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The state of Naruto

J44xm

経験値が足りない
6 Dec 2004
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I'm moderately surprised to find that there is no thread for the excoriation of the past several months of "Naruto" filler episodes. While I am a fan of the series, I finally had to admit defeat a while back.

For those not in the know, for at least six months now, the "Naruto" anime has aired its own independent story arcs that do not follow the manga's storyline as the series had been. Ostensibly, the reason for this is to allow the manga storyline to progress farther, that there may be more space between the storylines of the manga and that of the anime. This is speculation, though.

My opinion--and that of a large contingent of the series' fans--is that the quality of the episodes dropped considerably at this point and has not improved. There are sometimes episodes that are not so repugnant, but even these are marred by the lingering, pungent taste of pointlessness, as we know that the events in this episodes mean nothing and will likely never be mentioned again.

This week's episode, which I admittedly masochistically suffered though partly for the sake of curiosity (the fansubbers' opening message was that the episode made them want to die in a fire), was ludricrous and culminated in Naruto running around in the form of princess while urinating. There was urine rain and a urine-spawned rainbow. Classy, that.

Until I arrived here in Japan, I had never read the manga, but feeling the dearth of acceptable "Naruto" anime and craving to know what really happens after the last canonical events that I saw, I began to read it and have since come to enjoy it very much. Within the manga, the story, which I think is interesting, continues to progress and events of marked signficance continue to occur.

Yet, I still can't help but watch this sad shadow of an anime sometimes. I watched the first hundred and forty or so episodes of the series, and seeing like this is saddening on some levels. I imagine that the series' creator can't be too pleased about the latest state of affairs himself; yet, this would be the price of this form of publication, I suppose.

The good news, though, is that the filler will not continue for too much longer. Also, they will air "Kakashi Gaiden," an excellent story (that appeared in the manga as well) that reveals some important points of the character Kakashi's past. (And there will be some Fourth Hokage action, which I admit I'm slavering for on some base level.)
 
I love Naruto, but the filler has been slowly driving me insane. In fact I have not watched it for the past 2 months.
 
Same here, I haven`t watched it for 2.5 months now.

I understand that they have to use fillers so now and then, and I don`t have a problem with that, but as you said for 6 months is just crazy, and annoying.

Anybody know when the fillers will be over?

The reason that there are so many fillers is because the anime goes faster than the manga, isnt?
 
Dutch Baka said:
The reason that there are so many fillers is because the anime goes faster than the manga, isnt?
This is the impression I'm under, but I'm not sure that that is truly the case. I imagine that it's pretty likely, though.
 
Funnily enough I stopped watching at episode 150.

I had a late start into Naruto, not having watched it since the beginning as the first 2 episodes did not do much for me and I canned it. But then a friend of mine recommended me to stick with it a for a bit and let things develop. I did and soon was hooked, watching episode 1 to 120 in one big session, interrupted by sleeping only really.
Of course I then kept up with the ongoing episodes, but soon lost interest as the series become meandering and directionless. And then at 150 I decided to make a clean cut and let the series run to either a) watch it all as a batch which might make it look more cohesive and interesting or b) skip the useless sidestories and step back into it when the series picks up again.

So far I haven't returned to it yet.
Things like that are the reason I like my animes to be finished before I start watching them.
 
Well I got into Naruto a bit like you Satorian. It was a little more than a year ago when I got into. Previously I tried to watch and never could get into it. But ALL of my friends were into it and were like Narutards. Even my roommate who wasn't a big anime fan liked it. So I gave it a second chance watching the first 100 or so episodes in one big Marathon. I became a fan and watched it devotedly until the filler started. Now I watch it only when I am bored. Although recently in the past two weeks or so I have been trying to watch it. I am at episode 183 now. But right now I am more into Bleach then Naruto.
 
I also began watching the series well into its run. I watched the first sixty or eighty episodes (I forget) in a clump over a couple of weeks. (I took my time.) The main story really is quite interesting and I think it's a good series. It's a shame that the anime has fallen so, but alas, such is the case. But I think it will turn around once "Kakashi Gaidan" begins. In fact, I'm sure of it.
 
Kakashi was one of the most intriguing characters from the beginning on, so I'm really looking forward to that Gaiden.

As for Bleach, I was hooked on it since episode 1 and knew it'd be a great anime, but the current story arc took some time to develop steam. As it is made by the some production studio as Naruto, I'm afraid it might share a similar fate of becoming unfocused and ultimately boring, while they focus on their newest endeavour: KIBA.
 
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