I was told by an older friend that aparently Naruto was super popular and well liked, even more so than One Piece back in they day. Can any uncs here confirm and if so why?
>>289686407Pirates weren't exotic enough because pirates of the carribean existed.
One Piece 4Kids Dub was lame. Naruto had a more modern dub as in they didn't censor much of it.
Kind of but not really. It all depends on your social circle. In the late 2000s and early 2010s anime fans were divided between liking Naruto and absolutely despising it. Within the Naruto fanbase, it was more beloved than anything else ever and had utterly supplanted shit like DBZ in popular consciousness (we didn't know then just how much Latin America liked DBZ). Naruto running was a meme. It was fucking everywhere.
>>289686407Naruto was by far the most popular anime in the world for about 10 years
>>289686407One Piece had a dub by 4kids, the most notoriously censor-concerned anime importer that existed. They made One Piece gay and lame. Naruto being about ninjas was enough, and you must remember that the first part of Naruto that's even now usually considered pretty alright lasted for years. Kids who've been following a series for years will keep following even as it plunges off a cliff post time skip.
Naruto is a gateway anime of the worst kind.
>>289686407>well likedonly by narutards
>>289686407One Piece fucking sucks, og Naruto was much better. Boruto sucks too though, but at least thanks to it we got this dynamichttps://files.catbox.moe/2k8m9e.png
>>289686407People who liked DBZ and FIFA liked One Piece morePeople who liked various animes and got bullied like Naruto more Naruto pulled more girls
>>289687702People in remedial classes liked Bleach.
>>289686407absolutely
>>289687625sakura doesnt have those
For me it was art style. Early Naruto had a great art style. Also the op/eds of the anime were iconic and got me into the series. I tried reading One Pierre but the art was too /co/ for me.
>>289687810Adult version kind of doeshttps://litter.catbox.moe/szyx2r.jpgSorry for links, just the isp is range banned from posting images.
>>289687897u dont have to apologize lol no one here is important enough to have you justifying yourself over images
>accessibility, exposure, competitionThese three factors determine popularity of the show among kids. Everyone knew about DBZ and Naruto because those were the only things kids could watch at the time. Barely anyone I've met IRL knows about Bleach or One Piece. Also shartphones weren't really a thing yet.
>>289688031One does not need to be important for something like that. It’s just basic etiquette. I know myself i am annoyed when i press links even though the image could just be posted here.
Naruto is a gateway anime of the worst kind. It's a bad series, a clusterfuck of story and characterization that isn't very well done by any aspect, but which attempts to compensate for its weaknesses by adding in excessive shipping faggotry and DARKNESS.The normal anon can see this as the shit it is, and may enjoy it, hate it or be indifferent to it, but all the while recognizing that the series itself, regardless of their opinion, is plain bad.However, these very aspects that try to smear over the shit of its core make it a breeding ground for aspie, unsociable underageb& faggots who engage in every kind of faggotry both online and in the real world. The superpowered characters all trying their hardest to look cool, the jutsus, peculiar, colorful clothes, the whole ninja faggotry and everything about the Naruto world fuels their escapist fantasies, while the pity-party character backgrounds, emphasis on revenge, and overall preachiness of the series make it fit just right with the mary-sueish drives of your average preteen and his sense of unwarranted self-importance towards the world. Exactly the kind of shit that makes little kiddies and underageb& retards eat this shit right the fuck up.Naruto is basically THE series to attract the most hated anime fanbase known to /a/, which is why, regardless of individual opinions, it is the responsibility of every anon to troll the fuck out of this show and everyone who likes it, and ensure that no Naruto threads ever encourage the newfriends to show their faces here
>>289688062and it had the best hentai
>>289687838>One Pierreoh hon hon
>>289686407Women liked it that's why it was perceived as more well liked. The femoid fanbase always gravitates to the bishoujo esqe designs of naruto and bleach. One piece doesn't have hot characters in the main cast or as the main villians so it has a smaller femoid fanbase. Both Naruto and Bleach enjoyed widespread cross gender appeal because of the sexy designs and the ship baiting in each seiries. One piece lacks these two aspects because ultimately it is a shoen first and foremost. Oda has never bothered with pandering to a female audience, ever.
>>289687321Man the fall of in quality between the pre time skip and post time skip for Naruto is legendary. Like before said time skip Naruto was easily a 9/10. But after said time skip it went downhill very quickly. It went from a fun show about Ninjas and shit into Ninja Jesus talking about feelings and being gay.
>>289688219
>>289688444My ex was a Robin cosplayer so that ain't true
>>289688444>One piece doesn't have hot characters in the main cast or as the main villiansTop ten basement dweller posts of /a/ll time
>>289688444This. Women literally built websites just to talk about their favorite ships and the biggest rivalry was obviously NaruSaku vs NaruHina.
>>289688859I remember the yaoi fans being into Naruto X Sasuke.
>>289686407One Piece afaik only got popular outside Japan around the 2010s. You can thank the 4kids dub for that. But in Japan, One Piece was still massively more popular.
>>289689305I wonder why that is. Was Naruto too Japanese for Japan? I imagine Naruto was still popular enough to get games, merch and what not but if never got as popular as in the West.
>>289686407The first one piece dub was 4kids and it butchered the material with a rap opening and censorship, so in america naruto was definitely bigger early on. Also helps it was probably the most violent show that aired in a kids timeslot.
>>289688444I used to see girls in school watching naruto on their phones. Can't say the same for one piece.
I think /a/ would identify more with Los Caballeros these days.
>>289688444say that to all the Ace fangirls
>>289686407Yes he was right, there's a reason why /a/ hated Naruto so much. It was far more popular and well liked by normoids back then who wanted some other shounenslop after DBZ ended. It was also superficially similar to dbz with both the MCs and the power system as well. While OP didn't experiment with ki like power systems much later. Also OP dub was goofy and I know several people who actually OP back then because 'Luffy looked and acted like a clown'.
>>289689283Yeah and there were safe variations of it too by turning Sasuke or Naruto into a girl.
>>289686407yes it was>why?come on now
>>289689375Pirates are exotic for a Japanese audience. Ninjas are exotic for a western audience.
>>289686407Yes. One Piece caught steam later on.
>>289688444holy mother of cope I haven't met a femoid yet that liked Naruto back in the day. Juan Piss is just for kids
>>289686407Naruto was the first popular anime from the era when people started to watch anime by downloading it illegaly instead of watching it on TV.
>>289689608Naruto had a gay kiss right in one of the first episodes that was the fujo awakening of an entire generation
>>289686407It was unironically a different time
>>289689283>I remember the yaoi fans being into Naruto X Sasuke.you mean like Kishimoto?
>>289689608Naruto had a solid yaoi following since forever, whether you consider that valid is another thing entirely but it had a female following for a completely different reason.
>>289689639>>289689677yet nobody irl knows those "fujos" or has seen them even, most guys preferred Naruto and Bleach because they didn't look like ugly toons for children and had cool as fuck aesthetic for starters
>>289689608You didn't hang out with the stinky ones sitting between shelves in bookstores. Bet most of them aren't girls anymore to be fair. If I was gonna bet on anyone trooning it'd be a NaruSasu whale.
>>289689655is Kishimoto even able to write a manly bromance that doesn't feel gayer than explicit gay sex?
>>289689826No. Kishi doesn't even know how to write straight romance.
>>289689826>>289689844No, the man is gay as hell.
>>289689856I think I read somewhere that Tenten was his favorite girl?
>>289689915Favorite design-wise, he said.
>>289686407i wasn't into anime at the time (mid 2000s) and i still had a vague idea of what naruto was, could recognize the headbands, etc. nobody cared or really knew about one piece in burgerland back then.
