I have two best friends who are twin brothers and they watched Naruto since it started airing and followed through all the way through the final episode. They always tried to get me to watch it and swore it was the best anime ever. They literally talked about it every time we went out underage drinking and partying. They’d just be fighting over Naruto. Never listened to them. Last year I finally gave it a shot out of boredom and binged the entire 2 series in about 3 1/2 weeks and the first thing I did was apologize for not listening earlier because damn, I really would rank it in my top 5 series. The main thing I thought throughout my watch, especially during the last arc, is I feel sorry for anyone who had to watch these episodes as they aired. Y’all really waited 12 YEARS for the inevitable Sasuke/Naruto showdown. I waited a few weeks and I was suffering. I couldn’t imagine 12 years of hiatuses and filler episodes. Y’all are the real MVPs.
I used to watch random bleach episodes wayyyyyyy back in the day when toonami was still a thing, decided to start from s1e1 on Hulu last week and now I’m hooked.
I was watching the show as soon as there was a fan sub, because I was a bit addicted. It was rough as hell when I knew I hit a filler arc or a recap episode. When I rewatch it I skip all the filler and it's great. And if you skip the filler, it's still a show with plenty of episodes, but you can skip like, 150+ of them.
Just wait until you're in a high stakes fight and it's an unannounced flashback arc for 20 episodes
Day one Berserk fan, yea my mangakas dead now and I have no idea if I'll be around to see it's ending. Here's hoping to one piece tying up all loose ends before I go and also ippo, please come out of retirement soon!
In any case, weekly release sometimes has its fun, there were so many theory crafting going on. Tobi being obito was going on pretty early and started to solidify as it progresses was quite exciting. Forums were full of fanfics to keep us going during breaks. Just like how it is now.
Every era will have its greats, it is a good time to be alive.
One piece is in the final saga oda stated it himself so probably no more than 5-6 years til it's done of course after that someone will probably make spinoffs
I mean Oda will probably. He already did Monster. I can see him doing a bunch of things.
I mean he's 49 he might do one more but idk i feel like people are going to be more safe with they're health after recent events
What recent events?
Toriyama's death
That has nothing to with being healthy and taking care of yourself. Toriyama died from acute subdural hematoma, which is blood pooling in the head from head trauma or randomly which is super rare. I don’t remember seeing anything about which it was for Toriyama.
But again, I don’t understand what you are trying to say.
He does t have to do real long series like One Piece again but he can definitely add side stories to build even more upon the world and branch out to different characters.
Example: Jinbei life until strawhats, Zoro being a pirate hunter, Shanks etc or new characters
Can't stand berserk though I respect it's status but you berserk fans have my sympathies. Some of my fave anime have original creators who have...transitioned. Like Akira Toriyama and Kazuki Takahashi.
Hold my Sapporo
- Eiichiro Oda
Most day one bleach fans were also day one naruto fans. We were already gifted with the privelege of witnessing these series unfold as chapters were releasing weekly. We can wait as long as it takes. One day.
Leave them (ME) alone 😭💀
GOD DAMNIT I HAD FINALLY FORGOTTEN!!
I dead have to rewatch it 😭😭, literally almost done with Naruto
Yep. Still waiting. One day. I hope.
I sincerely hope you’re aware of the TYBW anime
It's not enough and it's been so long 😭 💀
It's more like the thousand year wait than war or w/e
Thank you, Clive, but I think it's happening within this next American presidential term.
Me having read and finished the manga as it ended almost a decade ago instead of waiting for the anime.
Double that for One Piece
Horrifying fact a lot of people didn't know the bount arc was fillar and sat through the entire nightmare
The manga ended and its adaptation has been a huge buff so Bleach fans are FEASTING.
