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Naruto
ナルト
2002 · TV series · 24 min episodes · 4 seasons
AnimationActionAdventureScience FictionFantasy
Naruto Uzumaki, a mischievous adolescent ninja, struggles as he searches for recognition and dreams of becoming the Hokage, the village's leader and strongest ninja.
6 positive6 negative1 mixed17 neutralfrom 30 commenters
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32 comments on Hacker News
There is a balance to be found here.
I had the improbable experience of contracting with a community of foxes and then made up the cover story that "this is a character I play to get better smiles when I do street photography" and then made that story true.
So most of the time I am the one-and-only fox-photographer and feel unique but there are some places where a lot of beastly people are around and I think "I feel like just another fur". I don't think of myself as a fur at all but I find that being out as a hard-working therianthrope it has an effect on all sorts of closeted furs and therians and whatnot and when a fur asks me "are you a fur?" I feel bad disappointing them.
The whole thing is possible because of a database of legends that exist in folklore and pop culture. If I go out in a kitsune mask I think about 20% of people have seen Naruto or Demon Slayer and recognize who I am right away and in that situation I think of myself as the cast member at Disney whose job is easy because guests have already seen the movie. Even though I work from sinosphere legends, the fox-photographer is legible because people agree about what kind of animal a fox is anywhere there are foxes.
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/116598755105086140
I never bothered trying to stream anything, but I do remember downloading 20mb episodes of Naruto in surprisingly good quality due to the .rmvb format.
The filler episodes were traditional whenever a popular manga for boys was forced to put way too many episodes for economic reasons. While Naruto is the poster child of the problem, as the ratio of anime only content vs adapted is through the roof, we could see it many years before with Dragonball.
Animation standards have gone up enough, and there are so many more competitor series, that just needing to fill a broadcast TV slot forever just isn't as important as back in the day. The levels of animation repetition of the Sailor Moons and Captain Tsubasas of the day, which allowed for a lot of episodes with a reasonable budget, would be seen as unacceptable today.
That's extremely common, it's been happening for ages. You can see it in things like Naruto, too.
That's because they made it at a rate of an episode per week, and in parallel with the source material. That doesn't give time for anything very fancy, so it's mostly a panel by panel adaptation. Plus some filler in the mix, because a chapter usually doesn't have enough meat in it to last a whole episode. It's often 2 chapters per episode or so.
And that's why the slow pacing and the awful fillers.
Fullmetal Alchemist and the redo Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is the one I'm familiar with. Also the "filler" episodes from Naruto.
It seems like mega series with 200+ episodes where fillers are needed aren't getting made now? Demon Slayer is only on 63 for example.
> Composition is usually boring (very center-aligned and symmetrical) and if you try to control it by using words like "camera", it will put cameras in the picture half the time.
- Be more descriptive and specific with your prompts. I always add "shot from afar" or "wide-angled" or "shot with 85mm lens" - never had an issue of boring composition.
> Typical AI failure modes: "anime" generates a kind of commercial/fanart style that doesn't exist rather than frames from a TV show.
- Again, be more descriptive and specific with your prompts. ie; 'a character in the style of 'Naruto'. Need to specify the show or artists instead of using the broad term "anime".
> You can't generate things if they're hard to explain in English, like "a keyboard whose keys are house keys".
- One more time, you just need to be more specific. do: 'a computer keyboard, but instead of regular keys, replace each one with a metal house key.'
You just summarised the whole thing in a sentence! (Of course one needs to know at least a few 100 episodes of Naruto)
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I am not sure it is for me, because I did not watched Naruto and being forced to rewatch same scenes does not exactly sound like fun to me. I do not remember stuff from three months ago, but also it is not complete amnesia.
I like a lot how modern series are written and done. I find it to be massive improvement over what movies and series used to be when I was young. I like the one long story aspect of it all. I just do not want to watch it in one episode a week schedule.
and for you we have the likes of Naruto, which is 30-60% flashbacks to the prior episodes.
Yup. FMA: Brotherhood just hits the classic hero tropes and tells it to you straight.
I don't think its a bad thing. The Hero's Journey / Monomyth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey) has been told again and again in almost all media across all cultures.
Its just a storytelling style that's somehow got permanent, widespread appeal. Since its a "familiar story", I definitely think it plays to the advantage as a "starter anime". It gives a sense of familiarity to the audience, especially if they aren't used to anime yet.
Since the Hero's Journey / Monomyth is so popular, of course there's tons of animes that follow that style (and most "starter" animes IMO are a large-scale hero's journey).
