Why is it that i continue to see fics that have naruto being hokage level pre-genin, but he ALWAYS gets teamed up with Sasuke. Now it doesn't happen all the time, but i really just don't like fics where this happens. If he gets stronger after, thats fine, but before? The point of the teams is to develop balanced teams. Not, "oh, lets make naruto have this power and that power, and don't forget creating the rasengan on his own" but can't have the originality to put him on a different team. Having two super genin's on the same team completely over powers it, and thats bad. The reason why the dynamic between naruto and sasuke works is because sasuke views naruto as dead last but ends up fearing his potential. Not, sasuke and naruto are equals, so sasuke angsts over why he isn't the best. Nor is it..."Naruto has god like powers, and oh my god why can't i steal those god like powers with my sharingan." Any way, my point is, Teams are balanced, and if your overpowering Naruto, why would he be in sasuke's team in the first place? If he was so powerful, he should be graduating in Neji's year. People conveniently forget the fact that naruto failed the genin exam several times before he finally passed it with the deus ex machina of "omg i just learned a jounin level technique, pass me!!"
Naruto Rant about an aspect of powerful naruto fics
- Thread starter rathimal
- Start date
That's quite a block of text you have there. Might want to break it up a bit; it was hard to read.
Anyway, I'm not sure how to respond to this, as it seemed more venting than anything.
Personally, I'm sick of the overdone shonen genre in its entirety. Characters - especially the Main Character - in shonen action series tend to follow a single formula:
*Start out somewhat weak, with a good trick or two
*powerful enemy arrives
*MainChar trains or seeks out the artifact to defeat said enemy
*MainChar encounters and defeats the enemy (and his lackeys, where applicable)
*Next story arc begins, cycle starts anew.
Worse, the series that initially don't follow this formula inevitably end up conforming to the status quo (I'm looking at you, Kishimoto Masashi!).
Now, I understand that encountering newer and stronger opponents is part of the deal, but honestly, can't I have a few noteworthy series that do it with style and originality? Or at least ones that fake it really well? I'm tired of Dragonball clones!
There's gotta be more than Bleach. Seriously.
Anyway.
The most of what you're saying, rathimal, seems to stem from the Young Author Problem. That being, when a young kid (usually in his early teens, seldom later than high school) sees such a shonen fighting anime/manga/videogame series, they instantly go into Fanboy Mode. When they start writing fanfiction about it, they tend to give the Main Character all sorts of benefits or powerups without giving the proper level of thought to how this would affect the rest of the series.
I think that, in most cases, they just haven't realized how boring it is to have a hero who can beat any enemy without much effort.
This isn't a new thing; take Superman comics, for example. When your hero is damn near invincible, it's hard to portray any conflict with tension, and tension is what keeps the audience interested. SO, they ended up introducing dozens upon dozens of doo-dads and villainous powers involving Kryptonite, and eventually killed Supes off. When they eventually brought him back, they wasted no time in giving him new weaknesses or loopholes through his invincibility, simply because they wanted to make his life-or-death struggles believably life-or-death.
For another example, look at damn near any console RPG (and even some tabletop RPGs, if the DM doesn't manage it well). Many of them have a large element of mindless power-levelling involved. When you get right down to it, after you've beaten all the toughest enemies, and you've taken your characters' levels to the maximum, and you've gotten all the most powerful items... then what? Where do you go from there if the game design didn't make the road to that end fun enough? Answer: Nowhere. The game fails hard. And fanfiction written this way fails hard for the same reasons.
Make Naruto uber-powerful? Better happen later in the timeline; "enfant terrible" isn't a role that suits Naruto. Stick an achiever!Naruto on the same team as Sasuke? Not unless Sasuke is the dead-last.
...actually, someone should write one like that. Turnabout is fair play. :lol:
Anyway, I'm not sure how to respond to this, as it seemed more venting than anything.
Personally, I'm sick of the overdone shonen genre in its entirety. Characters - especially the Main Character - in shonen action series tend to follow a single formula:
*Start out somewhat weak, with a good trick or two
*powerful enemy arrives
*MainChar trains or seeks out the artifact to defeat said enemy
*MainChar encounters and defeats the enemy (and his lackeys, where applicable)
*Next story arc begins, cycle starts anew.
