morghus' place

Pre-Ramble
I discovered I had more to say about this topic and this series than I originally thought. It’s become a massive essay about Naruto, mostly as a reflection for me and how I feel about the series and how it’s turned out. I still like the series, and I still read it, because it’s highly entertaining – there’re aspects of it that badly needs fixing though. .. and sorry for the lol-texts. I couldn’t help myself… [Edit: Click the pictures for more details. There are a few with cut-offs]

The title there goes for practically every single one of the ninjas in this series. Actually, the only time I can remember there was a whole lot of stealthing going on, they were considered weak, almost to the point of comical relief (unless they were comical relief, and I just didn’t find it funny. I usually don’t find comical relief funny. Funny eh?). Unless you count the times they were hiding from an enemy, contemplating a clever and sneaky, but obvious, attack on their foe. There’s no such thing as a stealth-kill in this series. Which makes me wonder what you might consider an assassin, and how potentially badass they would be, because they, you know, do actual sneaky stuff. “I R TEH BOOGIEMAN!”

Truly Sneaky?
From here on Naruto becomes a difficult topic. When a ninja has been mentioned, you think about a guy in black gear with lots of shady tricks and abilities that comes sneaking in the night to make sure you won’t see the next day. When you mention a ninja in Naruto, you are actually talking about a martial artist that knows magic. No shit, actually. Boiled down, Naruto is about Kung-Fucking-Fu Mages, and the more physical training you do, the more magical stuff you can throw around like bad breath, as well as getting better at the magicky stuff over time. The focus is of course on the obvious, the magicky stuff. It’s flashy and cool. The straightforward physical combat is severely downplayed, and is most often watered down to a “Y HULO THAR BUDDEE! FUN 2 SEE U HEAR!” that goes on for about 3-30 seconds, and then they jump away from each other, ready to do some serious smack-talk for 3 episodes (or 3 manga-chapters). “U SUXX!”. “NO! U SUXX!”

Magical Ninjas
The aforementioned smack-talk is quite often intermingled by a series of minor jabs at each other, be it through throwing knives, dubious minor magic, or dubious major magic that we can’t see because it’s, well, sneaky. I guess that’s where the ninja heritage comes into play, although I doubt it. In most cases the magicky stuff is either a show of brute force, a contest of stamina, or some hidden and clever chess-game that we’ll never truly understand because compared to these masters of chess, we’re dumb and blind. Well, we’re of course awed by the explanation that we get in the end, when it’s too late for the oppoent, and then we’re similarly awed by the resulting smack-down. If it’s a flashy smack-down we become even more awed [Ref: Naruto Vs. Sasuke - Angry Emo Kitties Final Fight]. “U SEE WUT I DID THAR LOL?!”.

Characters
The gallery of characters is surprisingly strong in this series, surprisingly so actually, side-characters tend to be weak(er). We have all these weird characters with strange and freaky abilities, magicky abilities, and even weirder, stereotypical personalities (I’m look at you Gai! Maito Gai, weirdest dude there. Maito Gai – A Mite Gay?). You would think an ensemble of the 50 most standard and dull-ass bunch of characters would be just a tad boring, but this is where Naruto shines – the cast of characters. No matter who you’ll be spending time with you can be sure that you will be in the company of some weirdo guy that’s forever doomed to be entertaining because he’s hilarious in a number of subtle ways, or because he’s just not like the rest of the crew. “LOL I R SPESHUL RITE?!”.

The Good Guys
There’re no two characters alike, they’re all a bunch of weirdo stereo-types, they’re comical in their exaggerated vices and virtues. You’ve got the heavy-drinking Tsunade that’s old enough to be your grandmother, with a bosom the size of Mount Doom. There’s the eternal enigma and silent-type awesomesauce guy, Kakashi, with an exploitable weakness for ecchi-books. Let’s not forget the previously over-emo Sasuke, the most popular character in the series for years (yes, they ran polls about it) who has a magickal thingamajig in his eyes that gives him a hefty advantage against other magicky abilities. He’s our beloved hate-object. Or atleast he used to be, he’s not as whiny anymore, just silent and focused, not to mention a bit older and more powerful. Let’s ignore that he was in company with Orochimaru for 3 years, the lech. Ew. “PLAY WIT MY 1 EYED SNAEK PLZ!”