Naruto was there for me through so much of my life. When I was planning my wedding, my fiancé and I watched Naruto. Got married; didn't skip watching Naruto that week. Expecting our first child; I would come home from work exhausted and watch Naruto with my husband, to remind myself to never give up. When we were learning to take care of our first baby, Naruto was there; we watched it while taking turns holding him. When I was pregnant with the second, I would watch Naruto for comfort or inspiration. When the opening theme song came on, I would dance with my baby in my arms. When we had two little kids running around, we watched Naruto. As I grew in my career -- Naruto. House projects, travel, challenges with the children, issues with relatives -- Naruto was there through it all. When I went back to school and thought I couldn't do it, Naruto told me I could. When I changed jobs to earn a ton more so we could crawl out of wage slavery, Naruto reassured me that the future was bright. When I needed to cry, tragic situations in Naruto gave me a reason to let the feelings out. When I needed inspiration or advice, the characters in Naruto provided it. My husband and I would speculate with each other endlessly about our theories, the characters, and which way the plot would go.
Because I spent so many years watching an episode a week, it truly brings me back to those years of my life when I think about it now. And yeah, it was frustrating to spend over a year on the final battle. When Kaguya appeared out of nowhere, my husband and I turned to each other with identical expressions of "WTF??" We had so much to talk about that week, you can be sure!
Naruto is a treasured part of my life story. Waiting to watch just one episode per week was hard, but not nearly as hard as Kakashi's tragic backstory, am I right? I had never cried so hard at an anime before that.
Sometimes I would need some "grit" in my regular life, and I would remind myself about the Will of Fire. Or when I felt the urge to be self pitying, I would remember Rock Lee or Might Gai or any of the other inspiring ninjas who didn't let little things like breaking their bodies get in their way. When I had a hard time reaching out to someone, I would imagine they were Gaara, stuck behind a wall of impenetrable sand and trauma, and it would help me connect with them. When I needed to push myself or do a difficult task, I would play Naruto opening theme songs until I was pumped up to do it!
The experience of watching Naruto for so many years and all of its characters are an integral part of me now. Believe it!
That was beautiful
This was lovely to read
Currently watching Boruto after having finished Shippuden with my fiance in labor and delivery after having our son.
I couldn't get into it because I didn't like the animation. Is it good enough to overlook that cuz I am craving for some Naruto content.
It's okay at best imo
I'm just watching it for the exact reason you'd want to. There's certain moments with the cast from the original shows that are really wholesome or cool and some of the fights are good. Overall tho it feels a lot more like a slice of life which isn't the best for me. Don't get me wrong the character's are actually surprisingly fun and they do have some moments... but I want to see cool ninja shit and 60 something episodes in, the cool ninja shit is just WAY too sparse imo
In my opinion it is. It’s 2002 animation it’s not going to be that good especially for an anime that has 220 episodes. (Not including Naruto Shippuden which has 500 episodes because that has a lot better animation since it released in 2007.) The story definitely outweighs the animation.
Idk, I really liked thr old school animation style. The new style is too clean and CGI. This is just personal opinion though
I mean Boruto lol. I have seen Naruto 2002 and Shippuden already. Just unsure about Boruto.
The best answer I have ever identified with
I teared up reading this. Thank you 🤍🤍
I feel like I'm legally obligated to yell
NERDdDD!
nice write up
Being into the manga as it came out was something you can’t explain. On one hand, 15 pages a week could be really unsatisfying.
However, you had to be there when the Fifth Coffin reveal and Tobi reveal dropped. Forums literally crashed and it legitimately broke the shonen space of the internet. New chapter every Wednesday was a great thing to look forward to.
Right there with you!
I prefer the manga as a whole too. There's vast swaths of the series I've not watched to this day.
The Tobi reveal was in 2012 or something right? Ugh, I remember getting spoiled it the day it came out on a Facebook anime page before I could even read the chapter.
I don’t want an apology for having to wait out episodes, I want an apology for spending my entire teenage years being called a nerd and bullied for liking it and now that I’m an adult those same people thinking it’s cool lol
Haha for reals. All of a sudden everyone likes anime now
Anime was fine at my school in 2010. I was one of the more popular kids, and we had anime marathons. Most of us grew up on DBZ. The kids that would get a hard time were the ones that would Naruto run down the hallways and do jutsus at people.
