Like they say, Love is the birth of ingenuity. Well, they don’t really say it but let’s just go with it.
In this time and era, you’ve probably heard countless stories of grand and romantic gestures. A gesture that means to show one’s grand love for his partner. A YouTuber, who goes by the name of Oceaniz, recently did something really similar. He re-edited the entirety of the Naruto series, for a single reason. And what reason, you might ask? Well, it was so that his girlfriend could watch the entire show with him. A true man of culture if you ask me.
The anime series Naruto is infamously known for the number of filler content it has. Although the anime was successful and loved by fans all over the world, it has a lot of, let’s just say unnecessary content. As the anime was airing alongside the manga, it used every possible way to buy time so that it could avoid catching up to the source material. These tactics include, but are not limited to, having entire seasons of fillers, ten-minute long flashbacks, countless useless reaction shots, and more. When it comes to the flashbacks, things get very messy, as certain sequences and scenes are repeated up to 20 different times, and each time without showing any new information. Although there are certain guides out there that aim to guide new viewers so that they can skip the fillers, but they aren’t exactly optimal since certain canon episodes only have a few minutes of new content. Certain fan edits also exist, which cut out all the non-manga scenes from the anime. While it does cut out the problems, it also robs the series of some of the best original moments.
In short, to deal with all these issues and so that his girlfriend could easily watch one of his favorite shows with him, Oceaniz decided to do it himself. That is, re-edited every single episode to make it so that the viewing experience was as optimal and entertaining as possible, all the while skipping needless scenes and retaining all the essential parts, dubbing it as “The Ocean Cut”.
Before setting out to perform this gargantuan task, Oceaniz decided to lay out some base rules. The series was going to be edited in the English dub. The format he set out to follow was to cut 3-6 episodes and turn them into movie-sized content, with their duration ranging from 50-120 minutes. Openings would only be included once per video, and endings would only be added when they enriched the experience. All filler wasn’t meant to be cut out. Oceaniz retained some of the content, which was anime original and added to the lore of the series, and compiled them into special themed episodes, per his own judgment. The entirety of the story would stay unaltered, except for one big exception, which we’ll discuss later.
So, he started re-editing the episodes in the order they were aired. First came Naruto, which was relatively simple to edit. There wasn’t nearly as much filler content in Part 1, so most of it was a breeze. Except for the ending arc. There are a whopping 90 episodes of filler between the canonical ending of Naruto, so he cut that out while maintaining the good parts.
Next came Shippuden, in which all the previously mentioned issues assume their final form. The overly egregious flashbacks, the spaced-out dialogue, and the flat-out bad pacing of the show. The filler content in this part was tough to edit out since the opening, and the ending of each filler episode bled into the cannon content of the series. While minimizing filler and flashback content, this part was finished as well.
Lastly, there remained the question of including or excluding the extra content from light novels and the other extra source materials. Oceaniz decided to add these since most of these were very good original content and added heavily to the enjoyment of the series.
With the ending right around the corner, Oceaniz decided to make the biggest change to the series in his version. He decided to make a completely custom credit sequence, which would tell you what each character was up to after the end of the series. It was a sweet way to tie up the project. The info on screen was taken from Boruto and also some creative liberties on Oceaniz’s part.
Now comes the exception we hinted at earlier, which would stray from the canonical story of the series. Oceaniz decided to change the fates of Orochimaru and Kabuto since it didn’t feel right to him that such major villains were allowed to walk scot-free at the end of the series.
Crunching down the numbers, watching the entirety of canon Naruto would take you roughly around 250 hours of watch time. Compare that to watching The Ocean Cut, which came down to nearly half of the canon runtime, which is 135 hours. And finally, all that work wasn’t for naught, since his girlfriend really liked and appreciated the series after they finished watching it. A little brotherly advice to his girlfriend, MARRY THE DUDE!
