I LOVE THE OVERALL THEME OF THIS ANIME, it's great, you can either be a victim of your upbringing and past, or use it to springboard and motivate you. Then go from mopey kid to mopey kid and make them realize the purpose of living. Well, that's one aspect is Naruto's "naivety" infecting others to better themselves.
The other aspect of it is lack of animation, and boring multi-episode battles with a lot of padding. I didn't realize this during its initial run as a teen, but holy padding and lack of animation... SO MUCH TALKING AND PEOPLE STANDING STILL, and a lot of characters have a mask on, so they don't have to animate lip flaps, and as such means you're just watching a still image. There have literally been multiple times when I heard Audio and thought my PC was being buggy since intel GPUs kind of suck, and I thought the video froze while the audio continued, and then nope, that's just how it's "ANIMATED".
Around the QUARTER MARK, we get introduced to the main bad guy for the series and most of the next series, and is he just not interesting and boring. He loves to talk a lot and is just so one dimensional and boring. They're going for a more intelligent Joker angle, and it doesn't work.
I'm on Episode 73, and I'm hating this re-watch. The core message and theme are great, but there's not enough villain varieties to supplement the main villain, that it just gets boring. Also, the recycling of gags gets annoying as well. Mind you, this anime is meant for 7-12 year olds in Japan, that it kind of contextualizes the flaws I'm seeing as a now 36-year-old with over 100 anime watched up to this point. The thing as an adult I do find more interesting is the JAPAN mythology and demonology stuff, but there's not enough of that to keep me sated. I MIGHT, have to abandon this one due to sheer boredom.
The other aspect of it is lack of animation, and boring multi-episode battles with a lot of padding. I didn't realize this during its initial run as a teen, but holy padding and lack of animation... SO MUCH TALKING AND PEOPLE STANDING STILL, and a lot of characters have a mask on, so they don't have to animate lip flaps, and as such means you're just watching a still image. There have literally been multiple times when I heard Audio and thought my PC was being buggy since intel GPUs kind of suck, and I thought the video froze while the audio continued, and then nope, that's just how it's "ANIMATED".
Around the QUARTER MARK, we get introduced to the main bad guy for the series and most of the next series, and is he just not interesting and boring. He loves to talk a lot and is just so one dimensional and boring. They're going for a more intelligent Joker angle, and it doesn't work.
I'm on Episode 73, and I'm hating this re-watch. The core message and theme are great, but there's not enough villain varieties to supplement the main villain, that it just gets boring. Also, the recycling of gags gets annoying as well. Mind you, this anime is meant for 7-12 year olds in Japan, that it kind of contextualizes the flaws I'm seeing as a now 36-year-old with over 100 anime watched up to this point. The thing as an adult I do find more interesting is the JAPAN mythology and demonology stuff, but there's not enough of that to keep me sated. I MIGHT, have to abandon this one due to sheer boredom.