>>289686407kill yourself narutard
One Piece wasnt that popular in america until like 2019 or covid when it exploded.I never understood the hype for op, pre ts is good but post ts is hot garbage and painfully repetitive.Anime as a whole only entered the mainstream around that time
>>289686407One Piece spent a period of time being seen as the retarded third child. Some people would get into it and try to convince everyone else to read it, but the masses of teens of the 00's who were born in the 90's wanted things that were "cool" and Japanese flavored out of anime. One Piece had a style that was too silly and not "anime" enough for edgy teens to look past. Anime was still a somewhat exotic media to the mainstream of the west - kid's anime was scrubbed clean of it's japaneseness in localizations, manga/dvds and merch of anime was hard to get unless you visited a nerd shop in a city, other people that liked anime were hard to find or associate with because they were outcast and bullied. (Maybe the fact that liking anime was a highly bulliable trait is part of why people wanted to distance themselves from anything that looked more goofy or kiddy, as a defense)The 4kids dub really handicapped OP's introduction to the west, while at the same time, "cooler" and more bloody anime was having much less altered localizations aired on channels during hours that were a bit later for older kids. And this was the era where family PCs had become common - you get into something because of TV, and then you search it up on the internet. And then you find the entire series uploaded in parts, in dub or sub, on Youtube. And then you feel even cooler for crossing some sort of threshold to discover cool shit your society wasn't handing you.
>>289691112OP looked too much like a western cartoon for teens that wanted expansion from their roots. Bleach was straightforwardly badass, satisfying a cool factor as well as a japanese flavor. Naruto was steeped in japanese flavor while having a creative world, creative magic abilities, and memorable character designs. It had a system where all sorts of adventures were possible while staying grounded in a structure (doing missions for a village, trying to get promoted) It had bloody and badass moments as well as lightness and color. It had universal appeal, keeping a female fandom due to being full of cute emotional boys and not oversexualizing the women. It was something different than plain blood n'swords/muscles that anime was stereotyped as, but also not too far away from the flavor of anime that people wanted. Yes it was big. I think the big three represent a spectrum - OP on the side of universality, where anyone can find something to like. Bleach on the side of the more specialized desire for Cool Anime Stuff. Naruto was somewhere in the middle, and was aired in the right way at the right time to the west, unlike OP. It was hard for me to find other anime fans irl when I was growing up, but I still ran across someone wearing a Naruto headband or doodling a konoha leaf from time to time. And the fandom was everywhere on the internet, from those who made linkin park amvs for youtube, to people making flashes for newgrounds, to people making fanfics or fanart on deviantart.
>>289689655Shit is so gay lol
>>289686407Yeah, we were underage and had bad taste when we were younger so we consumed this slop. Hindsight being 20/20, it was bad.
>>289686407>more the one pieceOnly in the US, which is not the center of the world anymore
>>289686407>>289691112>>289687321People rag on the 4Kids dub, but I don't buy that as being a major reason it was the by far weakest of the 3 in the mid to late 2000's. I can't speak for ALL of the west, but at least as far as America was concerned OP was handicapped because it was just not the en vogue style at the time. Go back to that era and what was popular among younger people? You had Alt rock, Nu Metal, and Gangster Rap as the Music flavor. You had grunge- gritty- realism and Frutiger aero as the aesthetic flavor. Halo, Cod, and Gears of war with an assortment of brown and bloom was what videogames were to most 8-18 year olds. To top it all off the biggest anime at the time was DBZ (the american Bruce-techno version) and the DBZ movies (with rock band tie-ins like Drowning Pool). Basically NOBODY was giving a shit about the rubberband boy and his group of silly ass pirates and goofy ass badguys.There was no reality where( in the mid to late 2000's) OP comes out as faithful to the japanese as possible and overtakes Naruto as the most popular anime in America after DBGT stopped airing. That reality just doesn't exist.Bleach could've done it but it was handicapped by a later airing in the night on AS than Naruto.
>>289691495this. OP's wacky gagshit aesthetic was the polar opposite of the overall dominant aesthetic of the 2000s. That scene from the first X-men movie where they mock the comic uniforms aged like milk but it perfectly encapsulates the cultural zeitgeist of that time.
>>289686407Naruto and Bleach were equally popular. Basically because they were the closest thing to DBZ.Meanwhile One Piece was probably closer to the original DB as it was more adventure focused. They eventually all fucked up by becoming never ending slop full of filler though.
>>289691495I agree, OP was just not what people in the 00's were looking for. But I still think if some kids saw scenes like Zoro getting bloodily sliced up, Bellemere getting shot, and Sanji constantly smoking, and if it was aired alongside other "cooler" anime, it would have added a more grown up edge that would have retained more a bit more attention.
4Kids was also a Saturday morning time slot for babies instead of an afternoon/night time slot for cool kids. If you were inside watching One Piece you were a fucking nerd.
one piece just couldn't compete in the west when Naruto was coming out Once it ended it got some attention
>>289686407It was mainly an Anglosphere phenomenon caused by the 4Kids dub and their deeply seeded insecurity about whether things seemed "kiddy and gay" or "mature and edgy" at first glance. Europe liked One Piece just fine, especially in Germany and Scandinavia.
>>289686407You know Naruto's popularity has staying power because side characters and one off antagonists get fanart daily.
>>289689655It's gonna be incredible how gay Kishimoto makes the movie so that no one will ever doubt that his MC is a big gay faggot.
>>289686898>Within the Naruto fanbase, it was more beloved than anything else everIsn't that every fanbase?
>>289690102It's not 2009 anymore grandpa.
>>289691825One Piece still look too kiddie and you be called gay if you watched it. People who read or watched it knew it was just a funny gag story but first impressions are very kiddy. In Japan they didn't mind that as much as 00s America did.
>>289691152That image is nostalgic as fuck.
Naruto is gay and lame while BLEACH is vastly superior.
Bleach is gay and lame while NARUTO is vastly superior.
Yu yu hakusho is still the goat.
>>289686407>Can any uncs here confirm I'm an unc and was watching it when I was an early teen kid (among with One Piece, which I dropped when I was a kid and Bleach) and can confirm this.>and if so why?Just believe it.
Naruto may have been liked by the masses, but on /a/ it was not liked at all. Every thread would have copypasta of disdain and threads would sage to oblivion. Today people praise it despite its many flaws.Pain reviving the village was the beginning of the downfall for myself.Then it delves into Sasuke fighting kages, Naruto hyperventilating, Sakura still trying for Sasuke despite him trying to murder her, everyone getting revived in final war, Rin finding out Obito loves her and died for her then she confesses to Kakashi in less than 5 mins, Obito was the coolest guy (even if he killed my family), then aliens ruling the world during the final battle.This series was cool until these started popping up.
The real problem with One Piece is that it looks too western. You might as well watch Looney Toons or Tom and Jerry. One Piece is also very unfunny.
>>289695249Naruto becomes pretty much Ninja Jesus. It's as if Kishimoto kept trying to make X person was just misunderstood to the point it became a meme. Something tells me. That Kishimoto doesn't believe true evil exist in this world.
>>289691495>People rag on the 4Kids dub, but I don't buy that as being a major reason it was the by far weakest of the 3 in the mid to late 2000'Blaming the dub is a bit of a cope for the slow pacing and dullish plots of the early arcs, it has its moments but still. Nardo did more in its first 20 episodes than OP did in its first 50 episodes. Part 1 Nardo really locked people in and made people want to view it weekly, OP didn't seem to get as big until streaming really took off and people could marathon it. OP was goofing around on some silly restaurant boat and fishman village while Nardo was doing the chuunin exams, one of those things is a lot more cutting edge than the other. Character designs worked more in favor of Nart too
>>289695249>Pain reviving the village was the beginning of the downfall for myself.That's why it's kinda shocking /a/ would be such miserable bastards about it- there really wasn't anything negative to say about it up until the point where pretty much everyone universally agrees it went to shit.
>>289695477it was because of the fanbase
>>289695367Fun fact. While Luffy was having a good ol time with Usopp in Syrup Village, Naruto and Sasuke were was fighting for their lives against Haku. Then like 10-15 chapters later Naruto calls Sasuke a coward when fighting Orochimaru in the Forest of Death. It's hard to explain how action packed Naruto was early on. We all remember the dreadfulness of later arcs but man early Naruto is probably the best WSJ has to offer.