Given the shear number of choices: Naruto, FMA, My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer, Bleach, Dragonball Z, Soul Eater, Sailor Moon, etc. etc... there's a lot to choose from. FMA: Brotherhood just so happens to be the one I think is best.
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I'm mean... we're into what? The 14 year of Marvel movies following the Monomyth formula? This Monomyth / Hero's Journey is hardly unique to anime. The few other mainstream shows that come out with widespread appeal (John Wick, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, etc. etc.) are just more of the Hero's Journey formula.
Its not a bad formula, not by any stretch of the imagination.
I watched few episodes of FMA and came back unimpressed and bored. The plot devices as you mention is not much different than the usual hero saves world anime. Probably because I've watched enough of 'starter' anime that I'm sick of it.
That said it seems to be a bit more grounded unlike the usual starter anime - for example Naruto where a promising story turns into a unstoppable train wreck of terribly written characters and stretched out plots
> Is NGE worth watching for someone who never was really into anime?
Maybe? NGE is not very representative of anime in general. Its definitely its own creature.
These days, "anime" lovers like "That Time I was Reincarnated as a Slime", "Naruto", "My Hero Academia", or "Demon Slayer". And back then, this "style" was carried by Sailor Moon or Dragon Ball Z.
You know: powerful hero collects a bunch of things and saves the world kind of plot. None of these shows are anything like NGE. I'd say people who like NGE will probably not like Demon Slayer, and vice versa.
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NGE is an existential mecha-pilot anime about depression, being forced into a losing battle with powers you don't understand. If you feel like dragging yourself through 26 episodes of that, yeah, go ahead.
But this ain't the happy-go-lucky overpowered main character always wins kinda show that's popular by 2020 standards. That's for sure.
Don't get me wrong, I like both style of shows (!!!), and both have their place. But "anime" is so diverse that you really can't compare this story with other great anime stories.
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That being said, I'd say the perfect "starter anime" is "Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood". This show has a lot of the crazy fights you'd see in some of the more battle-oriented anime, but also has some deeper self-introspection that was more common to 90s era anime.
Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood hits a lot of themes and concepts that seem universal, that many people both anime-fans and non-anime fans can enjoy.
EDIT: In particular, the main character: Edward Elric, may be a kid but he grows up through the show and becomes a hero. Not your typical "anime superpower" growth (Naruto/Demon Slayer / Dragonball Z)... but instead actual outlook on life and maturity kind of growth. Yes, its a hero's journey but there's a reason this story is told over and over again, its a classic epic tale setup with widespread appeal.
What's exceptional is that Edward Elric is a mostly mature character even from episode 1. So starting from a largely mature character and seeing him grow even more is quite spectacular honestly. FMA just does the hero's tale extremely well, far better than most typical anime... with a few deconstructive bits thrown in here and there.
NGE is almost a self-loathing kind of story that makes you feel pitiful. Its good at it too, but I don't think it'd be popular or mainstream. NGE is really out there and goes 100% for whatever depressing feeling its trying to drag you into. I really don't think its something I'd typically share (despite its widespread acclaim, it really is a niche-storyline IMO that few people would enjoy).
EDIT: In contrast: FMA does have a couple of self-loathing parts (The early "Tucker" arc is especially a horrific ordeal), but never quite to the degree that NGE ever gets to. Its still horrific what happens in FMA: Brotherhood, but you never really lose hope in Edward Elric. You can root for the hero from the beginning and never lose faith.
In contrast, NGE absolutely expects you to lose faith in Shinji Ikari, his father, and the entire set of humans involved in the plot. These are not good people. You're watching a train-wreck in slow motion. This is very unusual, even by anime standards.
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Lets put this in terms of WW2 movies. There's lots of WW2 movies: like "Downfall / Der Untergang" and "Midway". Both have their benefits, both are WW2 movies.
But "Downfall / Der Untergang" is simply going to be more niche because the depressing stories are just less popular than the mainstream happy / boom boom fighting movies (like Midway).
If you were trying to get people into WW2 movies, would you start them on "Downfall / Der Untergang" ?? Probably not. Similarly, I wouldn't recommend NGE to a beginner anime watcher... I'd start you on something happier and more mainstream.
I also enjoyed Ergo Proxy, Texhnolyze and Planetes. Ghost in the Shell is still the only movie I revisit every now and then (out of all movies ever). They are all slow, I want to take the time to watch them again some day.
Very different but I also enjoyed Naruto as I grew up myself. It's long (but you can skip all fillers) but sometimes very deep. I enjoyed Kenshin but never finished it.
As mentioned below Samurai Champloo is also nice and Steins Gate (nice, strange atmosphere) and Death Note: very psychological: He thinks that I think that he thinks and I'm smarter so... Love that. And One Punch Man, puts a smile on my face.
