Well, personally I find the US dub to be annoying. (Believe it)
And ninjas don't wear orange jumpsuits.
Orange isn't a subtle color!
And ninjas don't wear orange jumpsuits.
Orange isn't a subtle color!
Why All the Hate on Naruto?
- Thread starter Thaius
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Personally, I think saying that dissing on the flashbacks and monologues is ethno-centric is a bit hyperbolic, especially when it's Naruto we're talking about. A character having a flashback and some monologue when they have an epiphany or to briefly revisit an important story element is one thing, but when flashbacks take up 50%-80% of more than half your episodes, that's just too goddamn much.Thaius said:
A good flashback can provide needed exposition, and taking some time to reflect is something we can all appreciate, but when you stop the story dead to revisit something the viewer/reader already knows MULTIPLE TIMES PER EPISODE, you've crossed the line from making an artistic statement to wasting our fucking time. If you're going to do a flashback, make it short, and to the point: 30 seconds at the most. We don't need to re-watch half of Season 4 every goddamn episode.
Not only that, but Naruto has some of the worst pacing I've seen in an anime since Dragon Ball Z. I remember during one of the early story arcs, where Sarutobi and Oorochimaru were locked in a death struggle, each one pushing beyond the limits of their strength, trying to finish the other off before succumbing to their injuries. This would have been an interesting and effective scene, IF THEY HADN'T CUT TO IT MULTIPLE TIMES FOR EIGHT GODDAMN EPISODES. Honestly, we didn't need to spend 25% of eight episodes watching a sword move just slightly in and out of Sarutobi's torso.
And yes, I'll grant you that the mangaka is the pace car for this sort of thing, and you can't push beyond the story without inundating us with filler, but that's beside the point. The point is, whether it's filler, flashbacks, or bad pacing, this kind of bullshit really brings the story down. It's the price you pay for pursuing this kind of parallel development, and it's a big one.
Bottom line: I don't think Naruto is the worst anime ever, but I still think it deserves most of the criticism it gets. It kind of went downhill after the first few seasons, probably because after that they had plenty of flashback material. :/
The anime/manga itself is okay, great at times but its only downfall is its sheer length. The favorite arc was the chunin (sp?) exams because they elaborated on the side characters who seemed much more interesting then the trio (Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura and David Bowie!). The fights with Brock Lee, Negi, Choji and Shikimura were tons better to watch during the exam arc and also during the arc when Sasuke ask Orochimaru to be his sugar daddy.
When the side-characters were more interesting then your lead then you need to rethink your character choices. Sasuke is way too brooding for my taste a bit like Shinji or Simon but Simon in Gurren Lagann actually grows a pair in about 7 epidoes, whilst Sasuke doesn't stop brooding until about the 400th chapter? Shinji I can't talk positive about (whiny as hell) but at least in the EVA movies he is portrayed a lot better.
Naruto is just too cookie cutter, has his own pains and tries to empathize with everyone even if they've been trying to kill him the past 6 hours. Reminds me a lot of the battle with Naruto against Pain, Pain is trying to destroy the damn village and instead of killing him upfront he does his usual monologue crap for 2 chapters gets a flash back of pain's past and makes pain do a heel turn at the end before he dies. It feels so lazy on the writer's part and also doesn't yield that many good villains, the only true villain was Orochimaru who was just too interesting and getting into Sasuke's pants whilst technically being a Female Transvestite.
You don't see Jotaro doing a damn monologue for 1 hour trying to get Dio Brando to become good, instead of killing him. No, you get an EPIC battle between Jotaro and Dio Brando.
The major problem I have is with Naruto/Bleach fans, but that is a different story entirely.
Don't know what its like growing up in USA/Europe but my usual anime line-up when I was a kid was something like, Magical Knight Rayearth, Nadia, Card Capture Sakura, Revolutionary Princess Utena, Dragon Ball and if I stayed up extra late I got myself some Fist of the North Start. So when I got introduced to Naruto/Bleach I was kind of "meh".
When the side-characters were more interesting then your lead then you need to rethink your character choices. Sasuke is way too brooding for my taste a bit like Shinji or Simon but Simon in Gurren Lagann actually grows a pair in about 7 epidoes, whilst Sasuke doesn't stop brooding until about the 400th chapter? Shinji I can't talk positive about (whiny as hell) but at least in the EVA movies he is portrayed a lot better.
