Video:

TV Rips, except for the first episode (yes, kids, the first R2 volume of Naruto has ONE WHOLE EPISODE ON IT. Whoo.) Pretty nice looking TV rips though-much better looking than, say, Volumes 10+ of One Piece. Quality stuff, but after seeing the first episode the drop in quality is a bit hard to take.

Audio:

No problems that I heard. Great soundtrack,too-gotta love that opening song! "I wanna rock" indeed.

Subtitle:

These seem to be from a fansub script, which seems accurate as the show is being fansubbed about as fast as Japan can come out with new episodes. They're pretty good, much better than the majority of HK discs. They'd almost be R1 quality but for some small but significant problems- 1-No song subtitles. So forget it if you want to know what the opening lyrics mean. Okay, the closing (which is excellent) is all in english, but the singer has a heavy accent so even after eight episodes I'm not sure of all the lyrics.Subs would help. 2-Certian signs and onscreen text are untranslated. This is very obvious in the aftermath of the "Cat Rescue Scene" in episode six, for example. Sometimes these signs are fairly important to the plot,too. For example, the Kanji on the ghost image of Sakura that sometimes shows up is supposed to read "INNER SAKURA." Those gags make so much more sense if you know that. 3-Missing words. Sometimes words are left out, and for some reason they seem to pick the keywords in a sentance to drop. For example-"You will if you lose any more blood." The line should be "You will DIE if you lose any more blood." Without that one little word, an important scene makes a lot less sense. This happens more than once. 4-THEY DIDN'T SUB THE PREVIEWS!!! Now, that's just lazy. Despite these problems, the subs are overall above average and usually quite understandable

Comment:

Menus-Everything is easily selectable and all menu screens are animated. A very classy, easy-to-navigate menu! One gripe-each episode has five chapters, but you can only select the episode itself from the menu. Oh, and click on "play all" to see the Manga Animated Logo of Doom. My, aren't they moving up in the world. Chapters: OP,Act 1, Act 2, ED, Preview Extras: Zilch Content: Wow, what a fun little show! If you're a fan of the manga in the US Shonen Jump, then you should enjoy this series-it pretty much follows the manga word-for-word (though I still think the manga is slightly better, mainly because the art style used here "cleans up" the manga style a bit too much) Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke and Kakashi are all great, orginal charecters-they each have some quirk, be it Naruto's lonliness (expressed via pranks and arrogance) Sakura's inner voice, Sasuke's quiet competance or Kakashi's tough-love approach to teaching. The first episode is one of the best introductions to a series I've ever seen, and things just get better from there (well, besides the lackluster second episode) the show loves to trick you into thinking the wrong things have happened-like any good Ninja, its greatest strength is misdirection. It can also be gut-bustingly funny. But the best thing about it is that it feels like nothing else out there-it really feels like something new, exciting and different. Give Naruto a try-it's a breath of fresh air in an anime world full of angsty robot pilots and girls in maid outfits.

Video:

I checked the first few eps and the quality was really nice even on a hihg resol monitor and the colours very vibrant. This time AV did not wait till Vol 3 to skip to tv rips. I skipped to eps 8 & i thought my eyes had betrayed me but there it was, grainy & very dull tv rips. I have some very good tv rips but there is no question about it, these ones are crap.

Subtitle:

From a quick check the subs seem quite good. There is some minor engrish & grammar / spelling issues but nothing which required much thought to understand.

Comment:

I am not that fussy about picture quality but half the fun of this series is the vibrant & loud colours. Sub-wise it is fine so far. Picture wise i don't think i could go 100 or so episodes of it. In any case this seems to be the stuff that will be put on USA TV so just wait.