Naruto

I finally downloaded an episode of Naruto to see what all this hype is all about. Everyone seems to be going crazy over this show. If you doubt my words just google it - you get over 200k results. Most of them are in english - but the show was never officially released in english version.

Instead the fansubbed episodes circulate on the web. The fansub era is about to end though, because the show will air on Toonami in September in a professionally dubbed version. I nabbed one of the episodes yesterday, just so that I can watch the uncut version before the toonami goons edit it to make it kid friendly.

In short - I was not impressed. It's possible I grabbed a weak episode (I think it was 114 - I liberally grabbed the ep that had the most seeds at the time) - it really seemed like a filler ep belonging to some larger arc. So I might be judging it to harshly. After all, Inuyasha has some quite dreadful episodes too. So does Fullmetal.

Nevertheless, I really did not see what the whole hype is all about. It really reminded me of Dragonball in many ways. And I can't stomach anymore Dragonball... Complete with annoying characters such as talking dog that was hanging around with the main character. I saw some fighting, some flashbacks building some story - but nothing totally impressive. After watching one episode I can clearly see why this show landed on Toonami and not Adult-Swim. It seems to be geared toward younger viewers - same generation that goes crazy over Dragonball and whatever else they have playing on their daytime anime block nowadays.

I still want to check out the first episode - maybe it will change my mind. But I wouldn't count on it. I think I can now easily let this one go and not care about the American release.

Tags: anime, manga, naruto, toonami, fansub