In the exciting first look at the new animated series, we see Spider-Man going back to his origins as a hero as Peter Parker discovers his powers and begins fighting crime in NYC! Watch the first sneak peek now and look out for Marvel’s Spider-Man premiering this Summer on Disney XD.
In honor of its recent final chapter we’re going to be looking at Naruto. Yes, the ninja who never shuts up and sounds like someone who smoked for a majority of their life, that’s who we’re going to be looking at today. Naruto was created by writer and artist Masashi Kishimoto, who originally made a one shot of the character, who was changed only slightly into the hyper active character we know today. It has recently finished with a total of 700 chapters and the anime is still ongoing currently with a “final” movie having just recently premiered.
Alright story for those who don’t know:
Twelve years prior to the original start of the story the village of Konoha was attacked by a nine tailed fox, who was then trapped into a new born baby by the village leader, the fourth Hokage. This child’s name was Naruto and Christ did he get the short end of the stick. Made into the town pariah he is forced to grow up not only as an orphan but also the most hated member of the town for mistakes he didn’t make. The children his age even dislike him, just based upon how their parents acted to him, and that made for a very difficult and lonely childhood. But fear not because Naruto doesn’t care, well he does, but he would never show it. He wants to be hokage and prove to the village he can be more than some hated reject. So he decides to become a ninja despite having failed as a student so many times before. Finally achieving his goal, he strives to become the strongest ninja in all of Konoha and prove to everyone that he isn’t a waste of space!
There’s a lot more that I won’t exactly bring up, just in case there are people who are interested in reading the manga or watching the show still. But basically its Naruto’s quest to acceptance and the friends he makes because of that. It’s cheesy but hey the kids love it for some reason. I know I did when I was young and watching it.
Naruto is our lead, obviously, and he is… Endearing? Really he’s a fine character with a lot of enthusiasm but there’s just a lot of energy that you have to match up with. He basically raised himself, never knew his parents, and doesn’t understand why everyone in the village hates him. Well he finds out, but even then he has a hard time understanding. He’s a bit thickheaded like that. He wants to be hokage and shouts it to the world with a, “Dattebayo!” (Believe it). We want him to succeed because he grows up so well over time that you can’t help but want him to wear the stupid hat of power, because you grew up with him.
Sasuke is the second main character I suppose in that he is sort of a driving force behind a lot of Naruto’s actions. Loved by everyone in the village Sasuke is a bit jaded on the whole people thing, often seeing them as similar because none of them try to get to know the real him. All the girls his age adore him to the point of stalking and it’s a wonder no one’s ended up with a restraining order. He and Naruto start off hating each other, seeing each other as annoying, but eventually they learn to trust each other. I don’t really care about him, he’s kind of a huge jerkwad, and that’s all he ever amounts to being.
Sakura is our leading lady and probably the character with the most growth, minus the last few chapters, but yeah. She’s hotheaded and intelligent but is scared of showing people what she’s really like out of fear of rejection. Starting off she just sort of comes off as a girl desperately in love with Sasuke and someone who has literally no motivation for anything really. That does change quite a lot that she’s strong and independent. She uses her strength and intelligence to become a strong female medical ninja who still holds onto what she loves.
There are a series of like a hundred plus other characters, which yes they are important, but that would take a whole lot of time.
The animation is… Well it’s shonen jump alright! That’s not saying Masato Kishimoto isn’t a good artist, but at times it is very wonky, but only in earlier chapters. Now for those who may not know, shonen is a ‘boy’s’ oriented genre of manga, which includes titles like Bleach or One Piece, and typically is showcased in the magazine Shonen Jump. For the most part the manga is a lot more detailed than that of the anime, merely because the animation crew likes to make everyone appear as bland as possible. Though the fight scenes are really good in both series, though once again lose a lot because of the more defined sketchy art style of Kishimoto. Now that isn’t to say that there are sometimes that I wish there had been a cleanup crew, because dear lord if I could count the number of times I’ve seen extremely sloppy execution done during the Chunin Exam arc. Ultimately though it was a very unique style that I don’t think will ever been done quite the same.
The sound is, not the best in either English or Japanese really, but if I had to choose I’d rather listen to five hundred episodes with subtitles. That isn’t me saying the dub isn’t good either, though I would never… It’s not good. Watch it in Japanese, preferably, also because they don’t butcher the opening theme like a lot of Dubbing companies did in the early 2000s. Now Viz Media did the dub, but once again, all it really did was launch Yuri Lewonthal’s career along with a few choice others who were already in the dub scene. This includes Kyle Hebert, Steve Blum, and Crispin Freeman. Also Liam O’Brian! These are the only people I think are of note, but hey, everybody likes different other voice actors. Any who, the music is also pretty good, sad flute instrumentals abound though. Because it is a longer anime it has multiple openings and endings. I would say there are a few that are really stellar, but there is a lot to go through. I personally really liked a lot of the Shippuden themes.
I have a lot of issues revolving around this show because of fans and the ultimate final few chapters of the manga. I grew up with Naruto, so I do end up having a lot of embarrassed nostalgia about it, I was as we used to call them a Narutard. I will defend that this is a good show with a lot of really good heartfelt moments, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that there is problems. Ultimately it comes down to the final arc and plot thread that just felt like it was ham-fisted into the reader’s faces. It felt almost like an insult to us as readers. I can’t be too angry though, it isn’t my work, its Kishimoto’s, but I can’t help but be a bit angry.
Still as a fan and a reader I have to thank Kishimoto for the last 15 years and congratulate him on completing Naruto. After such a long time it’s time to say goodbye even if it feels like letting go of an important friend. It’s an endearing show that if you have the time, read or watch it, it’s heartfelt where it needs to be and silly in the same way.
