Naruto Shippuden

First off I just wanna say that I am super sad that this show has come to an end. Naruto was my childhood and with it's ending I feel like a part of me is now gone. This is the show that got me into anime and I'm grateful for that. This show is no where near perfect, but is anything really perfect ? I'll start out with some of the cons of this show. As many other reviews have already stated, Naruto is loaded with filler episodes and this can't be any more true. At times the fillers can befunny and interesting, but most of the time you are just impatiently waiting for the show to get back to the real story line. There were tons of flashbacks and honestly they show the same scenes from the past multiple times. The story can be rushed, and at other times it feels like it's been the same battle for like 5 episodes. The artwork in the battle scenes can vary from good to not so great. But even with it's many faults, I still gave this show a 10/10. ( honestly if you hate fillers that much, just skip around) I don't know where to start with all the great things that this anime has to offer. I'll start off with the characters. The character development was great for the main characters and even some of the sides characters. I think that the show did an excellent job in giving each character a unique personality and they really made sure that you knew all the characters and their backgrounds. The development of the characters was so great that I was constantly questioning who my favorite character really was. At the beginning I honestly thought that Naruto was annoying and ignorant, but the growth and development of Naruto really grew on me and he began to become one of my favorites. Okay next is the story line. The plot was pretty interesting, but very long. While it did seem like the story was at a standstill for a while in the show, the writers did a good job at subtly setting everything up. Little things that happened in random episodes sometimes came up later as being important. The plot was like a puzzle at times, where I would try to put the pieces together. I actually really enjoyed how they set it up like that. Like Naruto and his friends grew, the story grew as well. In this sense I mean the vibe and mood of the show. It starts off more as a fun action comedy, but as the story goes on, it gets more dark, emotional, and the maturity level of the anime just increases. I'm not kidding when I say that this show can actually teach you life lessons. I highly recommend watching this whole anime. Even though it is loaded with fillers, by the time you get to the last few episodes, you'll start to feel emotional and sad that it's come to an end. While this isn't Your Lie in April or Clannad, this show still will definitely hit the feels. The end will have you feeling nostalgic, sad, happy, you'll honestly be feeling so many different emotions. This anime may be 500 episodes, but it is totally worth it and in the end you won't regret it.

Oh, I hope that I’ll be the first to write the review when all the Naruto anime series end. Well, what should I start with… 15 years. For FIFTEEN years this anime brought me joy and unspeakable emotions. For FIFTEEN years it taught me right from wrong. For FIFTEEN years it … it’s been a guide of light for me. Jeez, I was raised on this anime, I became older with its characters, I just LOVE IT!!! The Naruto series started when I was in a preschool age, and for 15 years it never stopped to surprise me. Thoughthe journey was long (some might say too long) it was always exciting and brilliant. And I am really sorry if I get carried away by emotions, but true Naruto fans will understand – this is a tale, a unique and flawless tale, of nearly all of my life and now that I look back and see that little Naruto who used to be always alone, without parents, without friends, and I turn my look to who he became through these years – the Hero, who saved the world, Best Friend that was always there to help and to understand, and now – a husband… ah, I might cry. Seriously. Perfect ending. Naruto and Hinata deserve their piece of happiness. And though we did not see this in original manga series, I was really glad to be able to see that kind of and end in anime adaptation. Now let’s get back to the show and analyze everything peace by peace. I’ll start with the story. Indeed the plot, the fantastic world, all the jutsu techniques, all the creatures and characters, everything that we saw in Naruto and Naruto Shippuuden world is a creation of a mastermind – Kishimoto Masashi, and for that I bow to him to the ground. Just imagine how impossible it was to create such a wide universe with all of its own structure (villages, clans, fractions), its own history (all the clans and villages wars), its own beasts, beings and heroes etc; and how unimaginable was it to make this huge machine work. There is everything I love about the story and about how it is served to the viewer revealing its genius from all sides. It is groundbreaking in every way possible. Now let us head to art style. Generally it is satisfying. Well, it is hard to make every episode look like Kimi no Na Wa (you can consider this a recommendation), especially when you have more than 700 episodes (Naruto + Shippuuden). But I can praise creators for really good special effects and the way they’ve made all ninjutsu types look like. And though I must admit that Naruto movies absolutely compensate lack of original shows’ drawing it does not make the original run look worse. Unlike art styling – music really is the VERY strong side of the series. From top to bottom it is impeccable. Every opening, every ending, every song from the series is something breathtaking and mind blowing. I truly enjoy every track and I can sincerely call the Narutos’ OST one of the best of all time in anime industry. The openings like Hero’s Come Back (OP 1), Sign (OP 6), Toumei Datta Sekai (OP 7), Diver (OP 8), Shilhouette (OP 16) will fire you up and make your spirit riot; the endings like Shooting Star (ED 1), U can do it (ED 15), Dame Dame ga (ED 31), Spinning World (ED 32), Zetsu Zetsu (ED 40) will make you believe that you just witnessed a dream that you never want to end. I am not even mentioning stunning Hisou, Kikyou, Sengunbanba, Utsusemi tracks that appear at very exact lyrical moments and touch your soul in its deepest corners. The chorus tracks like Akatsuki and Pains’ theme songs