Anime Review: Naruto

So today I decided to take on a behemoth of an anime as far as popularity and mainstream attention. I'm talking about The Pokemon or Dragonball Z of the current (pre-teen) generation: Naruto. Naruto is a young boy from the ninja village of Konoha and plans to one day become the Hokage, or strongest ninja in the entire clan. The only thing stopping him is that he is a complete misfit and moron to boot. The one thing that he really has going for him is kind of a double-edged sword. He has incredible hidden powers inside him that allows him to become unimaginably powerful. The downside is that the powers come from a demon sealed away inside of him. So while he can use the demons powers to gain strength, every time he does, the power ends up taking its toll on his body. If that wasn’t enough, his entire village (save a few) hates him because they are afraid that the demon inside him might one day be released.

Ok so now that we got that out of the way, what about the anime itself? So here is where Naruto succeeds:

The Fighting: Excellent.
The Characters: Wonderful.
The Drama: Great.

Now here’s where Naruto runs into problems...

The Plot: Too much filler! At the beginning of the series, the show does a pretty good job of moving the plot forward and still taking the time to explain the rules and principles of the world. Once you get past the 3rd story arc though, you are in for some major trouble. It’s absolutely nothing but filler for the remainder of the series; little stupid stories about a cooking competition, or training chibi-ninja and causing mayhem the whole way. Eventually the series finishes off with a strong lead up to the follow up series, but after at least 125 episodes of nonsense, you really wonder if it is worth wasting time over.

The Voice Acting: In most animes, the Japanese voice acting is better than the American voice acting. But in the case of Naruto, the American voice acting doesn’t even compare. Naruto’s voice is whiny and obnoxious. While Naruto says in Japanese “dattebayo” which really doesn’t have much mean other than “fo sho” or “fo real”, the American version has him saying “Believe it!” after every sentence. I believe if I hear that phrase ever again I will probably kick that person’s ass…

So with all that, what is my verdict you say? Well, surprisingly the good generally outweighs the bad. This is the carefree, but serious action anime I’ve been looking for to fill the DBZ gap. Also the follow up series does a great job of fixing a lot of the problems from this one. But that’s another review for later…