Neoriceisgood
Member
A little thing I thought about:
Bleach is now a better Naruto than Naruto ever was.
For me, although I agree with the general idea that Naruto was never "good", early Naruto's strongest points were mostly:
1. characters other than NaruSasu weren't always super important, but at least they were interesting to watch.
2. A large number of fights had very interesting tactical reasons for being enjoyable. When I think of pre-timeskip fights a lot of the characters were essentially immume to beam-spam and random powerups and essentially had to rely on pulling out interesting strategies or finding a way to make an established move work against a weird opponent.
Examples include:
1. Shikamaru almost always being the underdog power-wise and having to rely almost entirely on intelligence and surprise to win.
2. Characters like Shino and Kankuro having powers that verge on horror where the sheer lethality and "imma screw up your plans"-aspect of the powers make them far scarier than having a godzilla power level.
3. Someone like Lee giving a huge "fuck you" salute to the idea of simply power-leveling your powerful genius techniques and actually seemingly standing a chance against genius characters like Sasuke and Gaara.
When I look at .. honestly, the last two years or so, I find myself fairly uninterested in battles because of so many ..replacement-strategies that take place.
1."find an interesting way to use an established technique" has essentially been entirely replaced by "pull-shittu-out-of-my-ass-no jutsu", which is why almost any character who doesn't have this powerup fetish has been rendered near-useless.
2. It's become increasingly clear to me that Naruto's types of powers become increasingly boring and stupid with the "ninja rule" in place. The more ninjas fight at the same time, the more pathetic and meaningless their powers become.
(What's the difference between 1 ninja using a technique, and a 100 ninjas using that technique? When a 100 ninjas use it you know it'll fail and get overpowered!)
3. Not saying early Naruto didn't suffer from this at times, but the early battles often had quite some variation and almost horror-esque creepy techniques in place. As mentioned, something like Kankuro's dolls could easily fit in a horror story.
But when I look at the current villains and fights.. It just feels empty, the villains are about as threatening as a lackluster DBZ character. They're not scary because it's horrific to think about one of their techniques hitting you. They're "scary" cause zomg town-destroying beam spam!1!
In contrast, the few times Bleach gives someone who isn't Ichigo a decent fight we often get pretty absurd Bankai power reveals, a fight like Facebook v.s. Byakuya actually makes you wonder: How on earth do you defeat a power this absurd and seemingly omnipotent. The payoff becomes "Ohh..that's pretty clever."- rather than "good guy wins cause of random hax lol".
If my hope for the current powerup arc aiding other characters than just Ichigo comes true, and we dear lord please get a more interesting BG for the fights than "empty sky" I can actually imagine enjoying quite a few of the future Bleach fights. A hope I've long lost for Naruto.
Anyway I'm just curious, but am I alone in thinking this is the big reason Naruto feels so lame right now? Interesting battles and strategies were one of early Naruto's stronger points imo, so the total change in how fights seem to work just bores me to death. So far even that both Bleach and OP often beat Naruto at what used to be it's main selling point to me.
Bleach is now a better Naruto than Naruto ever was.
For me, although I agree with the general idea that Naruto was never "good", early Naruto's strongest points were mostly:
1. characters other than NaruSasu weren't always super important, but at least they were interesting to watch.
2. A large number of fights had very interesting tactical reasons for being enjoyable. When I think of pre-timeskip fights a lot of the characters were essentially immume to beam-spam and random powerups and essentially had to rely on pulling out interesting strategies or finding a way to make an established move work against a weird opponent.
Examples include:
1. Shikamaru almost always being the underdog power-wise and having to rely almost entirely on intelligence and surprise to win.
2. Characters like Shino and Kankuro having powers that verge on horror where the sheer lethality and "imma screw up your plans"-aspect of the powers make them far scarier than having a godzilla power level.
3. Someone like Lee giving a huge "fuck you" salute to the idea of simply power-leveling your powerful genius techniques and actually seemingly standing a chance against genius characters like Sasuke and Gaara.
When I look at .. honestly, the last two years or so, I find myself fairly uninterested in battles because of so many ..replacement-strategies that take place.
1."find an interesting way to use an established technique" has essentially been entirely replaced by "pull-shittu-out-of-my-ass-no jutsu", which is why almost any character who doesn't have this powerup fetish has been rendered near-useless.
2. It's become increasingly clear to me that Naruto's types of powers become increasingly boring and stupid with the "ninja rule" in place. The more ninjas fight at the same time, the more pathetic and meaningless their powers become.
(What's the difference between 1 ninja using a technique, and a 100 ninjas using that technique? When a 100 ninjas use it you know it'll fail and get overpowered!)
3. Not saying early Naruto didn't suffer from this at times, but the early battles often had quite some variation and almost horror-esque creepy techniques in place. As mentioned, something like Kankuro's dolls could easily fit in a horror story.
But when I look at the current villains and fights.. It just feels empty, the villains are about as threatening as a lackluster DBZ character. They're not scary because it's horrific to think about one of their techniques hitting you. They're "scary" cause zomg town-destroying beam spam!1!
In contrast, the few times Bleach gives someone who isn't Ichigo a decent fight we often get pretty absurd Bankai power reveals, a fight like Facebook v.s. Byakuya actually makes you wonder: How on earth do you defeat a power this absurd and seemingly omnipotent. The payoff becomes "Ohh..that's pretty clever."- rather than "good guy wins cause of random hax lol".
If my hope for the current powerup arc aiding other characters than just Ichigo comes true, and we dear lord please get a more interesting BG for the fights than "empty sky" I can actually imagine enjoying quite a few of the future Bleach fights. A hope I've long lost for Naruto.
Anyway I'm just curious, but am I alone in thinking this is the big reason Naruto feels so lame right now? Interesting battles and strategies were one of early Naruto's stronger points imo, so the total change in how fights seem to work just bores me to death. So far even that both Bleach and OP often beat Naruto at what used to be it's main selling point to me.