Worse, the series that initially don't follow this formula inevitably end up conforming to the status quo (I'm looking at you, Kishimoto Masashi!).
Now, I understand that encountering newer and stronger opponents is part of the deal, but honestly, can't I have a few noteworthy series that do it with style and originality? Or at least ones that fake it really well? I'm tired of Dragonball clones!
There's gotta be more than Bleach. Seriously.
Anyway.
The most of what you're saying, rathimal, seems to stem from the Young Author Problem. That being, when a young kid (usually in his early teens, seldom later than high school) sees such a shonen fighting anime/manga/videogame series, they instantly go into Fanboy Mode. When they start writing fanfiction about it, they tend to give the Main Character all sorts of benefits or powerups without giving the proper level of thought to how this would affect the rest of the series.
I think that, in most cases, they just haven't realized how boring it is to have a hero who can beat any enemy without much effort.
This isn't a new thing; take Superman comics, for example. When your hero is damn near invincible, it's hard to portray any conflict with tension, and tension is what keeps the audience interested. SO, they ended up introducing dozens upon dozens of doo-dads and villainous powers involving Kryptonite, and eventually killed Supes off. When they eventually brought him back, they wasted no time in giving him new weaknesses or loopholes through his invincibility, simply because they wanted to make his life-or-death struggles believably life-or-death.
For another example, look at damn near any console RPG (and even some tabletop RPGs, if the DM doesn't manage it well). Many of them have a large element of mindless power-levelling involved. When you get right down to it, after you've beaten all the toughest enemies, and you've taken your characters' levels to the maximum, and you've gotten all the most powerful items... then what? Where do you go from there if the game design didn't make the road to that end fun enough? Answer: Nowhere. The game fails hard. And fanfiction written this way fails hard for the same reasons.
Make Naruto uber-powerful? Better happen later in the timeline; "enfant terrible" isn't a role that suits Naruto. Stick an achiever!Naruto on the same team as Sasuke? Not unless Sasuke is the dead-last.
...actually, someone should write one like that. Turnabout is fair play. :lol:
I had that in mind for my Naruto/Magic: the Gathering xover. Ink-Eyes does train him to be very powerful, but they both dismiss the Bunshin no Jutsu as useless crap... and Iruka keeps testing the class on it, and thus failing Naruto.
Needless to say, he gets pissed after a while, and finally caves in and tries to learn it. :lol:
So yeah, badass he may be, but he miscalculated badly on that one.
Needless to say, he gets pissed after a while, and finally caves in and tries to learn it. :lol:
So yeah, badass he may be, but he miscalculated badly on that one.
Yeah, i admit that i made this rant/vent after i read this the first coupla paragraphs of a fic that was recommended on a journal somewhere. Though, i have to admit, i suffered from a case of fanboyism, where the more powerful naruto/harry potter got, the cooler it was. But after these maybe 3-4 years of reading, and finding the few gems that have flawed characters and good writing, i grew on the darker stories where not everythings sunshine and roses. Thank god, that i'm not a fanboy anymore. Or maybe just thank rx7 or hawker, or hawk, or the finite number of good authors out there. lol.
On another note, naruto does suffer from dbz tendencies. Though, Kishi seems to be trying to remedy that in part 2, if only just a little. I think at some pt in part two during his training naruto said his max was 200 clones at a time. I'm pretty sure he can do more that that, though i'm unsure if that was with or without the kyuubi chakra. During the gaara/naruto fight, doesn't naruto say something like 1000 hit combo before he gets all kyuubi-ized? But yeah, whats more DBZ then having to overpower two near-immortal akatsuki agents?
oh, and i like the comparisons to rpgs toraneko.
On another note, naruto does suffer from dbz tendencies. Though, Kishi seems to be trying to remedy that in part 2, if only just a little. I think at some pt in part two during his training naruto said his max was 200 clones at a time. I'm pretty sure he can do more that that, though i'm unsure if that was with or without the kyuubi chakra. During the gaara/naruto fight, doesn't naruto say something like 1000 hit combo before he gets all kyuubi-ized? But yeah, whats more DBZ then having to overpower two near-immortal akatsuki agents?
oh, and i like the comparisons to rpgs toraneko.