The Bad Guys
Now, that was the good guys, except for Orochimaru, who was eventually killed by Sasuke, or so we think. I doubt that chapter’s concluded just yet, his death was too obvious. Orochimaru’s the kind of bad guy you have to love, despite being an icky and ew bastard that makes you think of a pervert that likes watching dubious porn, simply because he’s such a completely unlovable character. If Kishimoto Masashi, that’s the author of the manga, ever made the perfect villain, Orochimaru’s it. There’s also Sasuke’s arch-nemesis, his brother Itachi, who killed off the entire clan to prove a point (++, but I won’t be spoilering it right now), and is generally overpowered. To be quite honest I don’t really picture Itachi as such a massive villain like Orochimaru, but my suspicion lies with the incessant whining of the character of Sasuke downplaying it. A major bad thing is easily downplayed and turned unimportant if someone’s harping about it constantly, and that’s what was done in the first 90% of the series. Yes, that means I’m entirely umsympathetic to Sasuke’s pains. “I HURTZ! MORE TAHN U!”

Combat
The combat-system in Naruto is pretty complicated, in a sense. The melee is straightforward, while the magicky stuff can be as esoteric as the author wants, which can be pretty damned wonky. If you’re not a 100% melee kind of guy, you’re not going to be doing a whole lot of close combat, you’ll preferably stand 10-30 metres away preparing some kind of scary and efficient attempt at taking down the opponent. There are what, 3 of the melee-types in Naruto? Gai, Rock Lee and Naruto? No, Tsunade and Sakura as well. Of all of those, only the character called Rock Lee is completely melee-based, all the others are able to sprinkle some magical fairy-dust around when applicable. The rest mix in the odd chakra-magic (the name of the magicky battery. You run out of it, you run out of magicky stuff, most likely not able to move either, since it’s connected to stamina). With the exception of Naruto, all of these people are generally quite successful in their endeavours, as far as we’ve been able to tell, and they use their magicky chakra along with their tricks happily and efficiently. “I HIT U 4 LOLTGHOUSAN!”.

The Protagonist
No series would be quite the same without a protagonist to cheer for, and Naruto is no exception to this. In the beginning we sympathized with his loneliness, his desperation for attention and friends, and his desire to accomplish something. We wanted him to stop being miserable and sad, we wanted him to be special, beyond being the outcast of the village. We wanted him to be awesome, we wanted him to be the hero. And so we cheered him on when he stole something special so he could learn a forbidden jutsu (that’s what they call the magicky things in Naruto, jutsus) through a forbidden scroll that was really powerful and awesome. Of course, we had no freakin’ idea what this really was until we were shown, and we had our first moment of “Whoooooaaaah… awesome” when Naruto created a thousand clones of himself, accompanied by the fantastic music that’s become the hallmark of the series epic moments, and laid down the smack. Now, why did he steal this scroll to learn this forbidden thing? Two reasons, to get attention, and a desire to protect the village. This outcast boy that’s been ignored and avoided as much as possible has a tremendous desire to become the Hokage (leader of the village or something) to protect the village, despite everything. “LOL U SAD SMAKDOWN!”

Now, the character went through some pretty memorable moments, building up as a character, letting us get to know him, and the highlight of this was when they were in the Land of the Hidden Mist, or whatsitsface. Naruto came up with an amazing move, all on his own, one where he changed himself into a ninja-star (or whatever it’s called), and let Sasuke throw him. The throw was a miss, an intentional one, and what happened then has been lost in the Mists of the Hidden Memory. What I remember from this episode is that I thought it was so awesome that Naruto had developed to the point where he was tactical and innovative, and from here on I was pretty devoted to the series. “LOL LIEK FANBOI?!”

