When I first saw Naruto I thought of Dragonball... Mostly because it was the same Animation studio that was creating them. But after that the similarities pretty much ended and having caught a marathon of the first 100 episodes playing on a Saturday on Cartoon Network, I was pretty well up to speed on the going-ons with Naruto.
Naruto is about a 12 year old boy who has a terribly dark secret power. On the day he was born, a giant Nine-Tailed Demon Fox attacked the village where he was living, and his dad, being a super-awesome powerful ninja protected the village and all the people with his life. He used a powerful ninjutsu technique to seal the Demon Fox away... into his son, Naruto. Unfortunately, Naruto's dad, Minato, died in this process. His mom, Kushina, had previously been the Jinchuruki, the one who the Tailed-beast would be sealed inside of, so Naruto bascially inherited his mom's job, and she was also killed in the process.
However, you don't learn about all that to much later the series, but I figured I keep it chronological order. Anywho, most of the Ninja that had been fighting to protect the village from this Demon Fox died, and the kids who remained, didn't get the whole story, and thought that Naruto literally was the Demon Fox, when really it and it's massive power was just sealed inside of him.
Needless to say, Naruto, an orphan, had a pretty rough time growing up, since the older Ninja kept the fact that the Demon Fox was inside Naruto a secret. So Naruto didn't have a clue why most everyone rejected him, he just figured nobody liked him. Well lo and behold he gets involved in some some shady business with one of the village's own Ninja trying to steal a super-secret and powerful scroll which had several powerful Ninjutsu techniques, well this guy, Mizuki, tricks Naruto into stealing it and Naruto uses one of his own specialized techniques to get past the guards, and takes the scroll and learns one of the more powerful techniques.
So despite how serious all that sounds, there's also plenty of comedy and good-heartedness to lighten the mood. Especially when Naruto spouts about his "Ninja Way", which is to Never Give Up! That's right, he's stubborn as all get out and this stubborness gets him through some tight spots and even causes others to submit and eventually be his friend, while at the same time, Naruto geninunely wants to be friends with people, mostly because he didn't have anyone growing up. Naruto is put on a team with two other "ninja-in-training" or Genin, one of the Ninja is his "eternal" rival, a guy named Sasuke (sauce-kay) and a girl, whom Naruto has crush on, Sakura, and Sakura has a crush on Sasuke, who could care less about either of them.
Their instructor is named Kakashi, and he is one of the few who actually appears like a ninja, with a mask covering his mouth and nose, and his headband leans down covering his left eye. Kakashi talks very casually and appears lazy and not really paying attention to what is happening, which is far from the truth. Anyway, so this team of three with a instructor is sort of a regular way of operating the village, since there are several other teams with captains created.
So hopefully that's been enough of an explanation that I can go into WHY I like it so much, first off, all the characters who interact with Naruto seem very fleshed out and tons of backstory for themselves, and they develop through most of the series. Along with that, there's plenty of action and comedy and suspense, Naruto appears to be something of joke when it comes to performing some of the basic techniques, but fixes that and ends up being quite a badass, and since he's always competing against Sasuke in that department, it feels good to see him triumph; a good underdog finally trumping the natural genius story is always satisfying in my book! :)
However, at the point the story is at now, Naruto has been acknowledged by the village as being a hero and is currently trying to put the Demon Fox's power under complete control and use it to stop a guy who was actually controlling the Fox and attacked the village with it. Naruto's dad knew about this, and that's most likely the reason why he sealed the Fox's power into his son, so that he would grow up, train and eveutally have the power to destroy this guy, named Madara, who is unbelievably powerful. So it's turned into a kind of War story now, it's had its low points, but its like crack I keep coming back week after week waiting for the latest manga to come out... :b
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