Naruto is just too cookie cutter, has his own pains and tries to empathize with everyone even if they've been trying to kill him the past 6 hours. Reminds me a lot of the battle with Naruto against Pain, Pain is trying to destroy the damn village and instead of killing him upfront he does his usual monologue crap for 2 chapters gets a flash back of pain's past and makes pain do a heel turn at the end before he dies. It feels so lazy on the writer's part and also doesn't yield that many good villains, the only true villain was Orochimaru who was just too interesting and getting into Sasuke's pants whilst technically being a Female Transvestite.
You don't see Jotaro doing a damn monologue for 1 hour trying to get Dio Brando to become good, instead of killing him. No, you get an EPIC battle between Jotaro and Dio Brando.
The major problem I have is with Naruto/Bleach fans, but that is a different story entirely.
Don't know what its like growing up in USA/Europe but my usual anime line-up when I was a kid was something like, Magical Knight Rayearth, Nadia, Card Capture Sakura, Revolutionary Princess Utena, Dragon Ball and if I stayed up extra late I got myself some Fist of the North Start. So when I got introduced to Naruto/Bleach I was kind of "meh".
I would disagree with you on that point, at least for the most part. My gripes with the series isn't the dub (which I don't mind) or the filler (hell, I even liked a fair chunk of those). Rather, I have a problem with a bunch of characters and how they are used. I'll try to keep it brief, and keep in mind that I'm mainly going by the manga here...Thaius said:
1) Sasuke. Enough said. Seriously, it should be self-explanatory.
2) Naruto has the problem of being annoying in two major ways. He was annoying for the longest time on account of being an idiot, then he took a level in badass by becoming the Toad Sage, and now he's annoying on account how he's blatantly THE MESSIAH now.
3) Female characters, period. Name ONE that's well-developed and actually DOES stuff. Sakura has done diddly squat in Part 1 AND Part 2, and even her fight with Sasori doesn't count because she was puppeteered the whole time. Ino almost never shows up, Hinata's confession to Naruto has had zero impact on anything, Temari and Tenten are practically part of the background, Tsunade is relegated to a desk job, Kanon got crushed in her one fight, Karin is used like a tool even by characters... the list goes on.
4) All the really interesting characters are rarely seen and never get a real chance to shine. Shikamaru is arguably one of the most interesting characters in the entire series, leagues beyond Naruto and Sasuke, yet he only gets to do stuff in the Chunin Exams, Rescue Sasuke, and Hidan arcs. Imagine how much more interesting this series would be if we didn't focus so heavily on Team 7's members. What if it instead followed Shikamaru's team, or Hinata's, or Team Guy? They have so much potential and it's squandered on more "I will save Sasuke!" "I will avenge my clan!" crap.
5) Lastly, neat battles aside, the end motives of the villains are always just silly. C'mon... "Nuke no Jutsu" (hyperbole here)? "Turn moon into mind-controlling eye, since it's the corpse of the original tailed beast"? Just... silly.
Anyhow, that's just my opinion. I still like the series to an extent and keep up with it, but those are my main issues.
Well, I had a friend who was obsessed with it and tried to force me to watch it, so I was reluctant to say the least. It just seemed so dumb at the time. Then I tried to watch it; I know I'm not giving it a fair chance, but I couldn't stand Naruto's character at all, so I just couldn't watch any more of it, and that didn't encourage me to read the manga either. Plus, I like Sci-Fi and conclusive endings like Trigun and Cowboy Bebop (I'd say Outlaw Star, but that ending's a stretch). The only exception to this was Berserk, and I hope they give it an ending. To be fair, I haven't watched that many animes and I've read even less manga, but still.
I watched the show as a kid.
Hated the dub. Filler was stupid.
I have nothing to say about the manga, but I've heard negative things about it in terms of how the pacing is set up. This comes from my girlfriend who reads Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, among many other things and she only reads Naruto and Bleach simply because she feels she has invested so much time into it that it'd be a shame not to, despite the low quality. She geninely enjoys One Piece though, and so do I after she forced me to read all the chapters in a summer.
Hated the dub. Filler was stupid.
As a kid, I had no access to watching the original or skipping the filler if I actually wanted to watch the show.Thaius said:
I have nothing to say about the manga, but I've heard negative things about it in terms of how the pacing is set up. This comes from my girlfriend who reads Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, among many other things and she only reads Naruto and Bleach simply because she feels she has invested so much time into it that it'd be a shame not to, despite the low quality. She geninely enjoys One Piece though, and so do I after she forced me to read all the chapters in a summer.
