Naruto Shippuden (Japanese)

[mizzcriss]

Can someone do me a favor and tell me which episode is it that Asuma dies in? I've been skipping around alot to find it.

What really annoys me about Shippuden is Naruto's voice doesn't deepen.

I believe he died around eps 79-80, boy was that sad and lol IMO if you compare Naruto's voice from the original to Shippuden, there's a difference, his voice actor/seiyuu tried as much as she could to deepen it it seems

[Maokun]

While I don't think it was as bad, it's like how the Sasuke Retrieval arc had these dramatic, excellent death scenes only to miraculously have the people come back. Chouji and Neji's fights during that had a lot more of an impact when they were about the sacrifice they were making. Then, to just bring them back really weakens the scene because it means they have no consequences for what they do. The pill will cost them their lives, only it doesn't.

Ah yeah I hated that too.

Actually, this is kind of where you begin to lose the argument. The Sennin are established from the beginning to at least be on par with the Kage, as seen where the Third isn't able to kill Orochimaru and they search for Tsunade after Jiraiya refuses the position. They are all shown to be the strongest people alive for many, many chapters until recently they were bumped way down in favor of new villains. Why shouldn't Orochimaru set the bar for the strength of his generation? The theme of Naruto from the beginning has been that the newer generation builds upon the accomplishments of the old and in turn is built upon by the new. By having Orochimaru set the bar for elder generation, Naruto can finally achieve his goal of becoming Hokage by surpassing what was once the highest tier of warrior. Heck, it's even showing hints of the next generation surpassing Naruto's, with Konohamaru showing even more skill than Naruto at Konohamaru's age.

While it's true this is your strongest argument, you can't ignore that from very early on, Itachi was presented as stronger than Orochimaru. In fact, Orochimaru became Naruto's personal antagonist only after convincing Sasuke to join him, which he did only as a step to get closer to defeat Itachi.

It's quite clear, then, that Orochimaru was never supposed to be the main villain, as good an antagonist as he might be. The fact that you'd have preferred that instead doesn't make it a bad story, nor does switching villains late in the game either. I offer you as an example, Alexander Dumas' The Three Musketeers, which is the first that jumps to mind.

I'd actually suggest reading FMA, because Brotherhood has a really weak start and the first anime is much worse than the manga.

Thanks, I'll keep it in mind.

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

While it's true this is your strongest argument, you can't ignore that from very early on, Itachi was presented as stronger than Orochimaru. In fact, Orochimaru became Naruto's personal antagonist only after convincing Sasuke to join him, which he did only as a step to get closer to defeat Itachi.

It's quite clear, then, that Orochimaru was never supposed to be the main villain, as good an antagonist as he might be. The fact that you'd have preferred that instead doesn't make it a bad story, nor does switching villains late in the game either. I offer you as an example, Alexander Dumas' The Three Musketeers, which is the first that jumps to mind.

I would like to point out that the strongest villain doesn't have to be the main one. Soujiro from Rurouni Kenshin, for example, is the strongest character in the series but plays a Dragon role to Shishio and definitely isn't considered the main villain. In a similar way, Itachi wasn't supposed to be the main villain in spite of his strength, which would be a pretty bad idea anyways.

Also, I don't think Itachi is necessarily stronger than Orochimaru, at least by pre-timeskip standards. Since Orochimaru and Jiraiya are about even, I'll bring back the part where Jiraiya mentions that if he went toe-to-toe with Itachi it would probably end with them both dying. All it shows is Orochimaru being scared by Itachi, which would make sense since Orochimaru's greatest fear is death.

Also, I haven't read The Three Musketeers so I can't talk about that.

[Maokun]

I'd say that Seijuro Hiko is the strongest in Rurouni Kenshin, but good point anyway.

However, what I was trying to say when I mentioned Itachi was that he simply proved there was something else and greater going beyond Orochimaru's petty ambitions. As powerful as he was (and I'd contest that he was indeed more powerful as Orochimaru as they briefly battled during his fight with Sasuke,) he was just an underling of some organization. An organization that was hunting Jinchuurukis, which immediately presents them as a more dangerous threat than Orochimaru who merely wants to live forever.

In fact, it was this first Akatsuki infiltration that caused an early encounter of Itachi and Sasuke which ended in a humiliating defeat for the latter. That event was the decisive factor in making Sasuke go to Orochimaru, again, showing that Orochimaru was merely a transition step between their childish, personal issues and the world-spanning conflict that would be their fated future.

Also, it's not like Madara appeared from nowhere and was never involved with the story until the end. After all, he was the one who set off the Nine Tails against Konoha, basically being the reason the whole story exists.

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

I'd say that Seijuro Hiko is the strongest in Rurouni Kenshin, but good point anyway.

Soujiro was the strongest villain, anyways.

However, what I was trying to say when I mentioned Itachi was that he simply proved there was something else and greater going beyond Orochimaru's petty ambitions. As powerful as he was (and I'd contest that he was indeed more powerful as Orochimaru as they briefly battled during his fight with Sasuke,) he was just an underling of some organization. An organization that was hunting Jinchuurukis, which immediately presents them as a more dangerous threat than Orochimaru who merely wants to live forever.

I'm not sure why you keep on listing Orochimaru's ambitions as petty. Sure, he wasn't working for a utopia or anything, but honestly, Orochimaru was a breath of fresh air in a series where pretty much every other important antagonist relates to Naruto, and it was nice to have someone who wasn't even portrayed as sympathetically evil.

Also, I don't think listing him as a former member of Akatsuki weakens his status in the world. Orochimaru partially left the Akatsuki because he was afraid of Itachi, but his main reason was in order to become a power player in his own right, rather than serving Pain. If nothing else, his membership in Akatsuki was to learn who some of the other power players are, not just because he was weak or anything.