As I thought of it, the Naruto series, at the start, was pretty good. The victor in most fights was the one who could out-think or out-trick his opponent, not who had the highest "power level". That hasn't really been the case for awhile, though; the Valley of the End fight was the culmination of BS, and it's all circling the drain from there.
Glad you liked the comparison. I have been playing console RPGs since Final Fantasy IV (still an old favorite of mine), and I've seen that annoying 'power-leveling as an end in itself, not a means to an end' trend gain strength as time goes on. For crying out loud, it's a console game, not a MMORPG! :headbanger:
Glad you liked the comparison. I have been playing console RPGs since Final Fantasy IV (still an old favorite of mine), and I've seen that annoying 'power-leveling as an end in itself, not a means to an end' trend gain strength as time goes on. For crying out loud, it's a console game, not a MMORPG! :headbanger:
Personally, this is why Spider-man, Batman, Captain America, etc. are some of my favorite comics: They start off with nothing, work to improve, but ultimitly, they are human, and there are always someone better, more powerful, etc. They work to get around their enemies strengths, and expose their weaknesses.
Yeah, Naruto's got more chakra than all of Konoha combined, but he was still one of the weakest males in his graduating class. He works to improve, but he's never going to be all-powerful. All the chakra in the world means nothing if someone is smarter, faster than he is.
Yeah, Naruto's got more chakra than all of Konoha combined, but he was still one of the weakest males in his graduating class. He works to improve, but he's never going to be all-powerful. All the chakra in the world means nothing if someone is smarter, faster than he is.
The problem with that is that Naruto is the same age as his fellow classmates. If he failed the genin exam 3 times and was held back a year each time he should be 15 or 16 not 12. Or his classmates should be 3 years younger than him, especially Sasuke as he is the best of his class and as such certainly never failed his genin exam.
I think that the plot goes that he was put in the acadamy early in order to learn how to protect himself, or becuase of the fact that he couldn't get outside training. That or the acadamy allowed students to take the graduation exam any year.....i doubt that too.
My friend, congragulations on spotting a plot hole, and one that most fanfic writers actually correct for Kishomoto, by doing one of the above.
What you said is actually correct, as it is seen in a flashback that Kiba was in the same class as Naruto when they were younger, yet there is nothing said about Kiba failing multiple times.
And yeah super powered fics are annoying in how boring it gets without any challanges for the main character.
My friend, congragulations on spotting a plot hole, and one that most fanfic writers actually correct for Kishomoto, by doing one of the above.
What you said is actually correct, as it is seen in a flashback that Kiba was in the same class as Naruto when they were younger, yet there is nothing said about Kiba failing multiple times.
And yeah super powered fics are annoying in how boring it gets without any challanges for the main character.
I think its pretty much a given that children can enter the academy from a very young age i.e. kakashi or itachi. But really, this is just an example where Kishi has a glaring plot hole. I suppose it makes it more interesting to the reader as an underdog story as well as drives the point that naruto is a dead last loser. Assuming that the exam to become genin is given multiple times a year so people like kakashi can graduate early, its feasible that naruto took the exam thinking that it would get him that much faster to hokage the earlier he became genin. Still, one would think if this were the case, and such common knowledge that even an ignorant naruto would know it, then i would think that sasuke would have taken the exam as early as possible, ergo, this is just a poorly developed plot...unlike bleach where it seems the arrancar and vizards were planned from the very beginning.
Really the problem that I have with SuperNaruto stories is that not do they basically follow canon with Naruto screwing whoever it is that author likes but that they tend to suddenly make him weaker or turn the rest of the characters into super powered beings (all of whom seem to be sharing a brain cell between them) and there's almost no originality in them itÆs always the same freaking thing time and time again.
Actually, when you consider the fact that Kakashi graduated at a time when Konoha was on the verge of war, then after, during a war, kids graduating early kinda makes sense. The village would want as many skilled people on their side as possible.
I doubt that Kakashi was sent on important missions as soon as he graduated; he most likely did many D-rank missions. But seeing as many people tend to overlook kids as threats, he may have done a few assassination missions before he got his team.
