I heard that Naruto will be getting back on track in the 200th episode. I feel excited, sort of. That's about... 30% at its best.

I think it had something to do with Naruto being licensed. Oh I remember those days. When Naruto sharing was hot in the network of anime geeks in the dormitory, then suddenly the news about it being licensed caused a breakdown in the internet. I crawled all over cyberspace to find any downloads to no avail. Guess I didn't look hard enough because fans geekier than me seemed to have found a "secret" site that still hosted episodes. And they didn't want to share the address on the grounds that it would be swarmed with leechers that may impair the site. How selfish could they get? Anyway, charm never fails me. And I got to download! Finally!

That was a brief history, by the way. And now that I think about it, I don't see much how that has to do with my argument at hand. Ah yes, after the licensing issue I thought it would sail smoothly, the animators must have decided to just finish the last arc and go fillers all the way. Which was a lapse of judgement on their part. Boo. Wrong step, guys.

I thought the animation world has learned the lesson from what happened to the Rurouni Kenshin series. Instead of moving on with the story, which is warming its way into climax, they followed it up with fillers to the dismay of the fans. So after being at the top for almost two years, the fans got hold of newer stuff to take interest in. This is the sad fate of a great story disgraced by fillers. This is what fillers do to a story. It loses coherence, focus, and its fanbase.

Now I really can't comprehend why Bandai (who won the bid for Naruto's license) delayed the story for more than 70 episodes. At first I thought it was because the anime was too fast and may overtake the manga so they had to slow down. But then, the story has gone far enough so as to close in on the climax, and the anime is swarmed with horrible filler plots. How could the author allow this to happen?

Ahem. Anyway, am I theorizing too much? Or rather, just ranting. My conclusion is that, no matter how much they get back to the story and really superb animation, I don't think that they're going to get back all the fans that used to love Naruto. And that's what makes me sad.