Is Naruto worth watching?

[LoganW]

So I wanted to start watching a new anime that I can get invested in that has more then like 20 episodes. I thought Naruto looked pretty good but is it worth watching? If so where should I start and dubbed or subbed?

[Arcadeotic]

Here's a review that largely aligns with my opinion

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To be honest, Naruto is the most overhyped show in existence. Everyone goes on and on and on about how great it is; and my expectations for this show was equally high. However, I was really, really let down. Really. This wasn't the best show ever, as I had thought it would be. Don't get me wrong, the show is enjoyable, but it's definitely not among the best shows out there. I hope Shippuden will better than this... much better.

The concept of this show isn't that hard to follow. It's an alternate world in which ninjas live. The ninjas fight by using various skills, and they have this power flowing inside of them called chakra. Chakra is used to perform powerful attacks which (usually) belongs to either of the five traditional elements of earth, fire, water, air and lightning. Of course, since they are ninjas, they fight with weapons like shuriken and kunai as well as hand-to-hand combat. As expected of this kind of world, there's evil people, having different goals and reasons behind their evil.

The story follows Naruto, one of these ninjas, as he grows as a ninja, from being a stupid little prank-playing brat to becoming a fine ninja. Along the way, he interacts with and makes friends with many fellow ninjas, fighting his way towards his dream of becoming Hokage (the leader of his village). 

The story isn't nearly as good as the concept would indicate. Sure, a lot of the characters has some nice background stories, won't complain about that, but they manage to drag out everything so much. It really annoys me. Some fights take several episodes when they could've been done them just as good in one or two. There's also way too much fighting. The story goes like fight, fight, background story, fight, fight, even more fights, half an episode's worth of resting or journeying, fight, fight, and so on. I mean, it's cool to watch fights, but there are just way too many fights, and they drag most of them out to unnecessary lengths. The only really enjoyable fight was the one between Sasuke and Naruto right before the fillers began. Which brings up another thing...

Fillers! Agh, I normally don't mind fillers, but Naruto had some really, really stupid ones. Sure, there was the occasional diamond among the charcoal, but that doesn't excuse the high amount of bad fillers. I mean, just because they are fillers doesn't mean that they have to make them bad. Several shows have actually made decent and at the same time long fillers (especially Bleach, with its 40-episode long Bount arc), but Naruto failed horribly here. 

Also, I feel that Naruto is very silly at times. Silly is usually good, but not when it's immature silly. And guess what+ Naruto is silly in an immature way. It's so dreadfully stupid at times that I had to close my eyes, take a deep breath and wait until it got serious again. Now, it did have some good comical moments, but those were far and wide between.

Another thing I feel like releasing my rage on is the animation. It barely manages to get the description “average” to me. At its best, it's slightly above average. However, a lot of time it's slipshod galore with the animation. I still have many very bad memories from having to watch lots of errors in the animation, and I'm not sure if I'll ever get rid of those memories. While the amount of errors decreased as the episodes passed by, at least every second episode before the 100s had one or more moments of slipshod animation. Wonder if they ever considered firing the animators.

As a side mention, they should do something about Rock Lee - even though I've slightly gotten used to his horrible looks, I still feel a burn in the back of my eye every time I see him.

The music is pretty good, though. A lot of great tunes (especially the sad ones are great), and the first few OPs and EDs were pretty awesome. It has some really bad music parts too, like the tribal voice-ish song, and sometimes they could've used better themes during the fights. As the series progressed, the quality of the OPs and EDs decrease too.

The characters are fairly okay, I guess. Some of them are really annoying, like Naruto, because he's so stupid. Agh, he annoys me to no end! Some other characters are annoying too, because of things like their looks (Gai and Lee), or because they are failed attempts at comical relief (at least in my eyes, you might find them funny), like the all too perverted Jiraiya.

That's negative about them. However, they have some really nice background stories, some which are elaborated more upon than others. Many of the characters also get fair amounts of screen time, which for some people can seem too much, whilst others will be content with it because their favourite character from the show gets an episode for him/herself. 

