This is part one of my hopefully two-part discourse of how the major shönen series of the last years suck balls. Part 2, Bleach, might never be written due to laziness, and I would make a part three about One Piece but I haven’t read past Vol.30.
Warning: Untagged spoilers abound.
Naruto. Remember Naruto? Yes that guy, yeah, with the orange jumpsuit. The main character. There’s a chronic disease of most Shönen series by which nobody but the main character can do anything worth shit (See: Bleach). I’m very glad Kishimoto sidestepped that in here with guys like Shikamaru. However, Naruto isn’t Gon or Taikoubou. He doesn’t have another trait apart from his strength that makes him a worthy character. He’s a generic shönen character without the basic trait of all shönen characters: The ability to do stuff.
Aside from his emotional growth from “love starved jackass teen” into just “jackass teen”, he literally hasn’t had a single improvement in over a hundred chapters. He’s sill got shit control of the Kyubi’s powers, he’s still using the Kage no Bunshin hack to compensate for his lack of skill while making the Rasengan. He’s created a new and very unimpressive skill by, oh surprise, ANOTHER hack solution involving the Bunshin. He’s still a dumbass. He’s got no other trick. He’s worthless at anything but blasting random shit, which he even fails to do most of the time. It’s been over 370 chapters and there’s still no semblance of reason to show any admiration for this guy.
Oh wait, there is ONE development. Everyone was right! He was the 4th Hokage’s son! BIG WHOO-FUCKING–OP! Who the HELL hadn’t figured that out in like the second chapter? Why wait that long to tell us, and in such an anticlimatic manner? Probably was keeping it as a card for a plot-twist, then figured out everyone and their mother could have seen it coming and just gave up.
Then there’s Sakura. I admit, ever since she’s faded into the background scenery, I don’t hate her as much. She’s got some motivation aside from Sasuke, might have toned down her adoration a bit, and has had some growth. Still doesn’t make her anything but background scenery. Related to that:
Which leads us to the great Sasuke, who has been sort of made the new main character it seems. Good lord I fucking hate this bitch. Let’s leave alone the fact that he’s an utter bastard, that’s just part of his character, what pisses me off is that he’ll invariably be redeemed in the eyes of his friends (sure as hell not in mine), be forgiven for all his crap and live happily ever after/die heroically and be remembered as a hero. Fuck that shit. Also, what the hell happened with the mortally strict treatment of runaways that was introduced so early on with the crossdresser kid and the big-sword assassin? Why is Leaf sending so many people to RESCUE him? They should send the entire goddamn village to fuck up his and his emo teen-pop-band’s ass. Oh, and I loved how his deal with Orochimaru turned out. Five billion chapters of build up about how Orochimaru was going to eat him and it ends with “LOL, NO U!”. Now of course we all know Orochimaru’s spirit will awaken inside him and wreck some shit, but still.
And so we go to the billion stock characters. Where to begin…
Shikamaru. No I don’t have anything bad to say about Shikamaru. I love this son of a bitch. He’s my favorite character by far. The fact that he’s been getting more and more screentime is one of the few reasons I’m still reading this. Except for the smoking thing.
Hinata. Unless I’m wrong, I heard that Hinata is among the most popular characters in Naruto. How the hell that’s possible considering she’s got like two or three chapters of screentime in the entire manga a few years ago is beyond me, but hey, Japs must love their Yamato Nadeshiko or whatever. It would be cool if she appeared more. Not because of herself, but because she was on the same team as the guy who had bugs up his urethra. I’d like to see that guy more often. You’d think that now they’ve joined the main character’s party they’d be showing up more, but oh wait, THE MAIN CHARACTER isn’t even showing.
Rock Lee & Neji. What happened to those two? They were cool. Especially Lee with his “guts and willpower” Gunbuster thing going.
And… well, the others. If Kishimoto can’t be arsed to remember them, I sure as hell won’t. Ino’s on the same boat as Sakura, and the fatass was cool.
Oh yeah, and Sai. Ehhh… that guy. Don’t really give a crap. He doesn’t piss me off at least.
Also:
Sill no good idea of what the fuck half of the evil guys want and for what. We’re still getting told stuff about more and more awesome proprieties of the goddamned Sharingan and stuff, but nothing else.
Pein’s master plan revealed! A giant chakra nuke to end all wars! Whoo yeah, talk about shocking, interesting and deviously smart. Jiraiya’s fabulous static hair and the Giant Crab no Jutsu almost made it all worthy though.
Finally, Kishimoto is a really fucking lazy artist. He can do some impressive stuff when he wants to, but that’s by far an odd occurrence. His drawings are usually extremely simplistic and repetitive scribbles with no shading whatsoever, very few stock designs for each expression, tremendously undetailed backgrounds and an overall lack of emotion. It’s like reading the Hunter X Hunter chapters that were drawn while the artist was half-dead, except Kishi isn’t a terminal patient. Not to mention 2/3 of everything are goddamned face shots.
Bah, this came out choppier than intended, but I’m too lazy right now to revise it. Take it as a random rant.