Naruto/Boruto Griefing Thread

[Party Hat Wurmple]

Also, will an anime ever reach the popularity peaks of DBZ, Naruto, and golden age Pokemon ever again? Or is the genre done for?

Probably not. The typical old style shounen anime has been propped up by One Piece alone. Isekai has flat out DESTROYED quality anime and majority of it is quick cash borderline hentai garbage that sells because Japanese men are lonely and don't get girlfriends. It's just oversaturated with a lot of garbage and due to the pace media moves in Japan, not much really sticks anymore. The Netflix format really changed the way anime is aired for better and worse. You really get the feeling that there's no epic long format series anymore.

The entire point of the Chunin Exam is Neji projecting his anger at his own situation. He’s effectively pissed that no matter how good he gets, he’s fucked by the circumstances of his birth.

I always thought it would've been funny if Gaara somehow lost or forfeited the Chuunin Exam, and Lee went against Neji. I always thought that fight would've been entertaining. Especially if it just ended up being Neji just getting completely bodied by the 5th gate. I'm surprised they never did this as a filler what-if episode. Missed opportunity.

God, it's been almost 20 years since I decided to give this a watch on a whim one Saturday night. I was an autismo nerd about Nar and his adventures when I was younger. For how much of a mess the story became I still go back and watch arcs of it occasionally.

I got into it because there was a marathon of it on TV one day where I had nothing better to do. Some moments are still really good. But I remember the war arc getting to me a lot because my favorite moments in the manga got butchered by the anime. The anime had a nasty habit of jump cutting to other things that were happening simultaneously in places they shouldn't have. They also didn't pace certain scenes as well as they could've. A good example would be the brief fight before Obito was revealed. That manga chapter was actually before Shounen went on Christmas break for two weeks and was a good chapter, promising Tobi's identity in the new year. Instead, the anime shoves this pretty darn cool fight scene into the fucking cold open.

 

[AnsemSoD1]

Naruto's worldbuilding is shit.

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

Naruto's worldbuilding is shit.

The setting is the only thing that’s really cool. It’s a weird industrial setting mixed with a feudal system. The Uchiha shit just ruins it.

 

[AnsemSoD1]

The setting is the only thing that’s really cool. It’s a weird industrial setting mixed with a feudal system. The Uchiha shit just ruins it.

I guess I was spoiled by watching the anime first and finding out that a lot of the cool fleshed out world based shit wasn't canon in the slightest. (Except Blood Prison of course for some godforsaken reason)

 

[HeyYou]

This is the perfect place to repost this one Naruto review I had saved from the Naruto forums before Viz axed it.

The guy fucked up by acknowledging the incoming rebuttal people were about to make (lmao shounen has always been a dumb plot that only exists to give an excuse for people to beat the shit out of each other) and then still making his point. Naruto is not art by any means, but it did absolutely no damage to the medium and the main problems people have with current anime (preponderance of isekai, haremshit and "cute girls do things" anime) have very little to do with Naruto. The problems that shounen has (insane power scaling, series very quickly forgetting their original premise, the main characters not being nobodies and instead being part of a special bloodline) were not invented by Naruto and have always been present even in good shounen.

 

[Party Hat Wurmple]

Naruto is not art by any means, but it did absolutely no damage to the medium and the main problems people have with current anime (preponderance of isekai, haremshit and "cute girls do things" anime) have very little to do with Naruto.

If anything, I'd argue Naruto did a very important service to us by creating Boruto. Boruto was such a clusterfuck nightmare to create, Shounen hasn't done anything like it since. To give all fairness the original manga's run was rushed to shit, and made on the fly with little to no planning. Naruto ended in very late 2014 with Boruto launching 2016. In between, I they did two movies and a one shot. There's only so much time and talent that could've gone into planning Boruto. The release was disastrous and I'm convinced they're still using Twitter bots to boost its popularity. Imagine a world where it's successful though. I'm sure we would've seen Shounen go full Hollywood with sequel series.

 

[Ensok]

I'll still take the 4th Shinobi World War and all its problems over the final arc of Bleach or post-timeskip One Piece. At least Naruto still managed a good ending. Boruto is different, there's a lot to talk about there. The anime of Boruto actually has some good things about it but by and large it's a failure and there are so many mistakes made with the premise alone right from the start. The fucking flashforward was by far the worse mistake and the worst thing they could've done since it basically says "Naruto failed and nothing matters". It's like an Alien 3 or Force Awakens type of thing that just shits on what happened in the past. If it wasn't for that dumb flashforward things would've been okay for a while at least.