In fact, it was this first Akatsuki infiltration that caused an early encounter of Itachi and Sasuke which ended in a humiliating defeat for the latter. That event was the decisive factor in making Sasuke go to Orochimaru, again, showing that Orochimaru was merely a transition step between their childish, personal issues and the world-spanning conflict that would be their fated future.

I think you're doing Orochimaru a disservice by implying he isn't powerful. After all, even if his ultimate plan failed, he did cripple Konoha to the point that they spent three years rebuilding the place to being a functional village again. If you want intervillage politics and stuff it's not like it isn't there or couldn't be there with Orochimaru, heck, it would make more sense for it to be like that since he's the leader of an actual village.

Also, it's not like Madara appeared from nowhere and was never involved with the story until the end. After all, he was the one who set off the Nine Tails against Konoha, basically being the reason the whole story exists.

This is where I get back into what makes good plot twists. I seriously doubt Madara was originally planned as the one who had set the Nine Tails against Konoha because there isn't any foreshadowing of it. Let's say that at the end of Baccano! Isaac and Miria rip of masks to reveal they were aliens orchestrating the plot the whole time. That would be stupid because there would be no indication that they had ever been anything aside from a pair of eccentric thieves the entire time, and it's a random event that doesn't work well with the story and theme of Baccano!.

Continuing to make stronger and stronger villains isn't a good idea, either. One thing that had impressed me about Naruto is that it did a good idea of establishing how powerful people were early on. Sure, our protagonists were growing at fast rates but that tied in with the plot well and was implied to have happened with every generation, but think about it. No matter how powerful Naruto got in the first part of Naruto, he was always fighting opponents that were kind of in the same tier. Even though he got quite a bit stronger by the end of part one, I can't imagine him defeating Zabuza pre-timeskip, which is good.

There's a scene during the battle between Konoha and Orochimaru's forces that is really well-done and manages to keep some consistency for the series. We'd already seen that Kakashi was pretty powerful and was renowned throughout the land and whatever, but now we got to see his contemporaries, the other jounin of Konoha, in action and they're all shown to be just as powerful as he is. Not only Guy and Asuma, but we see Aoba and Kiba's mom taking the enemy down with the best of them. Genma, on the other hand, is shown still fighting Baki, a Sand jounin rather than a chunin, to a draw. What makes this scene so great is that you really get a feel for what it means to be a jounin, as opposed to them just being advanced cannon fodder. You see how powerful these guys are, and you know that even they cannot hope to compete with any one of the five Kages, which really shows what a Kage means to the people moreso than we'd ever felt before. It adds a lot of depth to Naruto wishing to be the Hokage, we see that how he knows that by outclassing everyone to such a degree he can really show that he is worth their time.

Now, we have a ton of villains who are all at this ridiculously high amount of power and being a kage doesn't mean that much when Sasuke can take on all five and kill one of them mostly unscathed.

[Maokun]

I'm not sure why you keep on listing Orochimaru's ambitions as petty. Sure, he wasn't working for a utopia or anything, but honestly, Orochimaru was a breath of fresh air in a series where pretty much every other important antagonist relates to Naruto, and it was nice to have someone who wasn't even portrayed as sympathetically evil.

Oh, I don't mind petty as opposed to "noble", in fact I also think that his character and goals were refreshingly unique. I mean petty as irrelevant, at least in the scope of the biggest conflict out there and contrasted to Pain's or Madara's goals. (become the most powerful being and take over the world).

Also, I don't think listing him as a former member of Akatsuki weakens his status in the world. Orochimaru partially left the Akatsuki because he was afraid of Itachi, but his main reason was in order to become a power player in his own right, rather than serving Pain. If nothing else, his membership in Akatsuki was to learn who some of the other power players are, not just because he was weak or anything.

I think you're doing Orochimaru a disservice by implying he isn't powerful. After all, even if his ultimate plan failed, he did cripple Konoha to the point that they spent three years rebuilding the place to being a functional village again. If you want intervillage politics and stuff it's not like it isn't there or couldn't be there with Orochimaru, heck, it would make more sense for it to be like that since he's the leader of an actual village.

I'm not really trying to imply that Orochimaru was weak or not to acknowledge his deeds. If I keep mentioning that it was implied that there were other much more powerful people, is just to show that I don't believe that the story was ever planned to have Orochimaru as the final antagonist. To Orochimaru's credit and perhaps what causes your chagrin, he was the main antagonist for most of the series, because going from reckless/sulky brat level to Orochimaru levels was a much longer road that going from Orochimaru level to Kage levels.

This is where I get back into what makes good plot twists. I seriously doubt Madara was originally planned as the one who had set the Nine Tails against Konoha because there isn't any foreshadowing of it. Let's say that at the end of Baccano! Isaac and Miria rip of masks to reveal they were aliens orchestrating the plot the whole time. That would be stupid because there would be no indication that they had ever been anything aside from a pair of eccentric thieves the entire time, and it's a random event that doesn't work well with the story and theme of Baccano!.

All the opposite, I can tell you that there's enough foreshadowing to be able to assume that Madara was the planned final villain of the series with at least 90% of certainty. (the other 10% would mean that the author is fantastic at filling plotholes coherently.)

First, it was dropped here and there, almost nonchalantly that the Nine Tails attack on Konoha was not a random event. Then we're shown there are some misterious writings deep inside the Uchiha's main building]

Continuing to make stronger and stronger villains isn't a good idea, either. One thing that had impressed me about Naruto is that it did a good idea of establishing how powerful people were early on. Sure, our protagonists were growing at fast rates but that tied in with the plot well and was implied to have happened with every generation, but think about it. No matter how powerful Naruto got in the first part of Naruto, he was always fighting opponents that were kind of in the same tier. Even though he got quite a bit stronger by the end of part one, I can't imagine him defeating Zabuza pre-timeskip, which is good.

