You were expecting, perhaps, the wild and wacky adventures of Team 07?
I like Naruto. That's not the part that will make me sound bitchy or elitist. Indeed, saying that you like Naruto at the moment is rather like tattooing "I am a weeboo" on your forehead. I don't think it's perfect. There have been events, characters, even arcs that I didn't care much about. That bored me. That I thought were weakly written. That didn't make a whole lot of sense upon reflection. Or before it. I do not defend everything about it. I don't defend every element ever, though it feels like I do sometimes compared to a fandom which is, let's face it, pretty much unpleaseable. I don't often complain much about it, because seriously? The rest of fandom's got that covered. Complaining about Naruto seems pretty redundant.
On the other hand, it doesn't seem like I hear a lot of people echoing my positive opinions of the series, which compels me more to speak up when I have something good to say about it. When I do feel like it deserves defending.
I'm throwing this out here in the interest of disclosure. So people who want to can chalk everything I'm about to type up to my bias
So here, in no particular order, are some common fandom opinions that have finally just gotten to me. These are not, by and large, arguments based on an individual incident. I am also going to do my best not to turn them into strawfans, but if I do, well, see my last point. If you want to, you can throw that toward my bias and move on.
It needs to just end!
Short Answer: STFU, or I will make you read Inuyasha.
Long Answer: Okay, just because someone else did it worse, that doesn't make Naruto any better. But... Really? Where should it have ended? How would you have ended it? How good of a story would it really have been if had ended there?
One of the things I like about Naruto is that it seems to legitimately have a big story. A big story. The plot has kept a fairly steady pace with reasonably little stalling for as long as it is. No one single arc has become grossly out of proportion to the rest of the story. Plot and character development continues apace. To date, nothing has happened to undo, delegitimized or other render any previous developments entirely pointless. We're still working on the same plots and themes introduced in the Wave Arc and before. The manga hasn't had to create New Threats whole cloth because there's no real villains anymore. The story was never trapped in time. It was never just a series of hijinks, or loosely assembled short plots. It's always been two large plots--Naruto wanting to become Hokage (and maturing rather into wanting to change the world), and Sasuke's little ball of drama and conflict. Relevant B plots have been introduced and resolved, and generally support the larger plots by contributing to the main characters development, serving as foils and externalizations of the two main character's issues, or to introduce and support themes that will become important later in the main plots.
It's a single, big, story unified by theme and conflict, not just by character or place. You don't like big plots? Fine. That's a perfectly valid stance. Just like not liking chocolate is a perfectly valid preference. That doesn't make the size of the plot a mistake. It doesn't speak to the quality of the writing involved.
He creates awesome characters and then he doesn't do anything with them!
Short Answer: WTF, you realize that would just make the story longer, right?
Long Answer: Really? Who? I'm having trouble thinking of a character Kishimoto created, put a lot of effort into developing and making awesome, and then didn't do anything with. Neji got a fair amount of attention devoted to making him interesting and awesome (and I admit, I'm totally biased in this example because I love Neji, but), and then he got... uh, a complete and well developed character arc, ending with him killing Kidoumaru. Character development complete. Fatalism and anger have been replaced with grim determination and a sense of responsibility. Steps have been taking toward dismantling his resentment toward his clan and the village. He didn't become perfect. He still has room to grow. But there's not really anything left to do with him without developing A New Threat. Gaara would be another obvious example. Shikamaru finally stepped up and killed Hidan after he failed to be an effective leader in the Sasuke inna barrel arc. There's not much left to do with him. Chouji, Ino, Hinata--they all have less development and smaller roles, but they all got plot arcs and character resolutions proportionate to their development and importance. These were C-listers to start with, so it's not surprising that not much was done with them.
Yes, there are some characters whose character arcs are still in progress. Naruto and Sasuke aside, Sakura is still a work in progress, for example.
This complaint seems less like a real problem with the writing and more being upset that the story isn't about the characters some fans like more. Lee is not the main character. Neji is not the main character. Hell, even Sakura and Kakashi are not really main characters so much as high ranking supporting cast. Naruto is not about the wacky adventures of Team 7, and it never, ever was. It's been about Naruto and Sasuke, and their rivalry, pretty much from the moment Sasuke was introduced. As the plot has developed, more and more has been attached to that rivalry, turning it into a big, epic thing. And when I say epic, I don't mean "great" or "awesome!" I mean... full of mythic elements. Like an epic.