Bullies were ruining their immersion fr
I don’t want an apology for having to wait out episodes, I want an apology for spending my entire teenage years being called a nerd and bullied for liking it and now that I’m an adult those same people thinking it’s cool lol
For real though. Why is anime so popular now when im a adult?
My personal take is that the last air bender took off on Netflix with younger kids and folks who weren’t into anime before but saw on social media everyone was raving about it. From there, it probably opened some doors.
I was one of those people I didn’t bully anyone but I did throw out the nerd or geek here and there and I will offer you this as I now love the show and watch at least an episode a day….. NERD!🤓
So true
Honestly the amount of filler, especially in Shippuden ruined the pacing SO bad for me that I kinda just stopped caring about Sasuke. I genuinely didn't want Team 7 reformed anymore because the timegap was just getting so insane. When he eventually did return I just let out a pensive "okay".
I'm thinking about rewatching the series with the filler arcs cut out or maybe even just reading the manga to see how the pacing would feel that way. I bet it would be much more organic and I'd be able to care more.
Rewatching without filler is much better. I'm a Bleach first fan and even with the fillers being pretty good they still ruin the pacing of the main story. Shippuden suffers from a lot of bad filler as well.
The filler episodes we got after the Pain arc where they were rebuilding Konoha and just telling each other stories was SO bad that I gave up and quit the show. I didn't start watching again until about 2 years later. I remember the Jiraiya novel also almost giving me an aneurysm. Occasionally there's a good filler season (I really enjoyed the one with Guren or the one with Kakashi in the anbu), but the majority of them were unfortunately rubbish.
It was a long journey, that’s for sure. Week after week after week lol
Big 3 took care of the times when one was lacking.
It was a journey, I was 12 in 2002 when I found Naruto on adult swim, so I had the 14 year journey of highs and lows. I read the manga so I always knew what was coming in the anime, which made the wait harder sometimes. I skipped most filler in Shippuden.
If you haven't read the manga I'd suggest that next, it tells the same story obviously but there's stuff the anime left out. It's also a lot darker, kishimito doesn't hold back, but the anime does.
Also, you onto boruto yet?
Blue vortex is going so stupid (in a good way)
What about the day one, one piece fans
Still watching from the retirement home?
We’ve been feasting for a while now imo, one piece literally only gets better it’s awesome.
It was even worse for the dub viewers. I remember watching weekly up to a certain point, then having to sit through a bunch a reruns and recaps just for the new episodes to air with a ton of filler. It truly made me leave the series and wait for it to end before I went back and finished it. I still do that with most anime today.
It gets better when youre both a naruto and a one piece fan after naruto you'll be eating so good with OP
As someone who's been watching anime since I was 8, I've just accepted that I can't really enjoy any anime by watching weekly episodes. I enjoy other types of shows when they're released weekly but anime just doesn't work for me.
I think it's mostly due to the pacing of most anime. I can't stand it when I've waited a week for an episode to drop only for it to be maybe 5 mins of talking between characters then a flashback for the rest of the episode. Or when characters are preparing to fight and spend an entire episode (or more) just talking to each other. DBZ is notorious for just having characters talk for multiple episodes right in the middle of battling each other. It's infuriating.
I love JJK but I decided to wait for the entire latest season to release before watching it just because the first 4 episodes are a flashback. Don't get me wrong, they were good flashback episodes. But I don't want to see stuff that happened years ago in the story immediately at the start of a new season I've waited 2+ years to release. The only exception to that would be anime like AoT or Chainsaw Man which are clearly structured from the beginning and don't have a ton of the typical anime tropes/tendencies.
Imagine being a naive 10 year old who thought Sasuke was gonna come back at some point during the long years of fillers. I didn’t even start the manga until high school so I had no idea 😂
Naruto really wasn't built to be a one episode a week show. As slow-paced as it is, especially in the Land of Waves arc. The episodes are like 21 minutes, and 3 of those minutes are flashbacks. Not satisfying. But put them all together in a binge and it's amazing.
The real struggle - there wasn't a nice neat source to look up what was fuller so you could skip it. Felt like years of filler.