Narurto: 7/10
If you like anime you’re going to like this anime. If you don’t like anime you’re going to like this one. From Studio Bones and director Shinichiro Watanabe we have been given the goldmine that is Space Dandy. The series began in 2014, surprisingly in America before Japan, and was an instant hit. It’s a bit crude in places but also has the same deep sentiments that we gain from works like Cowboy Bebop or Samurai Champloo. With an omnipresent voice that narrates all of the happenings with and around Dandy we are immediately kicked in the face with these storylines and plot that would probably never work in a different anime.
The story is literally about a Space Dandy, who, and I quote, is a dandy guy in space. What more could you want? It’s also basically an episodic anime with an overarching story line that we, as the audience, always are wondering where it is going to take us. But ultimately each episode is pretty fun and a standalone reason to try and sit down and watch this show. Also we have restaurants in this show called Breasturants, otherwise known as BooBies, which dear lord is probably a play on Hooters, or something. But anyway we have our three characters we are most faced with and then the other plot which an empire is trying to get their hands own our hero, because he may be the key to winning a galactic war.
So as said above we have Space Dandy, our dandy guy, and man is he just that. He is the best character to take away from probably this entire last new anime season. He’s on the hunt for new aliens to try and make a living off of, but ends up in high stakes shenanigans all the time. Dandy loves women and the booty, which he proclaims quite often. If he could live off the food at BooBies he would, but that’s just unrealistic. Still he has a sense of what is wrong and right while keeping a light sense of attitude towards most situations. While he can be entirely selfish he also usually ends up doing the right thing because deep down he is just a good guy. The big secret around him is also very cool and well done, which is another reason to sit down and try this out.
QT is Dandy’s second in command, an older model robot, and probably the most intelligent of the three mains we have. Shown to be older in model he is otherwise shown to be able to feel and process emotions like a human would. This makes it interesting as we have a robot who can love and be annoyed by things around him, and it makes for good storytelling as well as character development.
Meow is the unfortunate Betelgeusian that meets our heroes in the very first episode through a series of events. A bit of a pervert he is our otaku-esque character with very little want or care of pleasing his captain. Also he’s basically a cat. So he acts like one in certain situations despite a hatred of being called one. Everyone wonders why he left his home planet when he is such a homebody, basically, already, and it’s found that he didn’t want to end up in a mundane never ending life of boredom, which makes him quite endearing. He loves traveling with Dandy and QT, finding the excitement he couldn’t at home.
Then we have a whole slew of other characters that are technically side characters but are still important to the story plot overall and how it progress our main characters and forces them into situations. I won’t go into them because there are a lot of them, but I mean if you sit and decide you’re interested in the show you’ll get to meet them anyway.
The animation in this is… Just splendid. Every now and then it changes to a different style that is just as equally interesting as the plot. Each character is unique and independent, from Dandy’s pompadour to Dr. Gel’s gorilla like body. Also in the same style as Gurren Lagann it is big and encompassing to the point of being ridiculous. Yet we love it, we can’t help but want Dandy to go through another monologue where he just goes on about surfing and how life is just like that. Also it’s bright and shows exactly what we would want space to be like in that situation, people with hair that sparkles like the stars themselves or spaceships painted with Hawaiian shirt patterns. I cannot help but feel that this animation is the beginning much more top notch animation we’ll see in the future, especially from Studio Bones.
I want to talk about the dub before I go into the soundtrack. There is rarely a time that I will say watch the dub, but watch the dub dear lord it is golden. And in all technicality the dub for once is the original due to it airing in America before it did in Japan. For one Ian Sinclair is a perfect Dandy, hitting just that right amount of humor when it’s needed that you can’t help but want him to keep going. Colleen Clinkenbeard is also in the series which also ups how good this dub is to the point I want to call it pure perfection and put it on a shelf next to Cowboy Bebop forever. I have heard excerpts of the Japanese cast and I just prefer the English this time. It just feels far superior by simple matters of casting and the performance. But seriously just do it for Sinclair’s Dandy, it’s so worth it, just like you’d watch Bebop for Steve Blum. I cannot stress enough how rare it is that I will recommend a dub over the Japanese, so please if you take anything away from this and decide you want to check it out go and watch this version.
Now we can talk about the soundtrack. It’s so nice and uppity that you can’t help but feel good when the opening theme Viva Namida by Yasuyuki Okamura, which has its swoon worthy vocals that you can’t help but feel like yes this is worth my next twenty-four hours instead of sleeping before class. Also to give you an even bigger reason to watch the dub, we have episodes where the characters sing, and Sinclair as well as the rest of the cast actually sang the songs. They actually took the time to record these songs and make it fit the characters they were portraying. They don’t have Dandy sing in a perfect coo, rather his voice cracks when he sings higher notes, it fluxgates between octaves when he struggles to get that lyric out. It’s glorious. The mixture of music and dialogue was done very well that I didn’t struggle to hear or interpret what was going on.
I do have issues with this show. It isn’t the pure perfection I have built it up to be so far. Actually there is that issue of it being an episodic show. A lot of the episodes are throwaway ones that honestly you could skip a lot of. We have an interesting overarching plot that barely gets touched on because of hijinks that could be left to the side instead. That isn’t overtly bad as we’ve seen it well executed in Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, but we also want to just get to the point of what is going on. And we do get to it… Eventually. No spoilers of course, but still it just feels like it takes a while to really get to what we wanted. While each episode is unique and good I don’t feel that it works well to the degree it wants to.
Ultimately though,
Space Dandy: 8/10
