#naruto crit

[evilkitten3]

the thing that pisses me off about the sasuke retrieval arc is. there was no reason whatsoever for tenten not to be there. not in-universe and not from a meta perspective. it makes zero sense to leave her out and it makes shikamaru look like an idiot

[bug-the-chicken-nug]

god it feels like kishimoto didn’t really think itachi and the massacre through from the beginning and it really fucks with some of the character interactions because we got kakashi saying shit like this in an early chapter to motivate sasuke to tree-climb:

meanwhile the anime subs have him straight up word it like “the uchiha clan isn’t that great”, which has less of a sarcastic vibe but feels even worse in other ways. and i know part 1 naruto definitely made some insensitive and uncalled for quips regarding uchiha too, and that ALSO pisses me off, but at least in his case it comes off as like half because he’s an insecure little brat and the point of the story is that he needs to grow up if he wants to achieve his goals. kakashi doesn’t have that excuse at all, so he just comes off as an outright bastard for throwing the clan in sasuke’s face like that just to try and be “motivating”.  especially when this is a part of the story where Sasuke recently helped SAVE HIS LIFE and the thanks he gets is his teacher deciding to say shit like this to him. its even worse because you’re later told that sasuke really does deal with like a lifelong inferiority complex regarding itachi as it is, so that’s just heaping even more insensitivity on this comment. i don’t even dislike kakashi overall, but bro.  BRO.  you can’t really say shit like this and then have the nerve to act surprised when sasuke leaves your punk ass behind.

[pinepickled-narutoblog]

Every day I think about Naruto and how the writing was so fucked up and the story that COULD HAVE BEEN AND I

[blue-likethebird]

Homoerotic subtext or the refusal to give female characters a big enough role in the story to make their relationships with other characters feel genuine?

Find out next time on Naruto

[bug-the-chicken-nug]

not sure about the temperature of this take, but rasengan is honestly real boring and honestly kishimoto tried too hard to make it ‘special’. like right out the gate you get ‘oooo but naruto it’s the FOURTH HOKAGE’S speshul technique’ to not only hype naruto’s motivation up but like. immediately try to force the audience to feel more emotionally invested too. like it especially kills me when people are talking it up big as “ultimate expression of shape transformation” like..... it ain’t that deep. i’m not that impressed.  i saw the training arc but i’m just Not That Impressed, all that effort seemed really excessive just to try and justify how A Ball is so strong, somehow took three years to invent, and deserves to be spammed in every fight from then on. you really forced A Compressed Spinny Ball to be this powerful and special?  really? when the mc STARTS OUT learning how to somehow perfectly make shittons of shadow clones after like a few hours of practice by himself?  i get that they explain he wastes a lot of chakra when he does the clones but why is that the only other consequence to him when other shit is Sooo Hard, apparently?  like his shitty control somehow doesn’t affect the quality of those at all? and then you have to culminate the proof of how “special” Spinny Snooze Ball is in its introductory arc by forcing a dumb situation where your twelve year old’s gotta save a fucking SANNIN from some deeply annoying twenty year old nerd-bully who still manages to have too much plot armor despite losing this fight.  god. not to mention how i feel like nature transformation is only even so “hard” in the first place meta-wise because kishimoto probably realized it wasn’t a good look to wait until a good bit into shippuden to finally be like “oh damn i never bothered to like, Explain how nature transformations work beyond the fact that they Exist” so he had to make it over-the-top difficult and say The Ball is “incomplete” to force you to accept “oh, it made sense to wait this long, and Naruto is so cool and special for making this same Snooze Ball but with wind in it now, even though making a self-damaging kill technique when his actual main goal is bringing Sasuke back alive and without permanent injury seems really counter-intuitive, actually” like if all you have to do to find out what the nature is is apply a tiny bit of chakra to special paper then why doesn’t everyone learn about natures and shit in the academy?  why have them rely on their families and connections to learn such a huge variety of other shit, even beyond just the obvious things like their own clan’s techniques, creating a bunch of obvious inequalities right off the bat? why do we need tedious bullshit like how it apparently takes a normal person six months Just to learn how to split a single leaf with wind chakra? why is jiraiya such a hack that naruto’s only new technique beyond generally improved fighting capability after the timeskip is to just Make The Boring Ball But Bigger? like, sasuke learned the fireball in like a week with his dad only giving him like a basic explanation of it one time so even without the excessive six months crap, you wouldn’t really have to lose out on sasuke still being considered a genius if we just say that with persistent hard work and an actual good teacher, genin can usually learn one of the simpler elemental jutsu in their affinity after like a month or two, which still gives a sense of challenge but is less ridiculous already.

