dragged out in an attempt to make it fit the length of the story told within one chapter of the book.

Then there are fillers, which I think might also have played a huge role in the hatred it has received by my fellow men and women.

Sure, there are better anime out there, but I would definitely recommend this to a friend as a manga than an anime, simply due to its consistency in terms of story telling and length (does not take long to read each lil chapter). If they want to watch the fights animated, just head to youtube, and find one of the many AMVs with linkin park songs

 

[Colt47]

Think someone else said it already, but the problem is that it has drawn itself out too long and has suffered from major power creep. It had the potential to end in a really satisfying manner, but it's kind of past the point of return now. In fact, I'd say the only one of the big three (One piece, Bleach, and Naruto) that still has some life left in it is One Piece, and even that one is getting drawn out. The only reason One Piece is lasting is because power is a rather difficult thing to judge in that universe.

 

[VanQ]

I'd say the two main reasons is a lot of people outgrew it. A lot of people who liked it when they were 12 outgrew it or the second reason is the obsessive fans. I liked it until I started meeting other Naruto fans. I'll just be casually chatting to someone about anime and bring up Naruto and I had one girl go on a giant NarutoxSasuke rant, including showing be pictures of yaoi on her phone. The more people I talked to who were just plain creepy like that made me want to associate less with the series.

Oh you poor thing, no one should have to be put through that. I once told a guy that I watched Naruto when I was younger and thought it was pretty cool and he went on a rant about how much of a ***** Sakura is and how awesome Hinata is. While I happen to agree, I think that the workplace is not the kind of place to be ranting about that crap. Then the next time I saw him, he came to work with a pussy deflector and started saying "kage bunshin no jutsu" and other jutsu names and making the hand signs. Oh and he mispronounced all of them.

I'm mostly just curious about the term 'pussy deflector'. Never heard that one before. Mind enlightening me?

I made another post in the thread explaining that just a bit down from my original post.

 

[lunavixen]

I don't like it because it's too inconsistent and has WAY too many filler episodes, they could've cut the entire series in half and you'd still get all of the major plot points in, with episodes to spare, it's the same reason i've stopped watching One Piece, there is just too much to go through to catch up, Naruto has also lost all depth.

 

[spartan231490]

Hey everyone, I've just recently started making a comeback in the anime scene, after enjoying Persona 4 and Sword Art Online. I started watching Glass Reflection reviews on Youtube and I noticed frequent jabs at the Naruto franchise and I remembered seeing mean-spirited comments aimed at the show on forums before.

I used to watch it when I was like twelve or something, along with Bleach and Samurai Shampoo and thought it was pretty cool. I even picked up that Full Burst game and it's very good.

So my question is: "is the show hated or something and for what reasons?"

It's not exactly hated. However, it's a shounen(aimed at boys younger than 14) and those are widely condescended by mature viewers in the west(I love them myself, all 23 years of me). Also, it's got the same problem that bleach does of having a great many filler episodes(episodes that weren't in the manga) and these distract from the overall story-line, screw with the pacing of the anime as a whole, and also tend to be of a much lower quality than the rest of the show(though it's better than they are in bleach). I maintain that if you skip the filler it's one of the greatest shounen around.

 

[DeltaEdge]

To be honest, I actually don't hate Naruto like most people do. I stopped watching the anime forever ago, because I just can't deal with filler, and this applies to pretty much any long running shonen, including Bleach and One Piece.

I mostly read it habitually, habitual reading being the only thing keeping me reading Bleach, which I despise now, and for me, has been so thoroughly ruined, that I can't even positively reminisce about the parts that I did enjoy. I actively enjoy OP, and I'm alright with Naruto.

I kind of fell out with naruto for a while, because it just felt like it was dragging on, and the latest(and possibly last?) arc, despite what most people say about it, has somewhat reinvigorated my interest in the series. But yeah, I think most people now probably dislike it because of how long it has dragged on, and have probably stopped reading. That, and the latest arc isn't that great, it's just kind of wrapping things up, and a lot of people now who probably loved certain aspects about the show when they were younger like the characters and setting, upon getting older have probably grown to find them shallow and boring, or in some cases, they might just straight up disagree with the mentality/morality of the main characters, making it painful to read.

But yeah, so basically, a lot of people hate Naruto because they only found it cool when they were younger, but now find that they don't like a lot of the characters, and possibly find the story to be overly-convoluted, which seems to be a common problem with shounen titles, as they often seem to have a strong start, but then kind of teeter off because they didn't seem to look that far into how the story would progress beyond a certain point, causing the story to decline majorly after a certain point.

 

[The_Echo]

So my question is: "is the show hated or something and for what reasons?"

There's a bit of a stigma around "shonen" anime. Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with anime that fall squarely into the shonen category, but there are very specific commonalities that lend them to feeling rather... shallow and/or samey to some people.

Naruto is a huge offender of this. Its plot was effectively a joke to string the fights together, the characters are altogether fairly unlikable or unmemorable, and the anime is littered with filler; more than any anime should be allowed to have.

Just, overall, it's not a high-quality series. It's very much entry-level anime.

 

[MCerberus]

I never really got into Naruto. It just seemed like everything wrong with eastern animation. Whiny annoying-voiced people yelling so they can waste more time. It also had a big hand in killing Toonami, which is a burn-at-the-stake offense in itself.

 

[michael87cn]

It's so depressing that mediocre manga can continue for what seems like forever, but incredibly awesome high-quality manga like Berserk, can take 1+ years for a single issue to come out...