Naruto is overrated, and is average at its best

Rebuttals to opponent's case. There isn't really a "case" yet, so this will be short. I'll try to figure out my opponent's points here. 1) Naruto = fun to watch A: it would be funny B: it has fight scenes About the funny part, we'll get back to that later. But the jokes are clearly made for a younger age group. The fight scenes can be entertaining, but I have already criticized them for returning factors. That makes the fights nothing more than just simple entertainment! 2) entertaining, but with a deep and enriching story. Here it fails for both age groups: younger kids are annoyed by the enriching story, older viewers are annoyed by the unfunny jokes which don't entertain at all. Opponent kind of agrees that it deserves to be criticized as a generic shonen. And, my opponent states that voice acting is awful. Okay, back to my points: 1) My opponent says that you COULD feel bad for Naruto, however, we're clearly not meant to identify ourselves with him. In all ways, his arrogance is something nobody connects to, and in Japan, blonde hair and whiskers just makes it even harder to identify yourself with his looks. I think that for these reasons, we can't truly feel sorry for Naruto over a total of 200 episodes. Naruto would not be useless, says my opponent, his example being Haku (tailed beast, so boring) and Gaara (The toad did everything, Naruto just mentally made Gaara switch sides). About luck, it is clear that there are numerous examples. Kiba and the farting, but simply the fact that he got matched up against Kiba and not gaara. Had he faced Gaara, his carreer would've been over. Had he not stolen the multi shadow clone technique scroll, he wouldn't have ever been able to do ANYTHING! Not to mention, it takes him an awful long time to actually master the rasengan. 2) The writer's fantasy: my opponent only comments on the tailed beasts. First, it's chakra and not Karma. Second, I wouldn't mind the tailed beasts as much if they looked cooler and were featured less often. Their fights ARE boring, after all. 3) Must apologise that now that I know he has not seen shippuden yet, that telling him about Orochimaru was a huge spoiler... He says Kimimaro was a sad character, to which I agree, but he simply came and went. We could not feel sorry for him like we did for Zabuza, or for Pain. That happens too often here: the writer feels the need for side villains, which simply come as a villain, then lose the fight, and then a flashback to explain their sad story. This structure won't get us connected to characters, though. The voter will agree that the sole case of Tobi is one where the writer DID succeed. Will not spoil why, though. Also, my opponent hasn't given a good reason why side characters such as Rock Lee or Tenten should stay alive. Their storyline seems used up, and while Lee is fun to watch, Tenten is actually very boring. I'm sorry I forgot to mention that Asuma died too, making for an awesome revenge Arc. We needed to see more of that throughout the series, and less of the Naruto being a brat during Part 1. The way characters are killed off could be a lot better. The example of Itachi still counts, as that fight should have been a lot more interesting. Sasuke using his cursed seal isn't exactly what we were waiting for. I think all of us can agree that there should have been a better fight for Itachi before his dissapearance from the show! 4) Con thinks Ichiraku ramen was an easter egg, while I highly doubt new writers would be concerned with such things in their series. I'm very certain this was a readymade, as he ate there daily just like Naruto. Naruto went to the academy, the writer went to college. Clearly, the author put some of his own joys into Naruto. About the mythology: I have no problems with the showing of mythology. In fact, it should be praised. But the viewer won't truly notice much of this, other then the fact that this fictional world is entirely based on readymades. Almost none of the good stuff comes from the author's mind. Neji's gentle fist technique, exists Handsigns come from buddhist signs Sharingan techniques from goddess of sun, moon etc. This show should therefore not be praised for its originality, but only for the recounting of good stories. My true argument here was that the writers own imagination fails to keep up with the mythology. Con says it would be boring if everything already existed, but I am a 100% certain that none of you had heard these Japanese stories before. So why does the writer still add his own stupid ideas such as a "puppet master" which makes for boring fights? 5) I have never said an Arc was 20 minutes. I said that a small story (episode) of 20 minutes was shown within an Arc. I also doubt any TV station was willing to show a whole Arc non-stop, making it hard to see an entire Arc without missing anything. People who watch it solely on TV, will miss out on things, and because of that they can't watch the show: just like con says, don't watch it if you don't know what's going on. So on TV, this show is completely worthless. 6) My opponent ignored my argumentation here: is it worth watching these characters develop, spending literally 24 hours of episodes with little good only assuming it'll get better? Does that outweigh the time spent watching Naruto suck at being a ninja? It wasn't all bad, no, definately not. But I believe the show relies on its length to get as much attention as it does now. I would have never continued watching this if I wasn't constantly reassured by my friend that "in shippuden, big fights will take place". I was constantly mourning that no villain seemed to be as good as Zabuza and throughout the months of watching, sometimes I really got fed up with it. But this is personal, ofcourse. Overall though, I have shown why this show is only average rather than complete amazement throughout the WHOLE series. My opponent says we would not discuss fillers but I have given a very clear reason why that is mandatory: now, they insert important things for the main story in the fillers. Capturing the three-tails for example. Or all non-flashback moments in the lost tower promotion arc. Plenty of reasons why we should be considerate about fillers. After all, they're shown on TV too as if they are equal to the rest of the show. Conclusion? Fillers matter. Besides, the one watching on TV cannot simply skip these episodes. Con seems inconsiderate saying that last round i did not have any rebuttals to his argumentation. I thought it was clear that each person first posts his arguments, and then comments on the other's arguments the next round? Also, you haven't really given me much to refute. You have yet to prove why this show would be more than average. More than worth watching even, you have to prove that it deserves all the fans and attention it currently has. You haven't done that yet and neither are we done talking about the negative points to the show. Even if you were to refute my points, you have yet to make your own case.