@comicstooge said:
Lol, someone who watches DBZ should ever complain about lazy writing from another series.
Dragon Ball does what it does without pretensions, to criticise it for a focus on fighting and humour is missing the point, you'd might as well be complaining about Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan movies lacking in depth.
Naruto aims higher, but fails, embarrassingly so. Its pretentious. Kishi's attempts at human morality and philosophy (hell even just general human interaction) are laughable and painful to watch. Naruto's speeches are not poignant, nor particularly interesting, and yet turn mass murderers against their life's ideologies in a matter of minutes. Sakura's interactions with Sasuke are horrible, and are similar to a girl who repeatedly returns to an abusive partner, this guy tried to kill her and has never shown her any affection at all and yet she follows him around like a lost puppy hoping to be noticed. Naruto and Sasuke's friendship is so poorly developed that Kishi pretty much had to create a retcon about them being reincarnated brothers just to make it seem less forced.
Piccolo took 6 years to rehabilitate, Vegeta took closer to 15 years to rehabilitate, the average character in Naruto is rehabilitated after about 15 minutes of conversation and are willing to sacrifice their lives for Naruto's ideology after about 20 minutes.
By Shippuden, Kishi no longer even understands the very basics of storytelling, he no longer bothers to properly build up the bad guys for instance, so the readership gains little investment in the fights as they haven't had time to hate the villain and look forward to their defeat. Naruto's themes may be "more complex" than Dragon Ball's, but its themes are never backed up by what is actually being shown, Naruto contradicts its own themes at every turn, Dragon Ball's simple themes of hard work and humility always fit.
When Krillin was killed Goku was sad, frustrated and angry. After Naruto's friend Neji was killed Naruto forgot about this within like an hour and referred to the murderer of his friend, parents, and fellow villagers as "The coolest guy" .
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