Naruto is an extraordinarily incompetent series run on its many inconsistencies and plot conveniences to facilitate its poorly written story. One of those conveniences can be seen immediately after the mysterious opening. We're supposed to roll with an orphaned child, without guidance or support, growing up relatively sound of mind and body while being irrationally scorned by everyone around him for something he played no part in.

Even for a shounen series, it's absurdly idealistic to believe Naruto, the main character, would grow up to be a healthy boy with a good moral compass despite being despised by the villagers, so much so they nastily told their children to avoid him out of spite. That's not even mentioning the fact them scorning him makes zero sense and reduces them to two-dimensional puppets under the author's control incapable of rational thought or reason. Naruto was a new-born baby when the nine-tails attacked, with no will of his own. He couldn't subscribe to having the nine-tails sealed into him, and even if he could, hating him for it would be like loathing a prison for containing violent criminals.

This gets mudded further when its quickly revealed the Fourth Hokage - who sealed the beast within Naruto - is his Dad. The issue is exacerbated further when Kishimoto retcons Naruto's surname into a clan in the 2nd half with his favourite character, Sasuke, learning one of his allies was a Uzumaki. Later down the line, Naruto learns his mom was drafted into Konoha with the sole purpose of inheriting the nine tails from another Uzumaki on her deathbed, making Kushina, Naruto's mother, the last Uzumaki in Konoha's care. So now we're left with a bunch of stupid villagers that somehow don't know they were scorning the child of the Fourth Hokage despite Naruto looking identical to his father and bearing the surname of his mother when it was known Kushina was married to Minato.

See what I mean by how atrociously written the plot is? These are the consequences of writing spontaneously. Kishimoto drawn whatever seemed interesting to him at the time without fact-checking, resulting in an incredibly loose narrative with more holes than Swiss cheese. The worst part about Kishimoto's improvised writing is that it left no room for details. As I alluded to earlier in the review, we don't know anything about Naruto's early life. How did he get by being so irrationally shunned and hated as he was?

Was he raised in an orphanage or did Hiruzen watch over him before dumping him in a single apartment when he was 5 or 6, according to the anime? We're just not privy to these details because Kishimoto burnt through the story at such a rapid pace. You wouldn't think a story containing 700 chapters would feel so rushed, but it definitely does. In 35 chapters, Naruto not only graduated from the academy, met his teammates, gone on his first adventure in the form of a mistakenly C-ranked mission and completed a life-threatening exam.

(I can see where Demon Slayer gets its hasty pacing from. Ugh)

The speedy pacing completely works against itself in the second half of the series being built around Naruto and Sasuke's alleged bond. Alleged is the correct term here because of Naruto's "bulldoze straight to the action bits" afforded them (NaruSasu) zero panel time to actually grow and bond as genuine friends. It's terrifying when you realize the two never even had an actual, genuine human conversation outside of mission segments and other story arcs, where they're not discussing anything of immediate importance and they're just interacting, chatting and, you know, actually getting to know each other. (This is very important when you want to establish a bond between characters as relationships are built on communication.) The simple but effective moments like Naruto and Sasuke just hanging out and peacefully conversing without trying to bite each other's heads off are sorely missing from their dynamic, making it impossible for me to sympathize with Naruto's grief and anguish when Sasuke abandons the village.

In fact, Naruto comes across more as an abused housewife than a bestie with how badly Sasuke treated him in part two. With the two having barely even spoken to one another normally outside of story arcs, it makes Naruto's fixation on Sasuke unbearable to read. Both Studio Pierrot & Kishimoto himself appeared to realize the glaring flaw in Naruto's relationship with Sasuke - that being their lack of communication - because they were so hung up over a single flashback where Naruto encounters Sasuke sitting lonely by a river. The two make eye contract, glare, and as Naruto walked off, they crack a smile. The moment's meant to symbolize they share a connection but it fell flat and cheap, like a cheesy romantic monologue hiding the fact the couple never know nothing about each other.

It's really saddening that I can't form a picture in my mind over Naruto and Sasuke interacting casually even after 700 chapters. It's not good enough.
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Retcons and plot devices to facilitate said retcons.__

The Uchiha massacre is the biggest one that immediately comes to mind. The most damning evidence against Itachi being some tragic character lies in Danzo. He never existed, like at all before part two. His whole goal was about usurping the seat of Hokage. So, taking that in mind, you would think such an ambitious character would jump at the chance to take the seat of Hokage following Hiruzen's death but nope, he doesn't even get a mention. Instead, the elders go straight to Jiraiya and offer the throne to him, which he rejected since he was BASED like that. Not to mention Itachi's actions wholly are at odds with the reveal. Traumatizing his little brother, not once, but twice when he rolled up on Naruto to steal him in the Search for Tsunade arc, telling him he doesn't have "enough hatred" is absolutely NOT something a "good guy" would do.

Forgive me, but on what planet does "filling someone's head with HATRED" make them want to rally around the leaf, according to Itachi's "intentions"? (And I use that term loosely). Itachi comes across as a massive buffoon without common sense. The anime attempted to make sense of Itachi's foolishness with one of Naruto's notorious flashbacks, leading up to the Uchiha's attempted attack on the village, but all it accomplished was making him look worse. All he had to do was kill Danzo and negotiate with his father and Hiruzen. Bizarrely, he didn't even report Danzo's treasonous actions to the Hokage and continued to work with him after he murdered his bestie.

