Title: Naruto

Owner: Masashi Kishimoto

Genre: Action, adventure, comedy, fantasy

Rating: 6.5/10

Summary:

Twelve years ago, a giant, monstrous, and powerful fox known at the Nine-Tails attacked the ninja in the Village Hidden in the Leaves and killed many people. The most powerful ninja and the leader of the Hidden Leaf Village, the Fourth Hokage, sacrificed his life to seal the Nine-Tailed Fox into newborn Naruto Uzumaki.

Naruto is jeered at and treated like a pest his whole life, with no family or friends. Due to the law put in place by the Third Hokage, it is forbidden to talk of the Nine-Tails incident to anyone including Naruto; who is unaware of the demon fox inside of him.

Now that Naruto is twelve, he is tricked by a rogue ninja to steal a secret scroll that would teach him a secret ninja technique. He is stopped by his teacher Iruka Umino, who then reveals that Naruto has the Nine-Tailed Fox inside of him.

After defeating the rogue ninja and finally accepting that he is the Nine-Tails, Naruto is assigned to a three person team that will be taught how to be ninja under a sensei. He is paired with his rival, Sasuke Uchiha and his crush, Sakura Haruno; and placed under his sensei Kakashi Hatake to become Team 7.

With this opportunity to finally make friends and have others accept him, Naruto vows that he will become the next Hokage and the most powerful ninja.

Opinion:

Okay, this is something I know you've all been waiting for! Prepare for the long-awaited Naruto chapter!

Prepare for a lot of distractions and spoilers throughout the whole chapter, so I'm posting one spoiler warning here to span the whole chapter. You've been warned--I don't want to hear any bitching about "spoilers" because I've warned you beforehand.

*SPOILER ALERT*

So, Naruto is one of those series that manages to make it to the top, and has lots of obnoxious fans and amazing fans, but seemingly more haters. Now, for me, I wouldn't say I'm obsessed and I don't hate it either. I'm going to fence-sit on this series, because it was alright. It was slightly above average, as are most shows I watch.

Like every other show I've seen, I went through that "obsessed" phase for a bit either during or after watching it. So yeah, I was a bit of a fan and I still am.

I'm going to fence-sit because I agree with either party here. I can see why people love it:

It's hilarious, has an adequate plot, and is easy to get into.

But I can also see why people hate it:

The literal SHIT-tons of filler and the arcs and events are very prolonged.

This show is the very definition of the good, the bad, and the ugly. However, let me jumble that up a bit so it's the bad, the ugly, and the good.

#1: The Bad

Now, I'm not a true Naruto fan because I didn't watch the 100-episode filler arc--I actually just skipped it and watched the very last few.

Next up, turning a cool character (who admittedly was an asshat) into a bad guy (even though we all knew it would happen). Let me pretend for a moment that I didn't have the entire series spoiled for me before watching it. Thanks, Dani.

I'm reasonable though, I know that with a series this old and popular that it's impossible not to get spoilers. Anyways, I kind of liked Sasuke to begin with. He was okay and I knew he was eventually leave; but I still didn't really want to accept it. I can't even justify my point, but let me say this: There must have been some fans who were slightly surprised, even if in the least, and some that were slightly disappointed when he finally did leave the Village Hidden in the Leaves for Orochimaru.

The other thing to mention is that events take forever to happen sometimes; actually. I'm not kidding. It was like Bleach, where it always dragged out the point longer than necessary. Honestly.

"We're going to get Sasuke back!" cries Naruto.

We all get a little pumped for a new arc, but it turns out to be thirty episodes of fighting bullshit where the team slowly branches off and gets nearly killed individually. It just... I don't know, it just annoyed me that there were five "battles" that should've been considered minor that were instead made to be three or four episodes each.

#2: The Ugly

I can't decide to put this in the ugly or the good section, but the animators and fricken Masashi Kishimoto love to make either really messed up or extremely androgynous characters. I remember seeing Rock Lee for the first time. I don't remember what I thought, but I do remember his hair, eyebrows, eyes, outfit and overenthusiastic attitude annoying me to NO END.

That doesn't even cover when I first saw Haku. I remember watching, and when I saw him I actually closed my laptop and said aloud, "Jesus Christ, what is that? Is it...a boy? No, it's a girl... Or..."