make you feel goosebumps and your hair stand as you stare through the eyes of our heroes at fearless overwhelming enemy hordes. An incredible work by the composer – Yasuharu Takanashi. The characters. Oh, there is so much to say. This is something galaxy lvl. Nearly 100 characters, each with their own temper, beliefs and credo, each of them is trying to make an impact at the world they live in. I will always remember characters like Madara, Itachi, Nagato, because their own vision of the world and the steel will they’ve shown to everyone is something worth of admiration and respect. All the heroes are versatile, unique and incomparable to each other. I am not mentioning the number of skills and techniques each character possesses and how multiform and complex they are. Worth mentioning are beasts like Tailed once. They are that destructive force everyone is trying to lay their hands on, but the author shows that they are something more than that – they have souls and feelings, and no one can see their good hearts under the scary masks. The enjoyment that I personally got from this show is something outstanding. I enjoyed it to the core and absolutely adore it. Maybe that’s because I felt much the same as the main hero and ‘ve been a witness of many injustice things in this life, and the anime shows it very good. The human’s greed, the way we only think about our own sake, even the way kids treat someone who is not similar to them – it is a part of the masterpiece that Naruto is. Colossal work by Date Hayato and everyone who worked to make this show to be this titanic and go on nonstop for 15 years. I personally bow to all of you and say: “Thank you for the best childhood memories, I will always carry them!” And again I want to congratulate Naruto and Hinata with wedding, and thus my beautiful dream is over, meaning that I grew up and it is time for me to let my childhood go.

Naruto Shippuuden! The series that would never end finally ends! After ten years, five-hundred episodes and several movie tie-ins, this milked cow is finally laid down to rest, resulting in one of the worst shounen anime adaptations ever made. While I did enjoy myself with the series and certainly found myself even liking it for the first two-hundred episodes or so, the insane amount of filler, padding, and the abysmal final three or four arcs made me despise this show by the end, and all of the characters and narrative. The filler in this anime is such a goddamn problem that it destroys the entireanime, and at this point, if you did want to get into Naruto, I would recommend reading the manga, or skipping over the filler because, for the most part, the filler is absolutely abysmal and is rarely interesting or adds onto the overall world of the series. Since this review is going to spend a long time detailing all of my problems with the story, I will address the animation and music now. While I still prefer the original soundtrack of Naruto, Shippuuden is still great. The action pumps you up and there is a great variety in songs and moods to fit each moment and scene. The animation is a different story, however. The anime is very inconsistent, and that is to be expected with a show with over five-hundred episode; at its best, it could be movie quality, it’s worst, trashy nineties OVA. Shippuuden is the direct continuation of the original series, set two years after the events that transpired in the original in which Naruto has trained to hone his skills and jutsu. Upon returning to the village, he fights off against the Akatsuki, a group of powerful, rogue ninja who wants to collect all of the tailed beasts to create the ten tails and rule the world, while trying to save his gay lover, I mean best friend, Sasuke. Now, I want to clarify first of all that I enjoyed the first season very much (excluding the fillers, that is). It was fun, the battles were original and creative, and the characters went through great development; it captured the hard life of a ninja perfectly and the cruel world in which they live in. Shippuuden was also pretty good for a little while in the beginning of the series, albeit not as interesting or engaging as the previous story arcs of the show. One good thing about the sequel is that Shippuuden is a lot darker and more mature than the original series, now with the Akatsuki clan running amok and killing many of the tailed beasts. There is this constant sense of looming danger and tension in the series and the Akatsuki were easily the best thing about part two. All of them are interesting, had unique abilities, and for the most part, are allowed to shine in their own respective battles. Hell, there are even a few character deaths which took me by surprise, which added onto the steaks and tension of the show. The first one hundred episodes of content (minus the fillers) are pretty great although I did have some problems, most notably being Naruto and Sasuke themselves. Naruto in part two is annoying, whiny and irritating, and his constant journey to save Sasuke feels boring and without much sense logically, since Saskue becomes a complete dick head, hell bent on destroying the entire village. Sasuke starts off wanting to kill his brother, and after the worst plot twist in the series where we learn his evil brother was, in fact, a good guy, which I’ve always hated, all he wants after that is to destroy the village and everyone in it, and his character fluctuates so much throughout part two that it becomes hard to keep track of. Both of their respective story arcs hit brick walls by the end of the Pain arc and hardly develop at all past that, just in their power levels. Speaking of the Pain arc, the conclusion to that very same story arc was so bad that I lost all hope in the series. After a great fight in which much of the main cast die, Naruto has a friendship speech with the villain in which after, he brings back all of the people in the village who died! This removed all of the tension from the series and was such a cheap way to bring back characters that I began to hate the series from that point onwards. Combine that with characters who did receive some screen time in part one, now being pushed to the sideline with no development, aside from Shikamaru, but even after his own arc, he is pushed to the side to make way for the yellow-haired twit. In addition, Naruto’s character is ruined after we learn he is the child of destiny and was destined to save the