The Protagonist Struggles
Ironically that’s where it all went downhill. From here and onwards all you get to see Naruto do is use Kage Bunshin (the forbidden technique, meaning Shadow of Something, or perhaps Something of Shadow, but what he does is make clones of himself) ad nauseum, atleast until he learns Rasengan (a whirly ball he holds in his hand, and when presses against the opponent, more on that later), and we get to watch him use Rasengan and Kage Bunshin ad nauseum. To be quite honest there’s nothing new throughout the series from here and onwards, with the exception of the Nine-Tailed Fox-Demon thingamajig inside him that gives him an extra boost. While it’s awesome to look at Naruto in über-mode, it does get pretty tiring to watch this Three-Trick Pony do absolutely nothing new and interesting all the time. “SUPER SAIYNA LVL 72932?! LOL!”.

Ponies!
Now, I would be kind of ok with the whole concept of this Three-Trick Pony if it was a truly awesome pony. It’s not. I mentioned that Naruto was a melee-type, one that relied exclusively on beating the living Zeus out of his opponents. More irony, it’s usually Naruto that gets this deity beaten out of him, because his skill at hand to hand combat is about as awesome as mine. What we end up seeing is Naruto making a whole bunch of Caged Munchkin clones that charges at the opponent with little success. He then either hides to try again, or he aims to sneak in a Rasengan. Now, I mentioned how utter crap he was at melee? Well, the thing is, if you suck at melee, and your two ultimate moves are based on melee, alternately that’s all you can think of using it for, would it make sense that he manages to land the sodding thing? Nope, and that’s what happens. The most exciting thing we get to see is how he’ll be able to land this powerful whirly-ball on his opponent, quite often after a bunch of tries. Which is extremely unexciting after you’ve seen it a few times. “LOL WHIRYL BALLZ!”.

Stopped Making Sense
Where did the innovation and ability to excel go? He picked up a forbidden technique in hours. He excels at changing forms (which he hasn’t done in ages either). He’s got the stamina from hell. He’s got a demon inside of him that gives him power. He’s got so much going for him, so why does the author insist on keeping him a Narutard? In the latest iteration of the saga of Naruto, Shippuuden, we get to see him start learning about a new trick, using elements from nature, and that some can use this, and some can use this element. The author of the series introduced another element! So Naruto has to learn about his element. Of course, we’re presented with a dumbass Naruto that just doesn’t grasp it, so they figure that Naruto should make a million clones of himself that can practice this stuff, since they are each an individual. Neat perk, you go work, I go play. Kek. So, as usual Naruto is Narutard. He spends ages learning something, and now he’s even boosted by this really awesome trick. but why doesn’t he use his most awesome and proficient trick more, develop a branch that he knows better instead of insisting on learning some dumbass incarnation of a previous Hokage’s super-trick? “LOL NARUTARDZ!”.

The Plans?
Seriously, for all the good things in this series I get the feeling that the creator of Naruto just doesn’t get it. Naruto was awesome, now he’s a muppet. The reason I’m interested in the series at all has nothing to do with Naruto himself, although I do hope he’ll suddenly start to shine. No, I like the series because of the supporting cast. They’re awesome. I love them all. From Chubby Chouji to Sad Sakura, they’re all quirky and fun, interesting and varied. Naruto is just uninteresting. He doesn’t develop in any direction that seems remotely natural. It seems the author ate too many funny shrooms at some point, or just ran out of ideas. Most likely he lost his first flow-chart, and forgot Naruto’s existence, leaving his assistants to fix all the errors, and every time he sees Naruto become interesting he goes “WTF?! WUT R HE?!” and brings out the eraser. Stupid assistants eh?

The End
Shit, I could go on and on and on about this topic and how Kishimoto seems to have completely forgotten Naruto’s roots and how he’s become a parody of himself and bad story-telling. When I went to school I learnt about something called the “red thread” that’s supposed to go throughout the entire text/story/whatever. Naruto’s lost his for now. Let’s hope it’s picked up again at some point in the future, so that Naruto once again can be awesome like he once was.

And this is why I ended up discussing characters earlier by the way. Hot topic in my head!

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