Full episode recaps annoy me because it really shouldn't take that long to go over what hapened the last 12 episodes. And if it's only been that long, why bother? From episode 26 through where they are now, they haven't had a recap episode or half-episode that I can remember. Lots of flashbacks, but I don't mind those. Especially when Naruto has a flashback to Haku while he's fighting Gaara. That gave the series a more grand, epic feel knowing that the writers still have those events in mind as the characters would.

Going over the "newspaper report" episode, I found that most of it was reintroducing the characters and basic facts of the Naruto world. And it was done because they had moved to another time slot and wanted to catch everyone up with what was going on. It's forgivable, especially since it had its own little story to it (even though a lot of the footage for the "new" scenes was recycled), but still. It's a bit annoying to watch when you've just binged the entire series to that point on a slow weekend on campus.

Bottom line, I wouldn't really change anything or take anything out of the series. It's a damn great series. The recaps are annoying, but there're only 1.5 episodes that I remember being nothing but recap, and for a 83+ episode series, that's not bad at all.

And yes Konoha Rek, I am indeed buying Viz's releases of Naruto. For one, I don't want to get ahead of the anime. For another, I don't have the hard drive space. ^^;; And for another, Viz manga's a lot cheaper than it used to be, especially their Shonen Jump stuff.