The first reason for me would be the amount of filler episodes. Let’s be honest, filler nowadays just doesn’t work anymore for anyone. Only few would sit through it, especially when it has as many filler episodes as Naruto. Naruto Classic has 220 episodes and 91 of them are non-cannon. In comparison to it’s continuation that is considered that is even not that bad.
The second reason for me would the female characters. Whilst I never participated in all of the excessive hate they receive, especially towards Sakura, I‘m also not delusional enough to say that they’re perfect. Now, obviously no character has to be perfect but the problem that I have is that the female ninja have nothing in comparison to the male characters. Sakura is acting like an annoying fan girl towards Sasuke, Hinata can’t even form a proper sentence in front of Naruto without stuttering and blushing and looks like she’s about to faint, Ino joins Sakura in fangirling over Sasuke and is only focused on her appearance and Kurenai, the only female sensei we have, loses her only fight against Itachi. That wouldn’t be such a problem if she wouldn’t have used genjutsu against Itachi, a prodigy who possesses the Sharingan! The only female characters who actually did their job in Classic were for me Anko, Tayuya and Tsunade. All were acting more independent since none of them were dragged down by any romantic feelings for someone or fought a stupid fight and especially Tsunade had a proper character development in her introduction arc by overcoming the death of two loved ones.
The lack of good-written female characters hurts because Kishimoto did a fantastic one with the male characters and gave them so many moments. Zabuza and Haku as first antagonists were really enjoyable and the first fight where Kakashi fought against Zabuza as well as the final fight on the bridge were great. The parallels between Naruto and Gaara during the Chunnin exams were good and I know no one who doesn’t love fights such as Lee vs. Gaara or Naruto vs. Neji were a core philosophy and question in Naruto was established. Can hard work and determination surpass natural talent and defy destiny by making it to the top? Orochimaru as the first major villain was perfect because he was scary, creepy, obsessed with power and was also cunning and resourceful, fitting the snake he was meant to physically and metaphorically symbolize. Jiraiya, despite being a pervert, had such a big heart and trained Natuto well. In Classic all three of the Sanin were outstanding in my opinion. A character I especially appreciate because he uses wits over raw power is Shikamaru. He isn’t as strong as many others in the show judging by physical power or maybe even special abilities. But he uses what he has and uses it to it’s full potential by using his mind. Sure, he is lazy most of the time but a genius who cares for his friends and allies and I think nothing showed that better than the Sasuke Recovery arc which is next to the Search for Tsunade arc my favorite from Naruto Classic. Because this is in most cases the only and/or last time we see some of the characters fighting alone and fighting good, whether they ultimately lost or not isn’t even important. We never saw characters like Neji, Choji, Lee and Kiba with Akamaru have such good and intense fights again and that’s a true pity. The Sound 4 were also good antagonists for this arc and whilst all of them fulfilled the roles within this arc well enough, I would have loved seeing more of Tayuya and Kimimaru since they were interesting and I loved the abilities and powers they had. The return of the Sand siblings in this very same arc was also nice, especially seeing how Gaara changed after meeting Naruto and letting him fight with Lee together, the very same boy he nearly killed, made his attempts to change even better.
If you want good female characters, this Anime isn’t something for you as it‘ll leave you hanging for the biggest part except on rare occasions. Despite that I also won’t deny that Naruto had a big impact with its many characters and I think the fact that is still so well-known today speaks for itself. Naruto has left it’s legacy and especially main characters like Naruto and Sasuke are still standing tall today. Despite it‘s flaws I‘d still recommend it for anyone who can overlook the reasons I listed because whilst Naruto could have done a lot better, it also did quite a bit very good.