Other problems of Boruto though are Mitsuki becoming increasingly irrelevant, Naruto and Sasuke simply not being as strong as they should be/horribly inconsistent powerlevels and fighting abilities in general, those god damn androids, Eida and Daemon in particular, the slow as shit pacing in the manga which is compounded by its schedule, and Ikemoto being a shitty artist.

The Boruto anime though was actually really fun for a while, it was actually good at the beginning, the first arc and academy arcs were good at introducing and developing the characters and the conflicts were kept at the low stakes they should be. If you could just pretend it ended at like episode 65 it would be the perfect example of how to make a nice and concise sequel to a series like Naruto. Even then if you want to you can kind of just pretend that the Boruto movie is all that exists, that's basically a stand alone feature that wraps things up perfectly well. Post episode 65 has some good filler and some nice stuff as well, but also some arcs that drag on way too fucking long and then it starts introducing all the really dumb shit in Boruto. The only good thing from later in Boruto is Isshiki, who was the perfect villain for the moment. He somehow just works, a simple design, simple fighting style, simple ability to shrink things, incredibly straightforward and serious. In other series he'd just come off as plain and boring but here they really make him work. The timeskip has also happened now and while there are still problems Boruto as a character has gotten better. It's sad there's so much shit lingering over the series that can't be fixed now.

 

[Party Hat Wurmple]

I'll still take the 4th Shinobi World War and all its problems over the final arc of Bleach or post-timeskip One Piece.

Slow down there partner. I'll stick up for Bleach. The TYBW is clearly kind of a rushed mess but at least over the years the subsequent material that has come out has gone to great lengths to fix it. Sure you can always make the argument "I shouldn't have to read a dozen other stories to get the point" and that's fair, but I'll give effort credit where it's due. Nowadays if you put everything on paper, the TYBW Arc has at least a pretty interesting story. While it doesn't have a sequel, the anniversary chapter did a sequel series the right way, building upon the consequences of the TYBW and the series as a whole with large stakes and ramifications for the entire cast. The anime is also shaping up well, but it's not finished yet.

I can honestly say the post-ending Bleach stuff has been well...better than Bleach itself. Tite Kubo got better as a writer now that he had time. But Kishimoto? Not so much... Samurai 8 was a fucking disaster. The Minato one shot was good though. Allegedly, Ikemoto is doing most of Boruto with Kishimoto only supervising, but how much of that is true? I wouldn't be surprised if he did have a lot to do with it and is more involved. Boruto Two Blue Vortex's and Samurai 8 are arguably two of worst manga I think I've ever read....

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Naruto was the end of the era of shonen anime, everything afterwards paled in comparison.

 

[Registration]

I've never read naruto but really like Boruto. For myself, all the ninja shit is magic, doesnt matter if it comes from space or technology, I also enjoy the timeskip a lot, since Boruto trauma from being cut off his family really ressonates with Sasuke's own past, and Kawaki doing this all his schemes out of love rather than hate is really nice, someone who gained something and someone who lost everything clashing it out.


The technical ninja stuff doesn't bother me in nothing at all

 

[Ensok]

I've never read naruto but really like Boruto.

Might I ask how you even got into it then?

The aliens don't bother me a ton, the change in style and scope from Dragonball to DBZ is even bigger honestly, but I don't really like the android/advanced tech stuff because it doesn't feel very original.

 

[God of Nothing]

This is the perfect place to repost this one Naruto review I had saved from the Naruto forums before Viz axed it.

why
i write essays about the most meaningless shit sometimes but this is next level autism

I'll still take the 4th Shinobi World War and all its problems over the final arc of Bleach or post-timeskip One Piece

Same. As much as I really don't like how Naruto went after Pain, Bleach after Soul Society and One Piece after the timeskip are utterly unrecognizable as what they were before and it's hard to believe they're even the same series. Shit like the very first chapter of Naruto sticks all the way to the end of its original run. Same with the Wave Arc and the Chunin Exams. Those two things still flow well until the end of the series, which is honestly surprising.

Remember Haki at the beginning of One Piece or Luffy deciding he was going to actually rule shit than say vague stuff about being the Pirate King? Remember Bankai, Shikai, soul reaper dad (I still have no fucking idea what his deal was or why Ichigo never asked him about it despite outright knowing it after Aizen), or whatever the fuck super soul saiyan shit Ichigo had at the beginning of Bleach? One Piece is like a parody of itself now and Bleach has no real identity outside of its wackass samurai afterlife style. Boruto is the Naruto equivalent of all that, but Boruto itself is distinctly its own separate series at this point and branded as such.

