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I kind of miss the days before Sharingan was established as the ultimate technique and Senju/Uchiha became the total focus of the series.
It was a lot cooler when all 5 ninja villages were equally dangerous and could put up a good fight. I miss the bug clan, the wolf-symbiosis clan, the fat meatball clan, mind control, shadow control, etc. Those were all really cool powers. I really don't like how it got boiled down to this black and white Uchiha vs the world conflict. It turned a cool, interesting, believable world into typical shounen nonsense :\.
Really wish Kishi was better at storytelling because the world building he did was truly amazing. Then he kind of squatted down and took a giant dookie all over his own work. So sad.
I used to think Gaara was so scary and was so curious to know what techniques the other sand ninjas had. I was super interested in Rain village, the 7 swordsmen, etc. Same with earth techniques. Every new ninja was super exciting and interesting. Then somewhere along the line they just turned into token plot pieces, poorly implemented, poorly understood, and then completely steamrolled by OTT powers.
Just look at how poorly the 7 swordsmen of mist was handled. Those guys were hyped up to be EPIC EPIC swordsmen. We get the best ones EVER and what is it? Some dude running around with a giant sewing needle who just gets flattened after killing a few random faceless ninjas. The gold brothers? .... Their powers were just bizarre and not in a good way, more in a "I really feel like I'm reading a made-up absurd children's manga now sort of way. Gai would have been an awesome opponent for the swordsmen. A bunch of sick taijutsu hand to hand combat sequences. Kiba and his dog would have been a cool matchup vs the twins, etc. Shit like that.
Back in the day, during the chuunin exam and stuff, Kishi did a great job pairing off interesting combatants against each other and each fight was super damn interesting to see how the different techniques would play out against each other. So much of that greatness has just vanished. This fight against Tobi is the first good one in ages. Just compare the fight between Orochimaru and Sandaime for an example of an insanely awesome kage level fight. Then you have Madara vs GOKAGE and it's boring enough to put me to tears. All they did so far was some combo attack that ended in the old man dust farting. And sure enough Madara barely blinked. He just has some giant impervious flaming skeleton. I mean, come on. That's probably one of the least interesting powers ever. Hi, I'm invincible. Really?? That's the best Kishi could come up with? Even the Hyuuga invincibility technique is cooler than that. Dude spinning in a circle and releasing a field of chakra around him. It's invincibility of a sort but limited and costly. Way cooler imo. I dno, blah.
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On August 02 2012 16:48 StorkHwaiting wrote:
I kind of miss the days before Sharingan was established as the ultimate technique and Senju/Uchiha became the total focus of the series.
It was a lot cooler when all 5 ninja villages were equally dangerous and could put up a good fight. I miss the bug clan, the wolf-symbiosis clan, the fat meatball clan, mind control, shadow control, etc. Those were all really cool powers. I really don't like how it got boiled down to this black and white Uchiha vs the world conflict. It turned a cool, interesting, believable world into typical shounen nonsense :\.
Really wish Kishi was better at storytelling because the world building he did was truly amazing. Then he kind of squatted down and took a giant dookie all over his own work. So sad.
Pretty sure thats how 99% of Naruto fans feel.
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On August 02 2012 16:48 StorkHwaiting wrote:
I kind of miss the days before Sharingan was established as the ultimate technique and Senju/Uchiha became the total focus of the series.
It was a lot cooler when all 5 ninja villages were equally dangerous and could put up a good fight. I miss the bug clan, the wolf-symbiosis clan, the fat meatball clan, mind control, shadow control, etc. Those were all really cool powers. I really don't like how it got boiled down to this black and white Uchiha vs the world conflict. It turned a cool, interesting, believable world into typical shounen nonsense :\.
Really wish Kishi was better at storytelling because the world building he did was truly amazing. Then he kind of squatted down and took a giant dookie all over his own work. So sad.