If you want weird: FLCL. What was that about?
That was the first thing I thought of, if anyone is interested the test is episode 23 and 24 of the anime [1].
[1] https://naruto.fandom.com/wiki/The_First_Exam!!
Yeah, I subscribe to Crunchyroll, Netflix, Prime Video, and Funimation. Or in other words, 100% of services with streaming anime available in my country. To be fair, seasonal anime gets a good coverage with those. Netflix's player is pretty good, but the rest vary from meh to awful (I have never successfully changed the timestamp in Funimation's player without playback crashing within the next minute).
But back catalogues availability is not so good. Crunchyroll and Netflix have the most popular stuff like Naruto, Code Geass or Evangelion but literally nobody has, say, The Devil is a Part Timer in my country.
Movies? The SAO movie got a physical showing in my country, the Made in Abyss movie actually did show up on a pay per view non-region locked streaming service and... that's literally it.
Soundtracks? It might be on Spotify. This week. But maybe not next week. I've no fucking idea, but the constant appearence and disappearence of soundtrack songs from my playlists has even caused me to stop moving spotify.
So for movies and back catalogues, my only "legal" option is to ship DVDs/Blurays and a region locked player from the US, or maybe sometimes I can get stuff from the UK in my own region. For soundtracks, even that is not usually an option. Does that legally entitle me to pirate it? No. Do I care? Not really, I feel I've tried my best
I'd be somewhat surprised if literally nobody knew about Ghost in the Shell, but I bet you didn't use the Japanese title (攻殻機動隊, Koukaku Kidoutai). However, only big anime fans around here would have heard of that title (of which you're likely to find a bunch at Sony, though, but certainly not everyone).
The US puts late night anime on a pedestal, stuff that fans focus on. That's a big market in Japan, but not ubiquitous by any stretch if the imagination - and the names that become popular in the US are often very different to the names popular here, and often only after they've fallen out in Japan. Takeda-san doesn't know about FLCL.
Anime is part of daily culture in Japan and everyone knows about it, but for household names you need to go to long-running, popular shows that run in kid-friendly slots. Stuff like Pokemon, Precure, Detective Conan, etc. It is those long-running shows that become part of the collective consciousness, because everyone watched some of that when they were kids. Same with Ghibli movies and anything by Shinkai Makoto (Your Name, Weathering with You, etc). That, and truly impactful stuff like Evangelion, the Gundam franchise, Naruto, etc.
Then there's the fads. Everyone in Japan knows about Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer) right now because they're doing tie-ups with seemingly every shop and business under the sun. Walk into any convenience store and they'll have branded snacks. Whether that series will survive to become something that people remember or not, time will tell.
Yes, this was how I was able to watch 200 Naruto episodes before there was streaming video. Good times torrenting all these RealPlayer files on my 50KB/s DSL connection/
> Ms Haga has been interested in ninjas - covert agents and assassins in medieval Japan - since watching an animated TV show as a child.
Translation: Naruto.
> Ms Haga has been interested in ninjas - covert agents and assassins in medieval Japan - since watching an animated TV show as a child.
I would find it absolutely hilarious if that "animated TV show" was Naruto.
Until you are the type of person that is always focused on others and wants everybody to be happy, often at the cost of expressing your own opinion. Then you'd need a dose of Ayn Rand and you also won't be popular on HN, but what the hell.
If you strip away all the industrial entrepreneur worshiping, there is a beautiful lesson about the ethics of expressing what you want and allowing loved ones to do things for you, because they want to see you happy, because they love the real, full you. I guess one can come from many sides but in the end I agree with the writer of this piece, it is about accepting yourself, including the things you don't like. If you've seen Naruto, this is the height of the series for me: [0] (None of the movies will play though.)
[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=naruto+hugs+himself&t=ffsb&ia=videos&iax=videos&iai=UmPrDbgR3d8
People like you are one of the biggest reasons autism is too broad of a term.
Maybe these words seem loaded to self-diagnosed, asperger glorifying, "neurodivergent," ever-woke social justice armchair linguists like yourself.
I'd love for all of you to be squarely outside of the same diagnosis my little brother has.
I can't stress how much your "fully functioning" "open to question" "non-illness difference" version of autism deeply offends those who have been touched by real autism. Not, got me a job at Google savante autism. Not, I'm a nerd who remembers every episode of Naruto and no one likes me because I never shower so my excuse is my neurodivergence autism.