Naruto was the end of the era of shonen anime, everything afterwards paled in comparison.

I'm just glad to know I was always right about how good it was after all these years. Rarely do you ever go back to something you watched as a kid looking to find faults and think it's better as an adult. Maybe it's just been the steady decline in good media. Good fucking lord knows how bad that's been.

JJK, AoT, MHA, and Demon Slayer are just filled with mediocre and bad writing. It's hard to even debate about it because so much of the shit (weird ass power ups, non-established characters, plot twists that make no sense or come from nowhere, characters being more archetypes than characters, subversion, and meta aspects) depends on how much you tolerate it. I don't mean to say series in the past didn't have this, but it is everywhere I look now, and I'm not trying to look for that stuff at all. It reminds me of how people say new writers just write what they read and/or mock it rather than try to add anything new.

Really weird to be one of those old timers that says "You had to lived while x happened to really know." Before weebshit blew up amongst normies, you could see the hype and growth of the stuff we see now. It just seems like no one knows what to do or write about anymore. People just cling to whatever is in, even if it sucks.

 

[Registration]

Might I ask how you even got into it then?

The aliens don't bother me a ton, the change in style and scope from Dragonball to DBZ is even bigger honestly, but I don't really like the android/advanced tech stuff because it doesn't feel very original.

I was curious to see how it would be done, the only thing I know about naruto was the anime before shippuden (without filler). The last 3 manga chapters when it came out and the gaiden manga.

Then boruto started, when there were around 12 volumes around, I decided do start reading and enjoyed it very much. So I've been reading it so far, one interview came out back then and it was decided back then that the story would be around half of Naruto's lenght. Even if I started reading Naruto right now, 72 volumes are a lot. And then I realized that going into this series without the knowledge of ninja magic that every time I see someone talking about it sounds like absolutely eye magic and genes magic would be interesting.

What I liked the most is how Naruto's father attitude is kinda fucked by his job as hokage. Someone who most of his life didnt had a family is raising one and was somewhat ausent for obvious reasons but still try to take care of Kawaki. Then Boruto is like a little shit that is sometimes similar to his parent and clearly a product of a a generation that worked hard for their kids and they dont have it so though. He idolizes Sasuke initially and wants to be like him, and the timeskip kinda makes it happen in the most bizarre power (ninja magic). I am quite curious to see how he deals with Sarada and the other girl, since they are his only supports after being cucked out of his own family

@God of Nothing

Naruto as a franchise for me is something to be in awe, it is incredibly popular in my country, where other anime and even japanese stuff were quite well liked before being popular or something.

Our boomers would love talking about capeshit like batman and spider-man, franchises that had decades of material and stories to be liked, but in the end of 1999 comes this story about ninja boy and society that quickly takes over everything. Not one piece, not Bleach, not shingeki no kyojin, fullmetal or anything, but this story mostly told by one single guy who created a multimedia empire. And those kids who grew up are adults now and have it even easier to show their kids just like their parent showed something from their time to them.

Check this out, soldiers in training where the drill sargeant tells him to sing a song for the group and other also sings, in a totally different language.

https://youtube.com/shorts/JnsECUpkfP8?si=-x_I42QBu-UMXQ5Z

I deeply admire how it shaped the world culturaly, the impact of it is something to be in awe, and it isnt something simple like dragon ball, it is a complex shit that I have no way to fully understand, the power and shit is something that nowadays children can understand that dragon ball couldn't do back then with an energy ball.


I have a deep respect for Naruto even when I didnt consume it, I believe that the main character is like a super hero for the people who grew up with him since 1999 and I would like to think that the people who read Boruto today would see themselves in Naruto's position as a father rather than just a boy.

Lots of shounen jump like manga existed in the past and will exist in the future, but very few will change a generation.

There are lots of Bleachs, Black Cats, Samurai Deeper Kyos, Torikos, The Flautist of Hamelin, but very few changed the game like Naruto, even more internationally and across generations.

 

[God of Nothing]

Check this out, soldiers in training where the drill sargeant tells him to sing a song for the group and other also sings, in a totally different language.

i felt this in my soul

 

[ShitLurker]

Also, imagine instead of his orange jumpsuit, everyone dressed like K Pop Stars.