There's a scene during the battle between Konoha and Orochimaru's forces that is really well-done and manages to keep some consistency for the series. We'd already seen that Kakashi was pretty powerful and was renowned throughout the land and whatever, but now we got to see his contemporaries, the other jounin of Konoha, in action and they're all shown to be just as powerful as he is. Not only Guy and Asuma, but we see Aoba and Kiba's mom taking the enemy down with the best of them. Genma, on the other hand, is shown still fighting Baki, a Sand jounin rather than a chunin, to a draw. What makes this scene so great is that you really get a feel for what it means to be a jounin, as opposed to them just being advanced cannon fodder. You see how powerful these guys are, and you know that even they cannot hope to compete with any one of the five Kages, which really shows what a Kage means to the people moreso than we'd ever felt before. It adds a lot of depth to Naruto wishing to be the Hokage, we see that how he knows that by outclassing everyone to such a degree he can really show that he is worth their time.

Now, we have a ton of villains who are all at this ridiculously high amount of power and being a kage doesn't mean that much when Sasuke can take on all five and kill one of them mostly unscathed.

In fact all this serves to show that while you can expect Kages to be amongst the strongest in the world, this is not necessarily true. Danzo is Hokage because he intimidated the cowardly and stupid emperor of the Fire Country, to choose him over the much better choice of Kakashi... The same Kakashi that was once flattened by Itachi! In fact, Gaara is a Kage but Deidara took him on rather easily, while the Raikage is shown killing Akatsuki members with hardly breaking a sweat. Also, goes to show that Sasuke, as unlikeable as he might be, is definitively the strongest antagonist in the series, second only to Madara and truth to be told, I wouldn't be surprised if he surpassed and betrayed him as he did with Orochimaru. After all, the series has always been about Naruto and Sasuke and everything else is accessory.

I just want to say I'm greatly enjoying this little debate and hope you are too.

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

Oh, I don't mind petty as opposed to "noble", in fact I also think that his character and goals were refreshingly unique. I mean petty as irrelevant, at least in the scope of the biggest conflict out there and contrasted to Pain's or Madara's goals. (become the most powerful being and take over the world).

Eh, I don't necessarily think so still. Kabuto, to make him feel better after he lost his arms mentions that he's already taken out two of the Kages, and so he only had three left to go. It's pretty obvious that discovering every jutsu in existence and revenge weren't the only parts of his plans. I mean, isn't Madara's plan simply to become the ten-tailed jinchuriki, so aren't is plans roughly the same as Orochimaru's?

I'm not really trying to imply that Orochimaru was weak or not to acknowledge his deeds. If I keep mentioning that it was implied that there were other much more powerful people, is just to show that I don't believe that the story was ever planned to have Orochimaru as the final antagonist. To Orochimaru's credit and perhaps what causes your chagrin, he was the main antagonist for most of the series, because going from reckless/sulky brat level to Orochimaru levels was a much longer road that going from Orochimaru level to Kage levels.

I don't think that many people were mentioned to be more powerful than Orochimaru. You might argue that the Third and Fourth were, and Jiraiya and Tsunade are approximately his equals, but aside from Itachi, who is Sasuke's personal villain, no one is really shown being more powerful than he is until the second part when it turns out Kages are really just really big cannon fodder and it doesn't matter if you used to be considered powerful.

Now, I'll admit that Kisame and Itachi did have a pretty awesome introduction. They arrived, they showed themselves to be competent villains, and they exited the plot when they needed to. Itachi had a lot of implied backstory along with the stuff already known about him and it made for a pretty interesting fight between him and Kakashi and Kurenai. I'll admit that I have a soft spot in my heart for Kisame even though I have no idea why aside from his just being pretty cool.

But Kisame is a pretty good example of what's wrong with this series as well. He had the potential to be a great, memorable villain but he ultimately fell pretty flat when he dies fighting another guy I don't think he'd even met before, and ultimately accomplishes nothing. Sure, I guess he got the Four Tails but that really could have been done by any member of the Akatsuki.

All the opposite, I can tell you that there's enough foreshadowing to be able to assume that Madara was the planned final villain of the series with at least 90% of certainty. (the other 10% would mean that the author is fantastic at filling plotholes coherently.)

First, it was dropped here and there, almost nonchalantly that the Nine Tails attack on Konoha was not a random event.

Can you tell me when this happens? I can't remember anything like this being implied.

Then we're shown there are some mysterious writings deep inside the Uchiha's main building]All right, I'll concede that it was implied that something was up with the Uchiha, yeah.

Much later on, we learn that that was the reason why Itachi was commanded with the extermination of the Uchiha, which was one of the longest mysteries of the series.

I'm in the camp that that was a pretty stupid reveal that Itachi was good all along or whatever, but I guess I can concede this.

In the meantime we've been slowly learning of the backstory of Konoha and more importantly, the battle between the First Hokage and Madara. Remember the two huge statues at each side of a waterfall where Naruto and Sasuke fought? Will of fire against the Uchihas' thirst for power? You cannot get much more foreshadowing than this.

I'm going to go ahead and say that I don't really buy this as foreshadowing. While the battle between the First and Madara was an interesting bit of history, it wasn't shown to be foreshadowing of anything. Even as a dumb thirteen-year-old I could tell that the whole point of the battle between the Valley of the End was supposed to be parallels between the duel between Naruto and Sasuke and the duel between the First and Madara. Their fights were a thing of the past, now repeated through the battle of Naruto and Sasuke. Heck, this even ties in with the constant parallels between Team Kakashi and everyone older than them, which is either some big artistic move or a really lazy mangaka.

