Naruto

I ran across Naruto on Cartoon Network maybe a month ago. One episode. I never had the tv on at the same time again, and I was wondering if I'd ever see any others...but, amazingly, in the vile dungeon sometimes known as Wal-Mart, I ran across several seasons' worth of the show. I'm more than halfway through the first season now. It's enjoyable, though the episode I stumbled across on tv was quite a bit more engaging. Then again, it's almost certainly from a later season, so it stands to reason that the series has improved as it's gone along.

It's an anime series. (Dear goddess of technology... Mozilla doesn't recognize the word "anime"?!??) Naruto is a mischievous Ninja in training. The backstory, which hasn't been particularly relevant in the first several eps, is that when Naruto was a baby, a 7-tailed fox demon was sealed inside him. Apparently this was the only way to save the village. Two observed effects and one guess of this thusfar: (1) the people of the village are mistrustful and suspicious of him; (2) Possibly his mischievous nature stems from this fox-demon; (3) He healed a wound surprisingly quickly. To be honest, though, Naruto isn't the most interesting character. Possibly he'll get more interesting later.

In his training team is also Sasuke (seems to be pronounced SAUCE-kay), and he was the focus of the episode I saw on tv. Rather, his backstory was. He's the sole survivor of the Uchiha clan and wants revenge on the person who wiped out his family. I have no idea when exactly the attacker's identity will be revealed in the series, so I won't post it as a spoiler (though you can probably find it somewhere on Wikipedia or one of the links therefrom). Sasuke is much more likeable than Naruto, from my perspective. Quiet, introspective, intense, dark... whereas Naruto is loud, outgoing, still intense but in an annoying/idiotic way, and bright.

A few complaints about the first season thusfar. There's a female on the team as well, Sakura. She hasn't yet done anything useful and I find this irritating. On the other hand, they haven't done the obvious ploy of having her always be the hostage and have the two males rescue her, plus they're still in the training stages, so perhaps this will improve. Also, there are some anime conventions that just irritate me. Poorly drawing the face when someone is upset or screaming, for one. This was done more obviously in the first few eps but has decreased somewhat in the latter part of the season. It's also a bit odd to have characters announcing the names of the techniques they're performing in the midst of a battle. In training, sure, but in an actual battle?

Still, I'm liking it well enough that I'll probably pick up the second season soon. Twenty dollars for a season isn't bad at all. Oh, just for reference, according to the main web-site, Episode 138 is about to air...and I'm on roughly Episode 10. No clue what the number of the one I watched was, but I would have to guess in the hundreds somewhere.