|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||
|
|
Reviewed by Barb Lien-Cooper Boy, take a break from reading a manga for awhile and you miss a lot. After Naruto’s mentor, the one and only pervy sage... I don’t want to go into it, spoiler-wise, but it was sad, so I took a break. And now in Volume 46, Naruto’s whole village is in deep doo doo. There’s a guy named Pain, who is almost ridiculously strong…and the village is rubble. The fifth hokage had to expend two tons of chakra just to keep the villagers from all dying. Naruto’s friend Choji’s Dad almost floated up to the big ramen shop in the sky, that’s how bad his injuries were. And Naruto’s sensei Kakashi, who I’ve been worried for awhile... I honestly don’t know his status. Nice cliff hanger there. Hope that he’s okay. As to a review, I’m of mixed feelings about the series as it stands. My feeling is that if you love fight mangas where slowly but surely the heroes and villains get near Godlike powers that fill up astounding splash pages worth of action, you owe it to yourself to glom into Naruto, the sooner the better. Yeah, I know, it’s popular and some people don’t like popular, even if the popularity is based on how good the series is. And believe me, if you’re into battle mangas, Naruto is the Beatles of such a genre. Hugely popular (and deservedly so), but also excellent on all levels. This manga will be remembered. It will be influential beyond belief. It will be enjoyed long after the Naruto craze is over, I’m pretty sure of that. Then why are my feelings mixed? Because I left comics in part because of the disease I call “Superhero elephantitis”. What I mean by that is that when a hero gets more and more powers, we spend more and more time watching him/her train. Then after awhile, he or she gets so powerful that in the end he or she can only fight other godlike creatures. There’s no room for smaller tales or smaller concerns such as character interaction at that point. For example, Superman could fight an unarmed crook, but it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. So the superhero ends up fighting to save the world every freakin' storyline! Bigness can lead to lack of creativity, boredom, and reader alienation. I fear for Naruto, excellent series that it is, because there’s no place to go after one’s turned one’s amp up to eleven. And how’s the series going to ever get that Naruto/Sasuke fight that we know has to happen eventually if it uses all of its chakra on manufactured threats to the Leaf Village? Part of me wonders if we’re at some type of turning point for the series. Part of me says that it’ll just keep getting bigger and bigger until I won’t have fun reading it any more. Yet, people seem to like “bigger is better”, even if I have problems with it. For instance, my husband is still nuts about this series and thinks it just keeps building in battle manga-y goodness. He still breathlessly reads the series cover to cover, excited and as happy as a kid every volume, still enthused and amused at every juncture, just like he used to be about superheroes before event fatigue killed his enthusiasm and turned him into a shonen-loving mangahead. I’m happy for him, honestly I am. A good fight manga is hard to find. I’m just a little knackered concerning big bangs in comics and manga, regardless of quality. Probably just a phase I’m going through. I still love the characters in Naruto. I still worry about them and mourn their losses. So, in spite of my own personal prejudices and concerns, I give this volume an unabashed B Plus. Think you could have written a better review of Naruto v46? Write us and we'll probably let you give it a shot! --EiC PC |
17 November 2009
|
||||
 |
| home | reviews | news | features | about us | advertise | privacy policy | contact us |
