Naruto: The Show that Built Me [Essay]

With the 500th and final episode of Naruto Shippuden having aired a couple of weeks ago on March 23rd, I thought it would be fitting to give an in-depth homage to the show that raised me.

My cousin showed me the very first episode of Naruto back in 2007. It was the first anime I had ever watched (ignoring Pokemon and Digimon, obviously). It was the first time I had seen blood in a cartoon; I was only 12 at the time. It was all new.

One day I was in HMV and saw the first couple of Naruto Unleashed DVDs on the shelves. I had to buy it. I wanted to know what happened to the mischievous young ninja with a demon fox living inside him.

I'll note now, looking back, that those first few episodes are both corny and wonderful. Fortunately the writing does get better. Even so, that first major story-arc in the Land of Mist really sparked my love for anime and how emotive it can be as a artistic medium. Up until then, I believed cartoons were for kids and live-actions were for adults, with no blurred lines between. But there was blood and death and heartache. It opened my eyes to the fact that an anime can achieve anything without the limitations of technology and CGI that live-actions must adhere to. As long as its able to be drawn, it can be done.

The characters felt like family. When that final scene rolled in the final episode I teared up. Actually, it was the second time that episode. As I said, the writing got a lot better. I was absolutely moved to tears by one point earlier on too. But yeah, ten years of Naruto. It's hard to deny a sense of attachment to those drawings with personalities. I watched them grow along side me. I was twelve years old when I first watched Naruto, and the main nine characters were the same age. When I watched the final episode, I was 22. They were too. They might be cartoon and fictional, but over the course of 720 episodes, plus another 10 movies, they went from scrawny pre-teens full of innocence, through their teen years where they saw countless atrocities and miracles, to adulthood.

This being said, not all of them made it to adulthood. Now that hurt. There was a time where the writer wiped out a number of the characters. For a short time some came back, some of my favourites, but in the end most perished. Like I said, that was heartbreaking. Admittedly, my favourite character, who only joined the series after the beginning of the time-skip known as Naruto Shippuden (episode 221+) and was actually one of the bad guys, didn't have long to get under my skin and didn't really have all too much air-time, but even he was difficult to say good bye to.

Disregarding all of what I've just said about the contents of Naruto and how good or bad its writing is, the franchise did a lot for me and my development and that's what I really wanted to talk about. I started watching Naruto when I was 12. It's a messy age where hormones are all over the place and a once bubbly, lively child turns moody, shy and lacking in self-confidence.

My first year of secondary school, I didn't really have any friends. I hung out with my sister and her friends for a while but I couldn't really connect with anyone. I stuck to reading books at the back of the classroom and generally keeping my head down.

I got into reading the Naruto manga. I brought one into class one day and sat quietly at the back. Then a girl in my form asked what I was reading. She was amazed that it was a backwards-read comic and asked if she could have a go reading it. She became my best friend.

It was the same for a number of my friends. I was still shy, but my best friend was outgoing and had no problem chatting to people. We got a group round to her house and decided to watch the first few episodes of Naruto. They were all crying by the end. It became a talking point for me with those who had watched it. Slowly, I got the confidence to talk about other things with them and formed real connections.

Sometimes we would all get together at lunch and map out ideas for Naruto fanfictions - this happened more often when a character we loved died and we couldn't accept their fate. Keep them alive by sticking them in our own stories!

That's where I picked up my passion for writing. Between 2008-2011 I wrote a 200,000 word fanfiction set in the real world but packed full of Naruto characters and elements. As soon as the first couple of positive reviews came in, it made me buzz with accomplishment. I learnt to write for a target audience. Back before the website Quizilla went down, I wrote Choose Your Own Adventure Naruto romance stories for teenage girls. They picked up 20,000 views each. I was astonished by the number of messages I received, praising my writing or asking if I could write a new story with a character they requested.

Writing those Naruto stories built my confidence as an author. They're not literary fiction and never will be. Which allowed me to make mistakes to then improve and build on. I honed my craft and discovered what audiences did and did not like. I can't imagine I would have achieved this if I hadn't found Naruto with its diverse cast of over 250 characters, each with unique personality traits and habits.

Naruto changed my life. I would not be who I am today if I had not found it. It's as simple as that. It nurtured my creativity, helped me find like-minded people who I could get on with, built my confidence, gave me something to return to on sad days, kept me company when I was lonely, and even now at 22, as an adult who can happily stride into a bunch of people and introduce myself, my former self a shadow in comparison, Naruto is still that nostalgic friend I look back at and thank for helping to raise me.

I cried as the final credits rolled. The end of an era that spanned almost half of my lifetime. I hold those characters dear and, particularly the final episode is the send off the show truly deserves, looping right back to the beginning. Naruto Uzumaki was alone all his life. But two people, before anyone else decided to accept him, were there for him from the beginning. They are the two in the final episode that Naruto acknowledges as family and I'm so happy the writers chose such a wonderful final episode.

The Naruto saga spans 720 episodes and 10 movies. That's just under two weeks' worth of time if you don't sleep or stop for any reason. Realistically, you could watch 20 episodes a day if you were going for it. And you should watch it. More than anything else. If you can get past the cheesy first episodes that were made to appeal to younger teenagers, I promise you the saga of Naruto becomes a wonderful, heart-wrenching, upsetting, joyous story that will make you wish you had watched it after it stopped airing on TV networks all those years ago.