[Magin]

A little bit of background with my experience of Naruto: watched the anime when it first came out in English dub, watched up to essentially the ending of Part 1, stopping at the waterfall fight, and after waiting a while and learning that Naruto was STILL chasing after Sasuke who had by that point become OP (this was around the point where Naruto and Sakura met up with him at Orochu;s lair), I vowed I wouldn't touch this series again unless it had what I would personally qualify as a good ending. So, fast forward to learning about the end, and for the past few weeks, I read the manga in just about one go, from beginning to end. Since I haven't participated in any discussion along the way, you'll have to pardon my thoughts about everything in this post (hence why I have a spoiler tag)

Spoiler for An semi-in-depth review:

Part 1 definitely had its memorable moments, and the Zabuza arc was excellent. Then you throw in the chuunin exams, and introduce Orochimaru. Which to me was the beginning of why I would loathe this manga for the next several years and refuse to touch it. Granted, at the time I thought that Naruto would be able to knock sense into Sasuke's head, and then we move onto the next villain/go about defeating Orochimaru. Of course, that's a nope. It's also why i have this theory that Kishimoto falls in love with his villains and is more willing to kill off the good guys than the bad guys (though if I do a count, I think that pre- shinobi war, the same amount of both good and bad guys were killed). But, I will abmit that minus the ending of Sasuke running off, it was an overall good fight.

Which brings me to my main problem with Part 2. The fact that Naruto only wants to get stronger in order to bring back Sasuke... I hate to say it, but the joke of "Naruto is really a cleverly disguised BL manga"... that seemed to be more than just a joke. Literally every chapter where Naruto is trying to figure out how to bring Sasuke back made me want to bash my head against the wall and say "Get over him! He's an enemy that needs to be dealt with!!!" But, for whatever reasons that the Powers That Be said, Naruto has to not kill Sasuke and convert him back. Granted, there was Naruto's whole conviction of :This is my Ninja way" to provide a convenient excuse.

However, not all of Part 2 was terrible. The early Akatsuki battles with Sasori and Deidara were actually quite good, and as much as I hated to see Jiraiya die, the Pain arc was a favorite of mine. I think I'm also the only one who actually liked the Resurrection Jutsu and bringing everyone back... I hate my mass kill-em-alls (fortunately, even if this hadn't been used, I don't think Hinata was fatally wounded... yes, I'm a NaruHina fan). Which then leads us to the 5 Kages summit, the War, and Kaguya.

The five Kages summit, after Sasuke kills Itachi. First, Danzo could be called pragmatic, but he was an asshole that needed to die. However, Sasuke then descending into "all of Konoha must pay for what they did to my brother"... this is when I wanted to slap him upside the head and say, "dude, you got your immediate revenge, no move the fuck on!". That was insanely frustrating. In fact, as I'll get to in a moment, anyone named Uchiha needs to learn to let shit go and move the fuck on.

As a brief aside, Killerbee is another favorite character of mine, idiot rhymes or no. And being fully in sync with Gyuuki, which would ultimately lead to naruto and Kurama being in sync, was awesome. Actually, during the training on the island, I got hit HARD in the feels when we finally got to the backstory of Naruto's birth. It was beautiful, moving, and sad, and then that color page of "what if..."... goddammit, I hope that this supposed slice-of-life covers that, although with naruto and Hinata, of course. That is something that will be well-deserved, IMO.

So then we go into the War arc. You know an arc goes on for way too fucking long when even someone who's burning through the chapters is thinking it's dragging on. Though to be fair, after learning about Tobi/Obito and Madara, they were both on my These Fuckers Need To Be Killed list. But, of course, Kishimoto had to develop a soft spot or perhaps went the route of "no, they were only misguided and ultimately manipulated, so they're fully up for redemption", and thus they live. Hell, even Orochimaru got the redemption card, which by this point in the storyline I was beyond giving a damn about him- that's how badly I think that situation got handled. Normally I'm passionate about seeing a villain get their just rewards... but during the war, it became a case of "just end this already!... preferably with some villain deaths via the good guys".

Granted, there were some excellent moments during the war. Although i hate seeing it on the bad guys, seeing hero powerups is something i enjoyed, plus Shikamaru really got to shine, and I obviously must mention just how much Hinata grew during this arc. But of course, Kishimoto went and made sure that the opposing Uchihas got their own god-teir power-ups.

Actually, let me address that right now. As I said before, I think Kishimoto fell in love with his villains, and boy did he give loving to the Uchiha clan. Not only does he give them the power-ups first, which makes me feel like he goes "oops, now I also need to give Naruto a power-up too, don't I...", and then combine it with the Uchihas being behind literally EVERY GODDAMMED MAJOR EVENT IN THE SERIES......... let's just say I grew to hate them, especially when it became a case of "this world is full of shit, it must be destroyed, and no one is going to talk me out of it" which then turned into Naruto doing 'talk no jutsu' for Sasuke and Obito, and Kishimoto further justifying it with "oh noes, they were really just being manipulated by an even stronger power that would eventually lead to the children of the Goddess being the true puppetmaster". As I said, this pissed me the fuck off. When you give me a shounen villain, I fully expect to no only see the good guys beat him within an inch of his life, but also expect the villain to take full responsibility, none of this manipulation BS (and hence why IMO, One Piece is amazing)

But back to the war, for a brief moment. As I've said, the war DRAGGED ITS ASS FOREVER. hell, to be technical, it wasn't even a war by the end, it was a huge battle with Power Ups Everywhere. Again, I'm biased with the good guys getting the powerups.. and just once I'd thought the goods guys (read: Naruto) had gained enough power to beat the Uchihas... Kishimoto made sure that they too got a power-up. And as an aside, the power on both sides should've run out long before it did, giant amounts of chakra or no. Although, something I did enjoy and may be a bad person because of it, is showing how all the kages were no match for Madara, especially with either Tsunade or Sakura an their superstrength not even phasing him.

Then came the Infinite Tsukuyomi and Kaguya. Had this been an arc that was separate from the war arc completely, I would say it was also one of the best arcs. But piggybacking off the War arc as "oh look, even Madara was being manipulated"... that was bullshit. But a final team up between Sasuke and naruto, and a callback to Part 1... that was excellent.

Then the final confrontation... for me it was a case of FUCKING FINALLY! AFTER OVER 10 YEARS THIS THING GETS GODDAMMED RESOLVED!!!! Bringing me back to one of my original points, I;d always thought this was going to be about Team 7 going on mission and growing within the Ninja World, not Naruto chasing after Sasuke and powering up in order to be able to do so. Although to be fair, the fight was quite well done IMO, and each of them paying the price of losing an arm... worth it. And now, I honestly look forward to how an slice-of-life story in a Ninja world (that appears to have maybe modernized?) will work.

For those who don't want to open the tag, here's the tl;dr: part was mostly good, Kishimoto loves his villains and anyone named Uchiha, always making sure there's a cop-out, the war arc dragged forever but with a few good moments, the Pain and Kaguya arcs were among my favorites, and Uchihas need to learn to get over things and not destroy the world. Oh, and this went down the DBZ route of power-ups.

Overall, I'm going to give this a 7/10.