I'm Watching Naruto!

I'm doing it. I'm watching Naruto. All the way through. I've never seen any of Naruto before and that just feels wrong, it's such an ingrained piece of weeb pop culture that I just feel like I should participate.

I'm actually going in pretty blind because I'm wonderfully out of touch. All I have in my Naruto knowledge bank is that I read the first volume of the manga in March last year and I saw these drawings at the british museum.

That's literally it.

I'm 5 episodes in, some initial thoughts (that are basically the same as I thought when I read the manga).

• I don't really like Naruto. lol.  I'm just not a fan of annoying, cocky, 12 year old boys. I'm pretty sure I have some mild school boy based ptsd, I find it really hard to enjoy characters like this. But I get it, he's had a hard life, he's still a baby, he doesn't know how to not be annoying. I am on side with his love for cup noodles though.
• Sakura better get some fucking character development fast because wow she's a bad portrayal of a girl. Like, how is she even a ninja if she's so stupid? It better not be just because she fancies Sasuke because arhgjkhgkdsksdaghl (there's already mention of family stuff though..?)
• Sasuke is just a different type of dumb boy, there's not even much to say about him yet because he's just so cold. It did make me laugh a lot though when there was a scene where it went from Naruto to Sakura to Sasuke and we were hearing what they were thinking in their head and Sasuke just wasn't saying anything.
• I have a soft spot for characters with eyes like this, even if you can only see one of them...

Now, why am I watching this if I think the three main characters are dumb and annoying? I'll tell you why! They're clearly going to grow and I want to see it. There's enough going on that it feels like we're heading somewhere and even though I don't like them yet it's still fun to watch and it feels like I will like them soon. They're kids! Of course they're stupid!
Not to mention with the wonder of hindsight, it's a 220 episode anime with a 500 episode follow up based on a 72 volume manga that has really, really beautiful artwork. I'm not going to drop it after 1 volume or 5 episodes!

So yeah, I'm watching Naruto and I'll probably share my idiot thoughts about it here every now and then.