You think you'd enjoy it better if it were a story about Lee and Neji and the Ant and the Grasshopper and their awesome growth under the tutelage of Gai? That's fair. But that doesn't mean anything about the quality of the story. It just means that 1) you like those characters better (at least, you do at this point in their development), and 2) related to the first argument about length, you prefer episodic hijinks to giant story arcs, and that's fine. That's great. But that's just a matter of taste.
Kakashi/Sai/Madara said it, so it's like word of god!
Short Answer: Are you high?
Long Answer: You know, I don't get this one. It seems like recently, I see a lot of fans looking at what a characters said, and assuming that said character is clearly right. He (it's usually a he) is taking a position endorsed by Kishimoto! Whether or not the rest of the narrative seems to support it be damned. Now, I'm going to say... I didn't like what Sai said to Sakura either. It rubbed me wrong. I didn't like how Kishimoto executed that, and I don't really like how he chose to handle that particular plot point in general. It does come off as Sai telling Sakura to settle for Naruto and quit hurting Naruto and... yeah. Not the finest moment in the series. I can see why it rubbed a number of people wrong and inspired some backlash. But does the narrative really seem to imply to you that Sai is right? No, really. Does it? Because if it does, you must be reading something completely different from me. Naruto not giving up on Sasuke has always seemed--to me--to be presented as a good thing. I read this scene from the first as a hurdle/conflict that Naruto would have to overcome in not giving up on Sasuke. Since that's consistent with the forgiveness theme of the whole Pain arc, and also pretty much necessary for Sasuke's redemption... I just don't see Naruto finally and permanently turning his back on Sasuke. If he does, I would think, it would amount to the moment of weakness right before the ultimate climax.
The shape that conflict took? Problematic. Forced. Troubling. With potential to become even more problematic and troubling depending on how Sakura handles her part of it. But word of god... uh... what?
The most recent example is Madara's use of the word fate. This one is a lot less controversial... or should be, and I understand it less. Why are we trusting Madara's interpretations of this? Why are we assuming that Kishimoto wrote this and thought, "Fucking signed, bitches!" any more than he agreed with Neji when Neji talked about fate. I've seen more than one person who's essentially said that Madara talking about fate is undermining the previous theme, which is odd and seems to be working backward to me. This only makes sense if you really believe that Kishimoto is using Madara--the manipulative villain--as his mouth piece. Now, I don't necessarily think Madara is lying. I think Madara has no reason to lie at this point. He could be, since he seems to enjoy trolling people, but he could be giving the truth as he sees it.
Rather than seeing this as undermining existing themes, I read this straight up as just picking it back up. Don't accept fate! Don't use it as an excuse! Why should "fate" excuse Sasuke? As I recall, even a caged bird tries to escape. It is possible--and responsible?--to fight your fate if your fate is untenable. The narrative here undermines Madara, not Neji's character arc.
Things were better before they got so serious!
Short Answer: If you think Naruto is too serious, then you're reading it too seriously. WTF.
Long Answer: ...Okay, no, really, no joke this time. Naruto has gotten somewhat more serious over time, as the main cast has grown and matured and the conflict deepened, but that's natural. That's how growing up stories progress. Was the Wave Arc really all shits and giggles? Really? And does Madara seem so veeeeery srs business to you?
There's only two ways this complaint makes sense to me. First, people didn't read the manga to start with, but instead, watched the anime, which tended to pad things out with more jokes. Naruto steps in dog shit significantly less in the manga. There's significantly less toilet humor. Yeah, it happens, but it's a much smaller part of the over all story.
The second is that people don't mean that the story has gotten more serious so much as that it takes itself more seriously, which is an important distinction, I suppose, but I still don't see it. One of the first dilemmas we were given as an audience was about killing your emotions and becoming a weapon. Is that the sign of a series that doesn't have a serious bone in it's large, heavily ribbed body? Not so much.
ASS PULL!
Short Answer: Kishimoto has an incredibly talented ass. I mean, really, I thought it was sort of a hack when I thought he was using his hands and brain, but if he's writing from the ass? It's sort of a heartwarming story. Like someone who learned to play piano with their toes or something.
Long Answer: There are seriously very few asspulls in Naruto as far as I can see. Kishimoto's world building and story telling are such that sometimes things aren't sufficiently explained/implied before they become relevant, and his timeline is quite entirely fucked, so I can understand some of the things that some people call asspulls. I can. It's easy to miss some things. And it's easy to get cynical because of infodumps. But let's put it this way--Kishimoto foreshadows like he's dropping anvils on the heads of unsuspecting llamas. Do you really think that foreshadowing is based on making shit up on the fly?
Going back to argument one, this is a largely unified plot. You don't write a plot like that unless you have all of the broad strokes worked out before hand. Some of the details may come on the fly, sure. More likely, an idea in the original plans had to be altered for space, or due to editors, or because developments have made them awkward.
