Fans Agree This Is The Worst Naruto Filler Arc
After it first aired in 2002, Naruto fed fans a consistent stream of ninja content for 15 years. The show and its sequel, Naruto: Shippuden, ran for a combined 720 episodes (via CBR). It was a majorly successful franchise that quickly became one of the top names in anime and manga, and Naruto proceeded to spawn movies, games, and more spinoff series over the years.
However, not all of the show's episodes are winners. In fact, not all of them even advance the show's core plot. Naruto is infamous for its high volume of filler content, which departs from the main story to focus on a less-important (and often non-canon) side story. These episodes are usually not written by the original manga's author, Masashi Kishimoto. Instead, anime often catches up to the manga, and the creators are forced to produce filler to give the manga author more time to advance the story.
According to Anime Filler List, the two shows have a combined 295 filler episodes. That makes nearly 41 percent of the anime inconsequential filler that fans can choose to skip over. There's more filler in Naruto than the runtime of some of the world's most popular anime, and most of it is nowhere near as good as the main story. So that begs the question: Which Naruto filler arc is the worst?
The worst filler arc in Naruto
Fans took to Reddit several years ago over this exact issue, and seemed to think the worst filler arc is The Allied Mom Force!! from Naruto Shippuden.
This storyline followed the children and mothers of the Leaf Village as they defended their homes from a sumo wrestler assault. Here's the issue, however: This humorous sumo attack happens during one of the final key conflicts in all of Naruto, the Fourth Shinobi World War. While the show's main characters are off risking their lives fighting the series' primary antagonists, fans were subjected to watch a group of stereotypical housewives rebuff a gang of fat guys with frying pans.
"Let me remind you," wrote one Redditor. "There was a war with who knows how many battles going on at the time, including the fight between Kakashi and the Seven swordmen happened entirely off-screen, and this was the filler they came up with."
Needless to say, it's disappointing for fans to build themselves up for the show's final arc only to have those events delayed for such a ridiculous story. In many ways, The Allied Mom Force!! might not even be Naruto's most ridiculous filler. It just came at the worst possible time and broke the suspense created by one of the series' most important events.