I used to think Gaara was so scary and was so curious to know what techniques the other sand ninjas had. I was super interested in Rain village, the 7 swordsmen, etc. Same with earth techniques. Every new ninja was super exciting and interesting. Then somewhere along the line they just turned into token plot pieces, poorly implemented, poorly understood, and then completely steamrolled by OTT powers.
Just look at how poorly the 7 swordsmen of mist was handled. Those guys were hyped up to be EPIC EPIC swordsmen. We get the best ones EVER and what is it? Some dude running around with a giant sewing needle who just gets flattened after killing a few random faceless ninjas. The gold brothers? .... Their powers were just bizarre and not in a good way, more in a "I really feel like I'm reading a made-up absurd children's manga now sort of way. Gai would have been an awesome opponent for the swordsmen. A bunch of sick taijutsu hand to hand combat sequences. Kiba and his dog would have been a cool matchup vs the twins, etc. Shit like that.
Back in the day, during the chuunin exam and stuff, Kishi did a great job pairing off interesting combatants against each other and each fight was super damn interesting to see how the different techniques would play out against each other. So much of that greatness has just vanished. This fight against Tobi is the first good one in ages. Just compare the fight between Orochimaru and Sandaime for an example of an insanely awesome kage level fight. Then you have Madara vs GOKAGE and it's boring enough to put me to tears. All they did so far was some combo attack that ended in the old man dust farting. And sure enough Madara barely blinked. He just has some giant impervious flaming skeleton. I mean, come on. That's probably one of the least interesting powers ever. Hi, I'm invincible. Really?? That's the best Kishi could come up with? Even the Hyuuga invincibility technique is cooler than that. Dude spinning in a circle and releasing a field of chakra around him. It's invincibility of a sort but limited and costly. Way cooler imo. I dno, blah.
That pretty much sums it up. All I could add is that what happens when we're getting 600+ chapter manga that isn't THAT much multithreaded. The things just has to get simpler, or we could even say dumb, at some point because it just burns out the most authors. I don't say there are no exceptions, but they're very rare
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On August 02 2012 16:48 StorkHwaiting wrote:
I kind of miss the days before Sharingan was established as the ultimate technique and Senju/Uchiha became the total focus of the series.
It was a lot cooler when all 5 ninja villages were equally dangerous and could put up a good fight. I miss the bug clan, the wolf-symbiosis clan, the fat meatball clan, mind control, shadow control, etc. Those were all really cool powers. I really don't like how it got boiled down to this black and white Uchiha vs the world conflict. It turned a cool, interesting, believable world into typical shounen nonsense :\.
Really wish Kishi was better at storytelling because the world building he did was truly amazing. Then he kind of squatted down and took a giant dookie all over his own work. So sad.
I used to think Gaara was so scary and was so curious to know what techniques the other sand ninjas had. I was super interested in Rain village, the 7 swordsmen, etc. Same with earth techniques. Every new ninja was super exciting and interesting. Then somewhere along the line they just turned into token plot pieces, poorly implemented, poorly understood, and then completely steamrolled by OTT powers.
Just look at how poorly the 7 swordsmen of mist was handled. Those guys were hyped up to be EPIC EPIC swordsmen. We get the best ones EVER and what is it? Some dude running around with a giant sewing needle who just gets flattened after killing a few random faceless ninjas. The gold brothers? .... Their powers were just bizarre and not in a good way, more in a "I really feel like I'm reading a made-up absurd children's manga now sort of way. Gai would have been an awesome opponent for the swordsmen. A bunch of sick taijutsu hand to hand combat sequences. Kiba and his dog would have been a cool matchup vs the twins, etc. Shit like that.