Itachi - well, he was talented, and the Uchiha were an important clan, so they may have used their influence to convince the teachers to let him graduate early. It's quite possible that Sasuke may have been slated to graduate early, but then the clan got massacured, and Sarutobi made him stay in the academy, afraid that Itachi was planning to come back for him.
Naruto - given the way most people treat him, the teachers tried to make him quit the academy by letting him test for early graduation, but failed him anyway.
I doubt that Kakashi was sent on important missions as soon as he graduated; he most likely did many D-rank missions. But seeing as many people tend to overlook kids as threats, he may have done a few assassination missions before he got his team.
Itachi - well, he was talented, and the Uchiha were an important clan, so they may have used their influence to convince the teachers to let him graduate early. It's quite possible that Sasuke may have been slated to graduate early, but then the clan got massacured, and Sarutobi made him stay in the academy, afraid that Itachi was planning to come back for him.
Naruto - given the way most people treat him, the teachers tried to make him quit the academy by letting him test for early graduation, but failed him anyway.
I think writers should concentrate on making Naruto deadlier, not more powerful. He IS a ninja folks. 
h43r:
Naruto should be learning how to properly disembowel an opponent with his bare hands, instead of wasteful jutsu that anyone with a decent grasp of the Karwimi and the various Bunshin could avoid with ease. :headbanger:
Not to mention the fact that stronger jutsu take more time to prepare ( I'm ignoring the bullshit that is Naruto 2). Kakashi demonstrated how easy it is to avoid such things during the bell test. A simple Karwimi and he's home free. To those that think Kakashi is strong, well, he's not. In the series, he only won a single major fight, that being his second battle with Zabuza. The only reason he even won that is because Zabuza was distracted by Naruto's killing intent and his concern for Haku. Without that, Kakashi only had about a 40% chance of winning.
h43r: Naruto should be learning how to properly disembowel an opponent with his bare hands, instead of wasteful jutsu that anyone with a decent grasp of the Karwimi and the various Bunshin could avoid with ease. :headbanger:
Not to mention the fact that stronger jutsu take more time to prepare ( I'm ignoring the bullshit that is Naruto 2). Kakashi demonstrated how easy it is to avoid such things during the bell test. A simple Karwimi and he's home free. To those that think Kakashi is strong, well, he's not. In the series, he only won a single major fight, that being his second battle with Zabuza. The only reason he even won that is because Zabuza was distracted by Naruto's killing intent and his concern for Haku. Without that, Kakashi only had about a 40% chance of winning.
Welcome to TFF kiji :mmm: Have a drink.
I agree with Naruto becoming deadlier. This new overpowered wind rasengan is made of so much fail I feel like spewing. Before the heresy that is part two, most ninjutsu seemed to be anti-personnel, with the more powerful elemental jutsu (that only hokage level ninja could just throw around) able to border on anti-battalion if the user pushed it. The only things we saw that were anti-fortress were the top summons of the Legendary Three. The heresy that started with the Sasuke chase however, has introduce no less than 6 characters who can throw around anti-fortress level attacks (Gaara, Deidara, Sasori, Sasuke, Naruto, and Kimimaru) Of them, only Gaara and Sasori are hokage level ninja and Sasori used the 3rd Kazekage for the attack (on only two people, which is massive fail.)
I'm not even going to get into Orochimaru and how he fought right now.
I agree with Naruto becoming deadlier. This new overpowered wind rasengan is made of so much fail I feel like spewing. Before the heresy that is part two, most ninjutsu seemed to be anti-personnel, with the more powerful elemental jutsu (that only hokage level ninja could just throw around) able to border on anti-battalion if the user pushed it. The only things we saw that were anti-fortress were the top summons of the Legendary Three. The heresy that started with the Sasuke chase however, has introduce no less than 6 characters who can throw around anti-fortress level attacks (Gaara, Deidara, Sasori, Sasuke, Naruto, and Kimimaru) Of them, only Gaara and Sasori are hokage level ninja and Sasori used the 3rd Kazekage for the attack (on only two people, which is massive fail.)
I'm not even going to get into Orochimaru and how he fought right now.
