Whenever a series is remade to better follow the original source, whether it's an official remake or a fan edit, the entire old version becomes irrelevant and the series starts whenever the new version was released.
This is true of Dragon Ball Recut, Dragon Ball Kai, Sailor Moon Crystal, Hunter x Hunter, etc, etc. And it's also true of Naruto Kai.
Naruto Kai is the only true representative of the Naruto anime, everything that came before it may as well have never existed. Which is why I've updated the chronology portion of my top anime rankings to reflect the same. I also did this for Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Guyver, etc. When a new and better version is released, that's the only release of the anime as far as I'm concerned. For future archival and watching purposes, only the remade versions matter.
Some day I hope to do the same for One Piece. If One Pace ever creates a complete version of the original work I'll happily scrap everything that came before then as well.
Naruto Kai is immeasurably better than the original. It cuts away all the useless time wasters and just tells us the story as it was meant to be, as it was written. It's unthinkable to ever return to the useless Naruto we've had to endure up until this point for all these wasted years.
It isn't perfect. There are some annoying technical glitches. The openings and endings are all gone when I would've preferred seeing them all at least once a piece. A lot of scenes are still allowed to drag on too long. A lot of recap recollections should have been expunged but were allowed to remain. But compared to the filler-plagued junk we had before, it's like a whole nother series.
And this new series, Naruto Kai, was released all at once, in its completed form, earlier this year. Which means this year now contains the full worth of the last 20 years of aired Naruto, they all count towards the quality of this year alone. Which means 2018 is a fantastic year in anime, and its #1 release is insanely better than any other #1 release of any previous year. We're talking 72+ volumes worth of material here! How can anyone beat that?
Who needs Hugtto Pretty Cure, Bolt, or Steins;Gate 0 when you've got Naruto Kai? It turns out 2018 is going to do just fine anime wise.
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As I was rewatching Naruto Kai, I also came across two really good songs. I eventually figured out they were Bunta and Jiraiya's Theme, which I already owned but for some reason hadn't included in my hall of fame yet. That's been corrected. I took out a bad song from Vagrant Story and a remix from Final Fantasy 12, so the music hall of fame is still the same song total: 5292 songs, 12 days in continuous play length.
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