Liquid Alter

Alright, I promised myself that I would do this, so I am.

Naruto. The manga is 595 chapters long at the moment, as far as I know.

The first part of it, which is before the anime went into the second season, is worth reading. I did so, and it is seriously incredibly good, even if you count it as something entirely different from what came afterward.

The Wave Country arc is actually the best out of all of them in my opinion, with the ONLY people who class as real ninja despite the fact that one of them uses a sword longer than most battle-axes and the other is a bishounen teen who uses ice needles. I have not read the whole thing, but that is what I would hold to even if I did go through it all.

But eventually it got to the betrayal and from there on, it all went downhill for me. When it takes the main character 20 chapters to learn one techniques while his enemies pull them out of nowhere, something has gone wrong.

And speaking of Naruto, the issues he has are uncountable. For one, he is stupid beyond measure, choosing to chase the woman that beats, insults and generally hates him for God knows how long while the one who is better looking, has a better personality and is really more skilled goes unnoticed for the entire manga by the blonde idiot.

And I also heard an (unconfirmed) rumour that Kishimoto himself told people that the ending of it could be Naruto/Sasuke shounen-ai. Yes, I am being dead serious about that, and the people who ship that pairing may have been right all along.

Though I have just found something out; there was an even earlier series by Kishi, the main character of which looks very similar to Sasuke from what I remember of the first cover. That might just be the reason that what was originally meant to turn out as something very different became what it now is.

All in all, some fanfic writers might just have done a better job at going their own direction and making it genuinely readable and long-lasting than the mangaka has been doing for some time.

Really, though, I just stay away from that fandom entirely now, like I have done since late last year.

When the apparent message that Masashi tries to put across is 'be an evil, traitorous bastard; chances are you will win in the end', it really isn't worth it for me.