I also like the fact that most of them have dreams or aspirations, and motives for what they are doing and how they are acting (usually it's tied together with their background stories). The growing relationships between them is also nice, their maturing, and how Naruto is slowly getting accepted by more and more people through hard work. 

Basically, they've portrayed the characters very well, and not too over the top, but some of them act stupid and silly from time to time, which drags the character rating down.

I have some mixed feelings for the show, which kind of drags down on the enjoyability factor of it. Great concept, not as good story, both good and bad music, horrid animation at times, many characters with background stories, some of them great and some not-so-great; it's hard to completely make up my mind, but I believe the ratings I have given shows my feelings towards the different aspects of the show.

Of course, even though there are things I didn't like, I can easily see why this show is so popular as it is; it has humour that the kids may find funny, as well as lots of fights which appeal to the teenagers and adults. I personally didn't like it that much, though. I'm looking forward to Shippuden because I’ve heard it was much better… I really hope so!

 

7

 

 

 

 

It's overrated and not that great. I honestly would watch Shippuden instead if I had that much time in my hands. It's also packed with ridiculous amounts of filler. But it's still appealing to the medium it's aimed at. Great concept, average story, music is eh at times, animation is really wonky at places, some great and bad backgrounds for characters. The manga is much, much better

As for going dubbed or naw, I've heard that the dub is better, but that's purely in the eye of the beholder.

[Dergonu]

Well I'd have to say "the manga is better, the manga is better!" even though those kinds of people really annoy me  

 

Anyways, the anime has a lot of fillers, but if you are okay with that, then go for it. The show itself is really good for what it is, (which is a very standard shounen series.) 

 

If you can stomach a lot of fillers, then it's worth it in the end. The action is good, some of the story is pretty great, and the ... Well yeah, the action is good. It's pretty standard shounen stuff, but at least it's a good standard shounen show. 

(Go for the sub, not the dub.) The little I have heard of the dubbed voices was pretty cringe, but keep in mind that I think that about every single English dub ever ... so... Yeah. 

[Nosebleed]

Naruto is actually a really good story, but it's not delivered well in its anime form because of all the filler.

Imho anybody is better off reading the manga.

[Asonn]

If you like to watch a lot of fillers, and an anime with a lot of still images and repeated scenes.. yes

[SilverLi]

I would recommend watching it. Without the fillers. Some of them are actually good but 90% of the fillers are horrible. I am currently rewatching Naruto and Shippuden. I am comparing that to any actionpacked or Shonen anime it is a great show. Without the fillers I must point out again. The story is well written and I am at least one of those which gets sucked into the universe. Whenever something interesting and epic happens I tend to forget about time.

But I am a fan of Shonen and these older and longer anime series. That's up my alley.

I would recommend it if you like:

• Shonen
• You are able to stand a bit older art. It gets improved over time except some infamous animation.
• You don't get bored of the same anime. Either you are a huge fan or you like long ongoing series. I don't like short one or two season animes because they don't develop in the same way.
• If you decide to watch it. Give it at least 25 episodes before you judge it. 
• To skip all Naruto fillers, check here. No spoilers in here. But I actually enjoyed some of the fillers. It doesn't give me anything to the story. But some of them are nice backgroundstory for characters so you tend to like them more.

My closing point is that Naruto is a good anime. in my case there was a couple of years ago an anime captivated me like that. I think the latest one was Fate UBW and To Aru Kagaku no Railgun. But that's what I am and what I like. I can't stand short animes of 13 - 26 episodes. It doesn't get developed enough in my opinion but they could still be enjoyable.

Edit: As stated above. The manga delivers and it is the fastest way to get through everything. But if you got 235 hours to spare go for it. I think it is around 140 hours without fillers.

[Deep Blue]

If you are ready to spend a lot of time watching episodes after episodes of pure filler then yeah probably.

btw I started watching it after" two best friends play" (a youtube channel) played the game xD

[Justin579]

I "was" a huge Naruto fan. It WAS my favorite anime but in the war arc they took a huge shit on top of it. And read the manga, it isn't full of those bullshit, boring ass fillers that no one cares about. But no, I do not recommend it at all.