Jutsu (Naruto) - Reception

Reception

Shonen Jump has featured several popularity polls for jutsu in the series. In every official poll, Rasengan has ranked first, and Chidori has ranked second. These results were reversed in a similar poll in the first Naruto databook, in which Chidori was ranked first, and Rasengan second. In a top ten list of jutsu compiled by IGN's Ramsey Isler, Rasengan was ranked first, and Chidori second. Several pieces of merchandise have been released featuring Naruto characters performing jutsu, including action figures and clothing.

Several publications for anime and manga have commented on the use of jutsu in the series. IGN called jutsu "one of the most entertaining parts of the Naruto franchise", and noted that "the complicated but impressive-looking hand gestures, the unique physical attributes, and the pure unadulterated destructive power of the ninjutsu are some of the things that make the series wildly popular". T.H.E.M. Anime Reviews claimed that it was in "fight/action scenes that Naruto receives is highest accolades", and praised the "invigorating and unique fighting styles/techniques manage to continuously infuse action sets with life". However, it criticized the "overemployment of certain special techniques" such as Naruto Uzumaki's Shadow Clone Technique, noting that the fights became "bland and repetitive" over time. Anime News Network (ANN) considered the structure of battles "repetitive to a fault — a series of competing power-ups followed by an elegiac coda", but mollified by the series' "winning formula: the villains are vile, the heroes sympathetic, and the stakes high".

In a review of the eighth through tenth volumes of the manga, ANN lambasted the fact the fights were frequently "interrupted by long-winded (and sometimes redundant) explanations of strategies and special techniques", but praised the visual presentation of the fights, noting that "the fights are staged with a clear eye for geography, movement and the human form, and are bursting with so much visual energy that not even the flashbacks and tedious explanations can dampen them". For the visuals in the anime, ANN made note of the fight between Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha in episodes 132–134, noting the "impressiveness of the Sasuke fight's visuals", in which "Naruto clones explode from a lake like ninja-shaped surface-to-air missiles and glowing energy limbs ambush enemies from underground and cling to rock faces like neon prehensile tails". Although ANN praised the animators who "put all the love they could into the fight", it criticized the slow plot pacing that led up to the fight, and the fight's tedious structure.