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REVIEW: Naruto GN 42-44

Josh7289 wrote:

Yep, for sure, Naruto is my favorite manga, and one of the best stories I've ever experienced. Kishimoto is a true genius.

Are you serious?

No, I am not mocking you or anything, it's just that from my experience on most sites on the internet, it is very rare to find anyone who is more than mildly appreciative of the series as a whole. So your comments, with their extreme praise, caught me off guard.

...a bizarrely hip-talking Eight Tails.

vashfanatic wrote:

littlegreenwolf wrote: vashfanatic wrote: It's Naruto that's ruined Narutofor me. He's the worst character in the whole series, and the fact that right after spoiler[Kakashi, my favorite character, is KILLED] we just cut back to Naruto training with frogs (seriously?) so he can yet again power-up miraculously...like I said, I'm bitter. Once you've stopped liking the main character, there's no point in continuing a series. I'm hoping this "power up" is the last one we're going to get, but it was necessary to get him to Jiraiya's level. He had to get to his sensei's level at some point, and this is a shonen series. But to each their own, I'm still loving Naruto, and he's really starting to mature... as much as Naruto can mature. But on spoiler[Kakashi, it's not confirmed yet he's dead. It's insinuated, but I have my fingers crossed.] My friends who've read further on in the manga online say that it's been confirmed.

Well, they made a mistake. In fact, it was left deliberately vague in a summery before a fairly recent chapter, spoiler[which described some of the events leading up and during the whole Pain fight, and confirmed the death of one character, but listed Kakashi as "out of chakra" rather than dead or alive.]

Most folks wont read a manga this long from its inception to its climax. Why? Because that will take many, many years. It's already been 10 years and Naruto may only be halfway by some predictions.

Funny that you end on the note you did, because this is the beginning of the part of the manga that made me quit in disgust over some of the plot decisions Kishimoto made. Once he started killing off the best characters and spoiler[retconning Itachi into a hero], I basically said, "Screw this, I have better things to read." Which stinks, because I'd liked part 2 so much more than part 1 until this point.

Clearly out of no where? I don't think so. Fangirls have been latching onto all these little "hints" for years now that Itachi isn't as "evil" as we've been led on to believe. The childhood flashbacks of Itachi we got early on, outside of the massacre, were always rather loving. It didn't make SENSE, and we were obviously missing a giant piece of the puzzle. Itachi didn't just snap one day and decide to kill his whole clan for nothing and just leave his little brother alive. Kishimoto has throughout the series showed a rather good understanding of psychology, and to have a character just killing to kill would have made the character not on par with the rest of the series.

Shonen manga usually suffers from lack of depth to their villains. You have some big bad psychopathic bad guy the hero has to go up against, and all he (the villain) wants is to kill, or gather power of some kind. It's a shallow plot device used to death in fighting manga, but Kishimoto is brilliant because he gives humanity to a lot of his "villians" so much in fact that at times you don't even know if he's evil or not anymore. Garaa is a perfect example of this, and now Itachi has joined the ranks making him for a while one of the most complex characters in the series. Kishimoto gave humanity to the monster, and it only made the story even better. It doesn't justify his actions, but it explains them.

Naruto is really the only manga I'm left reading at the moment with the occasional one shot volume here and there, and I'm a huge reader, particularly in the fantasy genre. Naruto gives me everything I could want in a fantasy story, and more: Classic archetypes, twists, backstabbing, a slight touch of romance, and a large variety of characters, all great ingredients for a great story. Plus, again, it’s EPIC. Kishimoto has weaved a modern heroic tale in the vein of old mythology highlighting the best and worst of humanity.

]But like I mentioned earlier, which is also the reason I think Naruto is so successful is Kishimoto’s use of psychology. He’s used it so well to give all his characters depth and character development that I sort of think of Naruto as shonen manga’s answer to Fruits Basket. He has developed an insanely huge cast, and yet has somehow managed to make each and every one of them so interesting to the point that I really don’t care when it veers off from Naruto or Sasuke, and that when one of the supporting side characters suddenly get a chapter that progresses that character’s development that suddenly I find myself so touched by what we’ve just learned that I have new favorite character. To say the characters are shallow shows that either you haven't been paying attention, or just haven't gotten to the chapters that focus on the character.

Yep, here’s another person not afraid to call Kishimoto a genius. The current story is absolutely brilliant in my opinion, and now is getting even more interesting with pulling philosophy into the limelight while also not pulling the punches on several characters. Naruto has had its low points,(I consider the Chuunin arc as the lowest point in the series), but Naruto in my opinion is currently in its prime at and I find myself eagerly awaiting the Thursdays/Fridays when the next chapter is released.

Poor renditions of the 'sympathetic antagonist' cliche.

Rerouni Kenshin, Hunter x Hunter, Yu Yu Hakusho etc. Many shonen have done this. And have done it much better. Hell, even Mr. Freeze form Batman the animated series, who is a tragic figure cliche as well was done better than any tragic figure that Kishi had put out on his table .

.........Convoluted twists, incoherent play on tired archetypes, overuse of a dying characterization. Poorly handled emotion conveying is considered the 'Highlighting of the worst of Humanity and good of Humanity'?

What? Why you prasing a sudden, poorly constructed, development through dangled side-characters that will never have a true purpose in the story again. A poorly portrayed debacle that should have been protrayed of the course of the story? Its Kishi's attempt to add artificial emotion to a plain lifeless attack on a fictional village.

Philosophy? That cliched. Preachy, Philosophy, that can't hold any weight without the exaggerated, repetitious bears of angst. Many shounen has done this philosophical stuff before, and without feeling too preachy. Pain is a metaphor for how bad part two is.

The chunin exams is the highest point in Naruto. It represented Naruto. At least its ideal vision. A decent character drama with semi realism within the frame of its world. Political intrigue was smartly tact on, execution was done masterfully, sense of of theme within its self, sense of of a bigger plot. Themes utilized and expressed through side- characters.

This was rated higher than Haruhi Suzumiya novel 1 and Death Note vol 12? Wow, ANN needs new reviewers.

population_tire wrote:

This was rated higher than Haruhi Suzumiya novel 1 and Death Note vol 12? Wow, ANN needs new reviewers.

I think we need new forum users, personally.

population_tire wrote:

This was rated higher than Haruhi Suzumiya novel 1 and Death Note vol 12? Wow, ANN needs new reviewers.

I think we need new forum users, personally.