Yes there was, animefillerlist.com
Day one dragonballer here
Worth every moment, and still to this day Boruto carries the Uzumaki baton. Naruto is truly a goat anime worth of its title. There are other anime that set the stage, and others inspired by the Naruto verse. Some times anime goes on hiatus, like breaks from friends and family. But if life has shown me anything, the important people and media will come back around.
Now that you're done with the show, now you gotta go back and rewatch that shhhh. You'll catch so many things. And welcome to the fam. Believe it!
Oh dude definitely. As I was watching it I was thinking about its age and seeing how it set the blueprint for a lot of successful manga/anime today. I’m sure the ride was quite the experience because I love posting/reading discussions about currently running manga/anime when huge things happen. There are so many Naruto moments where I thought “oh man this was probably a crazy fucking week online when this shit aired”
You enjoy the luxury of chatting online about the Manga and anime that's happening currently. But we didn't have all that back in the day. LOL I'm in my mid thirties and I remember having to find small communities local and people in school to bother for hours in between classes. And a couple of forms online that people talked in haha. And that's why it's even better now. You can see ppl reacting to this old content as if it were new, cause they didn't dive in originally. Seeing others take the jump now is just so awesome cause you know how dope it is.
I'm sitting here alone watching cats on YT crying cause this guy dying or going nuts cuz of ... Literally EVERYTHING lol. Oh yeah, you like Rock Lee? Wait a couple when you think he's no longer a ninja. Annoyed by the Pervy Sage, Jiraiya - yeah hello get croak soon. Don't make me poke you in your forehead like I did my lil brother... I never gave him enough time before he passed. :/ but we loved the anime, and it's tattooed on my skin
Glad you like the show. Keep watching and engaging. It'll always be there
Haha we’re the same age. When I was in high school it was all about online forums. I was part of a few so I just assumed there was one for Naruto somewhere. Sucks being old. Was having a conversation with my younger coworker and mentioned to him about how I used to download music video to watch them and he goes “by didn’t you just watch them on YouTube?” The look this kid gave me when I told him that YouTube didnt exist when I was in high school lol
Oof. Yup. Relatable. I was home schooled through highschool so I had the extra luxury of always being on the computer ... Good ol days of early Internet access. Lol. What a nerrrrrrd
Don’t we enjoyed the ride
It was worth the wait for sure. It made my childhood and watching each episode when it came out was blessing
The real tragedy was watching how the series declined.
If you skip the filler, then you have epic chuunin exam matches followed by a three-way sannin deadlock, and then the rescue sasuke arc, everything is amazing.
Then you have the long and boring deidara and gaara fight, Naruto generally failing to defeat...anybody. The anticlimactic Naruto and Sasuke reunion, and just generally boring plotlines and fights with a few exceptions like Sasuke vs Itachi and Jiraiya vs Pain and Naruto vs Pain.
But it really just hammers away that the show becomes a typical shounen where only the main characters matter...
Facts . PT1 clears. Felt like there was not even playing field and u had to be the smarter ninja bc everyone had some sort of hacks
Sucks that shippuden was so ass tho
Out of interest, was that with or without watching the filler?
Watched about half of the filler. I found a guide online that listed which filler you should skip and which filler was worth watching.
The pain of starting a fight episode just for someone to flashback after one move, knowing you gotta go through another week of school to get to it. PAIN
Honestly for a long long time the thing the community couldn’t wait for was the sasuke itachi fight
Reading the title I thought you felt sorry because we had to endure (literally) years of shitty fillers and boring flashbacks to finish the story that we started more than a decade ago.
What was the 12 wait. From beginning of shippuden to end? I also only watched it after it finished
I've been watching all of the Naruto shows, finished both the first one and Shippuden and now started Boruto, also watched some of the movies and extra episodes - there's lots of content that is pretty awesome and I definitely recommend doing a Naruto marathon like this. I'll also add, the website I watch it on is https://9animetv.to/ - it has everything there :)
I started off loving anime through DBZ and Naruto. I finished both and let me tell you one thing. NOTHING compares to One Piece. If you want to get into another anime/manga, one piece is the perfect one to start on right now. We are currently reaching the final saga and all the questions us One Piece fans had for 20 freaking years are slowly being revealed!
