His masters say he just wants attention—as an orphan, he feels alone and friendless. But he's also an outcast, for reasons he learns in the first episode of the long-running fan favorite Naruto. When he was an infant, a nine-tailed fox—a powerful, angry spirit—almost destroyed his village. The spirit of the fox was bound inside his body, and his people avoid him, worrying that it may someday escape.

As the series opens, a greedy rival reveals this information and more to Naruto in hopes of using him. But thanks to his plotting, Naruto finally manages to pass his initial test, become a first-level ninja and learn the powerful "Shadow Clone" jutsu, or ninja technique. This lets him duplicate himself many times and attack with many bodies, and combined with his homemade "sexy jutsu," which makes him briefly look like a buxom naked woman covered only by a few strands of strategically placed smoke, it's a devastating attack against weak-minded men.

But knowing these jutsu makes Naruto overconfident, and his arrogance and impatience to become a hokage, one of the highest-ranked ninjas, make him careless. While he's remarkably patient with Konohamaru, the even more hotheaded, incompetent and ambitious grandson of one of the village hokage, Naruto's first days of full ninja training go poorly. Assigned to a training group with his crush object, hyper-competitive Sakura, and her crush object, grim, quiet Sasuke, he launches headfirst and without thought into everything from winning Sakura's affections to defeating his sensei and completing his training.

Not the most promising beginning

Naruto is a massive ongoing hit in Japan; now in its eighth season, it's already run more than 180 episodes. It's been a hit here, too, both as manga (Viz publishes the English editions; volume 10 is due out in June) and as a Cartoon Network series. Inevitably, there are Nintendo game tie-ins and a collectible card game, too. Like many successful anime series, it requires some serious investments: in free time, for those who want to watch the whole thing, and in cash, for those who want to own it. But these initial episodes aren't the best way to convince someone that they should bother. Again, like many successful anime series, Naruto gets off to a slowish, awkward start that only hints at the drama and massive, sweeping plot arcs to come.

The first episode is actually very strong, with its hints of larger themes and its sweeping plot revelations. They come out in fairly ludicrous ways, with ninjas who are fighting for their lives pausing to deliver long expository monologues. But they still set up a great deal to come. The series' light, airy, colorful design is also promising—every bit player looks like the star of his or her own ninja series, with unique enough characterizations that it's easy to believe they'll all be coming back in their own plot arcs.

But the pacing in these early episodes tends to drag, as plot points are repeated over and over or Naruto repeatedly makes the same boneheaded moves. The series goes to some trouble to establish its vocabulary—much like Avatar: The Last Airbender, it takes place in a richly detailed world with plenty of room for exploration and character development—but the story grinds to a halt whenever anyone starts explaining, say, the ranks of ninja, or how a particular jutsu works. Naruto is a fun and exciting series, but it may actually be better in large doses, so the slow pacing doesn't seem to hold things up—as it particularly does here when the disc ends on a cliffhanger. Newbies may want to wait until a few more DVDs are available, then watch them all at once.