Back in the day, during the chuunin exam and stuff, Kishi did a great job pairing off interesting combatants against each other and each fight was super damn interesting to see how the different techniques would play out against each other. So much of that greatness has just vanished. This fight against Tobi is the first good one in ages. Just compare the fight between Orochimaru and Sandaime for an example of an insanely awesome kage level fight. Then you have Madara vs GOKAGE and it's boring enough to put me to tears. All they did so far was some combo attack that ended in the old man dust farting. And sure enough Madara barely blinked. He just has some giant impervious flaming skeleton. I mean, come on. That's probably one of the least interesting powers ever. Hi, I'm invincible. Really?? That's the best Kishi could come up with? Even the Hyuuga invincibility technique is cooler than that. Dude spinning in a circle and releasing a field of chakra around him. It's invincibility of a sort but limited and costly. Way cooler imo. I dno, blah.
Completely agree ... You can add to that that back in the days the characters where interisting and had personalities just compare Orochimaru with Tobi.
My personal theroy is that they hide that Kishimoto died during the Fukushima earthquake, luckily Oda survived 
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Fenrax
United States5018 Posts
On August 02 2012 16:48 StorkHwaiting wrote:
I kind of miss the days before Sharingan was established as the ultimate technique and Senju/Uchiha became the total focus of the series.
It was a lot cooler when all 5 ninja villages were equally dangerous and could put up a good fight. I miss the bug clan, the wolf-symbiosis clan, the fat meatball clan, mind control, shadow control, etc. Those were all really cool powers. I really don't like how it got boiled down to this black and white Uchiha vs the world conflict. It turned a cool, interesting, believable world into typical shounen nonsense :\.
Really wish Kishi was better at storytelling because the world building he did was truly amazing. Then he kind of squatted down and took a giant dookie all over his own work. So sad.
can't be said often enough. I recently rewatched the first part of Naruto. The series WAS good. Oro as a villain was so badass (his fight with Anko; when he laughed as creepy girl Orochimaru), the general pace of the series was great, every episode drove the story by a mile (only exception Hokage/Oro fight but that was cool since it was the big battle of that time).
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On August 02 2012 16:48 StorkHwaiting wrote:
I kind of miss the days before Sharingan was established as the ultimate technique and Senju/Uchiha became the total focus of the series.
It was a lot cooler when all 5 ninja villages were equally dangerous and could put up a good fight. I miss the bug clan, the wolf-symbiosis clan, the fat meatball clan, mind control, shadow control, etc. Those were all really cool powers. I really don't like how it got boiled down to this black and white Uchiha vs the world conflict. It turned a cool, interesting, believable world into typical shounen nonsense :\.
Really wish Kishi was better at storytelling because the world building he did was truly amazing. Then he kind of squatted down and took a giant dookie all over his own work. So sad.
I used to think Gaara was so scary and was so curious to know what techniques the other sand ninjas had. I was super interested in Rain village, the 7 swordsmen, etc. Same with earth techniques. Every new ninja was super exciting and interesting. Then somewhere along the line they just turned into token plot pieces, poorly implemented, poorly understood, and then completely steamrolled by OTT powers.
Just look at how poorly the 7 swordsmen of mist was handled. Those guys were hyped up to be EPIC EPIC swordsmen. We get the best ones EVER and what is it? Some dude running around with a giant sewing needle who just gets flattened after killing a few random faceless ninjas. The gold brothers? .... Their powers were just bizarre and not in a good way, more in a "I really feel like I'm reading a made-up absurd children's manga now sort of way. Gai would have been an awesome opponent for the swordsmen. A bunch of sick taijutsu hand to hand combat sequences. Kiba and his dog would have been a cool matchup vs the twins, etc. Shit like that.
Back in the day, during the chuunin exam and stuff, Kishi did a great job pairing off interesting combatants against each other and each fight was super damn interesting to see how the different techniques would play out against each other. So much of that greatness has just vanished. This fight against Tobi is the first good one in ages. Just compare the fight between Orochimaru and Sandaime for an example of an insanely awesome kage level fight. Then you have Madara vs GOKAGE and it's boring enough to put me to tears. All they did so far was some combo attack that ended in the old man dust farting. And sure enough Madara barely blinked. He just has some giant impervious flaming skeleton. I mean, come on. That's probably one of the least interesting powers ever. Hi, I'm invincible. Really?? That's the best Kishi could come up with? Even the Hyuuga invincibility technique is cooler than that. Dude spinning in a circle and releasing a field of chakra around him. It's invincibility of a sort but limited and costly. Way cooler imo. I dno, blah.
