About Naruto Uzumaki
by admin on Oct.31, 2010, under Naruto Photos
Naruto Uzumaki is a young boy who has the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox sealed within him. Twelve years before the start of the series, the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox attacked the ninja village Konohagakure, slaughtering many people. In response, the leader of Konohagakure and its ninja military – the Fourth Hokage – sacrificed his life to seal the demon inside Naruto when he was a newborn. Konohagakure, however, regarded Naruto as if he were the demon fox itself and mistreated him throughout most of his childhood. A decree made by the Third Hokage, who replaced the Fourth Hokage after his death, forbade anyone mention the attack of the demon fox to anyone else. This included Naruto, who was not aware of the demon inside of him.
Years later, Naruto is tricked by the renegade ninja Mizuki into stealing a forbidden scroll, but he is stopped by his teacher, Iruka Umino. When Iruka almost dies while protecting Naruto from Mizuki, Naruto uses a Jutsu he learned from the scroll that creates multiple clones of himself, Shadow Clone Technique, to defeat Mizuki. This encounter leads Naruto to realize that he is the container of the demon fox.
The main story follows Naruto and his friends’ personal growth. Naruto befriends two comrades, Sasuke Uchiha and Sakura Haruno, who are assigned with him to form a three-person team named Team 7 under an experienced sensei named Kakashi Hatake. Like all the ninja teams from every village, Team 7 is charged with completing missions requested by villagers, such as doing chores or being bodyguards. During the course of their missions, Naruto befriends other characters that he meets throughout the series. Team 7 learns new abilities, get to know each other, and experience a coming-of-age journey as Naruto dreams of becoming the Hokage of Konohagakure.
After several missions, Kakashi allows Team 7 to participate into a ninja exam in which they can improve their ranks, and thus, take part in more difficult missions. During the exams, Orochimaru, a criminal at the top of Konohagakure’s most wanted list, attacks Konoha and kills the Third Hokage in an act of revenge. This forces one of the three legendary ninja, Jiraiya to search for his former teammate Tsunade, who has been nominated to become the Fifth Hokage. During the search, it is revealed that Orochimaru desires to acquire Sasuke Uchiha due to his powerful genetic heritage. Believing Orochimaru will be able to give him the strength needed to kill his brother Itachi, who destroyed his clan, Sasuke goes to him in search of power. Tsunade sends a group of ninja including Naruto to make Sasuke return to Konoha, but Naruto is unable to defeat him and bring him back to the village. Naruto does not give up on Sasuke, however, and he leaves Konoha to train for two-and-a-half years under Jiraiya’s tutelage in order to prepare himself for the next time he encounters Sasuke.
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Pay No Attention to the Invisible Man in the Fluorescent Suit
by admin on Oct.31, 2010, under Reviews
My apologies- I clean forgot I was supposed to upload this yesterday. But no worries now, because I’ve got the forum users picks for the best of the Aughts right. Some of the blurbs were written by our own members! I may have had to bribe some of them, but hey, the job’s done.
I’m semi-retired from THEM right now- the new semester of school has been demanding, and the articles on Anime3000 ain’t gonna write themselves. But Stig and Tim will be here for you, because life is too short for bad anime, y’know?
If all goes right, you’ll hear from me again in the summer.
-Bradley Meek
A Drifting Life
by admin on Oct.31, 2010, under Reviews
At first, Drawn & Quarterly’s lavish publication of gekiga pioneer Yoshihiro Tatsumi seemed unnecessarily indulgent. But by the time the third collected volume Good-Bye was released, it had become clear that the publisher is indeed doing an important cultural service to the world, by bringing into the light a relatively obscure portion of the history of Japan’s postwar manga boom.
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Afro Samurai Resurrection
by admin on Oct.31, 2010, under Reviews
It’s impossible to deny that a whole lot of time and money and talent went into the production of Afro Samurai: Resurrection. One of the few existing anime franchises backed by a big budget and genuine A-list voice talent, it’s a gorgeous film, with incredible animation, spectacular action setpieces and a thumping score by The RZA; this is the closest thing to a big summer Hollywood-style blockbuster as could exist in the anime industry. It should come as no surprise, then, to those seasoned on what to expect from a big Hollywood blockbuster, that like those noisy, expensive cinematic confections we flock to every summer, it’s a whole lot of time, money and talent dumped into a pretty terrible script. That doesn’t mean it’s a total waste, though.
Resurrection picks up what seems like a few years after the events of the original OVA (this time the story isn’t split into TV-friendly chunks; it’s just a 97-minute feature) and Afro has basically retreated into solitude, growing a beard and basically spending his days carving wood figurines of the movie’s cast and fighting off would-be challengers who want to claim the legendary #1 headband for themselves. Along comes Jinnosuke, the teddy-bear-headed guy from the first one who takes Afro out pretty easily and introduces him to the movie’s villain, Lady Boobs Sio, who wants to exact revenge on Afro for all the crimes of his past (there’s some family history gobbedlygook in there somewhere too but the movie is far more focused on long shots of Sio’s ridiculous chest). (continue reading…)
Air Master
by admin on Oct.31, 2010, under Reviews
Air Master is a fighting show. Pure, with no dramatic baggage or unnecessary complexities to get in the way of its elbow-to-the-head thrills. The closest it gets to studied intent is to give the fights room to build up and expand out before exploding into acrobatic, face-smashing violence. Somewhere in the maze of comically crisscrossing characters, the fighters and their friends pick up enough personality to be fun and likeable, but only inasmuch as it’s necessary to make the fights matter and the downtime enjoyable. Any structure the second half has comes from the Fukamichi Ranking (the first half was all independent fights separated by bizarre filler episodes), which does little more than provide a loose framework for chaining together as many all-out street-fights as possible.
Like its protagonist, Air Master has muscles for brains. Its plot is nothing but nonstop brawling, and its humor is vulgar and its characters cartoony. It’s full of false starts, dead ends and side plots that never really go anywhere, and drops characters for long stretches only to pick them up again at the most random times. Visually it’s all over the place. Characters go off model, the artificial and the gritty are slammed together with unbalanced glee, and the animation switches from stunning to sloppy with no apparent logic. It’s a big, cross-eyed mess, with all the focus and intelligence of a gorilla on speed. And somehow, it works beautifully.
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