The fact is, asspull after asspull is just NOT how writing or publishing work 99% of the time. If Kishimoto didn't have all of the major points planned out ahead of time, he'd be going his editors heart attacks.
And remember this. Think about how publishing and editing really work, because this will come up again in my last couple of points.
Sasuke took over the plot!
Short Answer: Are you new?
Long Answer: Sasuke didn't take over the plot. Sasuke is the plot--or at least, half of the plot, or maybe somewhat more. Sasuke was added to the story in the first place because of (in my opinion, very wise) executive prompting, because they thought Naruto needed more conflict and rivalry. Otherwise, it probably really would have been just The Crazy Adventures of that Ninja Naruto on his Way to Becoming Hokage. And if that sounds like it would have been a fun story to you, well, fine. It probably could have been. But it wouldn't be the same story at all. A very important point in this is that when Kishimoto's publisher was vetting and contracting with him, they were doing so to turn Naruto into a story driven in a large part between the rivalry between two boys.
That's what they wanted. That's the niche they wanted to fill. That's the potential they saw in the character. That is the plot that they bought. When I call Kishimoto a hack writer, I don't mean it as an insult per se. I mean it in the very real sense that he is making a living. He's doing his job. He's producing more or less what he's paid to. That doesn't make it good. It doesn't make it bad. It just means that Sasuke has not taken over the plot, because he was, from the very inception of the manga, THE PLOT. Naruto just having an awesome goal is fine and well, and other manga might have focused on that. Naruto is not those manga. In Naruto, Sasuke serves to unify the plot in a way that an intangible goal alone would not have.
Kishimoto could write this more like I like because some other manga did it, and I like that one!
Short Answer: So go read that manga.
Long Answer: No, really, people don't seem to get how publishing works here. Shounen Jump already has that manga. They don't want a second one. They didn't give Kishimoto a contract and tell him that he was free to write whatever he wanted. They are active in this process, and they are seeking to fill a certain market. This is how publishing works. Publishers don't just like someone's work and go with it. They look for things that fit their criteria and reach their market. They know what they're looking for before they ever find it, and most of the time they then take steps (like mandating the creation of a rival character) to make what they find better fit that mold.
This is not just Japanese publishing. This is American publishing to. A few years back, I looked at what it takes to be published as a romance novelist (speaking of hacks...), and many, possibly even most, romance publishers will literally give you the formula for the book they want to publish down to the approximate page number that pivotal events will take place on. I'm too lazy to look now, but literally, they would have graphs. Here's your three-hundred-page romance fantasy formula. By this page, they should have met. By this page, they've had sex. By this page, they're fighting and breaking up. The climax falls here. They get back together again. One last sex scene. Resolution.
There's a reason so much media seems formulaic. Because it is.
Now, there are publishers that offer more freedom. There are are forums that are designed specifically to break away from those kinds of molds, but Shounen Jump? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say nooooot so much one of them.
If you wonder why Naruto isn't more like Bleach, or One Piece, or Fairy Tail--it's because those slots are full on the roster. If Kishimoto weren't writing Naruto, there would probably be some other more or less similarly shaped creature filling its spot, the way that Tasmanian tigers evolved in an ecosystem without wolves: selective pressure.
This is not to say that Kishimoto has absolutely no freedom. I am focusing on the freedom he doesn't have here rather than the freedom he does because I see so very often this deep misconception about how publishing at this level works. The same is true of TV entertainment, movies, etc. If it's mainstream, it looks like it does because that's the balance that was struck between the product the artist(s) involved wanted to make, and the product that the publishers wanted to sell. This is not to say that it excuses any work of flaws. This system regularly produces scads of mediocre, deeply flawed work. It does, however, explain why this particular argument doesn't hold any water.
That said, when you like something, so you then demand more things like it, you're contributing to this environment. Or, at least, you would be if you were the target audience and not an entirely incidental who may or may not even actually be supporting the source material by buying the translations.
In Conclusion
I have never been in a more unsatisfiable fandom. I had a little ranty fit, and you know what? I feel better now. I feel a whole freaking lot better now. That is the only purpose this post is here to serve. If I were trying to change anyone's minds, I would have posted this in chuunin, or I would have jumped into all of the various places I saw these gems being tossed around. With a few exceptions, I didn't. I'm not going to go tell anyone else that they have to like what I like, and while I might tell people that their interpretations are wrong, I don't think that wrongness in any way invalidates the fact that they don't like something. I hope they enjoy their negativity.
I know I've enjoyed mine.