world since he was born. This meant all of his hard work was for nothing and is such a giant middle finger from the author, that after this point, I hated the series. From this point on, we know that Naruto can never die nor lose since he is destined to save the world. His fate is pre-determined from the start, which does remove some tension from the later arcs. It also destroys Naruto's main theme at the same time. Naruto's driving force was that hard work and endurance would pay off in the end, and earn you respect from the people around you, even when the whole world is putting you down. In the early parts of the series there was a genuine sense of satisfaction in watching Naruto grow as a person and the catharsis pay off that entailed was great after all his hard work. Learning that he is a destined child, and was destined with all these great powers from the beginning ruins all of the hard work and endurance he had to go through to gain respect as a shinobi. Essentially, the author shot himself in the foot and omitted one of the driving forces of his story. Now, let me elaborate a little more on the Itachi plot twist before I go ahead and why I didn't like this twist in the story. To me, Itachi was a great villain, someone who killed his entire village just to test his limits, leaving his younger brother alive to act out revenge on the part of his fallen clan. Like Saskue, we hated Itachi at the beginning, which we should of, since this makes a great villain. Itachi is strong, ruthless, and cunning. All of this, in my eyes, anyway, made him great as a villain, but Kishimoto, works in a twist that reveals he was a good guy all along and killed his clan to prevent a war from occurring. Essentially he had to carry a huge burden on his back from the village elders, which is admirable, but it also causes Saskue's character to go out of control from this point, and fluctuate so frequently. I always found this twist to be kind of "meh", for a lack of a better term. I never hated it per say, to the point where it broke the series or anything, it's just that I think Itachi was much better as a villain than a good guy. But hey, this mini-rant is just down to my own personal preference. The worst character out of them all is Sakura. Now, I don't think she is useless in this series. Hell, she has a pretty okay fight against one of the Akatsuki members and wins, which is something I can appreciate, it's just that her character goes nowhere. She stays so stagnant and boring, whilst crying about Saskue. And holy hell does her love for Sasuke feel forced as hell. It makes no sense why she loves him to this extent, especially after the bastard almost killed her and threatened to destroy the entire village, killing everyone she loved and had known. Back in the original I could kind of excuse her crush on account that she was a young child, but now it's laughably pathetic and doesn't even make any sense. This applies for most of the female cast in the series since Kishimotot can't write good female characters. They're either completely useless or completely superficial. That's it. And this brings us to ninja war arc and everything that came after. These final arcs were awful. All of the clever tactics and strategies the characters had are now gone, in favour of who could pull off the most landscape reducing jutsu, and Naruto and Sasuke become so powerful, to the point they rival gods, even going as far as having them both die and then re-birth as an act of destiny. What I always hated was that all of the characters that died before; characters that I liked and had well-completed arcs were brought back to life since the author was too lazy to create new ones. This ruined many of the original arcs these characters went through, and I found this, for the most part, to be completely boring since they just repeat what happened previously. Sure, there is some development and growth with the characters, but it's hardly substantial enough to raise the bar. All of the previous rules and ideas that Kishimoto establishes in the early part of the series are thrown out and it's painfully obvious that he didn't even care about his own series in the end since the justsus and abilities some of the characters can perform goes against the rules of the world that he established. A good example is when Kakashi gets two Sharingan which would require a large amount of chakra to use. We've been told time and time again that this character, while having a wide range of impressive jutsu, doesn't have much in the way of chakra and thus can't battle for too long but in the final arcs he performs so many Jutsu it is unbelievable and when he does require the double Sharingan it makes no sense how he can utilise its power, especially since he obtains it at the end of the war and thus his chakra would have been completely gone! Another example of crap writing is after Naruto is reborn, he somehow saves Gai from dying just by simply touching his chest! It makes no sense why he can suddenly do this and this element is never explained to us at all. Not only that, but a few moments later he restores Kakashi's eye in the same fashion, but fails to restore Gai's dead legs, for whatever reason. What an asshole! These final arcs are so full of ass-pulls, random power-ups and last for so long that I can’t stand the idea of watching them again. The final fight between Naruto and Sasuke was pretty impressive and I’m glad it wasn't stuffed with filler but it’s not enough to save the whole series. The “final” villain Madara was the only thing I liked about the final arc but even then, he was replaced by the true final villain who was terrible, since the author had no idea how to end the series nor of how to get rid of such a powerful enemy. Kaguya was such a terrible final villain, only being relevant for about ten episodes or so. The biggest problem is that she came out of nowhere. There was no build-up like Madara. Madara felt justified to be the final villain because of the build-up and the pay off with him was pretty good, but Kaguya was boring, dull and had no narrative steaks or intrigue behind her character at all. She was truly the worst final villain I've ever seen. I could go on and on about every little thing, but I’ve covered everything that pisses me off the most so I’ll leave it at that. I do enjoy Naruto, despite the obvious flaws, but if you want to get into the series, just read the manga.

