Jesus, I kinda forgot about this. Okay, back on track.

Did you know the German dub pulled crazy 4kids shit? They felt blades were a no-no and edited out things like kunai. This particular scene took a new twist:

So he says, but later in the series gave me the impression that everyone and their mother could use the Sharingan so long as they tried. Also, Christ this scanlation group needs a better typesetter/editor.

I really miss these splash pages because they were usually pretty funny or cool to look at. I've noticed that with some long-running series: The page numbers per chapter start decreasing. I remember paintpixel started coloring some of them, and because I had access to the color laser printer in the weather station at Bronx Science, I got so many requests to print them out. Ah, the memories.

People complain about Naruto and flashbacks, which is true, but I think they forget it started really early on. Considering these pages come from chapter 12, it's not like the reader forgot any of this. The anime was also pulling this bullshit by this point: I distinctly remember this episode spent the first ten minutes recapping the previous one.

People fucking forget how great this plan was. It's no Shikamaru level, but it's still pretty fucking excellent. I wasn't expecting this from Naruto, especially at this early stage. What happened to this kid? I guess that's what happens when you have infinite amounts of chakra; you forget about complicated plans and just plow people over with your superior powers.

I use this as an example about the problems of moving from one medium to another. I saw this first in the anime before reading it in the manga, and this move took a good ten, fifteen seconds. At the time I thought, "Why the hell is Zabuza continuing his attack when it's obvious that Kakashi's copying it?" In the manga, this looks almost instantaneous. Because the animators had to accommodate all the seals, they created a drawn-out sequence that looks ridiculous in real time. Naruto as a series suffered a lot in the action scenes because of all the internal thoughts, which created awkward pauses. Compare that to something like Cowboy Bebop that had smooth fights without having to stop everything for a character to contemplate what to do next. It works better on page than in animation.

Also, does this move win the prize for amount of seals? It's not that amazing compared to some of the jutsu later on.