Moreover, shortly after that fight, the pieces of the puzzle starting falling in place as we were shown Akatsuki was hunting Jinchuurukis to feed their Bijuus into the blind god statue, which we now know it's part of Madara's Eye of the Moon plan. Moreover yet, Toby (Madara's alterego) was shown immediately after the defeat of the first Akatsuki member. All these things happened long before Orochimaru's death.

I wouldn't really cite this as evidence either. Even assuming that Pain's story had been planned from the beginning, I still think that Madara's plan is Kishimoto making it up on the spot. The fact that the Akatsuki are hunting the Tailed Beasts down is established from when they first arrive, but it was shown that they already had one plan in mind for them.

In fact all this serves to show that while you can expect Kages to be amongst the strongest in the world, this is not necessarily true. Danzo is Hokage because he intimidated the cowardly and stupid emperor of the Fire Country, to choose him over the much better choice of Kakashi... The same Kakashi that was once flattened by Itachi! In fact, Gaara is a Kage but Deidara took him on rather easily, while the Raikage is shown killing Akatsuki members with hardly breaking a sweat. Also, goes to show that Sasuke, as unlikeable as he might be, is definitively the strongest antagonist in the series, second only to Madara and truth to be told, I wouldn't be surprised if he surpassed and betrayed him as he did with Orochimaru.

But this is another issue with the series. It did a great job implying a lot of depth with that scene but ultimately disregards it in favor of constantly introducing new and more powerful characters. Remember how strong a scene it was when it was revealed Kakashi was a world famous ninja who had a pretty huge bounty and Zabuza recognized him instantly? Speaking of which, remember how Zabuza was once considered a huge asset? By now both of these characters are pretty much useless in any fight, I mean, Kakashi is pretty much the biggest example of the Worf Effect in Naruto. I think the biggest problem we have here is that I'm arguing about how Naruto lost consistency and you're trying to counterargue with stuff post-timeskip which threw a lot of established stuff out of the water.

After all, the series has always been about Naruto and Sasuke and everything else is accessory.

I can agree to this, even if Sasuke has pretty much become irredeemable in my eyes at this point, at least in the sense that he won't fit well with the story now.

I just want to say I'm greatly enjoying this little debate and hope you are too.

Yeah, it's pretty fun! I haven't had a chance to argue about whether or not something is well-written to this length before, which is something I've wanted to do for a while.

[Maokun]

Eh, I don't necessarily think so still. Kabuto, to make him feel better after he lost his arms mentions that he's already taken out two of the Kages, and so he only had three left to go. It's pretty obvious that discovering every jutsu in existence and revenge weren't the only parts of his plans. I mean, isn't Madara's plan simply to become the ten-tailed jinchuriki, so aren't is plans roughly the same as Orochimaru's?

Well, the reason Madara wants to become the Ten Tails' Jinchuruki it's to have the raw power required to execute his Eye of the Moon plan in which he'll use the moon as a giant lens to amplify his Sharingan and put the entire world's population under his control. Orochimaru was never shown to be that ambitious.

But Kisame is a pretty good example of what's wrong with this series as well. He had the potential to be a great, memorable villain but he ultimately fell pretty flat when he dies fighting another guy I don't think he'd even met before, and ultimately accomplishes nothing. Sure, I guess he got the Four Tails but that really could have been done by any member of the Akatsuki.

Yeah, I too was disappointed by seeing him being dispatched easily by the Raikage]Can you tell me when this happens? I can't remember anything like this being implied. All right, I'll concede that it was implied that something was up with the Uchiha, yeah. I'm in the camp that that was a pretty stupid reveal that Itachi was good all along or whatever, but I guess I can concede this.[/QUOTE] The fact that it was suspected that the Nine Tails attack was planned came up in one of the conversations between Tsunade and the village elders/Danzo, if my memory serves well.

I'm surprised you didn't think that Itachi was good. It was plain evident to me, especially after seeing his behavior when he and Kisame infiltrated Konoha. The fact alone that he left Sasuke alive (twice) was a pretty good indication that whatever the reasons he had to do what he did he was regretful and wanted to someday be punished by an avenger.

And as you agree it was implied that there was a secret to the Uchihas that was of not concern to Orochimaru, something that got satisfactorily resolved (unless you believe that Kishimoto created that little mystery and only came up with an answer much later on,) and which served to explain Madara's intentions and the fact he had been working on it for a long time. It's either this, or as I said before, the real genius of Kishimoto lays on creating a random number of narrative threads and then find coherent ways to tie together all the dangling bits.

I'm going to go ahead and say that I don't really buy this as foreshadowing. While the battle between the First and Madara was an interesting bit of history, it wasn't shown to be foreshadowing of anything. Even as a dumb thirteen-year-old I could tell that the whole point of the battle between the Valley of the End was supposed to be parallels between the duel between Naruto and Sasuke and the duel between the First and Madara. Their fights were a thing of the past, now repeated through the battle of Naruto and Sasuke. Heck, this even ties in with the constant parallels between Team Kakashi and everyone older than them, which is either some big artistic move or a really lazy mangaka.

Were you not mentioning earlier that the conflict in Naruto is driven as the battle between the Will of Fire and its opposers? Well, Historically, the Uchiha are the ones that represent the opposite philosophy. Orochimaru was not so much an antagonist of the Will, as someone who abandoned it because it was impractical for his own purposes. I believe that an Uchiha final villain makes much more sense inside the setting of the story (and since the cast of Uchihas left in that Universe was so small, I think I like better the idea of an ancient Uchiha still being alive, than creating some random other character.) In that sense, I'm talking of foreshadowing.