I long for the day when my brother's socially crippling mood swings and severe learning disability is no longer trapped under the same umbrella as a group of people who want to remove disability, retardation, or illness from a definition that has literally destroyed the lives of many individuals and families across the world.
I am disgusted by this optimistic view on autism. Championed by the most privileged of those with the disorder. You all fight a "stigma" for a mental disorder that you find has some "perks" as if the child thrashing his head against a wall and screaming at the top of his lungs because his brain registers every other sensation as pain and pain as pleasure doesn't even exist.
I have no sympathy for your entire assessment yet we agree on one thing, me maybe more so than you. The sooner we redefine autism into a multitude of different mental disorders, the better.
I usually get the impression people aren't really trying to match an accent. They're just trying to pronounce the letters and syllables as they would in their native language. Hence the stereotypical cringe-inducing "bonn-joor!" or "watashee wah soo-miss-oo dess-oo". Maybe it's because they haven't heard enough native pronunciation of the words (just like I mispronounce words I've only ever read in a book).
When I speak foreign languages I sort of subconsciously imitate characters I've heard speak in movies or shows. I'm always kind of worried my Japanese will sound like a mix of Naruto and Miyazaki characters.
As for regional accents, I find that's more a matter of knowing the little differences in certain words, like extending or shortening syllables, or rather strongly altering the key vowel (eg. Québecois 'nawn' vs. Parisian 'nohn' for 'non'). As you said, has a lot to do with mouth shapes.
For a lot of regional accents, I find you can fake things by transposing certain vowels. eg. for Australian transpose all the eh's (eg. get, head) into i's (eg. git, hid) and using soft r's (git me a beah mate). Whereas in my limited experience New Zealanders have a sharper change from e's to i's - it's almost "geet me a beah". And of course knowing the local slang - adding 'mate' to the end of your sentences just sounds more Australian.
It's hard to give recommendations because the stuff I read is probably not what most people would like ;-) Especially, I tend to like sports manga which is pretty far from fantasy. (Currently Yowamushi Pedal is fuelling my cycling addiction!)
I mentioned Barefoot Gen, which is a very early manga and a classic that is actually taught in Japanese schools. It's not fantasy, though. It tells the story of the author's experiences around the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
For fantasy things, Full metal alchemist is an alternate-earth scenario with magic. It is extremely good. One thing that doesn't actually fit the epic story format because it is a series of short stories is Mushishi. I highly recommend it, although I've only watched the anime. Akira is a cyber-punk, distopian future manga which is very highly acclaimed. Personally, it is not my taste, but it is excellent. Another interesting manga which has no actual heroes is Death Note. It's another one I don't like because all of the characters are really nasty, but some people really, really like it for that reason. I asked my wife (who is Japanese) for a suggestion and she mentioned Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu (Legend of the Galactic Heroes). I haven't read it but Wikipedia indicates it was originally a series of novels. It seems Viz publishes both the novels and manga in English. Ghost in the Shell is a very good sci-fi manga, but I have to admit that it is years since I looked at it, so I can't really remember it.
One manga which I love is actually a baseball manga called Touch. If you read that, you will see the manga story structure very easily.
I started reading manga as a means to learn Japanese. At the time I had only a passing interest in graphic novels and comics. Over time I got quite hooked on it. But I only read in Japanese, so I tend to read things which are quite easy. There are very complex manga stories which are aimed at adults, but unfortunately I haven't spent much time looking at those things.
Of course the 2 current most popular mangas aimed at young boys is Naruto and One Piece. Naruto just finished. It has some very powerful moments and the story is quite good. I've found that there are quite a lot of useful ideas that you can take away from the story and apply to your own life. However, the characters are one-dimensional (on purpose, I think) so I suspect it wouldn't appeal to the original poster. One Piece is also quite good (the first chapter is actually really worth reading on it's own and can stand by itself even if you don't read anything else). Again, it is aimed at a young audience and the characters are very static. There are some extremely moving moments, though.
Hope that helps a bit. As I said, it's hard to give recommendations because some people will look at that list and probably absolutely hate some of the things on there. There is an unbelievably massive amount of manga being written and I truly believe there is something for every taste. However, the examples above are pretty easy to find in English and are all quite famous. If they don't meet your taste, I hope you'll explore a bit further on your own.
I enjoy watching various anime but am by no means into Japanese culture, nor the American culture that is into Japanese culture. However, when I was first introduced to anime by a friend (minus Spirited Away) which was Naruto, I was introduced to the English-subbed versions even though English dubs were available. After watching a few episodes of listening to Japanese and reading the subs, I thought it would be a good idea to skip the effort of reading and watch the English dubbed version instead.
