The show is great but the DVD is sub-par
The episodes themselves I give 5/5. This is some of the best that Naruto has to offer. They are constantly entertaining and action-packed. Don't worry about that.

The DVDs are, however, a disappointment. They have both the english dub, which is fairly good, and the japanese. However, the subtitles are merely the words of the dub. This means that to those of you who speak japanese and can understand the audio, this is going to grate. It also means that there are times when there is japanese audio but no accompanying subtitle, or vice-versa. The first season box set had subtitles that were translated from the Japanese, why couldn't this one?

In addition, neither the opening nor closing songs have subtitles. Again, the first season didn't have this problem, they translated them. Fansubbing groups have been giving us karaoke openings for free for years, and a company that's making money off of this can't give us plain old subs? Poor showing. In addition, the space after the opening that was used during broadcast to announce the show's sponsors is left on, but with the voice edited out. This means that there's a little 10 second pause after each opening. This could and should have been edited out.

All in all the presentation of the DVD smacks of laziness and corners cut. A decent set of subtitles that were directly translated from the Japanese is a necessity for a DVD like this. I give the DVDs presentation 2/5

Exams aren't meant to be this tough
Naruto returns for a second series after the amazing first one. It carries on exactly where it left off. With the remaining candidates for the chunin exams, including the nine rookies of the leaf village, about to enter the forest of death.

The forest of death story arc takes up half of this series boxset. It sees the genin ninja using their skills to gather the earth and heaven scrolls and to get to the tower at the centre of the forest within 5 days. Each team starts off with either a heaven or an earth scroll, so the objective of the exam is to steal the required scroll from rival teams, while at the same time trying to protect their own scroll. This leads to an action packed story arc full of twists and turns in the plot. There is also some lovely characterisation with characters such as Sasuke, Rock Lee and especially Sakura It sounds simple enough, however, there is more going on than they realise. The main antagonist of the Naruto series, Orochimaru, is introduced in this boxset. This particular character darkens the tone of the series considerably.

The second half of the series focuses on the aftermath of the forest of death exam. The ninja who survived the forest of death are pitted against eachother in a preliminary round before the final exam. This particular section of the series has loads of characterisation of pretty much all the characters. You also get to see the different skills of the other ninja who were introduced at the start of the chunin exams. The action is also really intense. The fight with Rock Lee had me on the edge of my seat.

So the second series of Naruto is just about superior to the first season in every way. It is even more action packed, funny and emotional. And the story is brilliant too. However,at times this series suffers with over long story re-caps at the start of episodes. However it is not as bad as the first series, which at times was ridiculous with its re-caps.
The animation is once again top notch and the fight scenes are well executed. The music is also fantastic. I really like the opening song (Haruka Kanata by Asian Kung Fu Generation). It's an awesome song that goes really well with the feel and the spirit of the show.

This boxset is a bargain at just £20 for 6 discs with 26 episodes. If you are new to Naruto, check out the first series before this otherwise you wont know whats going on.

Naruto is a must have for any anime fan, and it just keeps getting better.


Still annoying but still fun as well
Carrying strait on from the previous series of Naruto, this boxed set contains all twenty six episodes of the shows second series. This series sees the rookies continue with the Chunin exam and is split roughly into two halves. The fist half deals with the second stage of the exam, a survival exercise in the Forest of Death where each team must obtain two scrolls in order to pass on to the next stage of the exam. The second half deals with the preliminaries for the final exam and consists of a series of one-on-one fights between the remaining hopefuls. Complicating matters is that the exams have been infiltrated by a deadly ninja criminal who has designs on Sasuke.

This second series of Naruto suffers from many of the same faults as the first with a somewhat annoying English dub, as well as being overly repetitious and it takes an age for the plot to get anywhere. This is not to say that this is not a bad series, while it is true that the first half seems to be somewhat lacklustre, once the action moves on to the preliminaries for the final exam it does pick up somewhat, although it is still hampered by an overabundance of flashbacks. There are also some things that the series does do well, the characterization is excellent and some of the exposition about chakra flow is also quite interesting. Although it can be very annoying now and again, this second series of Naruto is still fun to watch and if you like the first series then you will like this one as well but if you didn't like series one there is probably little here that will change your mind.

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