I have watched Naruto for the last 6-7 years and i love it my only big problem with it is those fillers ohh those god damned fillers, it's the same thing with Bleach. And i have just watched the series with the japanese voiceactors and english subs, tried out the American dubs tho but those where just horrible. xD
A fictional one.attackshark said:
If you also didn't notice, they are raising their kids to be little soldiers as if that wasn't unethical enough, they tend to enjoy a good little genocide once in a while. And Naruto being given his apartment and all might have something to do with his *cough* pretty V.I.P nature despite being hated upon by the ignorant masses.
I LOVE filler. Anyone complaining about filler in an anime is freaking retarded. It's a GREAT way for the audience to connect more with the characters (doing more realistic things and such) as well as develop the character in more ways than possible than keeping them in a strict story-oriented plot that is most likely serious (Naruto would have been ten times more annoying if it was no filler, and all action. Imagine how many speeches about friendship and love and puppies and clowns you'd hear.
That being said, that's one reason I hate the show. The terribly cliched character design. While all show's characters these days really fall under an archetype because of the mass amounts of fictional characters existing today, Naruto's characters just seems to use and combine all the ones that piss me off the most. All while butchering what ninjas are actually about, but that's not the main point.
If you don't like the characters, you can't like the show really. And when the plot is just really endless (I hate animes that drag on for more than 40 episodes), really god damn boring and repetitive, it just adds to the hate cake. In my honest opinion.
That being said, that's one reason I hate the show. The terribly cliched character design. While all show's characters these days really fall under an archetype because of the mass amounts of fictional characters existing today, Naruto's characters just seems to use and combine all the ones that piss me off the most. All while butchering what ninjas are actually about, but that's not the main point.
If you don't like the characters, you can't like the show really. And when the plot is just really endless (I hate animes that drag on for more than 40 episodes), really god damn boring and repetitive, it just adds to the hate cake. In my honest opinion.
This.AwesomeNinjaPowers said:
I've watched it and enjoyed some of it but also hated parts as well. For me its not a like or hate thing, just the fact that some of the fans just wont shut up or allow for any criticism or it.
Nothing like giving out a small review to a friend about Naruto's high and low points only to be cut off by some raving fan.
personally I love Naruto, I know that statement isn't likely to make me any friends but the soundtrack, characters, and overall story are all awesome, and if you don't like filler, don't watch it, skip ahead, simple as that, I don't even see what the problem with filler is, it gives minor characters a chance to shine, I'm part way through watching the "curry of life" arc, well I agree that the concept of such a thing is ridiculous but I don't care Rock Lee is one of my favorite characters and he's actually getting screen-time since he can't get any in the non-filler episodes there's another practical use for filler,
I tried watching it when it first aired, but was immediately turned off by the main characters(expect for the one older guy with the weird eye he was okay), too much filler and talking in the middle of fights(DBZ killed my tolerance for that), and I didn't think the fighting was near interesting enough to make up for the things I didn't like.
Doesn't help that when I think of anime ninjas I think more of Ninja Scroll and Wrath of the Ninja than teenagers with headbands and magic.
Doesn't help that when I think of anime ninjas I think more of Ninja Scroll and Wrath of the Ninja than teenagers with headbands and magic.
*I will discuss some other anime in the text of this post so there are some spoilers, please avert your eyes if this is something you wish to avoid.*
I would say that attempting to justify the strong distaste many people have for Naruto as simple "hipster" mentality is both lazy and disengenuous. It is true that any popular franchise will have its haters and for unpopular franchises, these haters simply outnumber its fans. Given how many people have expressed reasons why they dislike Naruto, simply saying "its popular therefore they hate it" is in a way revealing that you have no true counterpoint aside from a strawman argument.
Franchises can be popular without having very much merit in the terms of literature, film or art. That is fine, this is after all the mass media which focuses on entertainment. Its end goal is not to create works of art but to service the needs of its audience. The problem I believe is that Naruto's fandom contains elements which tend to push it as the best thing to hit anime since Tezuka picked up a pen. Its not.
Throughout the thread there are many valid arguments made. That the story drags or interesting characters fall by the wayside. We've seen the former many times such as the Namek Arc of Dragonball Z. DGZ is another old favourite that sometimes contained episodes that comprized mainly of muscular men grunting at each other for the better part of half-an-hour. Believe you me its sometimes difficult to explain to Junior why Daddy ever watched such a show. After a certain period of time, just about every character that was not capable of becoming a super saiyajin was essentially cannon fodder or plot device. Death Note also entered into a downward spiral when L died and never truly recovered its former heights. In either case when the relationship between the characters take a dive, so does the quality of the work. Not everyone will identify with the main characters and the auxillary cast keeps us both engaged and entertained. Cutting them out (or in the case of Naruto, cutting them UP) is not always a good thing.