That was a horrible experience. The English dubbed voices seemed to lack passion or say things in the wrong tones (or just be monotone!). Blue Gender immediately comes to mind as another painful English dub experience.
So, that is how my teenage self wound up pirating a lot of anime: because the fansubbing was extremely good and I could pick up on Japanese vocal intonation. I could actually tell what was a joke, and what was anger, instead of wondering when someone would have feelings at all in their English monotone!
In the case of Ergo Proxy, the additional notes in the fansubbing really helped understand the bigger dialogue. Without it I probably would not have held that particular show in has high of a regard.
The only consistent exception to the poor English dubs has been Miyazaki. Heck, Liam Neeson was a voice in Ponyo!
The entire anime industry is pretty much the worst thing ever, economics wise.
The companies behind the anime (And there are generally a lot - not just the production studio) invest the money to produce it, /and/ to book the slot that it airs on. Anime ratings aren't great for the vast majority of shows, and the TV networks would rather just pump out a cheap talk show or similar and get better ratings if they're left in charge of things.
So, now you've got the show produced, have booked a time slot, and start airing your show. You're not making money off of the advertising. Where do you make your money, then?
Merchandising and dvd/blu-ray sales. So this results in the ridiculous quantity of merchandise anime series have.
And then the blu-ray/dvd sales. These are what really drives the market, and it's completely ludicrous. A season will be released piece by piece, 2-4 episodes at a time, for $30-$60 each. Buying a copy of both seasons of Fate/Zero, for example, would cost you $591
The sales of these pieced out dvds/blu-rays basically determine the life of a show - at a time where only the domestic market is purchasing. Streams like Crunchyroll have basically zero bearing on how the committees running the show view it's success. If domestic sales are good, a sequel is likely to be made. If domestic sales are bad, even if it is an absolute runaway hit elsewhere (and I mean fairly universally - something could sell well in China, the US, etc etc etc and if it didn't do well in Japan, it's still dead)
Add all of that together, and there's really zero incentive for westerners (Or any non-Japanese market) to not pirate anime, outside of the whole "contributing financially [in an extremely diminished capacity] to the people who made the product you enjoy".
About the only time they take notice of international success at all is when it's a ridiculous runaway, like Bleach, Naruto, etc.
Interesting point.
In fiction, it's often easy to identify what people want to read / watch / consume - a Joss Whedon fan wants "stuff like Buffy", a 24 fan wants "more 24". You're in the Naruto niche.
This is niche identification, just like in non-fiction - where as I mention in a comment above, you can target down to tiny niches.
The difference in fiction is that it's illegal to target those niches because of copyright-created monopolies. I can't say "OK, ZenoArrow wants more Naruto" and make some without getting extremely sued.
I'm not sure what to do about that, but it's an interesting identification of the problem.
This also explains why new fiction is so hard to launch - you're creating a new niche, something that's traditionally randomly successful and very difficult.
(The traditional solution, of course, is either to license popular IP - not really doable for indies - or to base your fiction on a niche that's not copyright-protected. Hence the number of Sherlock Holmes-based films, TV shows, and books, for example - the Sherlock Holmes niche is actually available.)
Interestingly this is the only episode of Naruto I've ever seen. I remember being quite impressed at how cerebral it was, as I was expecting to see a bunch of ninjas running around slicing off each other's heads.
I saw this on a Naruto episode first (http://www.hulu.com/watch/36407#i0,p20,s1,d0), about 6 months before I started college.
For those who don't want to watch the episode, it's a written exam ninja trainees (genin) need to take to be promoted to ninja squad leader (chuunin). Any team (of 3) that has a single member fail will be failed as a group. If any ninja gets caught cheating they will be given a warning, and after three warnings they will be failed.
SPOILER (no really, the episode is great in this context even if you don't like/watch anime much) The intelligent (but not book-smart) notice the leniency of the anti-cheating-system and the carefully worded instructions to "not get caught", and then find ways to obtain answers from "sources", qualified chuunin who were intentionally planted in the exam hall who knew the answers, or to collaborate with teammates. End plot summary
I think it's important to teach kids not just the answers to problems posed, but also ways to find them. If it's too easy for them to find answers without rigid rules, it probably means that he problems we are posing them are not hard or thought-provoking enough in the first place.
Edited for a missed phrase
You just need to find things that inspire you. Personally, when I lose motivation I just watch a few episodes of Naruto.
Both of them are actually animated in Korea, incidentally.
It's funny... There was a minor controversy a few years ago when someone discovered that several Naruto fight sequences were actually traced off of other sources, including the Cowboy Bebop movie. I wonder whose idea that was -- the main studio or the outsourced one?