Aside from what I've said above, even some of the non-filler episodes are very slow paced. The fact that filler can't move the plot along fuels the second big flaw. Some of the filler episodes can be genuinely enjoyable but those are few and far between. This is worsened by the below par writing for these filler episode as they are not written by the original author Masashi Kishimoto himself. So mostly what we get is poorly written mini-arcs and episodes that don’t affect any of the characters or the world in any significant way. This being a mainly character driven plot, this becomes a huge issue because any significant event in fillers could affect the characters so they can't move ahead the plot line at all. The issues that lies within the filler episodes is that they are not allowed to make any significant changes to the story or specifically its characters. It counts as 219 total filler episodes which make up 44% of the series as a whole. The amount of filler in this show is staggering. The story is mainly hampered (not ruined) by fillers and pacing issues which I will discuss below. Down the line this is series deals with more mature themes and darker tones and manage to execute well on most of those themes if not all. And the story then on is presented in a collection of long well constructed story arcs with the bigger picture stories of Sasuke and the Akatsuki being told parallelly till a certain point.

The series eases you back into the world of Naruto with a slow paced, almost SOL like first few episodes. It starts off where the first part of Naruto ended and the very first scenes gives us a sneak peak of things to come. It's unpredictable, it's thrilling, it plays with your emotions, it's funny, it's tragic, it's sometimes downright frustrating but it is, more than anything, wondrous and fun while being able to take itself seriously when it needs to. But what it is, is beautiful (probably not the word that can be often used to describe a shounen anime), but it really is.

While it's not bad, it's certainly no Berserk. The story of Naruto has been a mixed bag. I'm going to tell you why it hasīeen the best experience an anime gave me in my entire life and dig into what made the series popular while also explaining its flaws. Sometimes the animation quality was below par and pacing can be painfully slow at times. Let me start off by saying Naruto is by no means a flawless anime. An anime that ranked as one of the most watched series in Japan that got tarnished by a greedy studio and has received tons of internet backlash throughout the years. The series that sold over 220 million manga copies, winning handful of awards along the way.

Naruto supuden