/anime/ - Anime

The Power of friendship, like all those Japanese children's cartoons right?

>>29034
I thought it was about hard work or if it was about the supremacy of being gifted with good genes

>>29035
Well it's definitely not about hard work considering rock lee gets repeatedly jobbed while naruto uses the kage bunshin as an xp multiplier

>>29038
It’s probably about who has the coolest looking eyes at this point.

It said it right there bitch

i think mangaka just keep retreading the same source material over and over lol

Naruto is Harry Potter with Ninjas but the Ninjas do magic so it's just Harry Potter

>>29067
Nah, more like Harry Potter if wizards weren’t completely fucking useless in close range combat

>>29033
It is about naruto's life.

Naruto is about whatever the author needed to pull out of his ass weekly to keep his job as writer and illustrator of a prestige comics magazine targeted to little boys.

>>29070
Kids watch this shit? Naruto is a long running series like one piece. I haven’t watched any of that stuff in ages but I’ve heard that the violence has been toned down and has had a bunch of kid shit put into it like dragon ball daima so I’ve stayed away from it for now.

>>29071
>Kids watch this shit?
Yeah, when I was 11-14 all the nerdier kids loved Naruto (and Death Note). I don't know if kids growing up after it ended bother going back to watch it though.

>>29033
I watched the first seasons back when I was a teenager, and the recurring topic was that it takes a village to raise a child. none of the protagonists were intrinsically good and none of the antagonists were intrinsically evil, they all had either a tragic backstory of being marginalized and mistreated by their community, or were professional mercenaries just doing their job, with no real animosity towards each other or their victims

it was a kid shows so it was never shown explicitly, but I remember that at some point during the zabuza arc the instructor guy tells naruto something like "even though you think we are the good guys, we are mercenaries and sometimes we do kill innocent people for money"

>>29071
Not anymore, but kids aged 10 to 18 did read the manga when it was airing. Nowadays kids read shit like Gachiakuta or whatever the fuck is recent in the shonen sphere. The same way kids would read Yuyu Hakusho and Jojo before Naruto.
The only people who care about Naruto are
>people who watched the show as kids and didn't let go (like Harry Potter fans)
>people who don't watch anime but were convinced by the group mentioned above to give it a shot and love it for being "so different" (it's just the same tropes from forever ago)

I too watched the first few seasons when I was in highschool forever ago.
OP's post made me go on the wiki and read about the ninja aliens.
I'm glad I didn't watch 2 entire series to find out its ancient aliens.

>>29086
Thanks. I never caught up with shippuden or payed that much attention to the part 1. I wasn’t aware of the fact that the show was like one piece in the sense that both the protagonists and the author are aware that the main characters are functionally not “good” people nor are possible to write as saints respectively.
>>29089
Your welcome.
>>29087
Question, are there any non kid friendly action anime released? When I specify non-kid friendly, I mean not containing the tropes older shows would have like women being unusually aggressive towards minor inconveniences, sexual and power based fan service, bathroom humour, censorship of blood and brutality, unusually soft colour pallets, and self insert power garbage for audiences untrained in real world fighting?

>>29033
It's a Conservative-Confucian-Nationalist manga for young people. It's ultimately about forgiving war criminals, looking at world and historical issues in a personal emotional idealist lens, and promoting a conservative status quo resolution of the system, just with the main character in charge.

Naruto is about child soldiers and the fascist deep state, I assume

>>29094
>Naruto is about child soldiers and the fascist deep state
It can't be about child soldiers, because there's no real critique about it. The fascist deep state CIA part of Konoha does cause a lot of the conflict in the narrative, but this never leads to the title character to have any critique of the system, in fact, Naruto never truly confronts these forces in the story. And a lot of the fascist elements of Konoha is subtly justified without pushback.

the first volumes/seasons are a conservative attack against queerness. first you have haku, a boy that becomes trans and then dies because he got groomed by a psychopath. and then you have orochimaru, whose first appearance is literally impersonating a woman and kissing sasuke to give him "his curse" (the gay virus), his second appearance is to hint that he groomed kabuto when he was a teenager, and his first off-screen mention is to imply that he molested anko

>>29100
I respectfully disagree with this take:
Haku’s story isn’t about "punishing transness."
Haku’s gender fluidity is treated neutrally in-universe. Naruto briefly misgenders him, then immediately moves on — zero narrative judgment.
His tragedy stems from being a child soldier trapped in Zabuza’s cycle of violence (war trauma > queer identity). His death humanizes both him and Zabuza, framing their bond as twisted but tender — not as grooming = queerness.
Orochimaru isn’t "queer-coding villainy."

His shapeshifting/gender impersonation is classic folklore deception (think tengu or kitsune tropes).
His predatory behavior — cursing Sasuke, manipulating Kabuto/Anko — reflects ambition and abuse of power, not queerness. The narrative condemns him for violating autonomy (a universal theme), not for queerness.
Early 2000s shonen like Naruto used androgyny/flamboyance for drama, not LGBTQ+ commentary. Kishimoto later includes positive gender-nonconforming rep (e.g., Might Guy’s emotional flamboyance isn’t mocked). Haku’s gentleness even contrasts toxic masculinity — he’s kind despite being raised as a weapon.
Critiquing Orochimaru’s predatory tropes? Valid. But conflating his amorality with queerness ignores:
His victims (Sasuke, Kabuto) aren’t queer-coded.
In-universe, nobody links his actions to LGBTQ+ identities.

TL;DR: Early Naruto has problematic tropes (like most 2000s anime), but framing it as "anti-queer" overlooks its neutral/progressive aspects for its time.

>>29093
The series critiques cycles of vengeance (e.g., Pain’s rampage, Sasuke’s downfall) and uses forgiveness as a tool to break generational trauma—not to excuse atrocities. Naruto spares Nagato/Obito but still holds them accountable ("I’ll never forgive you!"), and the Kage system itself reforms post-war (e.g., Allied Shinobi Forces).

While grounded in interpersonal bonds (a shōnen staple), the story openly condemns systemic failures:
Child soldiers (Gaara, Kakashi)
Clan persecution (Uchiha massacre, Hyūga abuse)
Authoritarian corruption (Danzō, Madara)
Naruto’s rise as Hokage symbolizes changing the system from within—not preserving it—by valuing outsiders, diplomacy, and mercy over tradition.
The Ending Isn’t "Status Quo with Naruto in Charge"
Pre-war Konoha: Secretive, clan-dominated, militaristic.
Post-war Konoha: Open to outsiders (Kumo/Suna alliances), prioritizes diplomacy, and Naruto explicitly rejects past Hokage dogma (e.g., Hiruzen’s inaction, Tobirama’s Uchiha bias). His leadership is the reform.

Mocks elite birthright (Neji’s "fate" speech rebutted).
Centers orphaned "failures" (Naruto, Lee).
Nationalism? The finale unites nations—it’s anti-jingoistic by design.
Yes, Naruto avoids revolutionary overthrow (it’s a mainstream shōnen), but its core ethos—empathy over inherited hatred—is progressive for its genre. It challenges conservative power structures far more than it upholds them.
Key difference: It’s idealist, not inherently conservative. You can critique its methods without mislabeling its message.