Great write-up...I really enjoyed reading it and can only agree with you!
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to me it seems like the power creep really started when they started bringing nagato into the fight, up until that point the best leaf ninja could take on or at least tag team the akatsuki members and have interesting battles. Once they powered up naruto to beyond kage level (which is what he is at this point) everything else just kind of slumped. While itachi has always been the coolest and possibly the best character in the show, it has really come down to him, sasuke, tobi, naruto and the recent addition of OP madara.
I wonder if kishi plans on taking away the nine tails from naruto thus making him about the same power level as other top ninjas (sage mode ect). I think i remember when they announced shippuden that there was going to be 3 arcs, the third one taking place a couple years after shippuden. Also, what happened to naruto becoming more aligned with wind energy.... For an arc called Hurricane chronicles it seems to be lacking.
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For those who didn't understand what was going on last chapter, what's happening is that to dodge attacks, Tobi sends parts of his body to another dimension. But he only sends the part being attacked, not his entire body. Kakashi's Kamui technique also sends objects to another dimension. It turns out that these two dimensions are actually the same dimension, and that it's likely pretty small, barely containing enough room for the objects sent to it.
Thus, if Tobi dematerializes part of his body at the same time Kakashi uses Kamui on an object, the object will collide with Tobi's body part in the next dimension.
The first example of this happening was when Tobi kicked a kunai at Naruto. Immediately afterward, Naruto punched Tobi in the face, but Tobi dematerialized his face and mask, sending them to the other dimension. At that moment, Kakashi used Kamui to send the kunai to the other dimension. Thus, Tobi got a scratch on his mask. Since Naruto attacked at the same time, the three of them at first thought the scratch was caused by Naruto's punch.
The last example of this happening was, obviously, when Naruto tried to hit Tobi with a Rasengan at the end of the chapter. Tobi dematerialized his right arm so that Naruto wouldn't collide with it, but only moments after Kakashi sucked the Rasengan to the other dimension. Thus Tobi's arm and the Rasengan were in the other dimension at the same time, and Tobi was hit.
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On August 02 2012 18:05 Courthead wrote:
For those who didn't understand what was going on last chapter, what's happening is that to dodge attacks, Tobi sends parts of his body to another dimension. But he only sends the part being attacked, not his entire body. Kakashi's Kamui technique also sends objects to another dimension. It turns out that these two dimensions are actually the same dimension, and that it's likely pretty small, barely containing enough room for the objects sent to it.
Thus, if Tobi dematerializes part of his body at the same time Kakashi uses Kamui on an object, the object will collide with Tobi's body part in the next dimension.
The first example of this happening was when Tobi kicked a kunai at Naruto. Immediately afterward, Naruto punched Tobi in the face, but Tobi dematerialized his face and mask, sending them to the other dimension. At that moment, Kakashi used Kamui to send the kunai to the other dimension. Thus, Tobi got a scratch on his mask. Since Naruto attacked at the same time, the three of them at first thought the scratch was caused by Naruto's punch.
The last example of this happening was, obviously, when Naruto tried to hit Tobi with a Rasengan at the end of the chapter. Tobi dematerialized his right arm so that Naruto wouldn't collide with it, but only moments after Kakashi sucked the Rasengan to the other dimension. Thus Tobi's arm and the Rasengan were in the other dimension at the same time, and Tobi was hit.
Nice summary. It's how I interpreted it as well.
Now I wonder how they handle that as:
1) A direct Rasengan hit by Sage-Naruto only resulted in his clothes being torn off.
