I guess Masashi read Harry Potter

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I'm kidding, first of all, before some manga nutjob gets crazy on me.

But damn, he may as well have drawn a lightning scar on Naruto's forehead in that last issue. First Minato was in his brain saving him from the piece of the evil [strike]Voldemort[/strike] Kyuubi living inside him thanks to a failed attempt to take over the world 16 years ago, then his mom was there, and saved him with the ancient power of mommy love.
 
Gusto

Gusto

I'd say it aims for boys aged 9-17.

That said, I started reading it when I was like 15-16, and damn if I'm gonna stop now that things are getting a little [more] hackey.

My OCD won't let me.
 
Espy

Espy

Calleja said:
Uh.. I seriously thought it was for little kids. I was not being trollish. Sheesh.
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Me too. I caught an episode on tv awhile back and figured it was part of the digimon/pokemon crowd stuff. If we are talking about a manga version over the tv version then maybe its really different, at least that would be my guess.
 
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I was just playing with you, Calleja, whether you were trolling or not. It's not in the same age range as Pokemon (unless pokemon shows things like blood and guts and beheadings). The old stuff could be a little kiddish, but still worth the read. The care put into constructing a whole world is well done. Post time-skip (the manga skips ahead 3 years at one point), the story got really good for a while. But after a while they got to the DBZ power plateau syndrome, and things got a little hackey. Still, it's got a good hook, and good art.
 
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Iaculus

Calleja said:
Uh.. I seriously thought it was for little kids. I was not being trollish. Sheesh.
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Oh, I was just messing with you. It's not like Naruto's something I feel the need to staunchly defend.

It's a shonen series, one of the four categories of anime and manga. Shonen is the largest, aimed at pre-teen and teenage boys. The other three, for the record, are shoujo (girls), seinen (young men), and josei (young women).

Whilst shonen can be very kiddy (i.e., most versions of Pokemon), one has to remember that it has the most multiple-demographic appeal of the four, which is one of the reasons why it's the biggest earner. The critically-acclaimed and often very disturbing Fullmetal Alchemist, for instance, is also shonen. Naruto falls somewhere in the middle - yes, it's about a goofball wannabe-ninja who never quite figures out that orange is not the most stealthy of colours, but it's also about a bunch of child soldiers, and the author doesn't always forget that. Plus, Shippuden (the sequel series, where the cast're all a bit older) gets quite a bit darker.
 
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Negative rep because someone misinterpreted my playing around as seriousness. Is my wife in here or something?
 
Calleja

Calleja

I actually thought Naruto was even kiddier than Pokemon, targeted at pre-schoolers or whatnot. Granted, all the experience I have with Naruto is like 5 total minutes of watching time and little kindergarten kids running around with symbols strapped to their head.

Fullmetal Alchemist is one of my favorite things EVER. If Naruto is the same genre, I'll definitely check it out.
 
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Iaculus

Calleja said:
I actually thought Naruto was even kiddier than Pokemon, targeted at pre-schoolers or whatnot. Granted, all the experience I have with Naruto is like 5 total minutes of watching time and little kindergarten kids running around with symbols strapped to their head.

Fullmetal Alchemist is one of my favorite things EVER. If Naruto is the same genre, I'll definitely check it out.
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'Genre' is perhaps an overstatement. It's more 'target audience'. That said, Fullmetal Alchemist is technically part of the genre known as the 'shonen fighting series', of which Bleach, Naruto, and Dragonball Z are exemplars.

Honesltly, you're likely to just find Naruto annoyingly bland after being spoiled by FMA. That's a problem for shonen in general, due to their easily-pleased audience and frequently commercial nature. Seinen tends to have a higher percentage of good stuff, such as Darker than Black (and yes, I do pimp that show with annoying frequency). If you want to try one of the big, mainstream shonen fighters, though, then I've heard decent things about One Piece... provided you have patience, and can get past the rather odd art-style. The Mahou Sensei Negima manga is also highly-regarded, though due to executive meddling, it masqueraded as a rather dodgy harem comedy for the first two volumes, and even after that... well, I hope you like fanservice.

The other common type of shonen is mecha shows, though there are seinen (and even josei and shoujo) examples of those, too. Those are a whole different kettle of fish, with their own different traditions and subdivisions.
 
tegid

tegid

It's the same genre, but don't expect the same quality...
Besides this, yeah, you had a completely wrong idea.
 
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FMA has moments...and it's a good story. But it depends on what you like. I'm not going to lie--I'm a big Naruto fan, and I don't care how silly that sounds. I prefer it over FMA (WHICH I LIKE AND FEEL COMPELLED TO TYPE IN ALL CAPS THAT I LIKE IT EVEN THOUGH SOMEONE WILL STILL IGNORE THIS), because of a couple of things. One, I never really got a good read on Edward Elric's character. Who is he? I'm still not sure at the end of the series. I mean, he doesn't like to be called short, and he wants to fix his brother, but that's about it. Two, the story feels small in focus in a tunnel vision kind of way--at least a little. This is opinion, of course. The background paintings are awesome--at least in the original series. Brotherhood may be based on the manga, but the art sure went downhill. By comparison, I love the entire magic/myth/psuedoscience that Kishimoto has created. It feels broken out of a larger universe, and the pieces of it work together. You know who everyone is on a character level.