In the case of Naruto, I personally do not enjoy the antics of the titular character. It may seem endearing to some and others can identify with the teenage angst that is pretty much the early characterization of Naruto. That he attempts to transcend his birth and become a person that others would respect is a noble and worthwhile goal. And I believe that this is where a lot of people get engaged in the story as plenty of people can empathize with such a motivation. That he is an annoying teenager makes him more authentic; adults know that teenagers can be annoying, having one that acts like a real teenager is sometimes refreshing. Bleach's Ichigo is a noble person who helps the helpless, protects his friends and pretty much saves the day. You may as well have tattooed "Hero" on his forehead since his characterization hinges on it. It may be ironic but as much as young Naruto annoyed me, I enjoyed him more than the Ninja Jesus that has taken his place. At least Avatar the Last Airbender's Aang grew into the role and that was the entire point of his narrative. Naruto went from "Sasuke I will save you!" to the Messiah with not all that much prelude.
The character of Sasuke however has proved divisive; he is popular with a portion of the fandom but is loathed by another. He is, in many ways, the antithesis of Naruto. An in-born genius whose goals are ultimately destructive and, some would argue, self-destructive. He is a wish-fulfillment character and Superman has been a beloved character for decades so I believe that speaks of the degree of staying power that such characters can have. However, Sasuke is, charitably, not a nice person. Essentially we are watching a very psychologically damaged young man with incredible power seasoned with burgeoning sociopathy. Its little wonder that more than a few people do not enjoy his place as secondary (or even primary) protagonist/antagonist. For some the fact that he is really, really pretty absolves Sasuke of everything up to and including murder. For others... not so much.
Add onto this the aforementioned loss of supporting cast and I think you can catch a glimpse of why Naruto is not as well liked as it can be. Overall I believe that it is a decent work that jumps up to a good level of quality when its on song. However the hate surrounding it comes from a combination of frustration, dashed hopes and obnoxious elements of the fanbase. It think its likely the third that gives Naruto the kind of visibility that provokes an extreme antipathy that outstrips the rest of its cohort in the current Shonen trinity, Bleach and One Piece. The latter two have their own hatedom but rarely do we see the sheer numbers or depth of feeling as the Naruto hatedom. What seperates them is the number of militant fans who, honestly, give the rest of them a bad name. By no means are Naruto fans obnoxious but they do harbour in their ranks individuals who are and its contributing to their favourite anime becoming a byword for over-hyped drivel. Ironic and sad really.
I would say that attempting to justify the strong distaste many people have for Naruto as simple "hipster" mentality is both lazy and disengenuous. It is true that any popular franchise will have its haters and for unpopular franchises, these haters simply outnumber its fans. Given how many people have expressed reasons why they dislike Naruto, simply saying "its popular therefore they hate it" is in a way revealing that you have no true counterpoint aside from a strawman argument.
Franchises can be popular without having very much merit in the terms of literature, film or art. That is fine, this is after all the mass media which focuses on entertainment. Its end goal is not to create works of art but to service the needs of its audience. The problem I believe is that Naruto's fandom contains elements which tend to push it as the best thing to hit anime since Tezuka picked up a pen. Its not.
Throughout the thread there are many valid arguments made. That the story drags or interesting characters fall by the wayside. We've seen the former many times such as the Namek Arc of Dragonball Z. DGZ is another old favourite that sometimes contained episodes that comprized mainly of muscular men grunting at each other for the better part of half-an-hour. Believe you me its sometimes difficult to explain to Junior why Daddy ever watched such a show. After a certain period of time, just about every character that was not capable of becoming a super saiyajin was essentially cannon fodder or plot device. Death Note also entered into a downward spiral when L died and never truly recovered its former heights. In either case when the relationship between the characters take a dive, so does the quality of the work. Not everyone will identify with the main characters and the auxillary cast keeps us both engaged and entertained. Cutting them out (or in the case of Naruto, cutting them UP) is not always a good thing.