>>289695789Part 1 Nart filled the void that was left behind when stuff like DBZ and YYH were fizzling outEarly OP is more like DB whereas Naruto was managing to match some of the intensity of DBZ, and it takes OP quite some time to get to that point.Early OP was fine and good in its own way but it simply wasn't peak like early ruto
>>289686407It was in the US because the One Piece dub was hilariously bad.
>>289686407Hand signs and the chakra power system are much more chuni friendly than anything in OP and Sasuke appealed to the edgefags, everything went to shit after the Pain arc when it just turns into ninja dbz
Naruto > one piss btw
>>289696552Yes. IMO Naruto started going to shit as soon as Sasuke left because Kishimoto is expecting us to care for Sasuke as much as Naruto but we didn't really befriended Sasuke. As soon as we started getting to know him he sperged out and became too emo. I feel bad Sasuke mellowed out more and actually befriended people around him, only for then betray everyone would have been a bigger gut punch. Keep in mind this type of character ain't easy to write. Same thing happened with Anakin Skywalker for example.
>>289696821I remember people getting pissed of at all the Sasuke shit. Someone even said that the Manga ought to be called Sasugay instead.
https://youtu.be/MnbrmyCjbdw?si=O-bLSKwRUnxWS-TMhttps://youtu.be/J6Cl121s_Ho?si=q7x4PMGQHytGH2YHhttps://youtu.be/1hgTRkPcQDc?si=BK0H6G_U7Jy1DWXbhttps://youtu.be/-2IbwC8Ck4w?si=ogvMh_-3gkO1XGzNhttps://youtu.be/h6_63ZF_rqI?si=lhGHMOeuM_dG25fqhttps://youtu.be/r6LkCVIIPM0?si=9RM54D6vNbF6d-PD
>>289686407In America yeah Naruto was FAR AND AWAY more popular the. One Piece was marketed as a kids show while Naruto was part of Toonami.Once One Piece was added to Toonami is started to pick up steam especially since Naruto was entering the dreaded Filler Hell. For some stupid fucking reason Cartoon Network never acquired the Airing rights for Shippuden back in the 00s.Once the manga and anime became more accessible people began favoring One Piece more especially as Naruto began to wrap up.Bleach was liked.
>>289698924Well that was a throw back.
>>289698924First upload recorded actual lag, this upload's better:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Bth3GaatE>>289699199It's both a time capsule of pop songs of the 00's and stylistic tropes of early, invader zimified western anime fandom. I watched them so much as kid
>>289686407Naruto was so popular that, like furries, 4chan had to foster a culture that didn’t accept it, or else we would be Naruto: The Board.Overall it was a normalfag titan, the hotness among youngsters and surface dwellers who didn’t watch more than a couple of anime. But the hatebase was just a strong, being the punching bag.Naruto got an unironic nostalgia revival years later from hood weebs and kids who grew up with it. At the time, it was cool to hate on it, like Bieber or Twilight. Either it was always shit or got shit after the chunin exams.One Piece if you can believe it (heh) was usually just underdiscussed and dismissed more than shat on.
>>289686407Just look at what anime got the most AMVs on youtube at the time.
So popular *the* stereotype for the embarrassing weird weeb in 00s middle/high school was a sweaty autist who naruto runs and wears the headband.
>>2896968211. The ninja world was actually kind of ass but you weren't able to know this during part 1 since it didn't move away from Konoha too often2. Part 1 had more variety in power levels, part 2 eventually boiled down to the same few OP powerlevel gimmicks being spammed - Akatsuki managed to hold things together with their diverse unique abilities but after they are tapered out of the series its all eyes and beasts
>>289699697this pic smells like mt dew induced farts
Naruto was quite popular in its early years, but Naruto was also starting to unravel in terms of writing and characterization in its early years, too, because Kishimoto was always a very bad writer.The setting and premise was just enjoyable and felt promising, like you wanted to see more of it and what kind of adventures would be waiting, and Kishimoto's greatest strength was always in visually designing the characters, making cool ones, sexy ones, cute ones, neat ones, etc.In hindsight, it feels like the anime adaption did SO much heavy lifting for the series as a whole, it did a good job of adapting the early parts into something that was fun to watch, but Kishimoto, as said, is a very bad writer, and he was regularly struggling with characters and plot.The first 30 episodes or so of the anime IMO is the absolute best parts of Naruto ever, it never got consistently better than this, what comes after is quite a lot of "It's just not as good." steadily declining from there.>>289686898Yeah, pretty much.>>289688245The hentai was choice as hell, and it was thanks to Kishimoto making characters that you'd very much want to fuck to begin with. To me, this became Naruto's enduring value over the years, long after I stopped caring about it as a series at all.
Perhaps Naruto resonated with the west due to it's blonde haired and blue eyed, fiercely individualistic yet starved for praise MC
>>289700067We were kids who thought they were cool ninjas, and the music in the anime was cool.
>>289700067I think it’s the opposite. Naruto the franchise was obviously Japanese, and weebs liked that aspect.
>>289686407Nothing like a good, colorful battle shonen. Even if it doesn't make any fucking sense anymore by the end.
>>289699560because streaming anime wasn't a thingwe all had to download each episode from torrents ahhh those were the times when i had to delete games to fit naruto episodes on my disk
>>289686407Curse mark sasuke was pure 2000s edge. It was "aura" for younger millenials and older zoomers. Probably jerk off material for some bitches.
Naruto's manga hitting the western scene in the early 00s a bombshell. The anime coming oversees and landing on Toonami was the second nuke.
>>289699697>all these weebs are +40 nowHow many families? How many lonely old men? How many suicides?
It was a different time.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8o4qbxDhz0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG72q5vThOM
>>289694173Nope. The Star Wars fanbase hates Star Wars, for example (rightfully so)>>289694694Based and TRUE
>>289687838I feel like Naruto was settled and figured out as a series almost immediately after the time skip which is an odd time to have that happen. you thinks the scope of possibility would expand after the characters get older.
>>289687749So bad boys and cool criminals? BleaCHAD here, I pulled like crazy cause my friend sold shrooms back then.
>>289700187Demon Naruto with the eyeliner was way hotter to me
>>289687749That's probably why it was so popular on /a/
>>289689948Mine too. C'mon, Kishi, you could've thrown us a bone.
Naruto was SUPER popular with younger millennials and early gen Z, kids born in the 1990s, rather than the 1980s, basically. They would've been in middle school or so when Naruto's English dub first hit American TV in the mid 00s on Toonami. The gateway for most western young people into anime was Toonami. I don't think young'uns today realize how big Toonami was to the western anime scene back in the day. It was essentially something everybody had in common: we all got started watching anime on Toonami, then moved to Adult Swim for "adult" anime, then eventually from there you started surfing the web to find stuff. That is more or less the progression I made, though in my case, I had already moved onto finding stuff online by the time Naruto's anime arrived in the states. I was already on /a/ by that point, and starting to torrent anime rather than watching bootleg streams.Naruto actually helped catapult a lot of these niche online streaming services into mainstream. Crunchyroll got its start in the mid 00s as a pirate stream showing Naruto episodes, and Naruto Shippuden in particular is what managed to let them go legitimate in 2007. They ditched all their illegal content, and officially licensed Naruto Shippuden, and it's off Naruto Shippuden they built their empire.
>>2896952495 Kage Summit had the BEST Sasuke moments though>These eyes see darkness clearly
While it did have an atrocious dub another reason for OP's initial failure was being too western coded and kind of normalfaggy even for Shonen Jump especially by western standards.
>>289700172I still have to do thisIt's either find a sketchy website to watch Re:Zero in buffering 640p or torrent it in full HD. Easy choice.
>>289696821The fact that Shikamaru was a way better friend didn't help. Sasuke and Naruto being BFFs is unironically a case of "Kishimoto's headcanon" because it's not true
>>289686407Hardly anyone in the English-speaking world gave a fuck about Wan Piss until COVID lockdowns, when they were bored out of their minds enough to read/watch literally anything regardless of quality.
