Hmmmm, a lot of these reviews are very interesting. What many of you praise as
Naruto's greatest strengths...I find to be its worst weaknesses. So let's do an informalish review--really more a response to the reviews here. First things first, I grade kind of harshly and can't fathom giving even my favorite series 10s. After all, these people are professionals. They make their LIVING off of this stuff. There's no point in being nice or giving something an 8/10 for being pretty good or average. If they've reached the publication level, an 8/10 means something is absolutely fantastic. A 10 means it's groundbreaking and a 5 is average, banal, mundane, for me at least. When reviewing, it's best to tap our literary snob side.
Everyone knows this story, I've read all the chapters, and we really need no summary, so let's get started.
Art:9/10
I'd have to agree with most of what's been said here. Naruto's art is EXTREMELY detailed and very clean, exactly what you'd expect of a highly successful mainstream manga. Personally, I think the art is a bit "too good", in its own way. It feels...very...soul-less. Mechanical. Precise, but lacking distinctive style. Like it could have been done by a computer. While this certainly does the job well enough, it feels very empty. A top class artist, one who gets a 10, inserts his or her own style while still making the action easy to follow and detailed. So overall, this art is extremely good, but lacking a certain something to push it towards the one-of-a-kind masterpiece or perfection level.
One thing I really DO like about Naruto is that the characters are very uniquely drawn. This is a huge part of art that's often overlooked. While reading some series like Air Gear or Claymore (especially when it's a weekly series that I'm caught up on and haven't read in the last few days), I have to stop and think about exactly who I'm looking at. Pretty much never have that problem with Naruto.
Plot: 3/10
Chock-full of deus ex machina, tedious plot turns, and extreme plot derailment. Kishimoto is a good artist with a great creative mind. He is NOT a writer. A good author does need increasingly ridiculous plot turns and shark jumps to keep the audience engaged. These are gimmicks. And Naruto is EXTREMELY reliant on its gimmicks.
I sometimes suspect that Kishimoto had a vague inkling how his story would turn out, but didn't think his story would get so big and successful and perhaps...didn't bother fleshing out the details until far later. This lack of planning definitely hurts the story and sometimes leaves the audience wonder why on EARTH he's making some of his storyline decisions, which just seem silly and wasteful from a storyline perspective.
A major example of this tendency: the elemental system. It happens what, around Chapter 300? Kishimoto out of nowhere decides to introduce a pokemon-style rock-paper-scissors system of elements. Out of NOWHERE. It becomes a major aspect of the manga and the focus of all the combat. And after a few dozen chapters it's completely dropped again, to fade away like it'd never been there. This is extremely indicative of how Kishimoto plans and lays out his manga. It's very half-hazard and poorly done. A lot of people praise Naruto's story, but I can't imagine that's really an objective analysis. It can be easy to get wrapped up in something and then love every aspect of it. It's much harder to acknowledge the major flaws in something you like.
Oh yeah, and pacing is kind of an issue at times. Not a constant huge problem dragging the series in the dirt, like with Bleach, but definitely a factor.
Characters:5/10
Naruto has the best cast of two-dimensional characters I've ever seen. Every significant character has been assigned an appearance, an exaggerated personality quirk, and a fighting theme. The bigger ones get semi-tragic/moving pasts. And then, nothing really happens. Nobody REALLY changes. They're all just oversimplified caricatures and cliches. It should be noted that the score does not mean the characters are poorly conceived or not entertaining. More that they're a lot of wasted potential. LOTS of points for the initial setup, but terrible terrible follow up. Thus the 5/10.
Also, Kishimoto allowed the cast to grow far too large earlier, though he seems to be dealing with that much better of late. Still, though, that spread him very thin with character development and also slowed down the plot.
Another unfortunate tendency I find in Shonen, which are often guy-centric and written by, well...men, is that the women have pretty much no independent character. Their driving motivations, personality, decisions, etc...are all in relation to the men they're enamored of. Or the female character's defining traits and characteristics have to do with her being female. Far less diversity than with the men. Naruto, while it has some exceptions and is better than some, definitely follows this trend. Take Sakura, Ino, or Hinata, for example. Their entire purpose in the story is to be irrationally in love with some dude and that dictates all of their subsequent actions. Hell, Tsunade has her moments. It's really pathetic.
Theme: 5/10
If I had to find a positive theme in this manga, I'd choose something like struggling against fate. A lot of characters have had their lives manipulated or are wrestling with vast forces out of their control at the social, political, economic, and magical levels. Perhaps this is one reason the series has such an emphasis on individuals, perhaps to the detriment of plot development.
When people consider a manga's themes, they usually say things like friendship, strength of will, or hope. That sort of stuff. And this manga certainly has that stuff. BUT, and this is a huge but...
Why on EARTH does everyone always leave out the bad themes? Things like this:
You can't really make a difference unless you're a genius. Without some ultra-great super-special genes, you'll never succeed at life and the world is shaped by an oligarchy of these people, collections of ultra-special people that matter. This is a message in virtually all shonen and it's stronger in
Naruto than in almost any I've read in a pretty bad way.
Another bad theme, though this one is a bit more minor: obsession. Sakura with Sasuke, Hinata with Naruto, Naruto with Sasuke, all these fixations...people determine their life's path from strange arbitrary fixations. It's really unhealthy. And this manga frames these preoccupations as admirable.
Oh yeah, and then there's the whole gender role thing. Which is pretty bad.
Originality: 10/10 (UNIVERSE) and 2/10 (what he's done with the universe)
Now, this is the REALLY interesting category for this series.
Naruto is clearly the work of a very imaginative artist. He just isn't a terribly great author.
Kishimoto has managed to set up this AMAZING world. All the jutsu styles, techniques, ways to rise up, the clan structures, buildings, political relations between the major countries, economies, etc... It's all just marvelous! Forget the story, I'd be content to just read about this masterful universe for 500ish chapters.
And here's the bad part. The story WITHIN this wonderful, artistic universe is just...well, it doesn't stand up. Best world ever, most tired, tried, cliche, dull story ever. The two combine to make a decent manga. So top marks for originality of the universe, no marks for originality in what he's done with this universe.
Overall: 6.5/10
Kishimoto is a good artist relying entirely on his creative vision and coasting off of the success of the universe he's created. What he's DONE within his universe is very very flawed. I'd love to see what a real author could do with the setup he has. And hell, I'd love to see some more works set in the naruto universe, perhaps from the perspective of an average genin trying to rise through the ranks, not somebody with ridiculous inflated superpowers who learns so fast that he skips over the interesting stuff and breaks the power structure of his universe.
Overall, I'd say this manga really illustrates the differences between comic books and graphic novels.
Naruto is, without a doubt, a comic book. Plot and character development, etc...they're not really priorities in the same way. Instead, the series goes for cheap gratification time and time again. And for some people, that's just great. I'm more of a graphic novel man myself--I'm engaged by material with a bit more depth and craftsmanship, even if it has less pizazz.
rotect UR loved ones.
