>>717524123
I fell for actually watching Naruto when I was a kid because the early Zabuza arc was great and I thought that Naruto would actually eventually cover actual NINJA things instead of just being random magic and punching shit.
And when that wasn't apparent, I was really hoping the show would reveal some twist that the Ninja Villages are just small rural hick villages and the rest of the world was dominated by larger sci-fi advanced cities ruled by cybernetic samurai and daimyo, and that the ninja were just really small-time compared to those guys and they have to overcome something that's far bigger than them.
Instead the series started being less and less about Ninja while still calling everyone and everything a fucking Ninja. It got progressively fucking annoying that a Ninja wasn't some special stealth unit, but apparently every fucking soldier is a ninja, every village is a ninja village. Every war is a fucking ninja war, and Samurai are just glorified fodder bodyguards that are technically also ninja in a fucking weird way. It's actually fucking retarded. For some bizarre reason, Ninja have the same role as regular soldiers, samurai and Omnyodo while also having the role of a Shinobi. I only really liked the Ninja Storm games, but barring that, I pretty much dropped it.

Hell, even now, I don't think there's ever been an interesting Ninja manga/anime set in the modern or near-future period that I can think of, only some historical period era Edo stuff (which I don't mind, but I like the urban ninja aesthetic from the 80s). The closest is Under Ninja, which I really like so far and it's pretty much what I wanted, but I don't trust Kengo Hanazawa as a writer because he has a track record for writing good manga with the worst and most retarded possible fucking endings.