What is Naruto? Why should I watch it?

[Desert Hare]

Well, meow, girls!

I am a girl woman. And I'm totally straight.

 

[Shalimar]

Naruto is based on the Manga Naruto, and that has shaped it a bit.

Naruto 1-133 are straight from the Manga
Naruto 134-300+ are fillers that gave the Manga time to get ahead of the anime since the anime tends to cover 1-2 manga chapters per episode. Except for the very last episode of the fillers which shows Naruto leaving the villiage with his master the fillers are unimportant and generally poorly done given that the guy who wrote the manga wasn't the guy who wrote those episodes.

Naruto Shippuden takes the story up again at the Manga after a 2.5 year time skip where Naruto and his master left the villiage to train. At this point the junior shinobi who are now 15 years old and experienced start to shoulder more responsibilites for the villiage. The Shippuden series tells more mature stories that deal with the death of mentor's and standing on your own two feet.

 

[Dog Moon]

How does Naruto have a gruffy voice? The voice of Naruto is played by a girl...

ANYWAY, IMO, what I would do is find the episodes that deal with the tournament that has been mentioned, watch those, and ignore everything else. Well, there is an awesome fight later on with Lee versus a Bone Dude where Lee is drunk [someone mixed his cider with ale! or something like that]. Might want to check that out as well.

Honestly though, as someone who has only just recently stopped watching, too much of Naruto is overextended fight scenes, too many flashbacks, and basically filled with side quests that are almost all exactly the same with very slight differences [Someone is in trouble and only Naruto can save them because they are treated very much Naruto as they are outcastes of their society or w/e].

But I still recommend watching the tournament. Was AWESOME.

 

[DonTadow]

How does Naruto have a gruffy voice? The voice of Naruto is played by a girl...

ANYWAY, IMO, what I would do is find the episodes that deal with the tournament that has been mentioned, watch those, and ignore everything else. Well, there is an awesome fight later on with Lee versus a Bone Dude where Lee is drunk [someone mixed his cider with ale! or something like that]. Might want to check that out as well.

Honestly though, as someone who has only just recently stopped watching, too much of Naruto is overextended fight scenes, too many flashbacks, and basically filled with side quests that are almost all exactly the same with very slight differences [Someone is in trouble and only Naruto can save them because they are treated very much Naruto as they are outcastes of their society or w/e].

But I still recommend watching the tournament. Was AWESOME.

Several of the best fights happen well after the tournament, particuarlly the fights between naruto and his rival saske and anything involving sand coffins. Again, Naruto more than often takes a back seat in many episodes to the other characters. The shows a martial arts show, so yeah you will have episode long fights. And because.. i'm betting you stpped after the first 2 or 3 seasons... their still developing the backstory of the characters, so thus the flashbacks (there were particuarlly a lot of flashbacks during thetournament because they were introducing about 14 new characters. That said the backstories often made the fights far more interesting than just throwing two people up there whom you do not know.

That said, after the show hits the filler episodes, some episodes are somewhat entertaining, just to see how ceratin characters are mastering their ninja skills. But when you tire of that its time to move on to Shippuden. LIke someone said, theres a time jump that continues the canon story.

 

[Dog Moon]

Several of the best fights happen well after the tournament, particuarlly the fights between naruto and his rival saske and anything involving sand coffins. Again, Naruto more than often takes a back seat in many episodes to the other characters. The shows a martial arts show, so yeah you will have episode long fights. And because.. i'm betting you stpped after the first 2 or 3 seasons... their still developing the backstory of the characters, so thus the flashbacks (there were particuarlly a lot of flashbacks during thetournament because they were introducing about 14 new characters. That said the backstories often made the fights far more interesting than just throwing two people up there whom you do not know.

That said, after the show hits the filler episodes, some episodes are somewhat entertaining, just to see how ceratin characters are mastering their ninja skills. But when you tire of that its time to move on to Shippuden. LIke someone said, theres a time jump that continues the canon story.

I don't recall what the last thing I saw was. I know Naruto was training again, it was after the fight with two more Akatsuki members where the immortal guy was trapped underground and Naruto finished off the other guy with cords in his body.

Now granted a couple of the fights against the Akatsuki members were interesting, and I did like the fight against the guy who was partnered with the Immortal dude who had four face masks with different elements, but overall, while so many of the characters are cool, the story seems somewhat bland to me. I feel that after the tournament, what I should have just done was skip to the episodes with cool fight scenes and ignore everything else.

And I agree that the backstories during the tournament were excellent and enjoyed them greatly, but that level of detail and story, imo, has been lacking recently.

 

[Relique du Madde]

How does Naruto have a gruffy voice? The voice of Naruto is played by a girl...

Maybe not "gruffy" more like gravelly.. The American vo's "I'm playing a teenage male so I must sound like I have a handful of pebbles stuck in my throat" is utterly annoying and quickly turned me off to the series.

And yeah, I only seen a few episodes and my description was also based on what I heard from people who I talked with who watches the show.

 

[Pbartender]

DH...

I'd recommend taking a look at your local library network, and see if they have a copy of the first season you can check out.

We also saw it on the shelf at the store, but checked it out through our library. We watched through the end of the second season, but both us and our 9-10 year old kids were getting bored with it, and we stopped there.

Instead, we've begun watched Avatar.

 

[Dog Moon]

Maybe not "gruffy" more like gravelly.. The American vo's "I'm playing a teenage male so I must sound like I have a handful of pebbles stuck in my throat" is utterly annoying and quickly turned me off to the series.

And yeah, I only seen a few episodes and my description was also based on what I heard from people who I talked with who watches the show.

Oooooooh, the american version. Man, I can't stand the american voices. Friend and I watched about 5 minutes of the american version and couldn't stop laughing for like half an hour. Japanese voices sound MUCH better.

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Oooooooh, the american version. Man, I can't stand the american voices. Friend and I watched about 5 minutes of the american version and couldn't stop laughing for like half an hour. Japanese voices sound MUCH better.

I agree there, having watched fansubs way back before it was liscened in the us, i couldn't help but cringe at the good awful english version.

I was ssoooo happy the same problem didn't occur with bleach.

 

[Kunimatyu]

Instead, we've begun Avatar.

This. Similar themes, superior in nearly every respect.