>>289700150>>289700067It's both. Naruto on the surface is obviously Japanese in its aesthetics, but the main character and the messages pushed of "Society is fucked, individuals must fix it" is definitely anti-Japanese conformity culture. Naruto is nothing like Deku the government lapdog, for example. He actually wants to change things, not maintain the status quo.
>>289686407Not only was Naruto more popular than One Piece, but so was BleachBoth were way more accessible, being the main draws of their respective blocks, but One Piece struggled to find a home. Some people will attribute it to its bad dub, but plenty of stuff got popular in spite of that. It was on a couple channels, but Funi failed to keep it on TV once they took over so it only lasted a season with its "good" dub. Accessibility was huge in the pre-steaming era.Not only was it given to a studio that handled it poorly, but it just didn't have that "cool" factor that its competitors had and it had a "weird" artstyle. People of that era wanted cool looking anime. And Naruto and Ichigo were just more appealing characters both in terms of appearance and personality to audiences.One Piece fans don't want to hear this, but the only reason its big now outside of Japan is because both of its competitors ended.
>>289686605>Naruto had a more modern dub as in they didn't censor much of it.Cutey Justsu and magic potion
>>289700498Correct - I will add that for Canadians, it was YTV. Friday nights where stuff like Gundam and Inuyasha and eventually Naruto would air.And it and Fox kids was the way I remember Digimon, especially Tamers
>>289700707This. Naruto offered the rebellion of learning about a foreign culture, while representing with an MC that wants to be different from it’s ways, which the american spirit can emphasize with
>>289691495>>289695367You fags really underestimate how bad the 4kids dub was, and how many dub onlyfags are out there. Yeah, I doubt One Piece would have been more popular then Naruto at the time even with a faithful dub. However, almost all the things that makes One Piece good was basically destroyed by the 4kids dub. So anyone who would bother to give the show a try on Toonami would only see a corny and obnoxious show for little kids that feels fucking schizophrenic at times due to the sheer amount of edits and episode mergings that are done.Seriously, sit down and try to watch episodes of that dub. I think for most people, it left such a bad impression that most wouldn't bother to check out the original because what they saw just seemed so unappealing.
>>289686407It was cooler than one piece, it was by far the most popular entry point to becoming an anime weeb in that era. Quality dropped off a cliff and now it's a joke.
>>289700832>One Piece fans don't want to hear this, but the only reason its big now outside of Japan is because both of its competitors ended.You're a moron because One Piece already had a large fanbase in Germany, France, and Italy before it even aired in the US.
>>289686407Somehow this anime would get outcast goth freaks dress up in Akatsuki robes and stand menacing by their mall's fountain only for them to be chased out or detained by mall cops
Its basically Harry Potter but with ninjas. >orphaned mc>more important than led to believe>replace magic schools with ninja schools>same composition of best friends
>>289691495This is why I didn't get into One Piece after I dismissed it initially because of the 4kids dub back in the day. Personally I would say that the 4kids dub being ass had a bigger impact for me. I would watch Yu-gi-Oh and the Sonic X 4kids dubs but One Piece was so garbage to me for some reason. I'm a huge fan now. I started reading from the beginning when the Wano arc was out in the manga and it took me 3 months to catch up and then gear 5 came out. Cool time to start honestly. I started cause Kaido looked cool.
>>289701589I was one of the few people who gave OP a chance back in like 05 in my grade. I can tell you with 100% certainty the dub had next to 0 influence on peoples perception of OP. The designs were considered goofy and the premise was considered lame. Nobody was waiting around 50+ episodes for the show to "get good" on a week by week basis. I stand by what I said, Helmeppo and Coby were not good first impression characters. Ussop the and the Pussy Cat crew were not good first impressions. Buggy the Clown and his Circus were not good first impressions. Mr. 3 and Mr. 2 were not good first impressions. Even Enel was pretty goofy looking. Idk if you were around back then or remember but you actually had people saying "Dude, trust me. Just hold out until episode 230 (water seven) for the show to get good." That's FOUR AND A HALF YEARS of weekly watching investment. OP never had a chance given the circumstances, 4Kids didn't help but it was in no way the deciding factor. Honestly the meme ass YO! One Piece rap prolly helped cement it as a memorable show in pop culture for that alone because if it had the Japanese intro literally nobody would have cared to remember it back in 2007
I wonder if Naruto would've been more popular if Sasuke was a girl or if that would've scared off the Uchiha self-inserters
>>289687625I haven’t watched any Boruto, stopped with the universe the moment the original manga ended. Is Boruto a carbon copy of Naruto, or he has more of an edge like that image suggests?
>>289686407Naruto was so popular that at one point it was banned from /a/. One Piece never had that happen. The only other anime I can recall is Strike Witches.
>>289701944Boruto is a whiny bitch that becomes an emo bitch who dresses goofy.Naruto and Boruto are both obsessed with Sasuke.
>>289701795>I'm a huge fan now. I started reading from the beginning when the Wano arc was out in the manga and it took me 3 months to catch up and then gear 5 came out.(Ignoring the fact you're on 4ch so you're already outside the pool of people OP would've needed to convince to be successful) Imagine if instead of binging the entire series in 3 months during the pandemic you had to watch it week by week for the entirety of middleschool or highschool before you got to the 'good parts' of OP meanwhile Part 1 of Naruto is over and Bleach ended.....Your experience is your experience fair enough, but for the majority of OP detractors back in the mid to late 2000's certainly you can see the problem. Bleach's soul society arc is its best arc and even it only did "alright" in America with everything it had going for it (aesthetic, music, fights, decent dub, good channel, etc).
It's true. You have no idea whst the original Naruto craze was like stateside. >massive boost from Toonami, given the same after-school love that Sailor Moon got>coincidence with the parkour craze, everyone wanted to be a ninja>every edgy kid wanted to be Gaara at one point>first appearance of smoke shop/eBay kunai knives, middle schoolers buying them>endless Cascada and Linkin Park AMV's with Rock Lee vs Gaara, Naruto vs Sasuke at the waterfall, and the anime-only scene where Naruto sees Hinata nakey training at the other waterfall >DBZ levels of popularity, even kids who weren't INTO anime watched Naruto at its peak >full-on cosplay boom, kids wearing the headbands to class>birth of Naruto-running>may have singlehandedly put the brakes on moeblobs in weeaboo fanartOne Piece was nowhere NEAR it. One Piece was still reeling from the awful 4kids dub. Yes, there were veteran One Piece fans who had read about it in a magazine in 1998 and actually followed in stateside Shonen Jump, but I don't think you appreciate just how BADLY the Fox Box dub hurt the One Piece anime's rep on the playground. Later Toonami airings of One Piece with unfucked dub did little to help until One Piece TOOK THE FUCK OFF in the 2020's. One Piece's popularity in the US was more like Bleach's at the time, and that trailed WAY behind Naruto. Naruto was a PHENOMENON.
>>289700187>Probably jerk off material for some bitches.Yeah. Gaara too. I remember anime forums back then strangely had lots of girls and I genuinely think this brooding emo aesthetics was one of the main reasons. Some anime forums I think actually had more girls. Very interesting period. J Rock was also huge. Although my otaku e girlfriend in 2009 actually liked Zoro from One Piece back then.
One Piece was arguably not even top 3. I knew of Naruto, Dragonball Z, Bleach, and Fairy Tail as choices that people watched. One Piece was on the CW when I was a kid, I’d just watch Xiaolin Showdown or other shit over One Piece.Big part was the aesthetic in Naruto was superior and emblematic of the tastes back then. It has the right style for the time whereas OP’s is basically a filter. It has a way better beginning than OP, music is better, ninjas were a unique thing compared to pirates on TV or in movies. A big part is Naruto is an easier thing to self insert yourself into as a child. Lots are saying just Naruto carried it, but a lot of people liked Shippuden. Akatsuki itself was a hit cast, in spite of early Shippuden pacing there was a lot someone could be entertained by.Fujos had the kiss and you can ship a lot more “couples” in Naruto than One Piece. In actuality the dub is not what prevented the show from catching on, there were simply more attractive options in the 2000s.
