The hit anime series Naruto, based on author Masashi Kishimoto's manga series of the same name, tells the story of Naruto Uzumaki, who dreams of becoming Hokage someday and earning the respect of his entire village. Naruto's quest was a colorful and exciting one, and he met, and fought, many fascinating characters during his journey.
In some notable ways, the Naruto series reinvented or avoided a handful of shonen action clichés, proving just how creative and thoughtful Mr. Kishimoto was when drawing this story. Still, Naruto couldn't help but embrace a few clichés along the way, and while none of these worn-out tropes ruined the story by any means, they are still rather stale in the eyes of modern viewers. When did Naruto fall back on time-worn shonen clichés?
10 The Protagonist's Parents Are Dead
It's not just Batman who's lost his parents as an action hero. Many shonen heroes have one or both parents missing or dead, often so the main character is forced to grow and survive on their own. Luffy rarely has any parental figures in his life, for example, and Ichigo Kurosaki lost his mother when he was young.
Meanwhile, Naruto pushes this to the next level, with both his parents losing their lives on the very night he was born. This negatively impacted Naruto's life in many ways, but to his credit, he did well despite being an orphan all his life.
9 Sasuke Started Off As A Cool Genius To Contrast With Naruto
Later on, the story of Naruto deepened Naruto's and Sasuke's rivalry to make it more nuanced, which is good. But early on, the story had Sasuke as a token "cool genius" character for the hotheaded main character to contrast with, and that was no accident.
Sasuke was totally Naruto's foil as a naturally-gifted and cool-headed child prodigy, and this happens a little too often in action stories like this. It seemed that at first, Sasuke existed for the sole purpose of getting in Naruto's way and making him look bad. Fortunately, that changed later on.
8 Sakura Was The Token Girl At First
Remarkably, the Naruto series started off with a lot of shonen clichés, only to refine and deepen those clichés and turn them into something a little fresher. A good example is the character Sakura Haruno, the third member of Team 7. In the early days, she was just the token girl, and nothing more.
In those days, Sakura was defined almost entirely by her hot temper and her one-sided crush on Sasuke, and she did little to help during missions. She was just there to be a girl who ogled at the cool rival to make the main character jealous, and that's a pretty cheap way to handle Sakura's character.
7 Jiraiya Is A Shameless Perv & Womanizer
Jiraiya the toad sage is another character who is more than just a walking cliché, but all the same, his clichéd side feels rather dated and conspicuous in the eyes of some modern viewers. Jiraiya is many things -- a Sannin, one of Naruto's best teachers, a toad expert and, of course, a huge perv.
In fact, Naruto often calls him "ero-sennin," or "pervy sage," and it's easy to see why. Jiraiya is a shameless flirt and womanizer, and he won't miss a chance to peek at women in the bath or surround himself with ladies at a nightclub while Naruto is training elsewhere. Mega-pervert characters just feel strange nowadays.
6 Naruto Is Constantly Training
No one can fault a shonen series for having some training sequences, such as Tanjiro training with the blade for two years or Izuku interning with Gran Torino. Still, the Naruto series has at least one major training sequence in each story arc, to the point where it seems training scenes are a prerequisite for any fight, ever.
If a strong foe arrives, Naruto's response is "A new challenge? I'd better go train somewhere first!" What is more, Naruto often uses a newly-trained technique or strategy just once or twice before abandoning it in favor of a new one. The training scenes are almost treated like an obligation every time they come up.
5 The Naruto Series Has Serious Power Creep
It's only natural for the characters of a shonen action series to get stronger and learn new techniques as the story goes, but many shonen series get carried away with their power creep. The result is that early characters and techniques feel horribly obsolete and dated compared to later material.
At first, Naruto characters, including jonin, could win with shuriken, basic jutsu and other staples, but by the end, all subtlety and restraint was abandoned in favor of Dragon Ball Z-caliber techniques that routinely set off nuke-level explosions and shockwaves. It feels strange to compare that to early material.
4 Beloved Main Characters Die Too Rarely
All three "big three" shonen series can be fairly criticized for being too reluctant to kill off their beloved protagonists. For example, absolutely no one died in Bleach's Soul Society arc, and too many characters have immersion-ruining plot armor in One Piece.
In Naruto's case, a few heroes did die, such as Jiraiya, Asuma Sarutobi and Neji Hyuga, but that's not enough to truly raise the stakes to a proper level. Every Shippuden story arc should have claimed a lot more characters' lives to boost the sense of danger and make these battles feel tenser. A lot more Leaf ninjas should have died, but they didn't.
3 Naruto Has A Magic School In It
Fortunately, this particular shonen cliché only barely appeared, and it has an organic place in the story that makes sense in the Naruto world. Still, there is no denying that the "magical school" or "elite academy" trope is rather overused by now.
Bleach has the Soul Reaper academy, Jujutsu Kaisen has the two jujutsu high schools, My Hero Academia has the U.A. heroics school, and even Kakegurui has a strange high school, one based on gambling. There are a few too many special schools in anime by now, and Naruto's ninja academy is yet another one. At least Naruto graduated in the first episode and quickly moved on.
2 The Power Of Never Giving Up
Shonen stories are designed to teach simple but valuable lessons to young fans to inspire and empower them, and there are some remarkably nuanced ways to go about this. The Naruto series, though, hits readers over the head with its own shonen lessons. There's no subtlety.
Naruto Uzumaki's theme is "never give up!" and that's pretty much it. He often repeats the idea of "give up trying to make me give up!" when facing a powerful foe, and that's as shonen as it gets. Tanjiro Kamado and Luffy have similar sentiments, too.
1 The Villains Want To Rule The World & Remake It In Their Image
Some anime villains are on a personal quest, or they are simply misguided. Others know exactly what they are doing, and they have grand ambitions indeed. It's a cliché not just in shonen, but most fiction for a powerful villain to seek world domination, either to rule as a king or to remake the world in their own image.
Naruto is no different. The villainous Akatsuki organization is the tool of mega-villains such as Obito Uchiha and Madara Uchiha to conquer the world and trap everyone in a massive genjutsu to force world peace. These are huge stakes, but not innovative or fresh stakes by any means.
0 Comments