2) Kakashi could only use Kamui 3 times a day. Or has this since been changed?
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On August 02 2012 16:48 StorkHwaiting wrote:
I kind of miss the days before Sharingan was established as the ultimate technique and Senju/Uchiha became the total focus of the series.
It was a lot cooler when all 5 ninja villages were equally dangerous and could put up a good fight. I miss the bug clan, the wolf-symbiosis clan, the fat meatball clan, mind control, shadow control, etc. Those were all really cool powers. I really don't like how it got boiled down to this black and white Uchiha vs the world conflict. It turned a cool, interesting, believable world into typical shounen nonsense :\.
Really wish Kishi was better at storytelling because the world building he did was truly amazing. Then he kind of squatted down and took a giant dookie all over his own work. So sad.
I used to think Gaara was so scary and was so curious to know what techniques the other sand ninjas had. I was super interested in Rain village, the 7 swordsmen, etc. Same with earth techniques. Every new ninja was super exciting and interesting. Then somewhere along the line they just turned into token plot pieces, poorly implemented, poorly understood, and then completely steamrolled by OTT powers.
Just look at how poorly the 7 swordsmen of mist was handled. Those guys were hyped up to be EPIC EPIC swordsmen. We get the best ones EVER and what is it? Some dude running around with a giant sewing needle who just gets flattened after killing a few random faceless ninjas. The gold brothers? .... Their powers were just bizarre and not in a good way, more in a "I really feel like I'm reading a made-up absurd children's manga now sort of way. Gai would have been an awesome opponent for the swordsmen. A bunch of sick taijutsu hand to hand combat sequences. Kiba and his dog would have been a cool matchup vs the twins, etc. Shit like that.
Back in the day, during the chuunin exam and stuff, Kishi did a great job pairing off interesting combatants against each other and each fight was super damn interesting to see how the different techniques would play out against each other. So much of that greatness has just vanished. This fight against Tobi is the first good one in ages. Just compare the fight between Orochimaru and Sandaime for an example of an insanely awesome kage level fight. Then you have Madara vs GOKAGE and it's boring enough to put me to tears. All they did so far was some combo attack that ended in the old man dust farting. And sure enough Madara barely blinked. He just has some giant impervious flaming skeleton. I mean, come on. That's probably one of the least interesting powers ever. Hi, I'm invincible. Really?? That's the best Kishi could come up with? Even the Hyuuga invincibility technique is cooler than that. Dude spinning in a circle and releasing a field of chakra around him. It's invincibility of a sort but limited and costly. Way cooler imo. I dno, blah.
i think i agree with basically all of this...
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On August 02 2012 18:05 Courthead wrote:
For those who didn't understand what was going on last chapter, what's happening is that to dodge attacks, Tobi sends parts of his body to another dimension. But he only sends the part being attacked, not his entire body. Kakashi's Kamui technique also sends objects to another dimension. It turns out that these two dimensions are actually the same dimension, and that it's likely pretty small, barely containing enough room for the objects sent to it.
Thus, if Tobi dematerializes part of his body at the same time Kakashi uses Kamui on an object, the object will collide with Tobi's body part in the next dimension.
The first example of this happening was when Tobi kicked a kunai at Naruto. Immediately afterward, Naruto punched Tobi in the face, but Tobi dematerialized his face and mask, sending them to the other dimension. At that moment, Kakashi used Kamui to send the kunai to the other dimension. Thus, Tobi got a scratch on his mask. Since Naruto attacked at the same time, the three of them at first thought the scratch was caused by Naruto's punch.
