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Naruto is one of those series that's adapts really well into an animated format and appeals to kids which is why it became the series that captivated a generation. I think I might like this series more if it didn't get so much praise and didn't have such an undeserving massively mainstream popularity.

Story:
I give it a 6 because let's be real, it's not the worst but it sure as hell is not the best. The series is very repetitive and there is very little change, there is big bad villain and he comes along and wrecks shit and Naruto changes him with friendship, rinse and ... repeat and increase the scale a little bit for each arc. I might have given the story a 7-8 but god damn the last arc was so bad it just blew me away so I had to drop it down. Naruto has the problem any long Manga has, lack of direction. The series just kept going on and on and on and there just wasn't a central plot, no big bad guy to kill untill the end where they basically played whack-a-mole with big bad OP villains, kill one and another pops up. Orochimaru could have been the perfect villain but god damn they had to turn him into some useless character at the end and have a completely new character be the final boss, just lame. Also the last chapter practically gave me cancer with all the fail ships, sorry stalker love isn't romantic to me and characters who don't even know each other in the main series being married with children at the end... What a joke. 6/10 and that's being generous.

Art:
The art is solid, pretty consistent throughout the series, it's not amazing art by any means and I thought the generous usage of black at the end was pretty annoying but the rest was solid 8/10.

Character:
All the interesting character get killed off and the main character is basically worthless post time skip. 4/10

Enjoyment:
I give it a 3 because I loved this series and it turned to shit so I basically went from like 9 to -6 which evens out to a 3.

Overall:
It gets a 6. Basically the series stole a template from HxH for the majority of the first half and the more it tried to deva-ate from the path it just got worse and worse. The original was good but it peaked at the chunin exams. I think that a 6 is honestly being generous for this big of a train wreck and I think less of anybody who gave it an 8 or higher.

Over the last month or so I've seen a ton of praise for the manga "Shamo" and recently I just read the whole thing and I feel very let down.

Overall the characterization of Ryu just felt like really all over the place and I didn't feel like it was because he was crazy, it just felt like the author didn't know what he was doing exactly with the character and experimented a lot more than he should have.

Then there's the whole constant perspective swaps that end up taking up nearly half of the chapters in the series. Ryu is the protagonist, he's the "interesting" ... character yet many other characters half the time characters who have just been introduced get the spotlight namely Toma and the retarded brothers at the end.

Also Ryu was constantly learning new things throughout the series then in the next part he would completely forget it. There was the whole arc (which I thought was a large part of the downturn of the series) where he learned to use ki. I guess the author thought that addition was as pointless and stupid as I did because Ryu never used that shit again. Then there was the whole "left-handed" concept where Ryu swapped to southpaw in the middle of the fight between him and the Heavyweight champ that was also never used again. Basically anything he learned to do for a fight, any training regimend, any new technique, he would forget by the next time a new fighting opportunity came up.

Overall the whole "arcing" concept and the pacing in general was really poor and disjointed. The author once again felt like he was just experimenting with what he wanted to do with Shamo and some of the arcs could have been different series in themselves because of how different they were. Like the ki arc and the end one with the retard brothers, so off from the overall feel of the series. The ki arc felt like freaking dbz, he just defeated the strongest opponent then all of a sudden he gets stomped by a completely unknown dude and he has to power up his ki to freaking win. The latest arc is practically a gag manga in it's stupidity.

Maybe I went into the manga with too high of expectations from all of the people praising it in this sub but damn I definitely stopped enjoying the manga when his conflict with the karate champ ended and it's not like it was the perfect manga up to that point I would say like 8.5/10 but the quality after that point was crap.