It was great to leave and come back to every few years. But I will say - nothing really matches how awesome season 1 was when it came out. Revolutionary at the time.
I don’t watch any on going animes. Status == completed only. Legit I hate being left hanging.
I think the time episode by episode before I binged all of Naruto at once was 2008. Stopped until like two years ago, watched it all at once.
The anticipation was so bittersweet haha cuz we were so invested in the next chapter. I hate having to wait now but yeah
I WAS one, but the fanbase turning into the Busch Lite version of the "Can he beat Goku" mentality turned me off of it for a long time.
Lol the wait for Naruto was not that bad at all. I would read manga so every week was Bleach, Naruto, and One piece. We were honestly spoiled. I'd start with Bleach, then read Naruto, then end with One piece. I don't think newer anime fans understand what it was like during the peak "Big 3" era
Brother even just watching canon episodes thats 20 A DAY, at about 23 minutes a piece thats 7 hours of Naruto a day. Thats not including some of the filler you watched. I’m not calling you a liar but damn man that is a lot of Naruto 😭
Listen, man. 7 hours is light. I put in quite a few 12-16 hour days. I was off work for a little over a month last year and had fuck all else to do. Not saying 12-16 was the norm but I usually wake up about 430-500 for work so my body was already in the routine and I would just watch until I got tired for bed or had to go do something. Plus it was all new to me and I haven’t been that invested in a new anime in a long time. Took me back to my childhood lol. So it didn’t seem like a lot at the time. That’s about the only time I could have finished that series because any other time I can get MAYBE 6-8 hours a week of leisure time to watch some anime. Being an adult sucks lol
You’ve got more commitment than me dude, I can bang through maybe 7-8 Naruto’s in a row before I need a pallet cleanser
Nah I feel sorry for you for not being a part of this series while it was airing and hot. Legit some of the best memories of my time. I dont talk about it all the time but Naruto will always be a part of who I am. People who binged it nowaday will probably just forget about it in a few months and it won't be as impactful as being a young fan.
I definitely will not forget it but yes you’re right. I truly did miss out on being a part of it while it was airing. I’m glad the fan base is still so strong that I can come here and talk about shit that you all got to see 10+ years ago and still have enough people who love it to have a discussion about it. Nothing worse than discovering something great when the hype has already come and gone and then you have no one to talk about it with.
The worst thing about watching week to week was when there was like 50 weeks straight of filler 😂
Literally how? How did you binge the whole show that fast?! I watched it in about 9 months and I was clipping along nicely lol.
I was off of work for a little over a month and had fuck all else to do lol. I absolutely do not have that kind of time today nor did I when I went back to work.
Worth!
I didn’t think I was going to live to see the end. And now I’m not sure if I’ll make it for one piece.
The Haku and Zabuza finale completely sealed the deal for me. I knew I was seeing it through to the end after that. There may be flaws but I do not regret experiencing and loving Naruto.
It could be way worse. I read Attack on Titan since the one of the first chapters released. Imagine how I felt with that awful ending.
Bruh you had to be there to understand. It was worth it.
Berserk fans in shambles.
Cries in one piece
I'm salty Boruto isn't over yet and I'm still waiting fo4 Bleach the thousand year blood war to be finished 😭😭
Glad you finally saw it!!! Now if only I could get all my friends to listen to me and watch it too!!
Now imagine being a Berserk fan :(
Manga readers gang rise up!
I had to apologize to my buddy for hating on it
Those fillers were BRUTAL. Especially during the great ninja war after a year of fillers I dropped it for a while. It was the most frustrating thing ever, they would have like 2 canon episodes to give us a taste, and then 3 months of filler. Then one canon episode and more filler.
When I got older I was able to binge through Naruto filler free and that was seriously the best experience ever.
Oh, I thought you felt bad for dedicated fans who were thoroughly disappointed by Boruto.
I started watching before it aired in the US. So, I got used to the Japanese voices. Waiting every week for a new one to be translated with subs. Didn't seem bad at the time, but now it was a long time to get to the end.
