Naruto...

[Maj]

So, without giving away too many spoilers about the series (I'm only about a third of the way through it)...

Does Sakura ever get cool or is she just some mostly-no-talent kunoichi for the remainder of the show?

[Crissa]

Sakura is the only one of her class that manages to know what the heck is going on.

...But no, I think her position in the group is 'responsible one'.

-Crissa

[erik]

She does get stronger. I would say that she does some significant ninja-ass-kicking on her own in the second part of the series.

The cartoon has not caught up with this stuff yet however. Thank god the fillers are almost done.

[User3]

Women under the age of 50 never do anything important in Naruto, get over it.

Just be happy that Naruto is, believe it or not, more egalitarian than pretty much any anime out there. Only white people though. Heh.

[erik]

I take it you haven't read the manga then.

[Cielingcat]

1170509077[/unixtime]]Women under the age of 50 never do anything important in Naruto, get over it.

Just be happy that Naruto is, believe it or not, more egalitarian than pretty much any anime out there. Only white people though. Heh.

Is there any anime that has actual asian people in it?

[Maj]

Women under the age of 50 never do anything important in Naruto, get over it.

I don't care if the women under 50 do anything important. I'd just like them to do something.

[Judging__Eagle]

1170541019[/unixtime]]

1170509077[/unixtime]]Women under the age of 50 never do anything important in Naruto, get over it.

Just be happy that Naruto is, believe it or not, more egalitarian than pretty much any anime out there. Only white people though. Heh.

Is there any anime that has actual asian people in it?

Initial D and some of Golden Boy.

Initial D also has the distintion of being one of the few series to include lips as facial features on characters.

Also, it's everything that Fast and the Furious should have been.

[User3]

don't care if the women under 50 do anything important. I'd just like them to do something.

They don't, I'm serious. If you think the first part is bad, the second gets worse.

In Sakura's big debut fight the big, badass villain... literally gives up.

Ino literally stands around doing nothing in her fight scene, waiting for the big strong boys to do all of the work.

And... that's the only part of the story the second part gives any girls under 50. Oh, some shots of Kurenai attending to her garden.


I bet cookies that Naruto is going to take on the more ridiculous elements of later Dragonball. You know, the interesting character dynamics of the first half being completely scuttled to show off the abilities of 2 or 3 main characters who eventually completely abandon tactics or creativity in favor of 'powering up with my HEART!!!' all of the time.

I'm going to calmly walk away from the series and hold onto the good memories. Oh, well, there's always Jojo. Mmmm, vampires with steamrollers and geokinetic doggies.

[User3]

*all drunk and bitter now*

I remember when Dragonball used to be fun! Yamcha was my favorite character back in the day! And Bulma actually used to do things!

Fuggin' Kamehameha... series went downhill after that.

[erik]

1170600541[/unixtime]]
In Sakura's big debut fight the big, badass villain... literally gives up.

That's a pretty weak interpretation of the villain not dodging the last attack at the end, especially since Sakura's ally notes that he was distracted. It is utterly ridiculous to say that Sakura was weak and/or did nothing in her big battle at the start of the second part of the series.

As a super medic ninja Sakura does some useful out of combat actions as well.

As for the series in whole, it seems like almost all the starting genin are getting more impressive. They aren't all equal, but they don't have to be. It seems like more and more they're moving towards tactics and away from "powering up my heart" crap. Could be because Shikamaru is a big feature and he is all about tactics after all.


More evidence that it isn't just Naruto being all-powerful is shown by tallying who is credited with killing Akatsuki members (a very bad-ass feat).

1 (Sasori): Sakura and Chiyo-Baaa
2 (Hidan): Shikamaru
3 (Kakuzu-prediction): Kakashi, Shikamaru, and Naruto (credit to each person who destroys a heart)

[edits: grammars]

[Nihlin]

1170541019[/unixtime]]Is there any anime that has actual asian people in it?

How about live-action Sailor Moon?

[User3]

That's a pretty weak interpretation of the villain not dodging the last attack at the end, especially since Sakura's ally notes that he was distracted. It is utterly ridiculous to say that

Sakura was weak and/or did nothing in her big battle at the start of the second part of the series.

If the reason why you won a battle was completely unrelated to your combat abilities, then yes, your combat abilities were mocked.

Sakura did not actually have anything in her toolbox to beat this guy so the writer took pity on her and gave her a storyline-related way out. He wasn't even close to using his full

potential yet.

As for the series in whole, it seems like almost all the starting genin are getting more impressive. They aren't all equal, but they don't have to be. It seems like more and more

they're moving towards tactics and away from "powering up my heart" crap. Could be because Shikamaru is a big feature and he is all about tactics after all.

Uh, yeah, that's not true.

In Part 2, instances of characters randomly powering up.

Sasuke developing telepathy, among which he can control bijuu.
Yamato and Kakashi suddenly being able to use water jutsu without a pre-existing source of water--I remember when it was a big deal that Kisame and the Second Hokage were able to do

this.
Kakashi developing the goddamn Mangekyou Sharingan.
Naruto developing a training method that will let him learn any jutsu in 1/1000th of the time.

Also, while there are instances in Naruto where characters develop Scooby-Doo plans to defeat foes... these moments are actually few and far between if you total up all of the action

sequences. People in Naruto usually beat people by overpowering other people. Or they end up getting rescued by someone who can overpower their enemy.

In fact, I'll tell you what. For every combat that was resolved by a Scooby Doo plan, I'll name two that was solved by random powering up. I'll win.

...