[bug-the-chicken-nug]

---criticism of jiraiya beyond this point, stop here if you don’t want to see it---

god i got to the part of naruto where jiraiya’s introduced and it takes everything i FUCKING have to not skip these episodes. this show INSTANTLY became so much less fun when he showed up. I hate that he’s probably gonna be recurring a bunch now. jiraiya’s pervert shit just ISN’T FUNNY, it’s genuinely so fucking creepy, especially whenever it’s aimed at naruto’s sexy jutsu transformation.  if this gets me branded a “sensitive sjw” or some shit i don’t even care, i was at least able to tolerate the perverted nonsense in naruto before this happened. on top of that, he basically makes naruto waste like three weeks out of the month he has to train, the only real benefits of that initial chunk of time being that jiraiya fixed naruto’s seal (which was an immediate benefit anyway) and whatever incidental improvement naruto made in stamina terms by continually pushing his chakra supply to the limit.  and he’s like, so frequently being mean to naruto throughout this process, calling him stupid and talentless and yelling at him??? and that’s also supposed to be “funny” but it’s just NOT.  Enough goddamn people have been mean to Naruto already, it just makes me want to fucking kick Jiraiya in his decrepit, shrivelled ballsack.  Dude, he’s a fucking child, it’s not his fault your training sucked when he was clearly trying his damnedest every day? and FINALLY, this technique isn’t even all that feasible for the chuunin exams, aka, the most relevant and pressing thing naruto is supposed to be training for.  Even if Naruto used it for that, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as narratively satisfying as him relying on his own strength.  I get that for the most part, Jiraiya wants him to access the Nine-Tails chakra through doing this stuff, but even so, I’d much rather Naruto actually learns how to do more with his own power first before he’s intentionally extracting power from a fucking demon that hates him. all in all, yes, I KNOW jiraiya’s supposed to get better and cooler and i KNOW he’s supposed to be really powerful and die at some point in shippuden and it’s supposed to be Real Sad or whatever, but for the time being i honestly hate him and find him difficult to watch.

[gritsandbrits]

And yes I know sakura is frustrating like REALLY frustrating but some of y'all act like she's worse than the gary stu who killed members of his own clan

[elle-lavender]

Naruto: Hinata and NaruHina

I know a lot of people have talked about this already, but I think we should have had more time devoted Naruto and Hinata's relationship. The plot often floundered towards the middle and end of of Shippuden. Frankly, I'm not even sure what the actual plot of Shippuden was half the time. 

Yes, Hinata's been watching him since they were kids and she was inspired by him, but more actual interaction between them would have been great. I am so happy they are together, but they seemed to be paired up in such a sudden, haphazard manner. I would have loved to have seen more of them fighting together, and Hinata inspiring Naruto in times he didn't feel strong. And a moment where they talked about their mothers after Naruto finally met his would have done so much for the character and the story as a whole. I mean, that would have been a moment of genuine emotion. Kishimoto could write moments of genuine emotion at times, and I wish he'd explored this relationship more in the manga, and not just dedicate a movie to them. Because he didn't develop it in a natural, organic manner. At all. 

 I would have liked way more time dedicated developing Team 8, in particular Hinata and Kurenai's relationship. Because seriously, all the father/son relationships got so much focus, but not the only mother/daughter relationship. Hinata only had her abusive father, and so having a supportive parental figure in her life is super important, but barely ever get to see that.

Also, we only learn about Hinata's sister after literally years of speculation in a two-part episode of Shippuden. Kishimoto established that Hinata's father was abusive and neglectful early on. A scene establishing that she had a better relationship with her sister, then fully exploring the complexities of that relationship earlier on, would have been much appreciated. 

There are many facets of the Naruto franchise that could have been paced better and fleshed out more. Because really; this series was brimming with untapped potential. These are just a few things I would liked to have seen explored more/improved on.