I wouldn't really cite this as evidence either. Even assuming that Pain's story had been planned from the beginning, I still think that Madara's plan is Kishimoto making it up on the spot. The fact that the Akatsuki are hunting the Tailed Beasts down is established from when they first arrive, but it was shown that they already had one plan in mind for them.

But this is another issue with the series. It did a great job implying a lot of depth with that scene but ultimately disregards it in favor of constantly introducing new and more powerful characters. Remember how strong a scene it was when it was revealed Kakashi was a world famous ninja who had a pretty huge bounty and Zabuza recognized him instantly? Speaking of which, remember how Zabuza was once considered a huge asset? By now both of these characters are pretty much useless in any fight, I mean, Kakashi is pretty much the biggest example of the Worf Effect in Naruto.

I can agree with this: however, isn't it what you could expect of a manga of the genre? Main Characters are supposed to grow up in power, and that usually mean leaving behind what was considered "powerful" before. In fact, those characters are purposefully created as growth marks against which you can compare the main characters instead of using numbers (over 9000!) you cannot really hold against the series making use of the expected tropes.

I think the biggest problem we have here is that I'm arguing about how Naruto lost consistency and you're trying to counterargue with stuff post-timeskip which threw a lot of established stuff out of the water.

I'm curious; does this mean that you consider everything after the time-skip not canon to the frame of the original story? That would mean that after the three years of training, they would, what? Have the fated battle against Orochimaru and rescue Sasuke? But the time-skip clearly marked the half of the story! The only way to have a similarly long second part without including new characters or narrative threads would be by keeping the already tiresome game of cat and mouse between Orochimaru and Naruto. If something made memglad about Sasuke being the one to finish Orochimaru is that it spared us another mini-arc of "hey we found Orochimaru's new hideout, let's infiltrate it and we'll get him this time for sure!"

I can agree to this, even if Sasuke has pretty much become irredeemable in my eyes at this point, at least in the sense that he won't fit well with the story now.

Yeah, I really hope Kishimoto will choose not to redeem him, because that would be the trite and tired way of doing things. "Friendship always wins in the end, no matter what terrible crimes you have committed!" If Sakura was able to let go Sasuke, I hope that Naruto and Kishimoto will also do.

Yeah, it's pretty fun! I haven't had a chance to argue about whether or not something is well-written to this length before, which is something I've wanted to do for a while.

I'm glad. Now I have to say that I'm not implying that Kishimoto is flawless or that Naruto is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 2.0. I myself have a number of complaints, but I'm playing Devil's advocate because the one thing I don't really believe is that the story has changed fundamentally from the initial premise.

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

Well, the reason Madara wants to become the Ten Tails' Jinchuruki it's to have the raw power required to execute his Eye of the Moon plan in which he'll use the moon as a giant lens to amplify his Sharingan and put the entire world's population under his control. Orochimaru was never shown to be that ambitious.

I guess this is what I get for having stopped keeping up with it, but I'm pretty sure Orochimaru's goal was to become a god, even if that wasn't stated directly. I'd hardly call becoming a god something a petty goal, even in comparison to having the entire world under your control.

Yeah, I too was disappointed by seeing him being dispatched easily by the Raikage]Maybe this is one of Naruto's problems. It gives hints to a lot of potentially awesome things but ultimately fails to deliver when it comes to the mystery. We gets hints of Kisame, a man with history, someone who was a master to the fearsome Zabuza, Butcher of the Mist. We see him trash Asuma and Guy but he ultimately ends up an irrelevant character who gets dispatched by someone else that he has no connection to. He ultimately could have been something really awesome and a fearsome opponent, but ultimately ends up being unimportant.

Anyhow, if you acknowledge that Itachi was presented as more powerful than Orochimaru (himself only being a member in a tiered organization) why did you feel surprised when he was taken down before Itachi? In fact, now I think of it the villain structure follows a pattern that has been laid in this way: know your immediate enemy but be aware there's someone more powerful lurking behind, then when you defeat the first, the one behind becomes the immediate threat and you get a glimpse of someone ever further behind.

Gaara>Orochimaru>Itachi>Pain>Madara

I'm going to say that I don't buy that villain structure. While Gaara was portrayed as a genuine and pretty well done antagonist, it was already established by the time we knew Gaara was bad news that Orochimaru was an important villain. Similarly, Itachi has always been in the background as this man of mystery, but a very present and real threat. Pain, on the other hand, shows up much later and we hadn't really seen enough of him and just kind of shows up. Yeah, I know he'd been there at Akatsuki meetings but, I dunno, it was better when the Akatsuki were these people shrouded in mystery. Kisame and Itachi had a great introduction that spoke a lot about the Akatsuki but ultimately I don't think it paid off all that well.

Man, I'm not even sure what I'm going off about, but I think the Gaara>Orochimaru>Itachi steps were much different in execution than the latter parts of the chain. Even though it did switch some focus, we already knew who these new villains were and why they were important, as opposed to "Oh, Itachi's dead, bring out the new villain." Sure, we'd seen Pain before and I'm not saying Kishimoto pulled him out of his butt but even before we made the transition between Gaara and Orochimaru we knew who and why Orochimaru was important. Pain was just kind of in the background before coming into the limelight, same as Madara.

Now, I'm not going to say that that is genius writing, but at least it looks pretty darn consistent and well planned to me. I feel you may be stuck in the Orochimaru>Itachi step because it was unarguably, the longest one. I guess it's like with Bleach where after the absurdly long and painstaking Aizen arc, you get the feeling that it should have been the end of the story, but most likely Kubo Tite has a very different thing planned for the ending.

You are highly overestimating Kubo Tite's writing, which makes Naruto look like Fullmetal Alchemist in comparison. Heck, he's even admitted to making up the entire thing as he goes along.