Cant cope with the fact that talking about the 2000s now is like talking about the 80s in the 2000s
Naruto appealed to the emo kids and the DBZ refugees. That's all.
>>289686407Because Naruto started of MUCH stronger than One Piece did. Early naruto is still peak battle shounen and Kishi also had the designs and art skills to back it up. One Piece's designs and art looked silly comparison.
>>289703082started off*silly in comparison*
one piece was always bigger where i'm from. the overgeneralizations for why OP could never this or that from anglos itt are annoying desu. stay in your lane and stop talking for literally everyone, ffs.
>>289686407Yes, a fact that makes /a/ seethe to this day since they never grew out of being bullied by gaiaonline.
>>289686407Naruto was more popular than one piece outside of japan, inside of japan OP has reign supreme for more than 2 decades
I honestly still don't understand how the rona gave wan piss such a boost. Like, I know people had more free time and all but it's still a ridiculous time investment with a very rough start.I'll have to admit I'm impressed, in a bad way, at how much of a push Shueisha has given it. The funniest thing is that despite all that DB is still making more money than it.Was it really just a massive shill campaign? Is that really all it takes?
>>289703626Normies were binging everything in the pandemic.
One piece never had a chance against Nardo prime. Ep 48 of Naruto is rock lee vs gaara while episode 48 of juan piss is the crew running away from smoker
>>289701589Most dubs of that era was bad. Pokemon, Dragon Ball, etc... are all popular despite their dubs. I actually remember the time back in 2005, when OP started airing and kids in my class were talking about it. The primary complain I heard wasn't about how voice acting is bad but how characters looked so goofy. I distinctly remember one boy complaining Luffy looked and acted like a retarded clown.
>>289701653I lived in Italy then and even there I remember Narudo being more popular than OP.
>>289691495DBZ was so fucking big in the west, people who weren't there will never grasp it. The whole manga industry was about to collapse before Naruto revived it along with Bleach.
>>289703429why didn't you say where that is?
>>289702059>Naruto and Boruto are both obsessed with Sasuke.This is the genuinely funny part.
>>289700640Shikamaru being Naruto's friend was the first Retcon I noticed in Naruto. Up to that point it was told to us that Naruto was a friendless loser who was seen by other kids as annoying. It wasn't until the Chunin Exams were he gained the respect of his classmates. But Kishimoto, Retcon it during the Sasuke Retrieval Arc to them being friends at school. I still liked that arc but even then things started to unravel.
>>289691495This is the actual reason. Naruto was more popular than One Piece before either series got dubbed too. The ninja theme was more exotic, and Naruto's story appealed more to the kind of loner bully victim young teenagers that were the target audience for shonenshit in the west at the time.
>>289706211Naruto had to beat Neji and Gaara on the same day for anyone of his haters to respect him. Kishimoto did not retcon that, the anime production did with their bullshit.
>>289686407Where I was Dragon Ball Z was clear #1, only thing that came close was Naruto. After those it was Yugioh and Fairy Tail, One Piece barely rated a mention.
>>289700832>Funi failed to keep it on TV once they took over so it only lasted a season with its "good" dub.4Kids already tanked its reputation, and picking up from Jaya where they left off rather than restarting from the beginning meant that they didn't overwrite them unless you bought their boxsets. The later attempts to bring it back started at even more random places, too.
>>289706531>Kishimoto did not retcon that, the anime production did with their bullshit.This.Naruto filler caused untold damage to Naruto's perception.It's why you have so many retards obsessed with muh wasted characters muh kishimoto wasted my favorite scrimbo bimblo muh konoha 11 fanfiction muh tenten pretending like if any of those people were ever genuinely relevant characters.I seriously don't understand what's with people nowadays who are seemingly unable to understand the concept of SIDE characters.
>>289701653Protip: When people say "outside Japan" they mean burgerland and maybe sometimes china.No one gives a shit yurop.
>>289702061>you had to watch it week by week for the entirety of middleschool or highschool before you got to the 'good parts' of OP meanwhile Part 1 of Naruto is over and Bleach ended.....This is another part of why One Piece struggled in the US: It was localized way too late. You didn't get it until around the mid-00s after Naruto had already taken off, while most of mainland Europe got it around the early 00s at the very start of the anime boom.
>>289687749>>289687702So wait, where the fuck were the people with high IQs? What did they like?
>>289691495As someone who lived through that period as a teenager, 4Kids working the anime over really did kill it's perception in America. The people who read the manga loved it, but the dub existed in a space where kids knew enough to realize they were getting watered down kiddy bullshit, but not enough to actually pirate (heh) the real thing until later in the 00s.Naruto got as popular as it did because it was easy to emulate and had cheap, iconic merch in the headbands and Akatsuki cloak design shit.>>289691644You overestimate how much 00s edgelord-core mattered to kids who weren't emo or goth. Even at the peak of post-9/11 nu-metal psychosis there were signs of derision towards that whole aesthetic. "I'm gonna go listen to Linkin Park" was a meme made of mockery.
>>289706842Cute girls doing cute things.
>>289706845>not enough to actually pirate (heh) the real thing until later in the 00s.The scanlation and fansubbing scene was really far behind at the time. One Piece didn't really have proper scanlations to speak of until Aokiji appearing on Long Ring Long Island and Water 7 made the Anglosphere interested in One Piece (other languages had official translations that were only an arc or two behind, while the US was just starting to localize the manga around then), hence the infamous Chinese "Masuru D Chocheh" bootlegs. Kaizoku-Fansubs were good, but I remember them still biding their time in Skypiea while Enies Lobby and Thriller Bark were ongoing, so people had to watch shitty guess subs like Vegapunk.
>>289706848I meant *what* exactly. In and around the same time Naruto was prevalent in the West. YYH? Getbackers? Gundam? Gash Bell?
>>289686407I couldn't really tell you. I never had a strong pulse on what was popular amongst my peers and contemporaries, even less so now as an adult. However I can say I saw a whole lot more of One Piece and I remember it more clearly, iirc I always caught the credits to Naruto for some reason, probably bad timing. Used to catch Pokemon, Bakugan, Yu-Gi-Oh! / GX / 5Ds, One Piece, probably some more anime and western animation in the morning on free to air tv in Australia before school. It was all 4kids dubbed stuff people love to shit on but at the time as a child I couldn't have cared less.>Anime and Western cartoons used to air during the mornings on Free to air TV>The Simpsons used to be on channel 10 at 6:00pm>both these things are gone>joggin my noggin and making me realise I'm getting oldThanks a lot OP
>>289706978Naruto started airing on Fall 2002. Go look at the seasonal charts from since then. Add a few years to make-up for the gap for it to get outside Japan.
>>289707013I meant *IN THE WEST* because Naruto didn't air here until later in Mid-2005 on Tonami.
>>289691152>not oversexualizing the womenThis actually stands out to me in retrospect, because Naruto's caught a lot of flak for useless female characters but the actual designs are the most realistic out of the big 3 by far. Like every pretty character in OP is a tittymonster with a tiny waist, in Bleach the designated big boob characters have beanbags nailed to their chest but Tsunade from Naruto looks like a woman with big boobs irl would look.
>>289707036Read my post again very carefully, anon-chama. I took that into account.
>>289707048i dunno about realistic, but they come off like kishimoto was always trying to balance the sexy or cute sides with a cool one, and most of the time succeeding.
>>289701795Iirc 4kids didn't even want to do the One Piece dub. They were contractually obliged because they wanted to do the shit they wanted to do and One Piece was part of that package. Whatever you think of say, the censorship in YGO, they clearly wanted to do it
>>289707049I know what you said. I'm saying you're looking at my question the wrong way.
>>289701939Less popular because you immediately kill the fujo crowd and Sasuke is probably even more popular to self insert in than Naruto himself because he's more generically coolActually, that's probably a key part of Naruto's appeal, as you head into Shippuden it's got two ongoing plotlines with two simultaneous protagonists, no other series has given this much emphasis specifically to the rival. So if you don't like the MC then you can watch it for Sasuke.