The last example of this happening was, obviously, when Naruto tried to hit Tobi with a Rasengan at the end of the chapter. Tobi dematerialized his right arm so that Naruto wouldn't collide with it, but only moments after Kakashi sucked the Rasengan to the other dimension. Thus Tobi's arm and the Rasengan were in the other dimension at the same time, and Tobi was hit.
i dont understand how dematerializing works. if part of your body is gone, wouldn't blood fill the empty space? i mean, he's missing part of his body, similar how kakashi amputated someone's limb in earlier chapers.
so whatever technique this is, tobi can exist in both planes of existance at once somehow with some sort of new state of matter -_-
i'll be dam if they tie chakra as a replacement body or something
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Tobi sends his whole body to the other dimension, not just the attacked part, that's obvious to me.
That was the whole point of the fighting in the chapter 2 weeks ago. He grabbed for Naruto several times, but Naruto was saved because Gai attacked Tobi's head with the nunchaku, then Kakashi threw the lightning dagger to his head while he was trying to do the grabbing the second time.
If he didn't send his whole body:
1) he would ampute himself
2) he would have killed Naruto already. He would have just sent his head to the other dimension and counterattack with his hands at the same time.
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Fenrax
United States5018 Posts
On August 02 2012 17:53 ixi.genocide wrote:
to me it seems like the power creep really started when they started bringing nagato into the fight, up until that point the best leaf ninja could take on or at least tag team the akatsuki members and have interesting battles. Once they powered up naruto to beyond kage level (which is what he is at this point) everything else just kind of slumped. While itachi has always been the coolest and possibly the best character in the show, it has really come down to him, sasuke, tobi, naruto and the recent addition of OP madara.
The power creep started with the first Shippuuden episodes. To be precise it started when Sasuke took out 200 ninjas ( that Oro fed him) all by himself "without breaking a sweat" and easy enough to be able to only injure but not kill them. That would have been impossible in Naruto part 1 and that was better. These guys have Chakra too, right? And they trained their whole life, too, right? So why does Sasuke win vs. 200 of them. In Shippuuden the whole ninja thing used to be about stealth and 1v1/small group combat skills .
Remember how Orochimaru approached the capture of Sasuke? He didn't just go to Konohagakure's front door and beat up the entire village. His 4 subordinates stealthily infiltrated the village in the cover of night and corrupted Sasuke into following them. Remember how Itachi and Kisame approached capturing Naruto the 9-tails in part one? They stalked Jiraya and Naruto, waited for their chance, set up a trap for Jiraya and then tried to capture Naruto. That was believable and how you would think ninjas would do it.
And what happens in Shippuden? Deidara and Sasori capture Gaara the 1-tails by a freaking FRONTAL ASSAULT on the entire village. Yeah, the first strike was a bit sneaky but basically the fight was one guy vs. a whole village and the one guy wins. How shitty can the sand village get? Lose to a single ninja? Please... Don't they have someone like Ino or her dad who can just mind control him for a bit while he is busy fighting everyone else? Someone like Shikamaru who can just pin him down for a few seconds which should be more than enough to kill him? Like an Uchiha who can spit giant fire balls at him? Like Naruto who can surround him with Shadow clones, even in the air. Can no one in their freaking village cast a Genjutsu on him? No, because in Shippuuden one OP ninja beats infinite nameless ninjas.
How did Nagato approach capturing the 9-tails? Again by a FRONTAL ASSAULT on the leaf village. Absolutely retarded story telling. Not even a sneaky first strike, he just goes there saying "Hi, I'm OP give me the 9-tails". And in the end he doesn't fail because one ninja can't possibly beat the Hokage and hundreds of Jonins and Chuunins combined like logic would dictate but because an even more OP character appears.
...somewhere on the road the Manga has degenerated from good storytelling to "who is more OP"
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i actually stopped reading naruto because of that.
he gets stronger and stronger, he will overcome everyone like songoku....
boring story overall
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I can't disagree that people in Naruto are OP now, but I also have to admit that I saw this coming a mile away. Sasuke beating up 200 people in Orochimaru's lair wasn't the first ridiculous thing to happen. No, the first ridiculous thing to happen was Itachi single-handedly wiping out the entire Uchiha clan. That event made it obvious to me early on that some ninja were orders of magnitude stronger than others, and that in such cases, use of stealth and clever tactics would be unnecessary.