TL;DR: Believe it! Took 10 years and 500 episodes but it finally ended. Guess that cow finally ran out of milk! [Story: 5/10 , Characters: 6/10, Art: 6/10, Sound: 9/10, Enjoyment: 7/10] Believe it! The series who was never meant to end has finally been laid to rest… or has it? It may have taken 10 years and 500 episodes (280 Cannon and 220 Fillers, believe it, I counted), thank you Studio Pierrot for finally stop milking this cow. Let's be real, all the real fans got so tired of your shenanigans they finished the manga long time ago. So why would you invest in thissuper long show? Rage aside, what's Naruto: Shippuden really about? It's a story about an unwanted ninja shinobi boy who had the dream of becoming Hokage and believe it he will overcome all the adversaries (including fillers) to achieve it! (But if we are being honest, it's really about Naruto's journey of finding his angry dark lover, Sasuke, to bring back home and he will ignore all his other friends to achieve it)! Jokes or Fillers aside, the main plot has two major arcs, the Akatsiki tailed beast arc and the Fourth Great Shinobi World War arc. This is your traditional archetypical heroic journey style shounen anime filled with every trope known to mankind. So if you believe it, they will employ it! The overarching theme is Friendship & Love conquers hatred & evil. How boring yet sweet & addictive. If you are wondering how can such a boring storyline keep the audience captivated for 500 episodes? The unique characters can be a possibility. This show has exactly 212 unique characters (villagers and background people excluded) and believe it do they stand out in one way or another! The major protagonists are Naruto and his Nakamas (which is friends for those weebs who don't know) Sasuke, Sakura and Kakashi. On the other hand, the list of antagonists just goes on and each successive one is more ridiculous with godlike powers & jutsus than the previous. Seriously, how Naruto overcomes them and befriends them will leave viewers breathless. Shoutout to Ittachi, for being one hell of a memorable antagonist the anime industry will never forget and should not forget, believe it! If the story and characters don't do this show justice, (it desn't) it's definitely the animation and sound accompanying it. Narutoverse completely changed the landscape of fighting style with its unique farcical jutsus that were hand-drawn and animated adequately well. It's impressive that most of the characters were very distinct from one another given this show having 212 unique characters. Fillers aside, the Cannon episodes were actually drawn well and the standard was reasonably maintained throughout, believe it! Moreover, given that this show is 500 episodes, it actually features around 60 unique OP/ED songs. It's a definitely a first for a show that took a decade to finish. The OP/ED songs are well received among fans and non fans of this anime. Furthermore, the background OST is composed beautifully well and it accompanies the fight sequence rather too well. This show really knows how to create HYPE and hit you in the feels so hard it will make even Chuck Norris shed a tear. Overall, I don't really see myself rewatching this show but I would recommend people to atleast give this show a shot. Why? Because I'm evil, no, because why not? If you are serious about it and only want to watch cannon episodes then definitely give it a shot. It's an interesting bingable show (over few weeks) and if you get tired, then just finish the manga. This show is nowhere near perfect and it has too many flaws that is just not worth ranting about it. If you ask fans of this show, they will say 10/10 but realistically looking at cannon episodes it's 7/10. Therefore, maybe you should really watch Naruto: Shippuden. Believe it! P.S. Below is the outline for all the cannon episode. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1-27, 29-56, 72-89, 113-126, 129-143, 152-169, 172-175, 179, 197-211, 214-222, 243-256, 261-270, 272-278, 282-283, 296-302, 321-346, 362-375, 378-387, 391-393, 414-415, 418, 420-421, 424-426, 458-459, 463, 469-479, 484-500 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I hope you found reading this short but supaishi review helpful.