10 KiB
How much Naruto knowledge is needed to read 'Time Braid'?
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Author: u/Salivanth *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2o482k/how_much_naruto_knowledge_is_needed_to_read_time/
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Score: 8
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Created: 2014-12-03T03:12:05
Post:
I love time-loop stories, and I love rational stories, so Time Braid seems right up my alley. The only problem is, I've never read Naruto. Is a strong knowledge of the show needed to get Time Braid, or would a few paragraphs/pages of background knowledge suffice?
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+14] Time flies like an arrow (19 minutes later)
I read Time Braid without knowing a single thing about Naruto, and I got along just fine. I'm sure that having an understanding of the anime/manga would help, but I don't think it's entirely necessary.
u/Salivanth [+5] (22 hours later)
Going to hijack the top comment to thank everyone who replied. I'm halfway through now, I prepared by reading a plot synopsis of the Chunin Exam arc so I knew what was 'supposed' to happen in the original exam, and looked up the different types of jutsu when someone here told me it might get confusing otherwise. Other than that I just occasionally googled stuff that I needed to know.
You guys were right, I have gotten the feeling of missing references a bit, but it's still a great fic regardless.
u/ancientcampus [+1] juggling kittens (5 months later)
That's good to know, thanks for everyone's data points.
u/eaglejarl [+9] (16 hours later)
I agree with everyone else -- you don't need much. The following should cover most of it:
- Chakra: magic energy. Every living thing has it
- Jutsu: a magic spell
- Handseal: magic gestures you use to cast jutsu
- Ninjutsu: "magic" techniques like creating matter and energy (fireballs, etc)
- Taijutsu: martial arts
- Fuinjutsu: seals. Writing that does magic -- for example, a storage seal is like a bag of holding: it lets you put stuff into extradimensional storage and pull it out later.
- Genjutsu: illusions
- Naruto is the jinchuriki of the Kyubi. The Kyubi is the most powerful of nine extremely powerful demons called the Tailed Beasts. (The Kyubi is the Nine Tailed Beast, others have eight, seven, etc) A jinchuriki is a person who has one of the Tailed Beasts sealed inside them.
- Naruto has immense chakra reserves to start with, and can draw on the Kyubi's power in a real jam. He also has extremely fast regeneration (heals a bad beating in a day or two); it's probably due to the Kyubi's power, but it might be a bloodline.
- Bloodlines are genetic powers -- for example, the Hyuuga are famous for their Byakugan power, which gives them 360 degree vision, ability to see chakra, etc.
- The Kyubi attacked Konoha (the village) twelve years ago. Naruto's father sealed it into baby Naruto, then both Mom and Dad died. The villagers all know about the Kyubi and hate Naruto for it.
That'll probably cover it.
EDIT: Forgot something:
- genin. Apprentice ninja
- chunin: Journeyman ninja
- jonin: Master ninja
- Hokage: Ruler of the village, very powerful ninja. The current one (Sandaime, "Third Hokage") is one of the very few people who likes Naruto. The Yondaime ("Fourth Hokage") was Naruto's father. Sarutobi, the current Hokage was the third Hokage, then Minato (the Yondaime) replaced him, then Sarutobi had to take the job back again because there was no one else to do it. That makes him both Third and Fifth, but he's never referred to as Fifth.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+12] Godric Gryffindor (19 hours later)
It was the first Naruto thing I ever read, and wooooo was there dissonance when I tried reading the second Naruto fic.
u/Cariyaga [+3] Kyubey did nothing wrong (2 days later)
Same. It pretty much got me into Naruto fanfiction in general. That and sheer volume; as many Naruto fanfics as there are out there, there's bound to be some good ones!
u/rumblestiltsken [+3] (3 days later)
Pretty thin on the ground though, right?
Time braid. Team 7.
...
I have read hundreds of Naruto fanfics, and literally no others stuck in my mind as good. Some I have sentimental memories of, but not actually good.
u/Cariyaga [+1] Kyubey did nothing wrong (5 days later)
There are quite a few good ones, I've read, though few that're truly /great/
u/Nevereatcars [+3] The Greatest Is Behind (2 months later)
Seriously though, any recs?
u/Cariyaga [+5] Kyubey did nothing wrong (2 months later)
Let's see...
