Naruto, in 2020

By Thomas Diefenbach

We’ve started this website during the great Covid quarantine of 2020, which means we here at Geeks in Toto have had a lot of time on our hands, So much time… and as such we’ve been binge watching everything that we can get our grubby little hands on, and as such i personally spent a good chunk of time re-watching one of my favourite childhood anime’s, Naruto, and with the English dub finally coming to an end in late 2019, it seems like a good time as any to look back, so, let’s see how it holds up nearly 20 years after its initial release in 2002.

I went into the experience of re-watching Naruto with bountiful glee, remembering it to be one of my favourite shows, and don’t get me wrong, it still is.. but… well, let’s just say there’s more than a few reasons that when browsing online forums most of the positive reviews come from people relatively new to the genre.

Naruto is the story of a group of young ninja (shinobi) of the village hidden in the leaf, and there exploits as they grow and mature in an unpredictable and hate filled world of war.. ok, good start, but it quickly devolves into a series of tropes and clichés, there’s the broody anti-hero, the use-less female character, and the overactive, knuckleheaded, aye! main character with a dark inner power. But then, as the series goes on I started to realise, that what really made me love this show, was the fantastic cast of supporting characters, you have Rock Lee, who despite lacking the abilities that make a shinobi he still strives to be strong, and gets one of the most badass fights in the series, during the Chunin exams against Gaara. Theres Neji, who’s destined to be locked in servitude through a curse that’s forced upon his family, but he finds his resolve to break that curse and hold his destiny in his own hands. There’s the mysterious Itatchi, a man who murdered his entire family and went rogue, but is later revealed to be one of the greatest hero’s of all, and the list just keeps going.

On top of this there’s Orochimaru, arguable the main villain of the original Naruto series, every time he shows up things seem to switch up a gear, and things can take some really dark turns. The first time he turns up for example is to attack the village, which he does by essentially resurrecting two of the previous Hokage (the village leader) and using them to kill their pupil and friend, the current Hokage, woah… and it’s also revealed that he killed the Kazekage, the leader of another village. And suddenly things don’t seem so silly and kid friendly, suddenly everything for our young shinobi become very real and death, war and betrayal start to surround them.

On top of this the animation in parts can be truly spectacular, some of the fights are beautiful to watch even over a decade on, and some moments are truly heart wrenching, such as the battle at final valley, or a moment that really hit home for me, when Choji battles Jirobo. Now, this may not have been as memorable for everyone as it was for me. The fights narrative is Jirobo trying to break Choji’s spirit, talking him down as the unpopular friend who’s always first to be left behind. As someone who was often excluded from social events, or spent his youth feeling like a third wheel in their friends group… this really struck home… and was one of the first times that a show really affected me, and made me feel that I wasn’t the only person that had feelings like this.

As the story goes on our stereotypical characters start to change, our brooding antihero has become possessed by rage to the point he is willing to abandon and destroy everything he loves in his quest for revenge, our useless female lead has recognised her weakness, and resolved to become strong, and not have to rely on the friends around her, and our knuckleheaded protagonist? Well? He’s still kind of the same, but know he’s starting to realise just how messed up the world he lives in is.

Now, don’t get me wrong, despite the series somewhat breaking these stereotypes, there’s still plenty wrong with the Naruto anime, for example all these breaks in traditional stereotypes start to happen very late in the series, I’d say there are at least 130 episodes before the initial relationships really start to evolve at all and that’s not good news considering maybe the biggest complaint that people have with Naruto as a whole, is filler, there’s 220 episodes in Naruto, 90 of which are filler… That’s 41% FORTY ONE PERCENT… and while some of these are fun side romps, there’s very few that actually build the characters in any meaningful way.

On top of this the shows pacing struggles as often brilliant fights are broken up by an excessive number of flashbacks, often from minor characters that they have tried to make feel more important than they actually are, while this has instances of being used effectively, such as with Haku in the Land of Waves arc, the reliance upon this trope gets old, FAST.

Overall, Naruto is well worth a watch, it deals with a huge variety of issues and emotions that people deal with while they are growing up, with a huge cast of deep characters to fall in love with, all set in a world that seems to grow darker and colder as the series continues, with themes that can be truly twisted in hindsight, such as when Sasuke was forced to relive the night his brother butchered his entire clan, including his parents, or when its revealed the Uchiha eventually need to steal the eyes of their kin to get stronger, or, just the entirety of Gaara’s back story, just… why? But these twists and turns keep you drawn in, wanting to know what happens next, oh, it’s more filler…

If I can just make one suggestion before you do run out and start binging.. maybe get a list of filler episode so you can skip straight over them… because really… they add nothing. ENJOY!