SPOILERS OBVIOUSLY
I stopped watching Naruto after a while for the obvious reasons. Back in middle school, a friend convinced me to see/read it despite knowing how against seeing/reading it I was. This is the same friend who would later convince me to try RuneScape (shudder) so go figure.
However, one day I started catching up on the manga again, roughly two years ago I think. At the same time and as I got farther along in getting catched up, my roommate at school at the time told me how it was getting better. His excuses were pretty bad. Ex. "Naruto is actually working with the Kyuubi now!" The main reason for this not being all that great is the Kyuubi or Kurama as we now know was portrayed as being pretty irrefutably evil. Yeah, the series slowly geared us towards possible manipulation of him and less malevolence as result but it never swayed so drastically as to suggest he's just got some beefs with some things like it does now. That could have been handled a little better but it was getting somewhat more believable (not really). So, I was skeptical on improvement after so much bore.
With Sasuke having joined the battlefield seemingly cured of a lot of his angst and even audaciously declaring his desire to be Hokage, Masashi Kishimoto really seems to have flipped things on their head. Sasuke, of course, was handled much better in this regard; it was always clear the stuff he was doing as a rogue made no sense whatsoever to anyone. That's why everyone hated him. Kishimoto seems to really enjoy doing this especially of lately. Even Orichimaru is like "Fuck this shit: I lost the use of my arms and then sort of but not really died twice". These tend to be hits and misses though more commonly reach a limbo of whether they work or not often being decided by mass opinion. Sakura goes back and forth at least three times in the series so she's more of a frustration than a good or bad though often judged to be a miss.
1. Cut hair. Decides to actually try fighting her hardest instead of sit on the sidelines.
2. Sasuke Retrieval Arc uselessness
3. Offscreen (T_T) training by Tsunade
4. Gets surpassed by crazy power increase introduction
5. Pulls a sort of Orichimaru and says "Fuck not doing shit AGAIN, I'm battling too"
While pre-timeskip/Part 1 really was focused on self-improvement and beating the odds towards silly, dismissed ideals post-timeskip/Part 2 got a little more into adapting that into the harshness of reality by looking at changing things optimistically. So, has Naruto gotten better? Have any of these reversals surprised anyone?
I stopped watching Naruto after a while for the obvious reasons. Back in middle school, a friend convinced me to see/read it despite knowing how against seeing/reading it I was. This is the same friend who would later convince me to try RuneScape (shudder) so go figure.
However, one day I started catching up on the manga again, roughly two years ago I think. At the same time and as I got farther along in getting catched up, my roommate at school at the time told me how it was getting better. His excuses were pretty bad. Ex. "Naruto is actually working with the Kyuubi now!" The main reason for this not being all that great is the Kyuubi or Kurama as we now know was portrayed as being pretty irrefutably evil. Yeah, the series slowly geared us towards possible manipulation of him and less malevolence as result but it never swayed so drastically as to suggest he's just got some beefs with some things like it does now. That could have been handled a little better but it was getting somewhat more believable (not really). So, I was skeptical on improvement after so much bore.
With Sasuke having joined the battlefield seemingly cured of a lot of his angst and even audaciously declaring his desire to be Hokage, Masashi Kishimoto really seems to have flipped things on their head. Sasuke, of course, was handled much better in this regard; it was always clear the stuff he was doing as a rogue made no sense whatsoever to anyone. That's why everyone hated him. Kishimoto seems to really enjoy doing this especially of lately. Even Orichimaru is like "Fuck this shit: I lost the use of my arms and then sort of but not really died twice". These tend to be hits and misses though more commonly reach a limbo of whether they work or not often being decided by mass opinion. Sakura goes back and forth at least three times in the series so she's more of a frustration than a good or bad though often judged to be a miss.
1. Cut hair. Decides to actually try fighting her hardest instead of sit on the sidelines.
2. Sasuke Retrieval Arc uselessness
3. Offscreen (T_T) training by Tsunade
4. Gets surpassed by crazy power increase introduction
5. Pulls a sort of Orichimaru and says "Fuck not doing shit AGAIN, I'm battling too"
While pre-timeskip/Part 1 really was focused on self-improvement and beating the odds towards silly, dismissed ideals post-timeskip/Part 2 got a little more into adapting that into the harshness of reality by looking at changing things optimistically. So, has Naruto gotten better? Have any of these reversals surprised anyone?