>>289703626One Piece improves on binge, there's less big Shonen competition right now and also the theme of anti-establishment massively appeals to lots of people, Naruto is a story about trying to reform a system from inside, Bleach is about someone who gets sucked into a situation, but OP is basically about overthrowing the government so for social justice obsessed revolution larpers One Piece is basically the Bible.
>>289706812That may be true but at the same time the Sasuke Retrieval arc is built on using those side characters effectively, and then most of them don't get *anything* to do in all of Shippuden. In particular the choice to have Sai join the team in Sasuke's place instead of giving screentime to an established character is baffling. Naruto falls into the issue of introducing too many new characters and therefore not utilising existing ones, though it doesn't hit that wall as bad as Bleach does with 20 new characters per arc
>>289707135Side characters who get decent shit to do in Shippuden:ShikamaruChojiHinata (anime only)Neji and Rock Lee get nothing to do which is particularly galling for Lee because his issue is that Might Guy has the exact same skillset, if Lee had gotten a bit more focus you could have given him some of Guy's fights. Neji is one of Naruto's big rivals from part 1 and also got a brilliant fight in the Sasuke Retrieval arc, there's no reason he couldn't have gotten at least one fight in Shippuden so he doesn't just disappear (and no I'm not counting the mirror matches as fights they just suck ass).
>>289688649i look like this and say this
>>289686407I believe One Piece was always on top in Japan. For some time Naruto was more popular in most western countries no?
>>289707217in retrospect, DBZ was fuckin gay compared to Reinhard Von Lohengramm. They shouldve aired this after He-man back in the summer of 98.>t oldfag
>>289686898>go to animanga forums>naruto is by far the most popular thing>go to different licenser's websites>naruto is by far the most popular thing>go to big anime conventions>naruto is by far the most popular thing>go to small home made anime conventions >naruto is by far the most popular thingNardo wasn't my favorite thing, but you're just being a contrariant.
>>289707135>is built on using those side characters effectivelyCorrect.They had their time in the spotlight.>and then most of them don't get *anything* to do in all of Shippuden. So?They had their time on the spotlight. Why must they keep coming again and again and again? When is the story supposed to end then? Characters are not made equal. Some are mains. Some are sides. Some are tertiaries. Some are straight-up filler. I will not, never will, take anyone who genuinely thinks Ten Ten got "wasted" because she couldn't 1vs1 ninja tools only final destination Madara, seriously. A background character having a nice design and them making your pee pee hard (See, Ankofags) does not entitle the character, or you for that matter, to anything.Sometimes all a character is meant to be is being a nice design to make the world feel a little more lived in.>Naruto falls into the issue of introducing too many new characters and therefore not utilising existing ones, though it doesn't hit that wall as bad as Bleach does with 20 new characters per arcCharacter bloat is a greater issue as a whole. I can agree with that much.But even on series with tight and core not bloated casts faggots will continue crying about those things. See, Dragon Ball. How to this day humanfaggots keep shitting themselves in anger about them being "wasted".Are you ever gonna tell me Dragon Ball suffered from a bloated cast? Of course not. Meaning the problem is from elsewhere.
>>289707170Neji and Choji should have died during the Sasuke Retrieval arc.
4chan is getting absolutely swamped by summerfags, what's going on?
>>289707617Nigga it's fucking July, we're right in the middle of summer, when the summerfags come.
>>289686407Yeah, Naruto was super popular. Nobody I knew watched or read One Piece back then, or had even heard of it for that matter
>>289707617look at the date nigga
>>289706842Not shonen. Just like today.
>>289686407One piss is nothing compared to how popular and culturally impactul Naruto was back in the day. As I always said OP is only really popular in japan.
>>289686407One piece did not even exist on my country. I only know about it through the internet.
the 4kids one piece dub was a disaster that set back One piece fandom in the usa for years
more like Bort's gay dad
>>289686407Well here’s the reality that most anons on /a/ do not seem to realize and thats the numbers.>Naruto despite coming to an end is still producing money more than any recent manga of the the late 2010’s.>one piece is making its money now especially during the covid pandemic.This was not the case for Naruto and DBZ because its popularity reached the west thats why they had a lot of video games being made and collectiblesIf that still doesn’t answer your question well when i was in elementary kids used to have binders , pencils ,and back packs that were naruto themed.
>>289708330>isIt's now way more popular world wide than Naruto will ever be. It's getting brand deals and money pumped into that Naruto will never get. Deal with it retard.
>>289707617Even if Inuyasha is supposedly the better shounen over DBZ and the big 3, it has some of the most pigheaded males sans Kohaku in existence thanks to Rumiko's shitty writing and weirdly some of the most simultaneously mature and sexy characters like Kikyo and Sango.Weird how such a series can be so nostalgic and polarizing at the same time. Much like Rurouni Kenshin was before the incident.
Reminder that the One Piece TCG is bigger than Yu-Gi-Oh now
>>289708649how was kenshin polarizing? (besides the incident)
What’s your Naruto crackship, anon? I know every narutard has one.
>>289708793Salad with every ojii-san in Konoha, since age 10.
>>289707617It's summer...
>>289708630Everybody and their monther knew who Naruto was nobody knows who is Luffy and his 20 sidekicks outside of the anime community.
>>289686898It was more popular than Bleach and Bleach itself was pretty catchy. The problem is one series had filler arcs out the ass 'cough' Bleach which killed the normalfag hype. Not that Naruto ones were any better but it pushed onto story faster. That is why you get the infamous Kubo during Christmas Carol 'do you make it up all along'
>>289709086yeah but you are speaking in past tense there.
>>289695255>Looney Toonskino>Tom and Jerrykino
>>289686407When one piece became more dragon ball z and fake GAR, that's when people started caring.
>>289703911Those dubs are golden compared to One Piece, get real. No body could vouch for it even getting past the visuals since it was so garbage. The dub shattered One Piece for 2 decades in the US.
>>289708793SakuKashi is my truth.
DBZYu Yu HakushoRurouni KenshinInuyashaThese were the type of super mainstream anime everyone was watching.Naruto, Bleach and One Piece became popular afterwards.For mainstream action anime the next wave of competitive releases didn't start until 2015 with the releases of Seven Deadly Sins, One Punch Man, and biggest of all, Dragon Ball Super.One Piece started picking up steam after Naruto and Bleach had gone past their prime.
>>289709669stop coping about it being JUST the dub
>>289709798Kenshin was only on cartoon network for a few months though, i dont think it was that popular
You guys really underestimate the power of a good OST/Openinghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiQrbSuLrsUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1XnVIgz_G4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrxMWAGYUkI&list=PL8cpKzstocfd8QCc2dEOn6I1sBLDPev0c&index=17https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scWSTDsj3IMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWv1f9KglHMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwOZCnDqVtU&list=OLAK5uy_nyUuf_TcsafdrNm7jlbObq3AfjyvxX_XYAnd the importance of having (good) unique aesthetics.
Narucucks have very hard time accepting their slop isn't considered good, looked backed on fondly, nor as popular as One Piece now.
>>289708793Tobirama x Shino, bonus points if Tobirama is a fat bastard. Shino can be any age. >>289708804>>289709795You call this normie crap crackships? (Just kidding.) :P
>>289709907They aired it until episode 62 (mostly filler afterwards.
>>289710120>it only lasted 3.5 months on toonamiif its really popular whyd they do that? i like kenshin but i dont think normgroids did
>>289706845Yeah I was also a teenager, but I still reject the dub being a meaningful factor. Your doing the same thing that other anon was doing, the kind of people reading the OP manga in 2005-2008 were not the people who were going to make it beat naruto. Naruto didn't become huge on the backs of 'anime' fans, it was a major converter of of normies into anime fans. If you're looking at people reading the OP manga in 06 that's already a group of people who are more open to broader Japanese aesthetics (rather than just the serious parts of it), cartooniness, and goofy japanese humor. Naruto was converting the guys who exclusively played halo and had been warmed up by DBZ into 'anime fans' it was a way different demographic.>Naruto got as popular as it did because it was easy to emulate and had cheap, iconic merch in the headbands and Akatsuki cloak design shit.Maybe your memory is fuzzy but Naruto was a massive before the land of waves arc ended. Itachi (and the iconic red cloaks) didn't appear until 07' which was a full TWO YEARS after Naruto was the dominating force. As someone who was basically in every different demographic clique (one way or another) the vast majority of people who looked at OP wrote it off before they even had a chance to hear the dub assuming they watched animated media at all.Naruto was already popular by the end of Land of waves, that's 19 episodes. What in OP was so atrociously changed by episode 19 that would've made the difference? Cigarettes' to lolipops, guns to squirtguns, and alchohol to juice are not what mostly held OP back. Pic related is. Within the first 8 episodes Naruto was the coolest kid on the block just visually, OP was closer to Zatch Bell (which I think may have been more popular at the time).