THOSE 12 YEARS WAS HORRIBLE . LOL
One piece, the anime, slowed down so hard it’s like watching paint dry now.
Welcome to the Fandom. What's your Ninja Level and do you have a Dojutsu, Specialize in Ninjutsu, or Taijutsu?
There's nothing more painful than waiting literal weeks to finish a 5+ episode fight where each episode lasts for around 15 minutes if you don't count intro and outro.
I began rewatching Naruto a few days ago since I never saw Shipudden, and I wanted to start fresh.
It feels so nice being able to watch the fights in one go.
Eh, I kinda feel the same way. That's the benefit of being late getting into an anime. I got into Naruto a hell of a lot sooner than you did but didn't like it for a long time. I watched CN/Toonami a lot and would see who I referred to as "that irritating orange ninja" and would turn the channel. I started watching out of boredom around the written exam of the chunnin exam. To be clear I have no idea how far along the English dub was at the time I'm simply mentioning what part in the story I started watching. Anyways it quickly became 1 of my favorite anime. I have like around 40 favorites. I'm someone who's into comics/graphic novels/books, movies, shows, video games, manga, and anime. The benefits of getting into a fandom in 1 on these media formats late is not having to wait for the story to complete + it appeals to my hipster traits not getting into the mainstream. However the negative is sometimes you feel like you missed out on the collective journey. I kinda felt like that with the MCU which I'm a huge fan of. Particularly since the Infinity saga which was its heyday is over.
To clarify, did you get into the MCU late or were you there during its heyday? The infinity Saga was absolutely fantastic just because for the 10 years prior, there was always so much hype around Marvel movie releases and they were all building up to Infinity War and Endgame. I don’t think Marvel will ever be able to replicate that ever again. I hope they can come close though. It’s been 5 years and it honestly feels like nothing has really happened in the MCU since then. I love the Wanda story/character arc but they’re dragging it out so much and it’s not enough to carry the whole MCU.
It was a fine experience I had my little routine of watching the new eps. I took breaks for some time and had lots of eps to watch too.
It was neat growing up with Naruto, he was always the same age as me as the episodes were coming out.
I feel sorry for people that didn’t grow up with Naruto during a golden age that pioneered the industry to what it is today. Truly a once in a lifetime experience. I imagine only real life achievements like having a kid and getting married can trump the anticipated pay off in sublime silence, turning page after page, week after week of Sasuke finally battling his brother. Rip to the kid that took his own life after finding out about itachi’s truth.
WHAT???? Also, you may be right. “Feeling sorry” may be the wrong term. Waiting every week is part of the experience. It just has so much filler I know it was agonizing for you guys lol. But yes you are right about everything else. I’ve read comments like that for years about Naruto and while I was watching it, it popped into my head several times. Naruto is the blueprint for a lot of successful anime today. After I posted this and reading the comments, I’ve gotten more “Yeah but it was fucking awesome” responses than “Yeah the waiting sucked” and I have gone from “feeling sorry” you guys had to wait for so long to feeling jealous that I missed out. I had a blast watching that shit by myself. Can’t imagine how great it would have been to experience it in real time and share it with the community.
It was a very long and dramatic journey between Naruto and Sasuke. Everyone in high school was very crazy about them, Akatsuki, Uchiha, etc.. I was that lone kid who is crazy about Shikamaru. Now we're all in 30's, and they all think Shikamaru is the coolest character in Naruto lol...
Do you really need to make this post of being sorry ? so weird.
Not as weird as you feeling the need to respond with this comment. Go be annoying somewhere else, bro.
I mean bro it feels pretty cringe, no offense ok.
Who are you and why you feel sorry for Naruto fans day one ? let me make analogy like you dislike chocolate but after 10 years your taste change where you like chocolate now and you tell other chocolate lover, i am sorry for dislike chocolate, how wrong i was.... It feels awkward to be honest if you do that.
True Naruto fans watch Boruto as well
Nah. Don’t spread that poison
i am not gonna eat shit to fantasise about how great chocolate was when cocoa eventually goes extinct
Day One Bleach fans are still waiting for their anime to end 😂