Not that the two have to go head to head at all, but if I had to choose one over the other, I'd have to choose Naruto.
 
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Iaculus

Really? I thought I got a pretty good handle on Ed. Basically, he's insecure. I'm not just talking about the height here - that's somewhere between a peripheral thing and a symptom. He's lugging around some serious survivor guilt whilst working for an organisation he really isn't fond of, and trying to stave it off through a faith in his own skills that tends to manifest as cocky, swaggering showmanship. Look at his flashy transmutations, his tendency to bludgeon others over the head with his intellect, and the way he completely goes to pieces when that defence, that almighty self-image, is damaged. Relying on others is a serious issue for him, and a significant part of his character development... but on the other hand, that determination to sort things out for himself means that once he sets his mind on something, you're probably going to have to resort to anti-tank rounds to even slow him down.

There's a lot of depth there, if you look for it.
 
Calleja

Calleja

The plight of Ed is one I actually found very poignant, actually. Trying to get his mother back he completely fucked his brother up... losing an arm and a leg was even completely secondary to that. He lived with a constant reminder of the mistake he had as a little kid, and tried to correct it and rise above it the rest of his life.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Al's even more poignant: He's a (sorta) living constant reminder of his and his brother's failure, and he's suffered far worse for it than Ed EVER did (to the point where he wasn't even sure he was real for awhile). However, despite the fact that he'd very much like his body back, he's really only in this whole mess because he wants his brother to let go of his guilt over his failures. He could live with never getting his body back but he can't live with his brother being in so much emotional pain. I've always thought his Alchemist title was the one that best described the kind of person he really was: He's called the Iron-Heart Alchemist because he will endure any pain to ensure the people he cares about are okay.

Plus the whole series is a very well concealed parable over the dangers of Stem-Cell Research (The Philosopher's Stone is a material that lets you do just about anything you could ever want, but it's made from people. Not spoiling that because it was in the last series.) and just Science in general because...

... every time you perform Alchemy, someone dies on the other end of The Gate. The REAL WORLD is on the other end of that gate and World War 1 is going on, thus hiding the mass deaths required. This a metaphor for the thousands of lives we lost in the midst of our Scientific Progress.
 
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Iaculus

I wouldn't say that Fullmetal Alchemist has a central 'science is bad' moral, though. The two main characters are scientists (and Ed's a staunch atheist) who accomplish a great deal of good with their innovations, and stand by the relevant ideals throughout the series. Rather, it's a simple advisory to remember the human element - in science, politics, whatever. To paraphrase Dragon Age, science was made to serve man, not rule over him.

Mind you, that's the manga. The first anime, as mentioned above, is a bit different.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Iaculus said:
I wouldn't say that Fullmetal Alchemist has a central 'science is bad' moral, though. The two main characters are scientists (and Ed's a staunch atheist) who accomplish a great deal of good with their innovations, and stand by the relevant ideals throughout the series. Rather, it's a simple advisory to remember the human element - in science, politics, whatever. To paraphrase Dragon Age, science was made to serve man, not rule over him.

Mind you, that's the manga. The first anime, as mentioned above, is a bit different.
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I never said it was always portrayed in a bad light, because it wasn't. In fact, Alchemy saved more lives in both series than it took, and probably does so on a daily basis. However, it also points out the extremes that some people will go to in order to GET that knowledge... from the laboratories where souls were bound to armor, to Showe Tucker and the lengths he'd go to in order to make chimeras.

Basically, the series villafies those who use Science to commit atrocities, while admitting that sometimes people will die in the name of progress.
 
Shegokigo

Shegokigo

*shrug* I get the same way about when people talk about Dragonball when their only exposure is the FUNamation chop job.

Most anime is going to be called "kiddy" and "stupid" to people who see it in their +20s if they didn't grow up on it and it's been "chopped" for a younger audience.
 
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The DisneyXD dub of Shippuden is terrible. It really brings down the show a lot. They really softened up the dialogue, and the voice actors are just plain bad.
 
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Iaculus

Shegokigo said:
*shrug* I get the same way about when people talk about Dragonball when their only exposure is the FUNamation chop job.

Most anime is going to be called "kiddy" and "stupid" to people who see it in their +20s if they didn't grow up on it and it's been "chopped" for a younger audience.
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Not a younger audience, a western one. Even pre-censorship with all the gore and dismemberment, Dragonball was still shonen, and still primarily intended for kids.

Sorry, just felt it necessary to point that out.
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

Shonen is named for the age range/gender. It might be targeted at a certain group, but that doesn't mean those outside can't enjoy it. I mean if you really want to get technical it's also targeted to young boys, primarily.
 
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