# Kid Dies Imitating Naruto **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 12, 2008, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057 "2008-03-12T01:37:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/21 "2008-03-12T12:23:58Z")
[QUOTE=DKW] And what, praytell, is the cool factor in _sticking one’s head in the sand??_ [/QUOTE] I dunno. Antivaccinationists do it all the time. There’s a sort of grim irony in the idea of someone named _Codey_ having to be resuscitated. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swallowed_My_Cellphone)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/22 "2008-03-12T14:45:59Z")
[QUOTE=madmonk28] Kids do stupid things. When I was ten I probably did some stupid stuff that could have killed me. [/QUOTE] Me too, but I never did anything that was so uncomfortable. I’d had really stupid “cool ideas” but anything bad that happened was something that happened suddenly and unexpectedly (well “unexpectedly” to me. An adult may have considered the dumbass injuries totally predictable.). Letting people bury my head in sand would have been slow, itchy, with sand getting in my ears, possibly my eyes even if they were squeezed shut, and probably my nostrils. That seems so UNfun I don’t know how he managed to sit there long enough for his head to be buried unless it was accidental (or it was a prank and the other kids got him to voluntarily stick his head in a hole and they shoved a mess of dirt over his head not knowing it would be too heavy for him to get out.) ---
**Author:** ![Trunk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/87869e/32.png) [@Trunk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trunk)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/23 "2008-03-12T15:00:47Z")
Haven’t 5th graders outgrown cartoons about ninjas? Poor kid. He had a lifetime of nerdocons and not getting laid to look forward to. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/24 "2008-03-12T15:12:31Z")
I’m still waiting for a kid to try and swim out to a whale off the West Coast so he can be eaten ala Jonah. ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/25 "2008-03-12T15:13:08Z")
They’re kids. They most likely got caught up in the fantasy or the excitement and well, we see what happened. I feel terrible for the kids who agreed to bury him–that’s a lifelong scar and therapy right there. I can’t see this as anything but a tragic accident. And even in 5th grade–I’d poke my head out every once in a while to check on kids. (but all I would likely see is the kids messing in the sandbox from a distance–so what good that would do, I don’t know). Is this a cartoon? Anime is cartoon–do these kids run off cliffs and expect to hang in the air like Wiley Coyote, too? Even a 5 year old knows the difference between cartoon and real life. Maybe Codey (poor kid) had some learning um, delays? ---
**Author:** ![Jayn\_Newell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Jayn\_Newell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jayn_Newell)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/26 "2008-03-12T15:18:27Z")
[QUOTE=eleanorigby] Is this a cartoon?? [/QUOTE] I find anime, on average, to be more adult than American cartoons (not to say there isn’t a lot of kiddie stuff, too, but contrast that to, say, Ghost in the Shell, and they’re not even in the same ballpark). Naruto isn’t as unrealistic as say, Bugs Bunny, but still you have people standing on the ceiling or walking on water, breathing fire, breaking rocks with their bare hands, etc. And people die often enough (albeit not very graphically–they save that for mere wounds) that I’m not sure why anyone would want to imitate it. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/27 "2008-03-12T15:26:14Z")
I’m having a really hard time envisioning how this happened. Like, the process is just not gelling in my mind. If the sand was only 1 feet deep, that means his body had to have been sticking out at a good bit of length, right? At some point during the burial, wouldn’t the kid realized “whoa, can’t breathe, time out” and pulled his head out? Unless his friends were doing a killer quick job of throwing sand on him, and unless his head was massively big and his body so small that he couldn’t get the leverage to free himself, I’m not getting how this happened. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/28 "2008-03-12T15:43:36Z")
[QUOTE=you with the face] I’m having a really hard time envisioning how this happened. Like, the process is just not gelling in my mind. If the sand was only 1 feet deep, that means his body had to have been sticking out at a good bit of length, right? At some point during the burial, wouldn’t the kid realized “whoa, can’t breathe, time out” and pulled his head out? Unless his friends were doing a killer quick job of throwing sand on him, and unless his head was massively big and his body so small that he couldn’t get the leverage to free himself, I’m not getting how this happened. [/QUOTE] I’m guessing he got a mouth/noseful of sand, got panicked and disoriented and just sort of freaked out rather then pulling himself up. Honestly for all the talk of how stupid the kid must’ve been, its not obvious to me that it was even that dangerous. I remember burying each other at the beach, laying a T-shirt over the persons face and covering their head so they could do the “zombie rising from the grave” act. As long as you keep it out of your noise/mouth, you can actually breath through a decent amount of loose sand. Seems more like dumb luck then anything else. ---
**Author:** ![Acid\_Lamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Acid\_Lamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acid_Lamp)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/29 "2008-03-12T15:46:47Z")
[QUOTE=you with the face] I’m having a really hard time envisioning how this happened. Like, the process is just not gelling in my mind. If the sand was only 1 feet deep, that means his body had to have been sticking out at a good bit of length, right? At some point during the burial, wouldn’t the kid realized “whoa, can’t breathe, time out” and pulled his head out? Unless his friends were doing a killer quick job of throwing sand on him, and unless his head was massively big and his body so small that he couldn’t get the leverage to free himself, I’m not getting how this happened. [/QUOTE] Exactly. self preservation would have kicked in at some point. One foot of sand? Gimme a break. Methinks the kiddies might have been playing a more nasty game than they are letting on, and letting Naruto take the fall. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/30 "2008-03-12T15:51:35Z")
And they would’ve gotten away with it, if it weren’t for us meddling adults! ---
**Author:** ![Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swallowed_My_Cellphone)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/31 "2008-03-12T15:52:49Z")
[QUOTE=you with the face] At some point during the burial, wouldn’t the kid realized “whoa, can’t breathe, time out” and pulled his head out? Unless his friends were doing a killer quick job of throwing sand on him, and unless his head was massively big and his body so small that he couldn’t get the leverage to free himself, I’m not getting how this happened. [/QUOTE] That’s what I was sort of musing above. Best guess: they dug a deep hole, he stuck his head in and then they just shoved all the dirt back in, almost in one fell swoop. He’d have a tough time getting leverage because pushing against the sand, the sand would just move the sand. A chart on a website says the average weight of eleven-year-old boys is about 85 lbs. The smaller bags of kitty litter I get are 10-12 lbs. If the kid was lying down with 10 lbs of sand on his head, and nothing solid to grab for leverage, I can see it being hard for him to get himself out of it. I can almost guarantee I’ve been partially buried by diving into a snowbank or pile of leaves as a kid, but powder snow and leaves don’t weigh much. The kids probably underestimated the weight of the sand. Poor kid. ETA: > [@Acid Lamp](#): > > Methinks the kiddies might have been playing a more nasty game than they are letting on, and letting Naruto take the fall. I’m inclined to agree with this actually. I think it was more of a prank gone bad. ---
**Author:** ![Flutterby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Flutterby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flutterby)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/32 "2008-03-12T15:53:20Z")
[QUOTE=you with the face] I’m having a really hard time envisioning how this happened. Like, the process is just not gelling in my mind. If the sand was only 1 feet deep, that means his body had to have been sticking out at a good bit of length, right? At some point during the burial, wouldn’t the kid realized “whoa, can’t breathe, time out” and pulled his head out? Unless his friends were doing a killer quick job of throwing sand on him, and unless his head was massively big and his body so small that he couldn’t get the leverage to free himself, I’m not getting how this happened. [/QUOTE] The article says he was buried from his head to his chest (which took me a bit to realize he must’ve been laying down, not head first into a hole dug in the sandbox which I first read it as..). If they packed it on, probably starting at the chest, he could easily not have the body strength to struggle free when he panicked. At the same point, having been a picked on kid who would’ve (and did) let other kids do things to me that I might not otherwise have done.. my gut reaction is the same as Acid Lamp’s. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/33 "2008-03-12T15:54:28Z")
[QUOTE=Jayn\_Newell] I find anime, on average, to be more adult than American cartoons (not to say there isn’t a lot of kiddie stuff, too, but contrast that to, say, Ghost in the Shell, and they’re not even in the same ballpark). Naruto isn’t as unrealistic as say, Bugs Bunny, but still you have people standing on the ceiling or walking on water, breathing fire, breaking rocks with their bare hands, etc. And people die often enough (albeit not very graphically–they save that for mere wounds) that I’m not sure why anyone would want to imitate it. [/QUOTE] And I find this to be a rather dumb thing to say. Anime is just _animation from Japan_. It is no more a genre than “comic book movies” or “the Whedonverse” are. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/34 "2008-03-12T15:59:24Z")
[QUOTE=Trunk] Haven’t 5th graders outgrown cartoons about ninjas? [/QUOTE] You clearly have not seen Naruto’s sexy no jutsu technique. (Just Google “naruto sexy jutsu” for images and videos – not hardcore, but NSFW and not 5th-grade either). ---
**Author:** ![Jayn\_Newell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Jayn\_Newell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jayn_Newell)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/35 "2008-03-12T16:03:27Z")
[QUOTE=Justin\_Bailey] And I find this to be a rather dumb thing to say. Anime is just _animation from Japan_. [/QUOTE] Yes it is. I’m just saying that the Japanese tend to make more cartoons aimed at older audiences than American studios do. Frankly, though, I’d expect a tragedy like this to be more likely from imitating Kaleido Star than Naruto. Sorry, I’m still having a hard time parsing where the hell the kids came up with this idea. Plus I like Naruto. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/36 "2008-03-12T16:04:29Z")
[QUOTE=Sage Rat] I’m still waiting for a kid to try and swim out to a whale off the West Coast so he can be eaten ala Jonah. [/QUOTE] Baleen: God’s childproofing device. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/37 "2008-03-12T16:05:15Z")
[QUOTE=Jayn\_Newell] Yes it is. I’m just saying that the Japanese tend to make more cartoons aimed at older audiences than American studios do. [/QUOTE] While that’s true, the answer to “Is it a cartoon” is not some involved discussion between the differences of anime and American cartoons, but “Yes.” ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/38 "2008-03-12T16:07:49Z")
My initial reaction was that the other kids held him down while he struggled and essentially suffocated him (no doubt without meaning to inflict death). This stuff about “he asked us to bury his head in sand” sounds like after the fact rationalization. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/39 "2008-03-12T16:10:59Z")
[QUOTE=Acid Lamp] Exactly. self preservation would have kicked in at some point. One foot of sand? Gimme a break. Methinks the kiddies might have been playing a more nasty game than they are letting on, and letting Naruto take the fall. [/QUOTE] I’m starting to think that, too. If the kid was really imitating Naruto, where is the fun in burying yourself in sand. You can’t do anything except lie there with sand on your face. Can’t see the thrill in that. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057/40 "2008-03-12T16:14:36Z")
I’m not going to guess at how this happened. The article said the police interviewed the children present (but didn’t list ages) and are evidently satisfied that this was an accident. That’s good enough for me. I do take issue with blaming the guardians. At 10 y.o., in a backyard, kids should be able to go for a while without direct supervision. You don’t need to check on them every 15 minutes, and IMNSHO, parents who do so are just foisting their own insecurities onto the next generation. It’s tragic, but so is not letting children mature because someone has spent the child’s lifetime helicoptering overhead. Having been there a few years ago, I can tell you I would stick my head out around time for a mid-morning snack, again at lunch, again for an after lunch snack (and before the inevitable jumping to conclusions, it would likely be fruits and water/fruit juice for the snacks). The other children did notify the parent when something was wrong. Could they have done it faster…sure? They were probably scared shitless, dealing with something well beyond their coping mechanism though. Could they have been smarter in the first place? Sure, but I’m sure well upwards of 90% of the people here did incredibly stupid shit at 10 years old and lived to tell the tale. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kid-dies-imitating-naruto/441057.md?page=3)