Do you see what I mean when I question Itachi's supposed superior intelligence? On what planet can a military veteran kill a promising recruit because he wanted an amazing gun the recruit had? It's so jarring that Danzo got away scot-free with killing Shusui and honestly made him feel like an invincible plot device Gary-stu whose purpose was to pardon Hiruzen from all blame, but ultimately, Danzo's presence just made Hiruzen look ever so incompetent.

The Bijuu retcon is one I hold a particular disdain for, since it introduced a bunch more characters left undeveloped. On the surface, it appears like the nine kaijuu-like creatures we see over the course of the story were already there, but that couldn't be further from the case and one single character leaves no room to doubt that.

Gaara, the "alleged" Jinchuuriki of the Hidden Sand Village drastically different from every other Jinchuuriki in the series. As Kishimoto was really running thin on ideas, (he burnt himself out in part one in all honesty. Just look how stale and generic Sai's and Yamato's characters were as proof) he made the fatal error of depicting the resurrected zombie Jinchuurikis with the same red cloak both Naruto and Bee had, contradicting Gaara. Gaara never had a red cloak of Chakra.

Furthersome, he had insomnia because of Shukaku. This is a massive drawback no other Jinchuuriki had other than him. If that's not damning enough against the validity of the Bijuus, he blatantly referred to Shukaku by his name throughout the series when learning the name of a Bijuu was supposed to be a big thing in the series. It essentially established total trust between a Bijuu and their host and allowed the host to freely use his or her power without going berserk.

Also-also, Gaara even referred to Shukaku as the "monk sealed inside a teakettle" when confronted by Naruto and Shikamaru when he tried finishing the job on Lee back in part 1, with this later being retconned into the monk being his Jinchuuriki in a hastily clammed in flashback during the War arc.

That's reason enough to conclude the Bijuus were never initially planned to be apart of a set as it completely contradicts Gaara and Shukaku.

I never understood Kishimoto's desire to add more kaiju-like creatures. He already had a dozen undeveloped characters. Adding seven more "tailed-beasts" into this already congested manga piled way too much on his plate to digest, so, he just didn't. A big plot point of the second half of the series were the kaiju-like creatures being targeted by the villains for their initial grand plan to spook the world into cooperation, though this was never foreshadowed in part one. Admittedly, it could appear that way since they came after Naruto, but nothing was mentioned of them wanting Gaara. This was shown after the Chunin invasion arc when two of Naruto's mentors discussed the Akatsuki's potential plans. They never surmised anything about them possibly going after every Bijuu, not even Gaara who existed, just Naruto.

Seven of the supposed "Bijuu" and their Jinchuuriki were almost entirely off-panelled. We don't see any of them being hunted down like lambs to the slaughter, outside of a brief cameo of the two-tailed Jinchuuriki getting captured after stupidly cornering the immortal duo on her own. The lack of common sense within these characters incredibly frustrate me. Why wouldn't Konoha inform the other nations of the impending danger of their mass weapons being targeted by a group of rogue shinobi so powerful and dangerous in their own ways they were considered S-Ranked threats? You would assume one character would overthink and would come to a possible conclusion that they might wield their collective might of all other Bijuu on Konoha to take Naruto.

They couldn't just do that but the characters themselves don't know that. For all anyone knew, they could've been amassing powerful, unstoppable weapons out of their current collection of captured Bijuus. It's completely illogical that Konoha never raised the alarm bells on the Akatsuki's intentions. It's just common sense but honestly, it was truly like the characters lacked semblance of a brain.

It still baffles me that Pein literally ROLLED up on Konoha's doorstep and launched his surprise assault without detection! Again, they should know these dangerous S-RANKED criminals were after Naruto. How were they not setting up lookout posts or even barriers for that matter, especially somce two of them in the immortal duo already tried taking Naruto. It blows my mind how irrational these characters are.

Masashi Kishimoto isn't an intelligent man and that's okay, because neither is my beloved Akira Toriyama nor Rumiko Takahashi, but the difference between them and Kishimoto is that the latter pair never tried to make Dragon Ball and Ranma 1/2/Inuyasha deeper than they were. They understood their limitations and I greatly respect them for that. Heck, part one Naruto stayed within its lane and it was all the better for it. It has its flaws, like Naruto's horrific fights (Kiba and Neji battered him around yet he ended one-shotting them through pure plot-armor) and the lack of chemistry between him and his teammates, but it had real heart that I found charming.

The Naruto movie: Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom is the one of the most heartwarming tales I've ever watched and encapsulated everything I enjoyed about the first half of the series. (It certainly helped that it had nothing to do about the diet Hiei, Sasuke, who had already fled Konoha by the time of the movie's release) Had the series stayed on that trajectory and noy evolved into something so terribly pretentious, then I never would've grown to despise this series as much as I do now.

In conclusion: Naruto ruined its own potential pretending to be something it never was whilst having stupid characters that couldn't think their way out of a paper bag. Shout out to Madara supposedly giving his all-powerful eyes to a toddler (Nagato) that didn't even know he existed. Just another awful retcon in the long list of them.

Final score: 3/10

At least his art is fabulous.