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REVIEW: Naruto GN 42-44

Im assuming you mean in your opinion Kishimoto did a poor job of pulling off the "sympathetic antagonist“, not really something I'd call Itachi to begin with. I thought I did a good job explaining why I thought Kishimoto did a good job with Itachi, maybe you should explain why you think his attempt was a "poor rendition". At least go into more detail so I can see where you're coming from.

First I said usually, and if we must, sure, make a new thread so we can dissect each and every bad guy personality in popular shonen manga. Bleach in particular was what I was thinking of when I made that statement, and it's what made me finally stop reading a manga I started out loving. Just listing a random series title doesn’t help with your point much unless you get specific in detail because those comics never held my attention enough to apparently understand what characters you mean. Please explain WHY those series did a better job, just don’t state your opinion without backing it up. It's just polite seeing I already did so.

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.

Second: Batman the animated series wasn’t an anime, and it’s one of the few American cartoons that had fantastic writers backing it up, so of course Mr. Freeze was brilliant. Saying "heck, even that Batman cartoon did better" doesn't do much for me when I happen to think that Batman Cartoon is one of the best animated series ever to hit television, American or worldwide.

Heart of Ice, the episode Mr. Freeze's character revamp was introduced into the new series under won an Emmy for Christ’s sake. I still get chills whenever I watch the episode, but saying that, I still got chills with the final revelations concerning Itachi and his showdown with Sasuke.

Oi, I don't even know where to start here. I’m not quite sure what you mean by “dying characterization”, and I think “convoluted twists” is sort a redundant statement that could also work as a compliment in Naruto’s case, but I don’t think you were complimenting it. So please go into what you were trying to express more to make yourself better understood. And I'm sorry, but I have yet to see anything
"incoherent" on Kishimoto's use of archetypes, and the fact that up til now you continued to call them cliche'...

Humanity hasn't tired of archetypes in their stories since the dawn of humanity, and I don't think they're going to tire of it in the next couple days. Every character in pretty much any story you come up with can be linked to an archetype. Archetypes are not just a tool used by storytellers, archetypes are a necessity to a storytelling.

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'?

Besides that, what concerning emotion was poorly handled by Kishimoto? And you misunderstood me. While emotions do play a major role in bringing out the "humanity" aspect of Naruto, it's not just emotions I meant. It's the topics and themes Kishimoto picks, and the relationships the characters have with each other.[/b

Well, let’s see. I’m praising it obviously because unlike you I don’t see poorly constructed development, nor do I see these characters never having a “true” purpose in the story again. The characters I had in mind when I made that statement are pretty much the Rookie 9, their sensei, as well as Jiraiya and Tsunade. Kishimoto hasn’t just introduced one and then thrown them away never to been seen again, they interact and help out Naruto often, and also help progress the story.

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

Besides that… “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.” - …What? Again, you’re confusing me with what you’re trying to convey. Please, some of us have been exposed to English for a while, but your use of the language is apparently a level I have yet to encounter, and it’s just baffling me. For us not of similar minds, maybe you can use layman’s terms? I understand how your question has a connection to what I said in that paragraph, but you lost me after that. Something about how Kishimoto portrayed an attack on Konoha… and it being a fictional village which we’re all aware of ... that’s all I got.

Philosophy is cliché’ now too is it? Gods now, don’t I absolutely HATE being connected to or interested in anything so commonplace! Let me go inform my philosophy professor the news so that he can go and find another job, and then we can all just… live the moment and not contemplate on anything, or think about the cause of actions. That sounds like a gleefully unexciting, boring, safe, unquestioning existence. Oh boy, I can’t wait.

And I'm not saying philosophy in comics is a unique concept with Naruto. Far from it. For me to LIKE a comic usually implies it's heavy in philosophy. I love comics that make you think and make parallels to real life, and Naruto has philosophy dripping from it's imaginary pores while it parades itself as a comic for children. Sure, you have the obvious points of it with Pain, like you mentioned, with the typical ethics, and it does seem a bit preachy at times, but I've never been one to skirt from someone trying to teach me something. Even so, what I like on top of that is that is Kishimoto has also been infusing Buddhist philosophy from volume 1, as well as elemental and natural balance, especially as of lately with the frogs

[b]And here I thought you said the side-characters were all pointless and useless? Aren't you contradicting yourself?

