a cute witch to celebrate the best season of the year – hope everyone out there is having a great pumpkin time!

I wore my Naruto Shippuden t-shirt when we went out to see my brother last summer. He asked me: “What’s with the shirt?” And I said “Naruto! It’s my favorite manga!”  Justin said: “I’m mortified.”  Jeff said: “You know,  it’s that lame ass anime shit she likes.”  Tom cuts through the noise and continues to address me, asking: “What’s it about?”

“It’s about Naruto, he’s a ninja that has a monster inside of him.”

That’s enough for my brother, who nods approval and says “Me too.”

I know that my brother understands, and I don’t need to say any more things about it. I wish that I could say more things about why I love Naruto enough to wear dorky ass age inappropriate t-shirts around in public, but the conversation moves on and I don’t know how to explain it anyway.

My friend Ian would be thrilled to relate at length the story of the night we were drunk and he tried to get me to talk about Naruto and all I could do is repeat, “It’s just, you know, so GREAT.” The only thing I managed to vary in that sentence was word emphasis and comma placement.

I’m not super good at talking, it’s true, but I want to try to tell you about Naruto anyway. Naruto is a shonen manga – that means it’s a manga who’s target audience is pre-teen boys. It is a formulatic entertainment, It has a monster of the week, and a good fight every episode. All the characters have sweet designs and super cool ninja powers.  I’m going to say right now that this is pretty much 80 percent of the appeal for me, as I’m about as shallow as they come.  I love the costumes, I love the monsters, and I love the fights!

This is true, but it’s also not true.  There is a subtlety to the framework of this story that shines for me. This is the story of a village hidden in the leaves, and its will of fire. When I stand at the window and watch the wind blow through the leaves, I think of Naruto and more smile gets added on to the one I already had.

You learn everything you need to know about Naruto in the first episode. He is full of energy and kind of a dorky brat. He wants attention from adults, but he’s crappy at school so he acts out by doing pranks and mischief.

He wants attention from adults because he’s an orphan. He’s an orphan because his parents died the night the village was attacked by a giant nine tailed fox demon. The nine tailed fox demon is an ultimate force of destruction, a superweapon developed by ninjas of the past, and as with all superweapons developed by ninjas of the past, they can get out of control and destroy a lot of stuff if you’re not careful.

A lot of people in the village died that night, so when the people in the village see Naruto, they don’t see Naruto, they only see a reminder of their pain. Doubly so for the few who know that the only reason the village was saved was because Naruto’s father and mother sacrificed themselves to seal  the nine tailed fox demon inside the belly of their infant, Naruto.

Of course at the start Naruto doesn’t know this. Naruto only knows one thing. He wants to become the greatest ninja in the village, The Great Lord Hokage, so that everyone in the village will be forced to recognize him.

Although everyone who hears Naruto say that he is going to become Hokage laughs and dismisses him as a loud mouth brat – Naruto never stops holding to his statement of intent.  He says it out loud all the time, and through the arc of the story he never accepts a situation that would get in the way of this goal. Naruto never goes back on his word, that is his ninja way. Naruto and his ninja way are the beating heart that moves this story along.

After Naruto graduates from the ninja academy, he is placed on a team with a cute pink haired girl he has a super crush on, Haruno Sakura, and the hidden leaf village’s other resident orphan of tragic circumstance,  Uchiha Sauske.  Sauske  is the last surviving member of his clan. The entire Uchiha clan, save Sauske,  was slaughtered by Sauske’s older brother Itachi. Sauske doesn’t want attention from adults, Sauske doesn’t want anything.  Sauske’s only dream is to revenge his clan by killing his brother. It is not too far along in the story before Sauske abandons his village and his friends in a search for greater power.

Sauske is no match for the darkness of his past, he is swallowed up in it and disappears completely. Only Naruto and Sakura believe they can bring Sauske back to his place in the village where friends value each other and the will of the fire is tended with honor.

As the characters grow older and more of the past is revealed, it seems there is a darkness at the center of the village itself that feeds the rift… Naruto and Sakura, maybe they don’t understand it completely but they cling to their way of the ninja, and their way of the ninja means not letting their friend get swallowed up by the darkness, no matter what.

Naruto was first published in November 1999, and episodes still come out weekly. That seems like an amazing long time to me. Naruto is a vast story with a wealth of characters, this couple paragraphs I have put down here are only a fingernail scratch on the surface of what’s there to be enjoyed in the story of Naruto. If you enjoy serial entertainment that is about the struggle of the present to deal with the darkness of the past and somehow find a way to move forward in a positive direction – you might enjoy reading Naruto, and I implore you to give it a try.

A character in the lastest episode proclaimed to her enemy that all who meet Naruto receive from him the flower of hope, and that is why although she will be destroyed in this battle, ultimately darkness will fall in the face of the light of the love Naruto bears for the people of his world, and I got a little thrill of knowing she’s right, because I believe in Naruto too, and will always work to hold the flower of hope in the face of darkness. No matter what!