Yeah pretty much. For a manga about ninja they have way too many attacks that take a loooong time to prepare and are blatantly obvious. The chidori absolutly failed; an asassination technique would not make alot of noise infact, it should be noted for the lack of noise involved. Not only that but the move used hand seals, which take a couple of seconds to do, and has that whole start up period. For a move designed to be used on the frontlines, it could be too easly predicted and countered, and it has a limit on it besides that of the chakra. Why it is depicted as some uber attack that is teh powerful is beyond me.
and I agree with ttestagr. My own suggestion is that massive attacks designed to raze entire city blocks and destroy small armies need limitations. They need long preperation time, and those who use them should be absolutely drained afterwards. Actually, that is just common sense.
And in my opinion, Naruto in part 1 doesn't need anymore jutsu to get by. He has already proven what he can do with just kage bunshin, the rasengan (standard version, though needed to be perfected), henge (self explanitory), and i think he has karwimi. So he has everythin he needs at that point, he just needs the skills to use them, and the experience to know how to use them.
and I agree with ttestagr. My own suggestion is that massive attacks designed to raze entire city blocks and destroy small armies need limitations. They need long preperation time, and those who use them should be absolutely drained afterwards. Actually, that is just common sense.
And in my opinion, Naruto in part 1 doesn't need anymore jutsu to get by. He has already proven what he can do with just kage bunshin, the rasengan (standard version, though needed to be perfected), henge (self explanitory), and i think he has karwimi. So he has everythin he needs at that point, he just needs the skills to use them, and the experience to know how to use them.
Again, that's the focus I intend to have in my Naruto/MtG fanfic... I'll have Naruto run by chance into a Nezumi assassin from Kamigawa who'll decide she has nothing better to do than indulge him and teach him a few tricks (although she has an ulterior motive - she's a Nezumi, not a good samaritan!), and eventually he'll be able to do much of the stuff she does, which includes blatant backstabbing, lurking in the shadows and using the carcasses of defeated enemies as distrractions by reanimating them before moving in for a stealth-kill. :snigger:
Seriously, there needs to be more ninja-y stuff.
Seriously, there needs to be more ninja-y stuff.
Actually, while I'd agree to making most of the others deadlier and more stealthy and such, I don't think that fits all that well with Naruto himself. Naruto doesn't hide in the shadows and stab his enemies in the back. He hides in plain sight, declares his intentions loudly, waits for his enemy to laugh at him for wearing parking-cone orange, then uses their underestimation of him to his advantage. His traditional solution to an enemy is to summon enough kage bunshin to overwhelm them and take them down with brute force. If that doesn't work, he uses the above method as a distraction, uses some clever method of getting inside their guard, then he and his kage bunshin apply brute force. Either that, or he just gets pissed off, draws on the Kyuubi's power... and applies even greater brute force.
Do you see what I'm getting at here? Naruto isn't about sneaking, amazing agility and unbeatable taijutsu skills and swordfighting. His strengths are his enormous chakra capacity (which, at 12 years old, is jounin level without Kyuubi), his regenerative abilities and his willpower, which combine to make battles of attrition his enemy's worst nightmare. He's creative and clever, good at unconventional tactics that catch opponents off balance. It also helps him learn jutsu that should otherwise take him ages to learn. And of course, there's the Kyuubi's chakra.
As I see it, if Naruto wants to defeat the Sharingan's prediction ability, there are 3 options. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is to be like Lee and become so fast that the prediction is useless. This is the path pretty much everyone chooses, and it irks me. The problem is that speed has never been Naruto's thing. In fact, speed is Sasuke's thing, and Naruto is and probably will always be slower than Sasuke (without factoring Kyuubi or curse seal), assuming Sasuke continues to train.
The second option is to immobilise the opponent. But this seems something more for much subtler ninjas than Naruto, like Shikamaru.
The third option, which I believe the one most in character with Naruto, and one that seemingly not many have thought of, is to create such wide-area destruction that it simply cannot be dodged within a certain range. In other words: brute force. It doesn't matter if your eyes can foresee a 20m radius blast if you haven't the time to get 20m away. So I for one was quite happy to see Naruto's new rasengan.