That's the most distracting thing about the manga. I don't actually read it but do flip through it when I see it updated in Sueisha and everybody looking like incredibly faggy fashion models is incredibly distracting. I can only process that with JoJo

Naruto should honestly be in the pantheon of horrendous endings and wasted potential for a story.

Nah, it's a standard Shounen anime as far as I'm concerned, most Shounen have shit tier endings. That and Naruto had been sucking for ages, so the writing was on the wall. Same deal with Bleach or Fairy Tail.

Naruto doesn't come close to the failure those two did, since people actually talk about it, and the ending for the characters themselves is satisfying. In the end it was always Ninjas doing cool shit and power of friendship. It also didn't feel the need to make a downer ending, ridiculous morals or SUBVERT MY EXPECTATIONS.

Agreed, Attack on Titan was a much bigger trainwreck. People actually expected shit from that. Same deal with something like Gantz. Both series are perfect examples on how trying to explain your elevator pitch can ruin your series to it's core. Both worked so much better when there was no explanation for the titans/aliens, it was just shit that happened.

The real issue comes with the post time-skip stuff where Boruto essentially switches places with another character.

A much bigger problem is that there is a character that has the power to switch them and outside of 3 fucking characters, nobody can notice. This is without going into your point about technology in ninjer land. Power Scale has been a mess in Naruto for ages and Boruto is just making it worse.

I remember Naruto being good up until the chunin exams, and then the Snake pedo got his hands on Sasuke's underaged ass and the story started taking a dive into retardville.

Sigh, good times, good times...

Naruto still simping for Sakura after that incident will never fail to infuriate me.

Specially with how Sakura still didn't even give him the time of day.

To be fair, I'm kind of pissed off he DIDN'T just pair Sakura and Naruto.

Uchiha's are the niggers of the ninja world, you don't get with someone desperate to burn the coal. And she paid the toll by being a single mom in a loveless relationship. Fuck her, she deserved so much worse.

I actually like Sakura, but the anime just ruins her by making her crying and complaining drag on for far longer than it ever did in the manga.

What is there to like? She is the only shinobi in the fucking series that has NO technique of her own whatsoever "oh, she's good with chakra!" WHEN, WHEN IS IT RELEVANT. The bitch only manages to steal Tsunade's tech and even then, the only time she uses it properly is when being puppeteered by Sasori's granny which was the last time she did anything cool, and this is from a manga only viewer. Sakura would have been better served as the nice flower lady in town that Sasuke could lower his guard to. But as is, she was huge wasted space that ended up unable to set up properly the trio as the second coming of the Sanin. Did she ever even summon a Slug once?

I feel like people get hung up on Lee and the Hardwork message. Lee was a literal retard who decided to destroy his body during a preliminary match when he was outmatched and everyone acknowledged that he stole the show, he came in and gave a showing that left everyone admitting he’d top tier.

Only to get a good fight teaming up with Gaara and then get forgotten into obscurity forever only for Gai to upstage him in every single dimension.

I always thought it would've been funny if Gaara somehow lost or forfeited the Chuunin Exam, and Lee went against Neji. I always thought that fight would've been entertaining. Especially if it just ended up being Neji just getting completely bodied by the 5th gate. I'm surprised they never did this as a filler what-if episode. Missed opportunity.

Biggest injustice for my poor eyebrow boy, not kicking Neji's fucking ass, because my god, Neji had fucking nothing to deal with the gates.

Naruto's worldbuilding is shit.

Can't be shit if there was never any worldbuilding!

I still remember how samurai were halfassedly added. When he decided for once to draw a map and try to think how things would actually work outside of "neato ninjer village!".

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

JJK, AoT, MHA, and Demon Slayer are just filled with mediocre and bad writing. It's hard to even debate about it because so much of the shit (weird ass power ups, non-established characters, plot twists that make no sense or come from nowhere, characters being more archetypes than characters, subversion, and meta aspects) depends on how much you tolerate it. I don't mean to say series in the past didn't have this, but it is everywhere I look now, and I'm not trying to look for that stuff at all. It reminds me of how people say new writers just write what they read and/or mock it rather than try to add anything new.

I have a possibly unpopular opinion that most of the fanbase for the big Shonen was due to the anime adaptions.

And with this opinion, I think the issue with the era post Naruto shonen is that there's just no levity and building on character interaction. Years of demonization of the concept of filler have made shonen hyper focused but without adjusting its tropes to it.