>>289686407Only in America
>>289710400
>>289710375the gay kiss, kakashi 1000 years of pain, and naruto wiping his ass on the toilet should be added to the image
>>289710479You may not have been around at the time, but those were seen as legitimately funny. Ironic Homoerotic humor and farting on your friends was very much a common things in the age before the culture wars so they didn't negatively impact naruto's status. Unfortunately for OP, the constant gag faces came across as spergy which WAS something that negatively affected it because being a sperg or a retard was worse than ironic faggotry in 07.
>>289704387Because even if he lives in a "major" European market, he knows deep down nobody gives a shit
>>289710479>>289710535Thinking about it a bit more, I would even go so far as to say having Naruto saying "BELEIVE IT!" like a retard did way more harm to the shows popularity than Kissing Sasuke, getting his ass reamed by kakashi, and calling Haku pretty combined x 10.
>>289710753Haku is pretty and I'm sick of pretending he's not
>>289709907I somehow managed to watch the entire canon part of the show back then, had to have been longer than just a few months
>>289710222As someone who went to groid schools, all of them liked Kenshin because they claimed Shishio as an honorary black.
>>289709798DBZ is on another level compared to the others though Inuyasha is absolutely forgotten as a breakthrough hit nowadays.
>>289712097Inuyasha is mostly remembered for its banger EDs
I got a better question, why is Bleach so fucking garbage after the Soul Society arc?
>>289710104Toei's One Piece anime has aged even worse to the point they decided the best course of action is to replace it. Why do you think so many normies got into OP through the Live Action?
>>289712161Kubo ran out of ideas
>>289707397>They had their time on the spotlight. Why must they keep coming again and again and again? When is the story supposed to end then?None of these guys dominated the previous story but they still had occasional fights. That's not about focus but just about following up on previously established threads. Like if Shikamaru didn't do anything in Shippuden either we would actually lose out the natural end to his and the Ino-Shika-Cho's character arc. And he doesn't even need a lot of screentime, and most characters don't need anywhere near that much focus. But Kishimoto tends to introduce a new character for a specific role which makes them feel artificial - a bad habit that reaches its apex in Danzo who becomes the sin-eater for all of the leaf rather than having Sasuke kill an acting Hokage who we already knew or even liked. It's not like Shippuden is amazingly paced or anything, the final third would have been much better paced if it had relied more on precise use of existing characters than instead the whole cast fighting a horde of zombies where no one can properly stand out at all.And it doesn't feel intentional either, Neji does nothing in Shippuden so why are we supposed to feel bad when he dies? >But even on series with tight and core not bloated casts faggots will continue crying about those things. See, Dragon Ball. How to this day humanfaggots keep shitting themselves in anger about them being "wasted".Dragonball has a small cast yet still feels like it has a bloated one because it has so many main cast members who serve zero purpose. Like why do Tien/Chaotzu/Yamcha even stick around? Everything they can do can be done better by someone else, if they had just not appeared again like Puar people wouldn't care, it's the fact that they hang around solely to job that makes people angry - which is why the sole moment any of them does anything at all people found it exciting because it was legitimately unexpected.
>>289712097Anecdotally I think DBZ has begun to fade away amongst Anglos as well. It doesn't help TFS and Super have codified the series for the last decade and the Funi dub of Z is painful to revisit
>>289686407>***You have to be at least 18 in order to use this site. Honestly, that keyword should be added auto-ban list, would improve quality immensely.
>>289712161Even the Soul Society arc is pretty shit. The opening manages to get basic shit that other similar series do every day wrong on a level that is baffling to comprehendRenji and Byakuya show up to arrest Rukia, then Ichigo and Uryu intervene. Renji is clearly the Nappa of the group and therefore takes care of both, so he looks strong, and Byakuya stronger for being his leader, but when the heroes survive Byakuya, the arc final boss, does not look incompetent for leaving them alive. Then Ichigo beats Renji. So now Renji looks like an idiot for losing to a complete amateur. Then Byakuya beats Ichigo - whatever, Ichigo was nearly done already - and doesn't kill him, making him look incompetent. Then Renji is retconned to be both A. secretly good and in love with Rukia (no hint prior to waking up) and B. 5 times stronger than when Ichigo beat him because they restrain their power in human world. Why not just have Renji beat Ichigo? When they fight it's supposed to be a climax but we already saw Ichigo beat him so Ichigo climbing the ranks by beating squad members and then a lieutenant doesn't feel impressive.Oh, and on top of everything else SS is an arc about Ichigo unlocking Bankai. Hype is built up for this because every other Bankai kicks ass. Then he gets it and it's just a speed boost. LAME. oh and the whole murder mystery plot is stupid, because Aizen has the whole cast under perfect hypnosis so he can do whatever he wants.
>>289712308Yeah, I'd say stuff like JoJo, JJK, and One Piece are more popular in the west, DBZ is a bit simplistic and overplayed.Not to mention easy to make fun of, you can find DBZ parodies in fucking Kids Next Door.
>>289712450Also Ichigo who is getting KWABooty blasted by Byakuya suddenly gets a Hollow transformation that evens the entire fight >Byakuya after seeing this just pretends like he saw nothing
>>2897123652005 was 21 years ago GRAND DAD
>>289709907We watched the fuck out of Kenshin.
>>289707617The Whole Internet is dead. It's just us.
Are kids young enough to have never watched Naruto seriously posting here? Are they even old enough to be on 4chan?Anyway, Naruto is probably the second most widespread anime ever after DBZ. Definitely more mainstream than One Piece. It was particularly popular among black people and middle/high school kids.
>>289692614I think thats less about stating power and more about it being a big part of many peoples formative years. Not that Naruto doesnt have staying power. Naruto has a very unique, recognizable artstyle and overall asthetic. I dont think you could mistake it for anything else. But it hit as hard as it did because many teenagers grew up with it.
>>289712097Inuyasha used to be insanely popular. True mainstream. What I believe happened to it is similar to what happened to Fairy Tail, the times just have caught up to it. But regardless, it was ruling the entire game at a time.>>289712308The popularity of series such as OPM, 7DS and DBS proves that Japan is still looking for the next DBZ.
>>289707106One Piece needed the DBZ treatment of a New Episode every day on toonami vs the Once a Week format they tried to run it at.
>>289712560There are anon here who think if you started using the site after 2006 you are a Newfag.
>>289686407Naruto should have been a genderbender show.
>>289712718
>>289707397Anko IS a wasted character. The story made a big deal out of her being Orochimaru's former student and that went nowhere. She's only saved by a filler arc that gave her closure.
We didn't have the word chuuni back then but that's the appeal Naruto had and it had more than anything else on TV at the time. One Piece just didn't stand out in comparison
>>289692447In Germany's case the Naruto dub was heavily censored, comparable to the 4kids One Piece dub. There were things like Itachi kidnapping his entire clan, Zabuza just defeating his team mates instead of killing them. The german One Piece dub was mostly uncensored at first.
>>289706812If the story can reach the same end without a character, they're a waste of space that shouldn't have existed in the first place.Don't introduce all these characters with their own unique powers and then do nothing with them.