But back to Naruto. I'm going to go ahead and say that Naruto could definitely benefit from being shorter. I know it's a hugely popular shonen or whatever, but so was Rurouni Kenshin, which told a much better story in half the volumes. If Watsuki had continued to introduce new villains and conflicts it would get old and lose the sense Kenshin once had.

The fact that it was suspected that the Nine Tails attack was planned came up in one of the conversations between Tsunade and the village elders/Danzo, if my memory serves well.

I...don't remember this, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on it, and award that point to you.

I'm surprised you didn't think that Itachi was good. It was plain evident to me, especially after seeing his behavior when he and Kisame infiltrated Konoha. The fact alone that he left Sasuke alive (twice) was a pretty good indication that whatever the reasons he had to do what he did he was regretful and wanted to someday be punished by an avenger.

He also essentially killed Kakashi and Sasuke, with no knowledge of the fact that Konoha would soon have Tsunade among its people. He pretty much admitted that he didn't want to start an international incident. He also had pretty self-serving reasons for leaving Sasuke alive until it turned out he did it because he loved his little brother.

And as you agree it was implied that there was a secret to the Uchihas that was of not concern to Orochimaru, something that got satisfactorily resolved (unless you believe that Kishimoto created that little mystery and only came up with an answer much later on,) and which served to explain Madara's intentions and the fact he had been working on it for a long time. It's either this, or as I said before, the real genius of Kishimoto lays on creating a random number of narrative threads and then find coherent ways to tie together all the dangling bits.

Were you not mentioning earlier that the conflict in Naruto is driven as the battle between the Will of Fire and its opposers? Well, Historically, the Uchiha are the ones that represent the opposite philosophy. Orochimaru was not so much an antagonist of the Will, as someone who abandoned it because it was impractical for his own purposes. I believe that an Uchiha final villain makes much more sense inside the setting of the story (and since the cast of Uchihas left in that Universe was so small, I think I like better the idea of an ancient Uchiha still being alive, than creating some random other character.) In that sense, I'm talking of foreshadowing.

It's not as if the series didn't already have a fair supply of Uchihas. We already had Itachi as a central antagonist in addition to Sasuke being the main antagonist kinda sort of. It's not as if the mysteries of the Uchiha clan couldn't have been resolved without more Uchihas.

I can agree with this: however, isn't it what you could expect of a manga of the genre? Main Characters are supposed to grow up in power, and that usually mean leaving behind what was considered "powerful" before. In fact, those characters are purposefully created as growth marks against which you can compare the main characters instead of using numbers (over 9000!) you cannot really hold against the series making use of the expected tropes.

I think you could have Naruto grow in power in a better way than constantly surpassing the highest tier only to have a new tier. I mean, wouldn't it be more interesting to see Naruto slowly grow and mature than constantly surpassing everything. Part one started out by doing a pretty good job of this as he matched increasingly skilled opponents that were still consistent with the tiers of the universe. Haku, Kiba, Neji, and Gaara were all signs of improvement in Naruto has he had to learn to apply himself in new ways to fight his foes and grow as a character. Notice that with as much growth as Naruto had in the entirety of Part One(do not mention the Kabuto fight because that was dumb even if the Rasengan is a pretty cool move) he still wasn't close to the level of Kakashi, even though we could see him now at the level of a skilled chunin. I think having Naruto slowly but steadily climb up the ranks is better than just a training arc to bump him up a tier so he's suddenly one of the most powerful people in the universe.

Also, just because a trope is expected doesn't mean it has to be used. In FMA Ed and Al gradually get better at fighting because they continue to do it, but most of their prowess comes from using their brain the whole time. They don't really have any exponential curves in strength to become suddenly able to fight the homunculi when before they couldn't.

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

I'm curious; does this mean that you consider everything after the time-skip not canon to the frame of the original story? That would mean that after the three years of training, they would, what? Have the fated battle against Orochimaru and rescue Sasuke? But the time-skip clearly marked the half of the story! The only way to have a similarly long second part without including new characters or narrative threads would be by keeping the already tiresome game of cat and mouse between Orochimaru and Naruto. If something made memglad about Sasuke being the one to finish Orochimaru is that it spared us another mini-arc of "hey we found Orochimaru's new hideout, let's infiltrate it and we'll get him this time for sure!"

It's not that I don't think it's non-canon or whatever, but I do think it generally broke up what made a lot of the original story really good. Many of the actually good characters Kishimoto had written have a reduced purpose. Remember that Rock Lee kid, the one who was pretty important and awesome? Has he even done anything post-timeskip(if you mention the Gaara arc I will be mad)? We keep on having new characters shoved into our face when many of us want to see the old ones that made us like the series. I'll mention what I already said about power levels, but I also think the post-timeskip stuff is trying to be more than shonen is supposed to be by having a supposedly more mature antagonist and trying to throw in some angst or whatever. Naruto started out as a fun shonen title that did a pretty good job of shonen tropes and had some interesting characters, and I think the post-timeskip stuff really clashes with the tone and theme of the pre-timeskip stuff.

I think you can even find this reflected in the artwork to an extent. Kishimoto's earlier stuff kind of had this sketchy charm that made it feel a lot more real and less like a paycheck, compared to the much smoother and more "Well, I like eating so here's what I'll do." It's not that I think the post-timeskip stuff is inherently bad, but that it threw a lot of what made the pre-timeskip stuff good out of the window and so trying to argue that something was foreshadowed when Kishimoto made it up in the middle of the post-timeskip stuff kind of falls flat on me.

Yeah, I really hope Kishimoto will choose not to redeem him, because that would be the trite and tired way of doing things. "Friendship always wins in the end, no matter what terrible crimes you have committed!" If Sakura was able to let go Sasuke, I hope that Naruto and Kishimoto will also do.