There were other hints, too. Orochimaru's near invincibility + the mysterious Akatsuki group who were portrayed to be even stronger than Orochimaru. The obvious fact that Naruto would some day come to harness the full power of the nine tails. And, most importantly, the existence of someone in the past (the Sage of Six Paths) who single-handedly created all of ninjutsu, defeated the 10-tails, and created the moon. No matter how OP anyone is today, they aren't as OP as he was, and we've known about him forever.
So yeah, it was obvious that certain people would attain OP abilities. And it was obvious that not everyone could be in that club, even if they were decent when they were young (Neji, etc). So I don't see the point in whining about things being OP. What is worth whining about is how shittily-crafted the OP abilities are. Half the time it's just unlimited chakra, super bomb attacks, and invincible shields and defenses that absorb chakra. I wish Kishi got a little more creative than that. For example, Jinchuurikis' ability to avoid genjutsu, Tobi's absolute mastery of a Kamui-like technique, Tsunade's healing prowess, Raikage's speed, and Naruto/Jiraiya's sage mode are all very cool OP abilities. Sharingan? Not so much.
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a lot of us have been in a very deep denial for a long time... it's kind of funny that a few of us are still reading this so many years later, and still somehow hoping something will turn it around. it's time to face the music guys. no one can write themselves out of this kind of corner. not to say that i am not interested to watch kishi try.
speaking of nostalgia, i know it was just anime filler, but the last time i really remember having my jaw drop at naruto was when lee fought kimi. i must have watched that like 500 times. nothing has come remotely close since. that was like the last breath of creativity from the original arc.
i think the original arc was most likely constructed over kishi's life as he was growing up. when he ran out of story and had to start this week to week creativity shit, rather than just filling in the details of a story he already knew... that is where problems began.
tldr =
On August 02 2012 20:03 InFdude wrote:
This is mainly due to the story parting from Hunter x Hunter. The parts where he is following a similar story are the parts fans like. Just like bleach. The parts the fans like are the parts the author had actually planned on. After that the mangas got popular and the authors just made up random shit to keep them going for the moneyz.
lol n1.
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On August 02 2012 16:48 StorkHwaiting wrote:
I kind of miss the days before Sharingan was established as the ultimate technique and Senju/Uchiha became the total focus of the series.
It was a lot cooler when all 5 ninja villages were equally dangerous and could put up a good fight. I miss the bug clan, the wolf-symbiosis clan, the fat meatball clan, mind control, shadow control, etc. Those were all really cool powers. I really don't like how it got boiled down to this black and white Uchiha vs the world conflict. It turned a cool, interesting, believable world into typical shounen nonsense :\.
Really wish Kishi was better at storytelling because the world building he did was truly amazing. Then he kind of squatted down and took a giant dookie all over his own work. So sad.
I used to think Gaara was so scary and was so curious to know what techniques the other sand ninjas had. I was super interested in Rain village, the 7 swordsmen, etc. Same with earth techniques. Every new ninja was super exciting and interesting. Then somewhere along the line they just turned into token plot pieces, poorly implemented, poorly understood, and then completely steamrolled by OTT powers.
Just look at how poorly the 7 swordsmen of mist was handled. Those guys were hyped up to be EPIC EPIC swordsmen. We get the best ones EVER and what is it? Some dude running around with a giant sewing needle who just gets flattened after killing a few random faceless ninjas. The gold brothers? .... Their powers were just bizarre and not in a good way, more in a "I really feel like I'm reading a made-up absurd children's manga now sort of way. Gai would have been an awesome opponent for the swordsmen. A bunch of sick taijutsu hand to hand combat sequences. Kiba and his dog would have been a cool matchup vs the twins, etc. Shit like that.
