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Naruto – 200 – Filling time with ninja

It has been a while since I last caught up with Naruto – still its a series I treasure deep within my heart, but these ever enduring “filler dark ages” are even dwindling the concrete enthusiasm I once felt for master Rock Lee and his “spring time of youth”. True to Naruto’s emphasis on fighting spirit, I will never give up on this show, I won’t read ahead and spoil myself with the manga – instead my fandom is on auto-pilot, navigating the blue seas with Monkey D. Luffy. Only god knows when the fillers will end – but my guess, for what another fanboys desperation is worth – is episode 208, the next true increment if the series is seperated by the anime-standard of 26 episodes per season. Fingers crossed, anyway – its been a year already and I’m starting to feel like I imagined characters like Orochimaru, Itachi and even that damn angsty bastard Sasuke.
As far as the quality of this particular filler arc goes – it’s not too bad. Despite a typical lack of tension thanks to the nagging knowledge that deep down we know Naruto is in no real danger and that Konoha won’t be blown up, in small doses it’s still fun and ever so slightly exciting. It’s nice that the chemistry between the various characters still works; them playing off each others ecentric quirks is shallow but entertaining. In other words, I can’t help but enjoy Hinata’s shy affection for Naruto exposed again and again by his dim witted and innocent brauva. It’s great that ANBU are popping up now and again too; their aggressive and cold presence, though fleeting, rekindles my smouldering faith in the darker side of Naruto and reminds me of how once upon a time, this was actually burning brightly as a quite brilliant action series. I long for those days again.

5 replies on “Naruto – 200 – Filling time with ninja”

I can only think as I read this.. "wtf is that in the first picture?! it must be an onion head (similar to gantz).. must be..". I spoil myself with the manga, which I’m glad doesn’t have fillers..

I know what you mean; as long as there’s hope of coming back to the original story line, so will I wait.
But I will never watch that… that filler.

I marathoned through episodes 1 – 100 of Naruto and was absolutely entertained by it. Then around episode 130+ they started to show filler after filler. I couldn’t get through an episode without sleeping and just gave up watching the filler episodes.
It wouldn’t be half as bad if they kept the animation quality like that of the earlier episodes. But they didn’t, giving us poor animation and a poorer storyline.
However, when the anime will continue with the manga storyline, I will definitely watch again.

"it must be an onion head"
It’s actually supposed to be one of the younger kids from the ninja academy and probably the worst character design I’ve ever seen, I had to screen cap it. It’s like an alien head or something!

Yeah, fillers are what are killing Naruto. Even with Shippuden happening, they stick filler even where it’s unnecessary.

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