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Forgive me for any inconsistencies in writing this is the first review I've ever written lol. And this review is mostly me airing my grievances with Naruto.

When I started 2021 I wasn't expecting to have spent most of the year reading Naruto. I was a big fan of the anime and it's been a few years since I watched it so I wanted to read the manga and see if I had the same type of enjoyment.

What an experience I had.

A lot of my overall score may be biased by the fact that I'm a longtime fan and a sucker for nostalgia. ... But Naruto is NOT a perfect manga and very far from it. From badly written female characters, way too long story arcs, and a wild convoluted storyline near the end, Naruto made me want to scream more times than I'm willing to admit. By the time I had hit about chapter 500, I hated every character in that manga except for Kisame, Kakashi, and occasionally Naruto (although he was testing his luck by the end of the manga). And I DESPISED Sasuke which almost feels like sacrilege to say as a naruto fan.

To be honest from about chapter 600 I wasn't even sure what the storyline was anymore and I know the storyline of Naruto.

But the thing about Naruto is that although I had a lot of problems with the latter half of the manga, there was still so much of it I enjoyed. The Chuunin exam arc is something that I was so excited to read even after watching it in the anime like 4 times. A lot of the deaths in naruto did genuinely make me sad (I won't say who since I haven't put a spoiler warning) and for the most part, I found myself really invested in Naruto's journey and his character development all these years later after finishing the anime.

And some of the characters in Naruto are my favourite in all of anime/manga. Characters that I mentioned before like Kakashi and Kisame are what made reading the manga so worth it for me. And other characters like Gaara, Rock Lee, and Killer B really upped the rating that I'd have given Naruto otherwise.

Overall, I wouldn't say Naruto is bad necessarily but it's definitely one of those mangas I wouldn't recommend to a new manga reader and only to diehard fans of the series.
That's not to say that Naruto isn't worth reading because it's such a big part of otaku culture but it's quite hefty and will take up at least some portion of your life.

So I say go ahead and read Naruto! But proceed with caution because it's A LOT.

Thanks for reading!