So you still have a huge cast, but they barely have the chance to do shit and show their capabilities. Yeah we all talked shit of the 100 filler episodes of the original, but episodes like trying to take off Kakashi's mask or the super hot curry are a classic, and you got to see how the other classmates have their niche.

Compare to JJK, they show you like 15 characters which most immediately die in the next arc. If you had a season of those characters cooperating with the hero then their death would mean something.

 

[God of Nothing]

So you still have a huge cast, but they barely have the chance to do shit and show their capabilities. Yeah we all talked shit of the 100 filler episodes of the original, but episodes like trying to take off Kakashi's mask or the super hot curry are a classic, and you got to see how the other classmates have their niche.

When I was a kid, I weirdly loved the filler that came after the actual ending, even though it felt really disjointed for the rest. You got to see everyone do stuff and weird ass team compositions because Team 7 was more or less disbanded. Granted, some of the filler during the actual normal part of the show was bad and felt even more disjointed. I can see how people view all of it was wasted time, but there are a surprising amount of popular scenes from them people remember. Then again, I haven't bothered to watch whatever the fuck the prison furry Mizuki arc was.

Compare to JJK, they show you like 15 characters which most immediately die in the next arc. If you had a season of those characters cooperating with the hero then their death would mean something.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: JJK falls apart if you look at it half-seriously for more than five seconds. Dear god. What the fuck of note even happened before Shibuya? I am being dead serious. Mahito? Jogo? Tree? I guess they got the prison realm thing during the half-assed "tournament" arc? Things just happen for seemingly no reason and with seemingly no consequence. With Mahito, you just learn this guy turns people into frogs for fun. Megumi was Yuji's friend? He barely fucking knows him. Nobara and hatchet dude too.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

When I was a kid, I weirdly loved the filler that came after the actual ending, even though it felt really disjointed for the rest. You got to see everyone do stuff and weird ass team compositions because Team 7 was more or less disbanded. Granted, some of the filler during the actual normal part of the show was bad and felt even more disjointed. I can see how people view all of it was wasted time, but there are a surprising amount of popular scenes from them people remember. Then again, I haven't bothered to watch whatever the fuck the prison furry Mizuki arc was.

I checked again, it took 100 episodes for the Sasuke retrieval arc to start. Can you imagine a modern shonen to even have 100 episodes? Nevermind doing them before kickstarting the main plot.

 

[TheHarbinger]

@ShitLurker

Nah, it's a standard Shounen anime as far as I'm concerned, most Shounen have shit tier endings. That and Naruto had been sucking for ages, so the writing was on the wall. Same deal with Bleach or Fairy Tail.

Naruto and few other anime having massive declines in their writing softens the blow for the terrible endings. I remember reading through the last few arcs of Naruto being an absolute slog because of how ridiculous the plot developments were. I couldn't imagine being an anime fan only and having to wade through an additional double story amount of filler. By the time I got to the end I was just glad that it was over.

Agreed, Attack on Titan was a much bigger trainwreck. People actually expected shit from that. Same deal with something like Gantz. Both series are perfect examples on how trying to explain your elevator pitch can ruin your series to it's core. Both worked so much better when there was no explanation for the titans/aliens, it was just shit that happened.

The Boys on Amazon did their explanation of powers in a way that surpasses most similar stories. With the reveal of Compound V being a creation by scientists and that Vought was secretly a pharmaceutical company. Imagine if they explained that super heroes were created by the "Curse of Vought" and that some alien centipede came to Earth billions of years ago.

I have a possibly unpopular opinion that most of the fanbase for the big Shonen was due to the anime adaptions.

The first thing a manga publisher does is pitch the project to an anime studio before even printing comic number one. They know that anime drives the sales of merchandise more than anything. And that an anime will actually drive sales of the manga more than the actual manga itself. And the animation studios know that they can churn out endless filler and movies if the manga isn't finished in time for the anime to conclude.

American and Western media is no different. Gotta get your Netflix or Apple deal before you even finish the main series. Game of Thrones is a classic example.

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

I feel like I wouldn’t hate Boruto if the main conflict was someone just wanting to kill Orochimaru and his Pool Boy for their crimes against humanity. During the start of Covid I was in the /a/ re-read Naruto threads and honestly the writing only slips when “smart” characters like Sasuke or Shikamaru are the main characters.

A lot of the plot points could be better written if they were given another draft. Like Itachi being played by the CIA niggers and being on the run could’ve been actually a good plot line. Or Danzo not being there to whitewash the guy who loves child death contests.

The aliens and knock-off Akatsuki are just kinda boring.