DOT wrote:Finished Naruto
I can say with confidence that it's pretty okay. I definitely will get around to finishing the anime at some point to see some of the fights animated, but I'm not dying to do so, and I probably won't be going on to Boruto
I hate to keep comparing it to One Piece, but there really is no comparison. It's still tbd at this point who the final boss will be, but there's at least 3 solid choices, all of whom are personally connected to Luffy and have been for a while. Even Im, who Luffy's never met, at least has been introduced as a character that exists 200 chapters ago, and we got a taste of their power quite recently with the Lulusia Kingdom incident. We, the audience, are at least aware of them. Kaguya coming out of nowhere with 20 chapters to go after only being referred to in myths and legends to be the final twist villain feels like the author wanting to stretch the story out a bit more and make the final fight more epic by having them kill God or whatever
Honestly, Sasuke should've been the final boss. I know him and Naruto have it out at the end, but that feels more like an "oh, I need them to fight because this is a shonen, and I didn't resolve their conflict before this" type of move. It's just not integrated into the story well, and I think that's what's missing at the end, the fact that while the story is about Naruto, none of the final bosses are really his foils. Tobi kind of is, but he's Kakashi's villain. Madara is more of a foil for Sasuke. And Kaguya is a non-character. It lacks the emotional aspect, and when we're at the point where the characters are so strong it's hard to tell what's actually going on in the physical confrontation, not having that emotional backing kind of drains the fight of any excitement for me
Also, one other thing that I feel One Piece does really well that Naruto fails at is giving the rest of the crew something to do while Luffy fights the big bad. Like, even Usopp and Nami get moments to shine in the Onigashima raid, and it's not like Hinata showing up for a panel to do the whole power of friendship thing only to get one-shot by Pain the next page. Even going back to Arlong Park, Zoro, Sanji, and even Usopp have mini-boss fights. It can drag the pacing at times, but there's always gonna be something for everyone's favorite character, and you just don't get that with Naruto. That's why I like the Sasuke retrieval arc 2nd best, because it does do that exact thing, it pairs off the characters into individual fights so you can see them all shine. The Ninja War arc does this a bit, but not to the level One Piece gets in each arc.
Your criticism pretty much falls in the same space as mine about the final arc of Naruto. After -everything- that happened, it felt like the final battle between Naruto and Sasuke was forced, and Kaguya was a complete ass pull of a character that lacked depth and had zero build up.
Now, my theory on why this happened? It was decided well before Naruto would end by the publisher that the author would put in various seeds in towards the end, mainly Kaguya and The Ōtsutsuki so that the story would have a way to continue in Boruto without his week to week involvement.
That has since changed and the author is now writing the story again, but I feel like Naruto's ending suffered from pure capitalism because Shueisha and TV Tokyo make millions a year off of the franchise and ending it would be leaving millions, if not billions in revenue off of the table. So essentially, Naruto was turned into a zombie franchise that focuses around his son, and the results have been hit or miss. If you choose not to continue the story, I don't blame you.
IMO, Naruto was at its strongest point during The Pain Arc/Invasion of Konoha.
That was an epic storyline from start to finish where Naruto not only came face to face with his mirror image (Pain), but was forced literally to sit down and question his own ideals and how they fit in the world around him. It also felt like the moment where the series really became Naruto, and he had finally become the hero that he boasted that he would be from the first chapter.
When he transported into the village after Pain nuked it with the red jacket and scroll...very few moments in shounen manga top the feeling that I got reading that so many years ago.
After that arc ended, it was a gradual decline in story quality as I feel like there was a lot of editorial crap going on behind the scenes.
RIP mags