The Mouse of Konoha, by Obsidian Dreamer; Naruto: The Gamer Files, by Maxfic; and Naruto: Shinobi Institute of Performance Analysis, by MaxFic
Those are the main ones I recall. It's been too long since I've read most of them.
u/rumblestiltsken [+1] (6 days later)
Any recs?
u/rumblestiltsken [+7] (3 days later)
On a side note, you also don't need to have any knowledge of Ah My Goddess.
u/ancientcampus [+2] juggling kittens (5 months later)
Seconded. I hadn't even heard of Ah My Goddess before reading Time Braid - I didn't even realize I was missing references. I've re-read it twice, and I still don't think I'm missing details.
u/Oraanu [+6] (29 minutes later)
Personally, I had never read any Naruto before reading the story and got along alright. I did look up a lot of the characters as they came up, because I wanted to visualize them properly, and the story (pretty naturally for fanfiction) didn't spend much space on character descriptions. I also read some of the backstories and power descriptions for those I looked up, which probably helped as well.
Basically, if you're cool with occasionally Googling characters and things you don't get, you'll be fine. But don't feel like you actually have to consume the source canon first.
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (17 hours later)
the story (pretty naturally for fanfiction) didn't spend much space on character descriptions
This is one of the things that really irks me about fanfic. Descriptions aren't just so people can visualize the character, they're so that you can tell us something about the character and who they are. That's in addition to the fact that some people (as evidenced by this thread) read fanfic without having a good grasp of the source material.
u/Stop_Sign [+2] (a month later)
But when you read 20+ fanfics in a genre, you don't want to be reading the same descriptions over and over. In hpmor, he skips a lot of visualization in the first interaction with McGonagall
u/ToaKraka [+4] https://i.imgur.com/OQGHleQ.png (47 minutes later)
I imagine you might at least want to get pictures of the important characters into your head, so that you can visualize what's happening--the Naruto Wikia has lots of good pictures of everything.
(I've read this story five times--it's my favorite book ever! I can only imagine how much fun you're getting into! Enjoy your journey!)
u/nerdguy1138 [+2] GNU Terry Pratchett (5 days later)
That's exactly what I did. It worked out great. I got all I needed from the wikia
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+3] Utopian Smut Peddler (6 hours later)
I helps to have watched the first season. While doing the dishes or something. You don't need to study it or anything, and that vague level of knowledge is all you really need. Read the wiki to add to that as needed (though it really isn't).
Or watch just the Chunin Exam arc, to get an idea of the setting and timing of events, plus the season two Lee fight to get a feeling for the action pacing. That's the best part in the entire series anyway.
u/None [+3] (10 hours later)
Fr an optimal experience, I'd recommend reading the manga up through the Chuunin exams and consulting the wiki for character information. Not necessary, but helpful.
u/Igigigif [+2] IT Foxgirl (22 minutes later)
I've recently read time braid with zero knowledge of naruto and enjoyed it. Most details are easy to infer from the story but a few are a bit confusing, especially the names for general types of jitsu. Honestly, I'd recommend watching the naruto spoof series fandub (aka naruto abriged), just to get some background.
u/MadScientist14159 [+2] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (17 hours later)
If you're going to read Time Braid:
Not much knowledge of Naruto is needed.
A lot of people get pissed off because it contains graphic torture scenes with no warning.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (23 hours later)
- It's also got a lot of sex that some people will argue doesn't really need to be in the story (see all the discussions from every time this was reccomended in this subreddit).
u/JosephLeee [+2] (a day later)
- Some concepts in it are not from canon Naruto.
u/None [+1] (10 hours later)
very very little.
you may occassionally want to google a character to get a visual of them
u/gommm [+1] (15 hours later)
I've never read or watched Naruto and I enjoyed it. It's not a problem at all. I actually like to read good fanfiction without knowing anything about the original story. I'm doing the same with Pokemon the Origin of Species.
u/thatsciencegeek [+1] (16 hours later)
I also read it without knowing anything about Naruto. Some chapters in, when I felt I didn't understand some of the background sufficiently, I spent a little bit of time looking up the definitions of the words of Naruto-verse on wikia and it was sufficient.
u/ancientcampus [+1] juggling kittens (5 months later)
There's a lot of people here saying they never read/watched Naruto before reading Time Braid. My largest fear is that Hinata's character would make less sense, without the context of her uber-crush and abusive situation. To such readers: do you pick that up well enough from the story's context?