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Even for Naruto, it goes to show that no matter how popular a series might be, it can’t please everyone. Naruto has plenty of storylines, history, worldbuilding, and more, all the while delivered through arcs, or current stories that push the narrative forward. But sometimes, an arc just doesn’t really hit the high bar, and isn’t as good as it could have been.
For this list, the arcs that were complained about the most, or at the very least, had the biggest detractors, are going to be listed. While some episodes in each arc are of the highest quality, this article will look at the overall package.
Note: This article contains spoilers of the Naruto anime and manga, and reflects the writer’s personal views. Some of the embeds contain depictions of canon-typical violence. Discretion is advised.
Naruto arcs no one likes
10) Pain Arc
With a big bad guy capable of flattening an entire village all by himself, most readers would think that the Pain Arc would be one for the ages. And for the most part, that is true, however, the arc’s questionable acts of killing off fan favorites and some poor animation mean that this arc is sitting on this list.
While it wouldn’t be so bad if the pacing was tightened up a bit, it remains that the Pain Arc is a pain to sit through.
9) Five Kage Summit
Want to know what not to do when writing a story about ninjas that can summon giant toads? Politics. While it’s a sad factor in life that political turmoil influences many people, that kind of thing is usually relegated to the background in fictional stories, and for good reason. It can be boring, annoying, and sometimes makes characters do things they normally never do.
It doesn’t help that in this arc, everyone’s personalities take a massive swing for the negative, and they start acting like total jerks to each other. No one says that a series can’t be dark, but for the love of god, know the difference between edgy and good storytelling.
8) Filler Arcs
The Naruto anime is a long, ferocious franchise with many, many filler arcs. And listing them all out here would fill out every slot on this list, as well as needing a whole new one just to even things out.
That’s not to say there aren’t good filler arcs, but when it comes down to it, most of them are just skippable.
7) Danzo Arc
Sometimes, all it takes to ruin an arc is a character, and Danzo in Naruto fits that bill pretty well. Cowardly, arrogant, foolish, and honestly kind of dumb, Danzo might as well be the personal arch-villain to Sasuke, and that says it all.
Danzo’s arc, for lack of a better term, is the kind of wind down arc a series has when it had a heavy scene or two, and needs time to cool off with a disposable villain. In a way, this makes Danzo sad.
6) Fourth Shinobi War
War is, quite naturally, an awful thing, even in Naruto. These days, it doesn’t take much to deduce that, but in Naruto, it's safe to say that the Fourth Great Shinboi War wasn’t quite as grand as many wanted it to be. For starters, it wasn’t really a ‘war’, as in it was fought between nations. Rather, it was against a terrorist cell and a mad zombie back from the dead.
What really annoys people about this war is the rampant power scaling, odd plot hooks, characters coming back from the dead, and more.
5) Kazekage Rescue arc
The first arc of Naruto Shippuden stars Naruto trying to rescue Gaara after he was kidnapped. By all accounts, this would be a great return to the series, sadly it doesn’t really do much with the plot. The arc takes forever to get going, the characters have made some questionable choices, and the worf effect is in full force this time around.
Of course, it also introduced Madara, who is divisive, to say the least.
4) Chunin Exams
One of Naruto’s early arcs, and one that introduced the other villages and other ninjas from behind the Village Hidden in the Leaves. The stage was set for a tense, nail-biting arc that required the characters to go through all sorts of trials and tribulations.
But the audience was randomly jumping around various characters and plot points, then into a fighting tournament arc, and then into another arc. It basically came out as a bit of a mess.
3) Kaguya Strikes
When an author needs to kill a bad guy and amp up the stakes at the same time, the most common way is to introduce another, bigger bad guy, and then have them replace the first one, and then have the heroes beat the newest one.
That’s pretty much what happened in Naruto with Kaguya, the mother of all Chakras, being introduced. While Kaguya on her own is fine, the simple fact of the matter is that she came out of nowhere and disrupted a large number of other arcs that were going on at the same time.
2) Search for Tsunade Arc
The Hokage is dead, the status quo has been thrown out the window, and Naruto has just been sent out to find a drunken gambling woman.
No shame to the future Hokage, but at the time, most fans didn’t like the Search for Tsunade arc because of its slow pacing and characters being introduced out of nowhere. But it did introduce the audience to the Rasengan, so it wasn’t all bad.
1) Tenchi Bridge Mission
The Tenchi bridge mission is the arc that introduces newcomers Sai and Yamato to Team 7, and for better or for worse, it's one of the most hated arcs in the series.
Poor pacing mixed with the questionable reception of the new arrivals means that fans didn’t really enjoy this stretch of the episodes. It was like filler, only in Naruto canon.
