More on Naruto

I've made it through the first two seasons now and part of the third. I still like the series a lot. It is very character driven, and that's something that appeals to me. Even the villains/anatagonists have richly detailed characters, particularly Haku from the end of S1 and the beginning of S2.

Sakura has done a few useful things now, but is still the weakest of the main characters. What's particularly odd is that she's the only identifiable character without a distinctive jutsu of her own. Naruto can do "shadow clones," multiple solid copies of himself; Sasuke can do "phoenix fire" where he essentially breathes out a fireball and sends it at his opponenets. All the rest of the village rookies have something distinctive: mind-sharing; super-senses; talking to bugs; talking to a strange little dog; turning into a giant ball of death. Wait. There may be one other without a distinctive jutsu that we've seen yet. I don't know the name, but in nearly every scene he says, "What a drag." But he's not a main character, so it's not as odd for him. {...brief interlude while I check Wikipedia...} Ah, it looks like she does eventually develop something distinctive.

Other than that, my only real complaint is with the overall structure. Story arcs do not, in general, coincide with ends or beginnings of seasons. Also, I wish there were an option to play all the episodes skipping the intro/closing credits except at the very first and last. I liked the S1 and S2 theme song better than what they're using in S3, but a quick scan showed that that theme song won't last, either. I can only hope the next new one is an improvement. The original theme song I liked well enough to watch through now and again between eps. The S3 one has me reaching for FF almost instantly. Also, the original end-sequence was beautifully illustrated. The S3 end sequence is incredibly boring. Again, these don't have any effect on the quality of the stories, so they aren't major drawbacks: Just minor irritations.

Oh, I started checking for latter seasons on Amazon today...and found that I'd gotten a very good deal on the first four seasons at Wal-Mart. They were actually $25 each, rather than $20 as I posted earlier, but most of the ones on Amazon are right around $40. Looks like some of them are special editions, but I don't think all of them are. Ah well.