Do you see what I'm getting at here? Naruto isn't about sneaking, amazing agility and unbeatable taijutsu skills and swordfighting. His strengths are his enormous chakra capacity (which, at 12 years old, is jounin level without Kyuubi), his regenerative abilities and his willpower, which combine to make battles of attrition his enemy's worst nightmare. He's creative and clever, good at unconventional tactics that catch opponents off balance. It also helps him learn jutsu that should otherwise take him ages to learn. And of course, there's the Kyuubi's chakra.
As I see it, if Naruto wants to defeat the Sharingan's prediction ability, there are 3 options. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is to be like Lee and become so fast that the prediction is useless. This is the path pretty much everyone chooses, and it irks me. The problem is that speed has never been Naruto's thing. In fact, speed is Sasuke's thing, and Naruto is and probably will always be slower than Sasuke (without factoring Kyuubi or curse seal), assuming Sasuke continues to train.
The second option is to immobilise the opponent. But this seems something more for much subtler ninjas than Naruto, like Shikamaru.
The third option, which I believe the one most in character with Naruto, and one that seemingly not many have thought of, is to create such wide-area destruction that it simply cannot be dodged within a certain range. In other words: brute force. It doesn't matter if your eyes can foresee a 20m radius blast if you haven't the time to get 20m away. So I for one was quite happy to see Naruto's new rasengan.
I see where you are coming from, but the fact remains that ANY fighter wearing BRIGHT ORANGE is just a target screaming 'I'm here, kill me!".
if not for his Main Character Immunity, Naruto would have been murdered already by a number of opponents who managed to sneak up on him. Even as a fighter he's got a rotten attitude to fighting - making yourself a target for anything that's not blind when you aren't skilled enough to avoid the assassination attempts is not a smart strategy, it's what a corpse does to become dead.
if not for his Main Character Immunity, Naruto would have been murdered already by a number of opponents who managed to sneak up on him. Even as a fighter he's got a rotten attitude to fighting - making yourself a target for anything that's not blind when you aren't skilled enough to avoid the assassination attempts is not a smart strategy, it's what a corpse does to become dead.
Sadly that's so true...
I just want to see a fic where he behaves like a real ninja for a change, and not to forget: a fic whyere he focuses on his strenghts. :huh.:
Why do i have the feeling that he's going to use this lessons on his own sensei? It would pretty much be the ultimate test, supassing thy master.
I just want to see a fic where he behaves like a real ninja for a change, and not to forget: a fic whyere he focuses on his strenghts. :huh.:
Why do i have the feeling that he's going to use this lessons on his own sensei? It would pretty much be the ultimate test, supassing thy master.
Why make only make Naruto deadlier? Why not make all of them deadlier?
Most people throw out anything past the timeskip, but why not just about everything else as well? Get rid of a lot of the jutsus (though Kakashi can keep the Chidori, only to have it fail), change the fighting around, and make all the shinobi more like shinobi and less like the Ginyu Force.
Lose most of the "Swords for Hire" thing too, with Shinobi villages not being on equal grounds with an entire nation.
Most people throw out anything past the timeskip, but why not just about everything else as well? Get rid of a lot of the jutsus (though Kakashi can keep the Chidori, only to have it fail), change the fighting around, and make all the shinobi more like shinobi and less like the Ginyu Force.
Lose most of the "Swords for Hire" thing too, with Shinobi villages not being on equal grounds with an entire nation.
Heh, just look at Sakura. Bright pink hair and a red dress. If that doesn't scream "open target", I don't know what does... :no:
Try to picture Lee attempting to be stealthy: "Yosh! My flames of youth shall hide me!!! If I am spotted, then I shall run 500 laps around Konoha on my hands! And if I fail, then I shall to 5000 pushups!" while the sentries stare at him. :sweat:
Let's face it: they aren't ninja, they're Ginyu Force rejects... :no:
And Naruto had such potential at first... :blue:
Try to picture Lee attempting to be stealthy: "Yosh! My flames of youth shall hide me!!! If I am spotted, then I shall run 500 laps around Konoha on my hands! And if I fail, then I shall to 5000 pushups!" while the sentries stare at him. :sweat:
Let's face it: they aren't ninja, they're Ginyu Force rejects... :no:
And Naruto had such potential at first... :blue: