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Old 2014-11-09, 17:39   Link #22
Kanon
Kana Hanazawa ♥
 
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: France
Age: 37
I'm giving it a 7/10 including an extra point for the nostalgia factor. Overall, Naruto really wasn't a very good shounen manga.

Part 1 was excellent and easily outshined a lot of other shounen manga. Although it peaked very early with the Zabuza arc (it absolutely blew me away the first time I watched it ten years ago, and it was most likely the arc that got me back into anime and manga), the rest of part 1 didn't let up all that much and was full of powerful moments. It had a great cast filled with endearing characters, a marvelous world begging to be explored further, amazing battles that relied quite a bit on strategy, and emotional moments. I remember it very fondly and I'd love to read/watch it again if I manage to find the time. I would have remembered Naruto as a great manga, near perfect in fact, if it had ended there. Unfortunately, there was still about 2/3 of the manga left.

Part 2 is almost the polar opposite of part 1. It represents everything that is bad in battle shounen. The previous cast we came to know and love during part 1 was forgotten (save for Shikamaru, none of the kids got the chance to truly shine and were in fact completely irrelevant), the big villain of part 1 got treated like garbage and tossed aside, power levels increased immensely until they reached a ridiculous level, and characters were written horribly. What I particularly disliked is that part 2 shat on part 1's philosophy. That talk about hard work being able to surpass genius and inherited talent, and the one about being able to change your fate? Complete bullshit. Naruto turned out to have inherited absurdly strong chakra from his mother, he was foretold to be Ninja Jesus by frogs, AND he also turned out to be the reincarnation of the son of God. That's not to say Naruto never needed to work to get where he is now, but man, he sure received a lot of nice gifts at birth. Thankfully, there were still characters like Guy and Lee in the manga, but the main character should have been the one to embody this message. I feel the story would have been a lot more meaningful if Naruto had truly been born a loser who eventually managed to rise up to very top of the world thanks to his perseverance. That's what really attracted me to the manga in the first place, and what made Naruto different from a lot of protagonists. Being special thanks to Kyuubi -which was more of a curse than a bane for Naruto initially- should have been more enough. I really don't get why Kishimoto felt the need to include all that.

When I think about it, the only arc I really liked in part 2 was the Pain arc, but then Kishimoto just had to end it in the worst way possible. That's the point I truly gave up on Naruto ever returning to its former greatness. Everything that followed was absolutely horrible. Sasuke's character became a caricature, I couldn't take him seriously after he went full DARKNESS. The war, which should have been the climax of the series, was handled in the worst way possible. It was the perfect opportunity to bring the old characters from part 1 back into the spotlight, but they were ignored once again. It dragged on for ages and ages, focusing on fights nobody gave a damn about. The reveal of Tobi's identity, which was hyped to be massive, turned out to be the most predictable twist of all time (people called it the moment Tobi got introduced, like 8 years before) and destroyed what was once an intriguing and charismatic villain and the best antagonist Kishimoto had created in part 2. I stopped caring after that and only kept reading to find out how it would end. I was actually rather satisfied with the actual ending save for the fact it was rushed and plenty of characters were forgotten, but I've gotten used to that.

I could expand on this even more but there's really no point. I already spent too much time writing this.

If I had to rate the parts individually: 9/10 for part 1, 4/10 for part 2. If I had to sum up the manga in two words: wasted potential.
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