In the case of Naruto, I personally do not enjoy the antics of the titular character. It may seem endearing to some and others can identify with the teenage angst that is pretty much the early characterization of Naruto. That he attempts to transcend his birth and become a person that others would respect is a noble and worthwhile goal. And I believe that this is where a lot of people get engaged in the story as plenty of people can empathize with such a motivation. That he is an annoying teenager makes him more authentic; adults know that teenagers can be annoying, having one that acts like a real teenager is sometimes refreshing. Bleach's Ichigo is a noble person who helps the helpless, protects his friends and pretty much saves the day. You may as well have tattooed "Hero" on his forehead since his characterization hinges on it. It may be ironic but as much as young Naruto annoyed me, I enjoyed him more than the Ninja Jesus that has taken his place. At least Avatar the Last Airbender's Aang grew into the role and that was the entire point of his narrative. Naruto went from "Sasuke I will save you!" to the Messiah with not all that much prelude.
The character of Sasuke however has proved divisive; he is popular with a portion of the fandom but is loathed by another. He is, in many ways, the antithesis of Naruto. An in-born genius whose goals are ultimately destructive and, some would argue, self-destructive. He is a wish-fulfillment character and Superman has been a beloved character for decades so I believe that speaks of the degree of staying power that such characters can have. However, Sasuke is, charitably, not a nice person. Essentially we are watching a very psychologically damaged young man with incredible power seasoned with burgeoning sociopathy. Its little wonder that more than a few people do not enjoy his place as secondary (or even primary) protagonist/antagonist. For some the fact that he is really, really pretty absolves Sasuke of everything up to and including murder. For others... not so much.
Add onto this the aforementioned loss of supporting cast and I think you can catch a glimpse of why Naruto is not as well liked as it can be. Overall I believe that it is a decent work that jumps up to a good level of quality when its on song. However the hate surrounding it comes from a combination of frustration, dashed hopes and obnoxious elements of the fanbase. It think its likely the third that gives Naruto the kind of visibility that provokes an extreme antipathy that outstrips the rest of its cohort in the current Shonen trinity, Bleach and One Piece. The latter two have their own hatedom but rarely do we see the sheer numbers or depth of feeling as the Naruto hatedom. What seperates them is the number of militant fans who, honestly, give the rest of them a bad name. By no means are Naruto fans obnoxious but they do harbour in their ranks individuals who are and its contributing to their favourite anime becoming a byword for over-hyped drivel. Ironic and sad really.
...you asked why people don't like Naruto, and then said that they're not allowed to dislike it for this reason? That's silly.Thaius said:
The English dub was the main thing I found so irksome, but sticking with it long enough, the translations get much less obnoxious and the voice acting stops grating quite so much.
This is a bit of a tangent, but, personally, I'm not a fan of watching anime in Japanese since I don't speak the language. And I've always been very suspicious of claims that you need to watch something in a language you don't speak to fully appreciate it. Something isn't magically better because it was the original, especially if you can't actually understand the original. These weird "purity" arguments over subs are just that - weird. The "original" experience was predicated on the viewer actually understanding the speech, so I'd say that having speech you can understand goes a lot further toward replicating the "original" experience than hearing a collection of sounds and vaguely interpretable intonational patterns (bearing in mind especially that Japanese has quite distinct intonational patterns than English, despite how often people claim that they "totally understand" the intonation of Japanese with absolutely no training) while reading a translation at the bottom of the screen.
Also, some of the fights really do drag on. Episode after episode comprised mostly of people standing still with angsty monologue about how they're not sure they can win this one (spoiler alert: they can). I cannot even begin to count the number of times someone has gotten hurt, not been able to go on, had a nice monologue, and then somehow got back up after their great epiphany before suddenly becoming more powerful than before they were horribly maimed. It's a good way to build dramatic tension, but the show definitely overuses these things. And some of the animation is obscenely cheap - think of the fight with Sasori where they're just moving a static picture of Sakura back and forth to show that she's "dodging" needles for a total of about five minutes.
That said, I don't know of any other fighting anime that's as fun to watch when it really gets good. The animation can be really impressive, the powers are always fun, and the show does an amazing job at actually using the powers in interesting ways and combinations rather than just using them the same way over and over and constantly rolling out new powers to keep things interesting.
They are all horrible ninja, I can see every one
Heh had to, but on topic, i dont hate it but i dont like it or plan to watch it because im already a couple hundred eps behind on it, and from what i saw on TV just randomly around, I will stick to the abridged series its much more entertaining
Heh had to, but on topic, i dont hate it but i dont like it or plan to watch it because im already a couple hundred eps behind on it, and from what i saw on TV just randomly around, I will stick to the abridged series its much more entertaining