Naruto - Review
Link to the author's (M. Kishimoto) personal website
Genre: Fantasy
Publication Type: Illustrated
Tags:
- Average Age of Main Characters (16)
- Length (10 / 10)
Link to Goodreads
Blurb: "Naruto" tells the story of Naruto Uzumaki, a young ninja who seeks recognition from his peers and dreams of becoming the Hokage, the leader of his village.
Review: I credit Naruto quite heavily for getting me into manga + anime. I'd sing along to the various introduction songs each morning, and my imagination was completely enthralled with questions of who would win fights against who in certain scenarios, or of what the various hidden villages looked like. I continued to be obsessed for a long time, eventually transferring from the anime to the manga as I got older. The chuunin exams remains one of the fondest anime arcs I've ever seen.
As you could probably infer above, a lot of my feelings towards the manga stem from a much younger view. There are many good things to say about the manga though. It was filled with silly funny moments, emotionally destructive moments, and intensely suspenseful moments. This is all combined with some wonderfully creative world building, and a great set of original characters. There is good reason that Naruto is so popular.
I cannot, however, in good faith recommend reading it. The final third of the story was simply bad. The cast of characters becomes so large and they are continually kept in the story in some capacity. The result is an unfulfilling experience for the vast majority of characters, and a glut of extra mediocre content. This is compounded by the award winning stretching job of the plot, which artificially dragged out the story for multiple years longer than it should have been. It is then put into the grave by the horrendous final arc, which completely negates much of the earlier story, and unnecessarily introduces yet more characters.
Ultimately this is a not recommend for me. Despite having absolutely incredible arcs like the Sasuke recovery mission, the story as a whole left me with an unfulfilled taste.