>>289695477I think the timeskip is generally thought to be weaker storytelling wise. Even as a teen i checked out once Pain was done. The main allure of the story for me was Akatsuki. The bad guys that were so hyped up in the pre timeskip. Then they got revealed and had their moments, but then it switched up to being the Uchiha manga and way too many characters I couldnt give a shit about got introduced and the Naruto and Sasuke dynamic got really annoying. Sasuke is just kind of a scumbag character and hes being treated as if hes an anti-hero type guy. Naruto at least is satisfying to watch him get strong and save Konoha and gain the respect of everybody but once Pain is done that aspect of tue character is also done.
>>289712942A timeskip also ruined One Piece. Shonen Jump manga don't seem to handle timeskips well except for Dragonball maybe.
>>289712854Honestly the German dub One Piece was pretty GOATted. I watched much of Water 7/Enies Lobby like that since the English dub stalled at Skypiea for ages (because Funimation went back and redubbed all the episodes 4Kids did)
>>289707057>>289707048Kishimoto was bad drawing girls cute or so he told himself.
>>289713023I think they began censoring it more in the Water 7/Ennies Lobby arc. Then the show went to Tele 5 instead of RTL II.I didn't like the Tele 5 dub, instead I began reading the manga beginning with volume 46. At that time it was before the Marinford arc came out in WSJ. It was either at the beginning of Impel Down or at the end of Amazon Lily.The german manga was ahead of the english manga at that time. The german Thriller Bark volumes came out before Marinford came out in the japanese WSJ magazines.
>>289713061That's like the one thing he was good at.
>>289712639Someone born in 2008 can post here. Naruto ended in 2014. Therefore it's very possible for an Anime fan who grew up watching One Piece, Attack on Titan, etc to have never watch Naruto.
>>289713433he drew a lot of cute boys too uwu
>>289712639First time seeing a show that was ubiquitously popular completely disappear from mainstream consciousness because kids don't watch shows from before they had long term memory? I've been on this ride since the 1990s.
>>289712823It's weird how a character was introcuded like her and then after the exam never mentioned again.
>>289713650Kids don't know about Ghost Slide...
>>289686898>we didn't know then just how much Latin America liked DBZNaruto was also more popular than DB during the middle 2000's in LATAM.
>>289712823kekway to prove the point
>>289712988One Piece time skip isn't as bad and the tone never really changed. Dragon Ball had time skips baked into its story and the way the story changed after Goku won the Tenkaichi Budokai was by focusing more on side characters as Goku's main goal in life was resolved.
>>289712639Just like how there's kids who started Dragon Ball with Super and have never touched anything before it, believe it or not, there's kids who have never touched Naruto and started with and have only experienced Boruto. Even worse, they actually think Boruto is good, peak, even, and even better than Naruto.Those are the times we live in.
>>289688859>biggest rivalry was obviously NaruSaku vs NaruHinaThat isn't remotely true. The biggest ship was always SakuNaru and wasn't even close. NaruHina was probably not even in the top 5.
>>289712639It's fucking old, man. I was like, maybe 11 or 12 when my brother first downloaded fansubbed episodes.
>>289707397>They had their time on the spotlight. Why must they keep coming again and again and again? When is the story supposed to end then?This is right, but there is the issue of a character feeling like their arc is complete. Like I understand Kiba not getting much spotlight in shippuden. But a character like Lee feels incomplete. It felt like his theme got introduced and there wasnt any real payoff, he just got trashed. Character bloat is not really that big of an issue, but why make a big deal out of a character and leave the readers hanging? I dont think people got attached to Lee accidentally.
>>289712988>>289713764It's crazy how every shounen "inspired" by Dragon Ball took the wrong lessons from it.To keep it just within the timeskips.>Dragon BallThe timeskips are long. Years and years happen just because.Timeskips happen constantly.Characters grow from kids to adults and get married and have kids. The timeskips are just something that happens, they're not treated like a big deal or a massive change of the status quo. Just the natural passage of time. Characters are just living their daily lives through them.>Average modern shounen timeskipTimeskips are like two/three years at the longest.The timeskips are always treated like a massive event that will change the world and the setting and the characters forever in untold ways.MC goes from 14 to 16 and this is somehow treated as them maturing like crazy.It ALWAYS has a training arc not-excuse baked in because there's a "big threat" in the "future" and they "have to prepare".Like heaven and earth. And people give Toriyama shit for his writing.
>>289713975>Rock LeetardEvery fucking time.Let me guess, you also think Naruto was about le hard work?
>>289712450>and doesn't kill himHe does. Urahara saves Ichigo.>Why not just have Renji beat Ichigo? When they fight it's supposed to be a climax but we already saw Ichigo beat him so Ichigo climbing the ranks by beating squad members and then a lieutenant doesn't feel impressiveHoly speedreader. Renji was under the seal and was underestimating Ichigo. Ichigo didnt beat Renji in any way. >Then Renji is retconned to be both A. secretly good and in love with Rukia (no hint prior to waking up) and B. 5 times stronger than when Ichigo beat him because they restrain their power in human worldNone of this is a retcon. A retcon has to contradict a previously established narrative. Renji being in love with Rukia is simply a new element in the story, and him being under the seal is simply a minor twist that makes sense considering how busted Lieutenants and Captains were revealed to be. This is simply the effect of power creep. >Then he gets it and it's just a speed boost. LAME.Straight up lying.>oh and the whole murder mystery plot is stupid, because Aizen has the whole cast under perfect hypnosis so he can do whatever he wants.Yeah retard. Thats the reveal. Thats the twist. I want you to explain in complete sentences why its bad.
>>289714020Yes, anon, it is every fucking time, because everyone that read the story felt the same way. Yes, a big part of Naruto IS hard work. You'd have to be completely retarded and insane to even argue otherwise. It comes up explicitly numerous times and Naruto himself has multiple training arcs and segments. Its completely retarded that youre trying to obfuscate a major theme of the series which is persistence through struggle and not taking shortcuts and blaming your circumstances.
>>289712173Don't kind yourself, Naruto needs a Remake too. The Pierrot adaption is garbage. Unfortunately for Naruto, they can't afford a studio like Wit to remake it.
>>289712560The world be better if nu-Anons used the 7 GRAND DAD meme instead.
>>289714630JETSONS?!
>>289713990Toriyama used timeskips to get out of having to organically develop characters.
>>289714020Naruto himself in the literal second chapter says that there are no shortcuts in life
>>289712988>timeskip also ruined One PieceBased on what? One piece has very high reception everywhere I look. Much higher than it's contemporaries. Delusional fuck.
>>289713678It's the same couple chapters that introduced Orochimaru's two team mates that also mysteriously disappeared immediately and were never mentioned again.
>>289707617>reeee summerfags>posts nu-coomer artIt is Summer indeed.
>>289715373It made sense for him because Dragon Ball the climatic events of a group of martial artists. Most of their lives are just them living their regular lives. The original Dragon Ball before Goku got married did have a thematic goal of Goku wanting to become the strongest under the heavens but after that the goal changed.
>>289701653Naruto was far bigger in France and Spain. Finding merch of One Piece on local conventions (even bootlegs) was near impossible when you can almost drown in Naruto stuff.
>>289715547What the fuck is nu-coomer, you doublenigger?
>>289717349>doubleniggerDoesn't that make him white?
>>289706842Harem anime like DearS and Girls bravo
>>289717498No, it makes him twice as black.
>>289707358Naruto is only the most popular anime if you take DBZ out of the equation
>>289707358>>289718049Was*. This isn't pre 2012 anymore.
>>289714365Yeah, nta but that is just shit writing. Like the Araki 'the closeted homo' said: it's just a poorly made fanfic of Saint Seiya.
>>289709151Retard
>>289717498That makes him a Schwarzenegger
>>289689641>>289691112What id do to go back to those myspace era times , i remember the arguments on new grounds.>>289709907I remember it being called samurai x can anyone confirm this ? And it was sort of popular with older kids
>>289686407Yes. Naruto was much more popular in the 2000s due to its brilliant power system and badass antagonists. It was in the 2010s that One Piece gained traction because of the Marineford arc, and fans got hyped by One Piece theories online.
>>289709907Samurai X aka Ruroni Kenshin was super popular in Latin America
>>289686407gb2gaia narutard