Anyway, all I got out of the Chunin exams was one mindless fight after another. It was dull, boring, with no story really to help support it, and really bugged the patience of one reading the comic for story instead of OMFG awesome fight scenes between pre-teen ninjas. Semi-realism? In the Forest of Death with curse marks and a boring as hell tournament? But oh, putting in a plot to kill the Hokage makes it all better[/b]!

Quote:

Yet Akatsuki, the Ninja wars, and the current attack on Konoha don’t speak of realism and politics?

Please. There’s politics in most every story line that has popped up in Naruto. These are little villages going up against other little villages, with secret organizations out to to interfere with these little village wars. It is all politics. Try looking at the other arcs of Naruto with as much of an attempt you made with the Chuunin arc and maybe you’d surprise yourself with what you missed by not paying attention

No real plot to support it?
Orochimaru's conspiracy to kill the hokage? Destroy the leaf? The subplot with Gaara? Mystery around subplot around Kabuto?

Why would I care about a hack organization run by a unconvincing,laughable villain with a lame unconvincing pathos. Which was supposed to be a strong organization but got turned into a disappointing



[/b]

I disagree with the review.

The manga has essentially been twisted, imo, to focus entirely on Konoha and the Uchiha clan. Part one was about Orochimaru trying to get the sharingan and avenging Konoha, and Part 2 was for a while about an awesome guy Pain trying to get the Kyuubi. But then with Madara's appearance the story reverted to being about exactly the same thing as part 1. Some mofo from Konoha who's pissed off and wants Sasuke and some shit about sharingan.

Ganryu wrote:

I disagree with the review. The manga has essentially been twisted, imo, to focus entirely on Konoha and the Uchiha clan. Part one was about Orochimaru trying to get the sharingan and avenging Konoha, and Part 2 was for a while about an awesome guy Pain trying to get the Kyuubi. But then with Madara's appearance the story reverted to being about exactly the same thing as part 1. Some mofo from Konoha who's pissed off and wants Sasuke and some shit about sharingan.

I wouldn't say I agree with that: the manga has always focused heavily on Konoha and the Sharingan/Uchihas, not just in part one, but part two as well. You yourself admit that it was a big focus for part one, so I'll mainly talk about part two now.

In part two, Pain was for the most part just a shadowy figure leading Akatasuki, his identity unknown and even his name unknown. His goal was a fairly generic one, or so it seemed at first, and it wasn't even revealed until a fair ways into part two. And while Pain was later developed more, the scene with Madara Uchiha giving him orders occured before that, so one should have been able to guess that Madara was heavily involved. Heck, Madara Uchiha made his appearance in the first chapter after we even found out Pain's name!

EXACTLY.

The story starts off being about a villain who's focused on the Uchiha and Konoha. Then we get the timeskip while being aware that SOMEONE has to be leading Akatsuki. Then we learn that the AL is someone entirely new. This means we now have a villain who likely has NOTHING to do with Konoha, Sharingan and Uchiha...

And then we learn that he's just a figurehead and everything is back to square one: Konoha and Uchiha.

That's just an idiotic twist.

Regarding One-Piece's relative lack of popularity in the US, I think a couple things may have hurt it.

One, it's artstyle definitely takes some getting used to. It turned me off of the series initially, even though now I love it.

Two, I imagine a successful anime run can help fuel the popularity of a series. The run dubbed Naruto had on CN may have had some issues, especially in the early episodes, but it was still a competent production that I enjoyed, and that helped fuel my interest in anime in general. One Piece's run in the 4kids days... well, I can't imagine that being very popular.


Back on topic, this is definitely an interesting series of chapters for Naruto. Some people hate it, and I have to admit that I didn't like some parts of it: I wasn't a big fan of the Jiraiya/Pain fight, for whatever reason. But I love Madara Uchiha as a villian now after his more complete reveal and his talk with Sasuke.

I'm assuming that you're saying all this in response to the people that say Naruto is this generation's DBZ? Well, it pretty much is. In America at least. I guess another way of putting it is "what is this generation's gateway drug?"

When people say that statement, they don't try to compare it on a global level, they compare to other anime/manga franchises and how well they perform in the U.S, and what's the series that most of the new generation of fans are being introduced by today.

Seeing as how it's consistenly been the 2nd best-selling anime and the best-selling manga for a while now and it's the franchise that's getting the most exposure nowadays over many types of media, then I'd say that it's fairly accurate.

..and what's the series that most of the new generation of fans are being introduced by today.

DBZ landed the #1 TV show...