This is, of course, not even getting into the questionable moral undercurrent of the show. I'm talking Mage: The Ascension levels of amorality. I'll be happy to destroy anyone's

orthodoxy on command. I love spreading hatred and discontent.

More evidence that it isn't just Naruto being all-powerful is shown by tallying who is credited with killing Akatsuki members (a very bad-ass feat).

It's not badass at all when you consider two of the defeated members.

We already went over Sasori.

Hidan... unless he pulls some sort of One Piece weird superpower out of his ass, he was and is a complete joke. He doesn't die, even from decapitation, but he can be physically

immobilized by dismemberment or even basic jutsu. And... if he stays in one place after drawing some of your blood and sampling it, he can reflect damage on you. That's all of the special

techniques he's used so far. I mean, Jesus, he's a taijutsu expert but Shikamaru (who I might add has one of the lowest taijutsu scores in the databooks for his peer group) can reliably hit

him. Hidan compares unfavorably to low-tier ninja like Zabusa and Tayuya. Defeating him isn't exactly a braggable accomplishment.

The only Akatsuki members that put up a fight and were defeated had most of the work done by... Kakashi and Naruto. And Kakuzu is keeping that streak alive. Whoo.

Kishimoto doesn't like for girls to do anything really important. That's 'okay', it's not like that's unusual among shonen authors.

[MrWaeseL]

Is Naruto that japanese cartoon where the main character can turn into a girl?

[Judging__Eagle]

1171019576[/unixtime]]Is Naruto that japanese cartoon where the main character can turn into a girl?

Sort of.

He doesn't actually become a girl, he just looks like one that is actually in her her early 20's and looks sort of like him, but hot and a girl.

It's a tactic that he uses; think of it like a different version of the Sleep spell, that only works on perverted guys?

He gets very early on the: "couple dozen normal punches attack" though.

[PhoneLobster]

I think Mr Weasel is thinking of Ranma, and unlike Naruto its actually worth watching.

[Maj]

Naruto's not worth watching?

Why?

[PhoneLobster]

Its flat, lifeless, mechanical, dull, purile, repetitive, shallow, vacuous, I could go on just like that but...

I got more respect for DBZ fans, at least it has the excuse from originating some time in the stone age.

I found more entertainment value in series one of Pokemon, THAT is how bad Naruto is.

I have utterly no comprehension why anyone ever could watch this beyond the point where it became clear it was about nothing, going nowhere and contained utterly no characters with any actual character.

Edit: and that point comes REALLY early on.

Edit Edit: Oh yeah, and I hate the way it looks. Not a fan of the character design, costume design or general look of it.

[Ramnza]

I'm a Ranma fan myself. But my sisters are crazy for Naruto.

It's cute. Far better than Pokemon could ever hope to be. But I'm not even close to finishing the filler episodes.

I thought Naruto could turn into a girl. Didn't he have a jitsu name for it and was hilarious?

[Judging__Eagle]

Well, he looks like a girl, but it's meant to be a 'distraction' attack more than anything else.

The dumb thing is that he doesn't initially know how or why his technique works on perverted guys.

[Username17]

1171086094[/unixtime]]I'm a Ranma fan myself. But my sisters are crazy for Naruto.

It's cute. Far better than Pokemon could ever hope to be.

Not a chance. Pokemon has a much more developed world and their comedy is way more funny. Naruto has drama at all, but Pokemon blows Naruto away when they are both trying to be funny.

Also, Pokemon has better fight sequences that are over in a reasonable amount of time.

-Username17

[Ramnza]

Funky,little, potentially cute animals fly out of pods that children collect to battle with is far more entartaining than a complex fantasy martial art system?

If we're going to discuss the quality of animation, Naruto wins. The fight sequences are long, sure, but not long when compared to DBZ. I mean pokemon was meant for little kids, it's predictable...Pichau is going to go carnival freak crazy with his lightening, occasionally Ash will have to use some other pokemon and they'll be a character development episode and Ash will learn some warm and fuzzy life lesson and the afterschool special cycle will continue another day.

Really.

[technomancer]

Just because something is predictable, that doesn't make it not entertaining. Look at the Scary Movie line and the recent Epic Movie. Not only is it predictable, you've probably already seen what it's based on! The fact that they use those cliches on purpose has no bearing on the entertainment value.

I am a huge fan a Naruto, but I also liked Pokemon. I would say I'm a bigger fan of Naruto, though. Although, after playing the gameboy games of Pokemon, I wonder why ash never bother to just hang out in the forest and trash the wild pokemon left and right to level up his monsters.

[Ramnza]

You bring up an excellent point. Formula entertainment can be interesting. If you watch any of the popular primetime TV shows, you're watching formula. I just think Naruto beats Pokemon in terms of entertainment value.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

I thought that anything potentaly funny about Ranma 1/2 was spoiled by characters that were uniformly unlikeable. I read the first two an a half graphic novels and as I recall, the only characters who didn't go out of their way to be assholes to as many people around them as possible were more or less nonentities unimportant to anything at all.

Okay that's an exaggeration. The main characters were actively assholes, The secondary characters were often passive assholes who were assholes to whomever it was convienent to be an asshole to at the time (The fact that this was often a result of main character's more active asshattery is irrelevant to me).

But still, when I heard that it never gets better, and instead winds up turning into people using dirty tricks and passive agression to convince their given (and practically random) would be signifigant other to ignore their horrible personalities (Or that other peoples personalities were worse), I decided I didn't need to waste any more energy on that series.

-Desdan