Back in the day, during the chuunin exam and stuff, Kishi did a great job pairing off interesting combatants against each other and each fight was super damn interesting to see how the different techniques would play out against each other. So much of that greatness has just vanished. This fight against Tobi is the first good one in ages. Just compare the fight between Orochimaru and Sandaime for an example of an insanely awesome kage level fight. Then you have Madara vs GOKAGE and it's boring enough to put me to tears. All they did so far was some combo attack that ended in the old man dust farting. And sure enough Madara barely blinked. He just has some giant impervious flaming skeleton. I mean, come on. That's probably one of the least interesting powers ever. Hi, I'm invincible. Really?? That's the best Kishi could come up with? Even the Hyuuga invincibility technique is cooler than that. Dude spinning in a circle and releasing a field of chakra around him. It's invincibility of a sort but limited and costly. Way cooler imo. I dno, blah.
I think this is a common occurrence in popular mangas. The author had a story planned out with some parameters for the world, and the plot is more or less "there" from start to finish. It probably isn't planned out in great detail far in advance, but the author has a general direction it should follow. When a manga gets huge popularity the author is tempted to try and avoid the plot direction at a point and make more money off of the work. The author may never make another popular work again, so this is unfortunately the safest move.
I don't know what the policy or rule of thumb is for taking breaks on mangas. I presume it is rather discouraged because the magazine (JUMP in this case) loses content. Because of this the author can't devote enough time to developing these new parts of the story as the author is already focused on developing the current arc and illustrating it. I think this leads to the kind of watered down content we've been getting from Naruto and Bleach for quite a while.
Once the manga draws to a close there will probably be two points in the manga where you can say "oh, if I take out everything in between these two points then I have what looks like the original story." I'm going to do a bit of bleach spoiling here, so don't read beyond this if you're interested in bleach and not up to the current chapter. If you take the end of the soul society arc and join it together with the Aizen fight you get something that looks a lot like what the author probably had in mind before the manga exploded in popularity. If you take the soul society arc, have Aizen go to hueco mundo for a few chapters to make everyone there his bitch, meanwhile Urahara Kisuke is busting ass making those pillars, Aizen comes back and is eventually defeated by Ichigo, then the Quincies happen and the story is concluded. It makes a lot more sense. Ichigo and the other captains never developed their skill-set during this period of time. Sure, maybe they got faster and more destructive. That doesn't change anything with the original plot. Make the enemies' strength increase and you've essentially got the same thing. It explains why this Quincy arc is uncharacteristically developed compared to the previous arcs.
I think this same thing will be pretty obvious in Naruto. If you give Naruto his time skip & sage training right after the akatsuki encounter waaaaaaaay back before shippuden, comes back to Nagato fucking up Konoha, Kabuto or Orichimaru takes this as a queue to do his mass ressurection (because even though people didn't die, the city is now very weak) with or without Madara, Akatsuki tries to use the confusion to their advantage to get the tailed beasts, and you end up kind of where we are now, but there would be a lot less of this bullshit powerup that the characters had to get to face previous enemies that were injected into the plot.
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I actually think comparison to hunter x hunter is horrible.
If Naruto or Bleach decided to make a hiatus of years they'd lose their entire fanbase.
But HunterxHunter has (at least I think so) lost almost no reader since it started. The story is so good that it can allow month longs breaks and no one is too upset about it.
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On August 02 2012 21:14 sharkie wrote:
I actually think comparison to hunter x hunter is horrible.
If Naruto or Bleach decided to make a hiatus of years they'd lose their entire fanbase.
But HunterxHunter has (at least I think so) lost almost no reader since it started. The story is so good that it can allow month longs breaks and no one is too upset about it.
i didn't take that to be a direct comparison. i took that to mean the authors in question decided to inject artifical life into their plotlines to drag them out endlessly, rather than paying tribute and respect to the storylines that made them interesting in the first place. this is why bleach redid the same story arc 2-3 times before it is where it's at as well. as has already been stated more articulately than i have put it.
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EPT
