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Okay, I love Naruto as much as the next fan. However, there are those things that really really irk me. To be specific, two really main things that irk me


Yu-Gi-Oh Syndrome


1) This is what I call the Yu-Gi-Oh syndrome, I call it this because I have yet to see an anime do it better than Yu-Gi-Oh did. Yu-Gi-Oh syndrome is where something is going to happen, lets say, a cat is going to cross a street. The cat gets to the edge of the street and you know the cat is going to cross, however then it shows you something about the grass, and the texture of the pavement. The cat then contimplates the meaning of life. Then the cat says something obvious like, "Wow, I am at the edge of the street, I need to cross it." End episode. Episode 2: You start off with the last 5 minutes or so of the previous episode, which in reality accomplished nothing. Then the cat actually begins to cross the street, then you see the white line at the edge of the street and the cat once again contemplates the meaning of life. The cat then walks in front of a car. The car is shown, the cat is shown freaking out, the car is shown a little closer and makes a big noise, the cat is shown a little closer and makes a big noise. commercial. Coming back to the car being shown, the cat being shown, and then the cat jumps out of the way. Getting to the center line. End episode. Episode 3: The cat is at the center line. The cat then crosses the rest of the road without almost any trouble, gets to the other white line, backflashes to when it contemplated the meaning of life on the other white line and then finishes crossing the road and continues the episode into something else.

This is annoying and we can do nothing about it. I would like to bludgeon the animators for doing it, the directors for telling them too, and the writters for writting it. If you condensed the 3 episodes, took only the actual important stuff that furthers the story, cut out the crappy dialogue you will get a nice good 1 episode, possibly 2. In Naruto's case it would be 2 episodes, because Naruto is not as bad as Yu-Gi-Oh, but it really is up there with Yu-Gi-Oh in the whole taking way too long to make a point thing.


You saw this coming...


2) This is a really controversial thing I am about to say. Naruto should be on Adult Swim. I will use once again another show to explain this. I used to watch Gundam Wing on Toonami. In Gundam Wing there was lots of blood, they edited all the blood. ALL OF IT and it made it sometimes really confusing. Now I have no problem with a little blood being shown. In Naruto, they show lots of it. I don't know when the censoring laws changed but, OMG. This is shown when younger kids are watching all the TV they can on saturday night before they are sent to bed. Nice. Too much blood. And I say too much blood because it desensitizes kids to it. Example: I have a friend who was allowed to play games like Mortal Combat at young ages, watch whatever and really had no limits. He came over to my house while I was at work and my mother had dropped some sewing shears onto her foot cutting the foot and slicing open the veins on the top, you know the ones you can see them. Her foot was pumping blood all over the floor in the bathroom and I mean there was puddles of blood when I came home. Apparently he came in (he does not knock he is like family ^_^ ) and he saw the blood, his immdiate reaction should have been to get her off her off her damn feet, help her wrap it up and then call my father, or his mom's boyfriend or someone with a vehicle to get her to the hospital. Instead his reaction was, Whoa, that's a lot of blood. pause. Need help? <-------Desensitized to blood people. Does not recognize the danger, or even that large amounts of blood loss can be fatal. Seen the amount of blood in Mortal Combat? That is way more than the human body holds. Naruto desensitizes kids to injury.

Biggest thing is Naruto teaches children to solve their problems through violence. It does. Whenever someone in Naruto has a bone to pick with someone, what do they do? They fight. When someones life is not how they want it, they take it out on other people (Neji, Gaara specifically). I am at work one day and this boy who is about eight years old notices my Kakashi dogtags and he says, "OO Naruto! I love that show! My favorite character is Gaara, he is awesome I wish I was like him." The mom laughs and says she has no idea what he is talking about, that it is just some show he watches. I ask her to watch the show one day with her kid, and she looks at me all concerned. Eight years old is too young to be watching Naruto! And most certainly too young to want to be like Gaara.

If I was a mom, I would start allowing at the age of 13 maybe to watch the show. This also is subject to change because different kids react differently to certain things. My brother at that age really could not watch things that were violent because he would act them out. At 13 we all did it. But he was, different. I could watch some violence and I would not be all that affected by it. But that is at the descretion of the parents.

Another thing on this one, if Naruto which has loads of blood in it, lots of violence, and quite a bit of sexual inuendo can be on day time tv, why can't Inuyasha? Inuyasha has less blood unless you cut off the head of a large demon, then the blood is comparable to the blood the sexy jutsu induces. The inuendo is not as bad as the pervy sage in most cases, Miroku touches butt, Miroku gets slapped (lesson learned) Pervy sage hides in bushes and watches girls running around in skimpy bikinis and gets no lesson. He also drools and acts like an idiot about it. I do admit the DAMN HIM'S, IT'S, AND IT ALL'S, is a bit much but that is called editing, they did it with Gundam Wing.


Now I am not saying I want young kids watching Inuyasha, but if you compare the two shows, they're really is not that much difference in the levels of violence, blood, and inuendo. So why is one on daytime and the other on Adult Swim.


Conclusion

Well that is what bugs me most about this show. It really is a good anime when you get down to it.

Also, I am not dissing Yu-Gi-Oh when I talk about the Yu-Gi-Oh Syndrome. If I did not watch the show how would I know about that taking 2 episodes to draw a card...well it seemed like it. Maybe 2 episodes with 1 card each in them ^_^.