Remember those sheets you have to fill out for registrations or accounts that say:

Gender (check one):

Male ___

Female ___

Other ___

I finally realized that the "other" option was made for people like Haku. Dammit Haku, pick a side.

I just feel uncomfortable being that one person being unsure of a character's gender or saying, "Oh, it was a boy/girl? I always thought of it as being the other way around."

One final thing I need to say is this:

Have any of you ever seen Nicholas Cage's son? If you haven't, search him up.

Nicholas Cage is the father of Orochimaru.

#3: The Good

One thing I love about Naruto is that the animators do nothing but fuck us over. This is what I mean:

During the Chunin Exam arc, you can see the Fourth Hokage walk past Naruto.

At the Third Hokage's funeral, Rin is standing behind Kakashi.

In Shippuden, Orochimaru is in the crowd waiting for Gaara to wake up after the Sasori/Deidara battle.

HOW?! How do they pull this shit on us and get away with it?

It's like how four boys in my math class managed to sneak out at the same time without anyone ever noticing, including the teacher--even though they all sat right next to each other. It is actually really cool to me.

Now, let me stray to my new section:

Erin's Random Adventures in Distractionland!

So my friend who has loved Naruto from the time he was a little kid has the games, and he got me to play Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 and 4.

Super fun, amazing game with awesome graphics for an anime game--I recommend it.

Temari is my favourite female character, so I was playing as her and honestly had no idea what I was doing. One moment I was flying, the other I was flinging little wind balls and God knows what else at him. Oh, and his name is Alex. He's a super awesome guy (but really stupid).

So we were playing this, and of course he's kicking my ass because I've never played it, and he was showing me some fun things--but this isn't about that. This is about the fun things gone horribly wrong.

I'm one of those gamers that screams at the TV even though I know the characters can't hear me. So Alex was playing as...Shikamaru, I think.

Finally Temari had enough of putting up with being pushed around, because she pulled this insane move where she grabbed Shikamaru, threw him down, jumped up in the air and then rammed her fan into his stomach.

I thought she aimed lower and so I screamed, "BALL-CRUSHING JUTSU!" And Alex lost his shit, and I kept on screaming. "SHIKAMARI IS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN NOW!"

Then another time we brought along our other friends Dani and Sam. Just to clarify:

Dani and I are women.

Alex and Sam are men.

I'm only saying that because Erin, Dani, Alex, and Sam are ALL unisex names. We don't want a repeat of the Haku incident.

So, the Xbox controller for Sam cut out as he played Choji (his favourite character) and Dani proceeded to spam him with attacks as Deidara.

Sam didn't know that the controller's connection cut out, so he pulled a Samuel Jackson and yelled, "Chakra motherfucker, DO YOU USE IT?"

...And we all fell over laughing.

Another thing we do is this thing where we all use the most ridiculous costumes and fight and then give our brawls names.

Once we made Ino, Sakura, Hinata, Temari, and Tsunade all change to their swimsuit costumes and then had a "bust versus butt" battle. The one that was even better was when Alex fought as Pirate Naruto and I was Napoleon Sasuke.

I honestly wonder, how do they get these hilarious outfits? I know they're based off filler episodes, but how does a filler episode become this...random? Napoleon Sasuke? Seriously? Or even better, French Naruto.

Quickly though, why are there only swimsuit costumes for the women? Why can't I play as shirtless Neji? WHAT IS THIS MADNESS?

(Seriously, it's unfair. I want to play as my shirtless, non-existent husbands.)

I don't know, these are just random stupid things we do while we're gaming. I'm sorry. I don't think Erin's Adventures in Distractionland is going to make any more appearances in future chapters.

I hope this was long enough for you guys (and that people will PLEASE stop asking me to watch Naruto in the comment sections), and that you enjoyed it! There will be a separate chapter for Naruto Shippuden later, so until next time!

(For anyone wondering, there will be a bit of a review for Naruto Shippuden, but most of it will be dedicated to several lists: my favourite male and female characters, my least favourite male and female characters, my least favourite couples and my favourite couples, and the most heroic characters. I hope you look forward to these hilarious lists.)

For warnings, there is language, some sexual content, and an alright amount of blood. I think it was at a good level.

Vote if you think that Naruto has 99 problems and Sasuke is all of them.