This kind of is a problem, because when he first left, Sasuke was someone you wanted redeemed. We knew he was a good but misguided kid that we wanted to see come back to the light. Now, he's been an angsty teenager who's been killing a bunch of people and we're supposed to hope he comes back to the light any more than we were supposed to for Orochimaru? Yeah, another mishandling for the post-timeskip stuff.

I'm glad. Now I have to say that I'm not implying that Kishimoto is flawless or that Naruto is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 2.0. I myself have a number of complaints, but I'm playing Devil's advocate because the one thing I don't really believe is that the story has changed fundamentally from the initial premise.

Eh, it's good for me to figure out what makes good stories good and bad stories bad, so this is certainly a good experience for me.

[Maokun]

Maybe this is one of Naruto's problems. It gives hints to a lot of potentially awesome things but ultimately fails to deliver when it comes to the mystery. We gets hints of Kisame, a man with history, someone who was a master to the fearsome Zabuza, Butcher of the Mist. We see him trash Asuma and Guy but he ultimately ends up an irrelevant character who gets dispatched by someone else that he has no connection to. He ultimately could have been something really awesome and a fearsome opponent, but ultimately ends up being unimportant.

I agree this is one of Naruto's many flaws. Perhaps it's a flaw inherent to this "long-run shounen" genre, in which, to make compelling the characters that you are introducing 5 years after the series started, you can only measure them against old, well established characters.

I'm going to say that I don't buy that villain structure. While Gaara was portrayed as a genuine and pretty well done antagonist, it was already established by the time we knew Gaara was bad news that Orochimaru was an important villain. Similarly, Itachi has always been in the background as this man of mystery, but a very present and real threat. Pain, on the other hand, shows up much later and we hadn't really seen enough of him and just kind of shows up. Yeah, I know he'd been there at Akatsuki meetings but, I dunno, it was better when the Akatsuki were these people shrouded in mystery. Kisame and Itachi had a great introduction that spoke a lot about the Akatsuki but ultimately I don't think it paid off all that well.

Man, I'm not even sure what I'm going off about, but I think the Gaara>Orochimaru>Itachi steps were much different in execution than the latter parts of the chain. Even though it did switch some focus, we already knew who these new villains were and why they were important, as opposed to "Oh, Itachi's dead, bring out the new villain." Sure, we'd seen Pain before and I'm not saying Kishimoto pulled him out of his butt but even before we made the transition between Gaara and Orochimaru we knew who and why Orochimaru was important. Pain was just kind of in the background before coming into the limelight, same as Madara.

Check it carefully, I was myself surprised when I noticed the pattern as I was answering you:
Gaara appeared at the start of the Chuunin exam arc and was established as very dangerous and highly murderous, also, part of a plan of the Sand Country to most likely overtake Konoha. He was the nemesis to defeat. Shortly after, Orochimaru appeared and his methods and real motivations remained for a little time, shrouded in mystery becoming a looming but uncertain threat. When the fight against Gaara started, Orochimaru showed his hand and by the time that fight ended, checking out Gaara from the villain list, Orochimaru had taken the stage as the nemesis. Then, immediately after, Itachi appeared, the new mysterious and uncertain threat.

Long time after, Oroshimaru was vanquished and Itachi became the nearest threat (at that time even Naruto was thinking about fighting Itachi, if only to increase his chances of saving Sasuke)]first time in the series[/B] there's no hint of an additional, more dangerous villain to follow Madara (except, perhaps, Sasuke himself?)

In other words, there hasn't been a time before when you could tell "this villain must be the big bad final boss" because there was always hinted there was something else to come. If Kishimoto truly intended to make Orochimaru the last, true villain, why did he introduced Itachi and the Akatsuki right after Orochimaru has made his big move into villainhood?

You are highly overestimating Kubo Tite's writing, which makes Naruto look like Fullmetal Alchemist in comparison. Heck, he's even admitted to making up the entire thing as he goes along.

Oh, no. I'm fully aware of the shortcomings of Kubo Tite, I only mentioned Bleach as an example of a story that had not foreshadowed any kind of continuation to follow after its longest, most epic arc in contrast to Naruto where several hints of a much larger conflict and mythology going on than "snake dude killed my boss and kidnapped my best friend" were provided early in the story.

But back to Naruto. I'm going to go ahead and say that Naruto could definitely benefit from being shorter. I know it's a hugely popular shonen or whatever, but so was Rurouni Kenshin, which told a much better story in half the volumes. If Watsuki had continued to introduce new villains and conflicts it would get old and lose the sense Kenshin once had.

Yeah, there's a discussion to be had about a shounen manga's lenght. I'm obviously not going to pretend that Kishimoto planned carefully the 10+ years of Naruto's story before starting writing it. Several things would have to be made as it went, for example the characters that fleshed out each faction and the corresponding fights. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that he planned a shorter story and simply kept going after what he had planned once it proved popular. It's not farfetched to think that he came up with Madara as the final villain when he created the Sharingan along with the rest of Naruto's underlying mythos, especially if you take in account that the final ability of the Mangekyu Sharingan is to control the Nine Tails, which happens to be the main plot device of the series. (Note that the Mangekyu Sharingan and the Uchiha secret tablets were introduced very early to the series, even before The Quest for Tsunade's arc.)

Also, I'd like to point that, as amazing as it was, the Enishi arc in Rurouni Kenshin is very clearly something Watsuki came up with on the run. The Kyoto Arc wasn in itself a pretty satisfactory end to the series. If you are willing to forgive Kenshin for extending its life beyond its initial limits, I'd encourage you to forgive Naruto as well. I know Naruto is much longer, but I'm not sure it actually has that many more characters than Kenshin; it's longer because while Kenshin & co. basically plowed through the enemies shortly after they were introduced (excluding, obviously, the main villains) while you get tons of back- and/or side-story attached to almost every secondary villain in Naruto (see Sasori, Hidan or Deidara.)

