NINJAS! Not only ninjas, but kid ninjas! This series has been on since 2002, with seventeen series and coming up three hundred and eighty seven episodes. This anime, like so many others, comes from the popular manga series of the same name. Manga are Japanese comics and the stories from which the anime originates so the two mediums generally tell the same story, minus the filler episodes. Naruto is one of the titans of anime, and a favorite amongst anime fans. Why? Lets dig into Naruto, episode one.
We begin with an introduction to the nine-tailed fox, a demon with immense power capable of destroying mountains or causing tsunamis with the swing of its tail. The demon heads to attack the village of Kohana which the resident ninjas are there to protect. Here we see a general rule of anime, that a mass of defenders, no matter how skilled, are usually cannon fodder. After a pretty one-sided battle, a great warrior with yellow spiky hair known as the forth Hokage appears. He rides a giant frog, a frog smoking a pipe and carrying a knife (odd), and seals the demon into a young baby boy, also with yellow spiky hair. I say yellow and not blonde because they show blonde people in this episode. Never in this episode or the rest of the series do we see anyone else, apart from the forth (wink, wink), with this bright, luminescent, Simpson colored hair. Within the first minute, the show has introduced us to the world it is set in, a world of ninjas and demons.
And so we skip twelve years onwards to see our protagonist, Naruto, as a young boy. After vandalizing some sacred giant faces sculpted into a mountain in the village, Naruto flees from the ninja authorities, taunting them, announcing how great he is. This is our hero ladies and gentlemen. Jumping throughout the town from building to building in a ninja fashion, we see that although Naruto is a miscreant, he has some skills. He evades fully grown ninjas with ease, escaping two with a camouflage technique. Thinking he’s safe however, Naruto emerges from hiding, only to be caught by his teacher, Iruka Umino, and he is dragged back to school. We see that Naruto is awful with serious ninja stuff, having failed many exams in basic techniques. Not taking the class seriously, he proceeds to transform into a naked female version of himself, with clouds covering the mature content for the viewers at home (Bastards), which he calls the seduction technique or sexy jutsu. Don’t you just love the little rascal, graffiti here, naked woman there. He’s a real role model. But we again see that Naruto has some skill, having invented this technique, however perverse it is. As he cleans the graffiti, the show starts to explain why Naruto is the way he is. We see that he is all alone, with no family or anything to go home to. Due to his lonely existence, Naruto wishes everyone to recognize him, even if it is just as a public nuisance. His dream however is to become the leader of the village, the Hokage, the number one ninja who everyone respects.
The show returns to the classroom the next day, where Naruto must take the ninja exam, making a duplicate of himself. Again we see that Naruto has no talent when it comes to ninja techniques, unable to control his energies to the disappointment of his teachers. Perhaps this might have something to do with the damn DEMON INSIDE HIM, but nobody considers that here. He fails this test in a comical fashion, creating an immobile, dead looking clone. And so we see the image of Naruto, outside the school, wallowing on a swing watching all the kids who passed the exam becoming official ninjas to the excitement of their adoring parents. Just incase we were uncertain if the only yellow haired child in the world was the kid with the demon fox in him, we see some parents relish in his failure, giving him the dirty eye. Bitches! The second teacher, named Mizuki, who seemed nicer and wished to pass Naruto, despite utterly failing, leaves Naruto with a big secret. This can only lead to something good, right? Naruto, believing that by learning a forbidden justu he will pass and become an official ninja, steals the Scroll of Sealing, which puts the fear of God into the rest of the ninjas. This scroll is very important, holding special techniques and information that the village holds dear. How Naruto gets by the security or does anything stealthy is not shown, but again we see that he has some potential as a ninja. As Iruka finds him, Naruto asks can he display his new technique to graduate, as Mizuki said he could. And so the trap is realized.
In the first of three sacrificing gestures, Iruka pushes Naruto aside and is hit with several kunai. Mizuki reveals everything about the demon fox to Naruto, including that it killed Iruka’s parents. This is somehow meant to convince Naruto to hand the scroll over willingly. That’ll work, ‘you’re a monster, gimme gimme’, or not. After his amazing negotiating skills fail, Mizuki proceeds to throw a giant ninja star, which although awesome, is the most ineffective piece of shit you’ll see in this show. A second sacrificing gesture shows Iruka cover Naruto, taking the star to the back. At this point, I really have to question what the hell Mizuki is doing. For a ninja, he can’t kill crap. He’s hit this other guy several times, with no real effect. We get a soppy scene where Iruka recognizes Naruto’s existence, realizing that they both grew up in the same manner, and this is somehow all his fault. And so after this touching moment, Naruto runs like hell, leaving his master behind to die. Our hero. Mizuki, being an idiot, decides not to finish off Iruka and instead gives chase to Naruto. Our final sacrificing gesture comes as the supposed Iruka catches up with the supposed Naruto. Naruto tackles him, knowing that he is in fact Mizuki. How does he know? Because Naruto was actually Iruka. My head hurts. As the two ninjas talk about Naruto, one saying he is good, the other saying he is evil, Naruto hides behind a tree listening, the rotten eavesdropper. WARNING, a line so clichéd it will implode your mind is about to be shown. Mizuki actually says ‘Iruka, I said I would kill you later, but I take it back. Die now!’ Giving us a single reason to believe Naruto is the hero of the story, he jumps in, kneeing our villain in the face. Ouch. And so, the battle concludes with Naruto using the forbidden justu, Shadow replication. This technique creates a good hundred if not more clones, that proceed to whale on Mizuki, off-screen unfortunately. Get it, Naruto couldn’t create one clone before and now he can create loads. GET THE IRONY! And so Naruto becomes an official ninja, the fact he stole what accounts as a WMD in the ninja world forgotten.
This show is how I define the standards of anime. The premise is simple enough, NINJAS. The characters development is entertaining to watch and is expertly executed. In this single episode, we see the protagonist change from annoying punk to misunderstood underdog. One feels genuinely interested in this character and is willing to invest themselves into further episodes. We see glimpses of other characters that also spark our interest, including Sakura, Hinata and Sasuke, who unfortunately only have short parts in this episode. Yet, as time goes on, each of these characters become just as intriguing, if not more so than our protagonist. Without spoiling anything, the story of the series is very precise, the characters continually growing in strength and intellect. Minus the filler, there is always the sense of a plan in the show, that everything is related in some way or another. The action is awesome, but unfortunately we only get a glimpse of it in this episode. Look forward to fast pace fights with crazy (in a good way) abilities and big ass weapons now and then. For a while, the show follows the pattern of Naruto making loads of clones and the baddies demolishing them, tearing through them like paper, slicing through them like butter and so on. The graphics of the show are beyond dispute, always consistently good, the colours and effects keeping the viewer interested. Overall, this is a damn good first episode and indeed one of the anime greats. The show only rises in quality from here.
Next time: Bleach (not the toilet cleaner)