I think you could have Naruto grow in power in a better way than constantly surpassing the highest tier only to have a new tier. I mean, wouldn't it be more interesting to see Naruto slowly grow and mature than constantly surpassing everything. Part one started out by doing a pretty good job of this as he matched increasingly skilled opponents that were still consistent with the tiers of the universe. Haku, Kiba, Neji, and Gaara were all signs of improvement in Naruto has he had to learn to apply himself in new ways to fight his foes and grow as a character. Notice that with as much growth as Naruto had in the entirety of Part One(do not mention the Kabuto fight because that was dumb even if the Rasengan is a pretty cool move) he still wasn't close to the level of Kakashi, even though we could see him now at the level of a skilled chunin. I think having Naruto slowly but steadily climb up the ranks is better than just a training arc to bump him up a tier so he's suddenly one of the most powerful people in the universe.

I can agree too that Naruto's power growth in the second part has been almost exponential which is an inferior development when compared with the way his growth was presented in the first part. I'll even dare to say that this was due a mistake in pacing by Kishimoto: He started all slowly and nice, but he had these enemies in mind that were terribly powerful, (indeed, they needed to be more powerful than, say, Kakashi; otherwise why not simply have Kakashi deal with them? But the series is called "Naruto" and Naruto is the one we want to see beating the baddies,) so if he wanted Naruto to even be able to be at the same level of those antagonists, he couldn't keep the pace he has keeping until then.

I believe his greater mistake was to have Naruto grow close to nothing in the three-year parentheses; almost everyone else had become able Juunin and the only thing Naruto had to show was... a bigger Rasengan? I can only guess that Kishimoto wanted to be able to show that at that point, Sasuke was absurdly more powerful than Naruto; however, that came at the price of having Naruto stretch his power exponentially just in two separate short training stages to be able to match him (and the other people at his level) by the time the series ends.

Also, just because a trope is expected doesn't mean it has to be used. In FMA Ed and Al gradually get better at fighting because they continue to do it, but most of their prowess comes from using their brain the whole time. They don't really have any exponential curves in strength to become suddenly able to fight the homunculi when before they couldn't.

Yeah, that's true; you can always do better than that. I was just trying to point that Naruto's flaws are not unsightly unexpected and even above the average of the genre.

[Maokun]

It's not that I don't think it's non-canon or whatever, but I do think it generally broke up what made a lot of the original story really good. Many of the actually good characters Kishimoto had written have a reduced purpose. Remember that Rock Lee kid, the one who was pretty important and awesome? Has he even done anything post-timeskip(if you mention the Gaara arc I will be mad)? We keep on having new characters shoved into our face when many of us want to see the old ones that made us like the series. I'll mention what I already said about power levels, but I also think the post-timeskip stuff is trying to be more than shonen is supposed to be by having a supposedly more mature antagonist and trying to throw in some angst or whatever. Naruto started out as a fun shonen title that did a pretty good job of shonen tropes and had some interesting characters, and I think the post-timeskip stuff really clashes with the tone and theme of the pre-timeskip stuff.

This is also true. And trust me, no one mourns more the death of Rock Lee as a character than me]I think you can even find this reflected in the artwork to an extent. Kishimoto's earlier stuff kind of had this sketchy charm that made it feel a lot more real and less like a paycheck, compared to the much smoother and more "Well, I like eating so here's what I'll do." It's not that I think the post-timeskip stuff is inherently bad, but that it threw a lot of what made the pre-timeskip stuff good out of the window and so trying to argue that something was foreshadowed when Kishimoto made it up in the middle of the post-timeskip stuff kind of falls flat on me.[/QUOTE]
As said above, I mostly agree with you in this. However, I have to say I've endeavored to give you examples of foreshadowing from before the timeskip and only referred to post-timeskip stuff when I believe it's a logical continuation of those hints.

This kind of is a problem, because when he first left, Sasuke was someone you wanted redeemed. We knew he was a good but misguided kid that we wanted to see come back to the light. Now, he's been an angsty teenager who's been killing a bunch of people and we're supposed to hope he comes back to the light any more than we were supposed to for Orochimaru? Yeah, another mishandling for the post-timeskip stuff.

Yeah, I wonder about this too. However, I'd like to believe that such a main point to the whole premise as Sasuke's ultimate fate was planned from the very beginning. At this point, the best I can honestly hope for Sasuke is to die by Naruto's hand and have some touching last moments of realizing he chose the wrong path.

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

Welp, I think we've mostly achieved what we meant to do. I look at Naruto in a slightly more favorable manner(though I am by no means planning to pick it back up), and maybe I've pointed out some of the flaws you might have missed? Either way, good times, but I think this is a good spot to end the debate. Nice job.

Okay, one last thing. The other day I read the latest chapter just to see what was going on and it was some samurai dude fighting someone I'd never met before. That pretty much illustrates what I am trying to complain about for this series.

[Maokun]

Agreed, it was a nice run. Reminded me of good times with my best friend of several years ago when we used to discuss hotly stuff like this.

Also, I wouldn't be able to explain what you saw because I'm a masochist and I follow the story at the anime pace, not the manga.

[rocklobster]

[quote="Maokun (post: 1477481)"]This is also true. And trust me, no one mourns more the death of Rock Lee as a character than me]

You know, I actually liked Sasuke before he turned evil. That's not to say I don't like villains, I do. It's just his "heel turn" (to use a wrestling term) was so contrived, IMHO. That and he's caused so much physical and mental suffering since then.
[spoiler]But after what I just saw in Naruto Shippuden ep 208, I doubt Naruto will like Sakura much anymore.[/spoiler]