My first manga review, and I've decided to base it on a franchise which I've followed for many years: Naruto/Naruto Shippuden. The Naruto anime was one of the very first I watched, and definitely played a big part in making me the anime/manga fan that I am today. The sheer number of filler episodes, however, caused me to end up putting it on hold/dropping it and now I just read the manga.

First off, the story. For a number of years I loved the story and world of Naruto. By reading the manga (and watching the anime before that) I was introduced to a hugely imaginative and colourful world full of ninjas and their cool ninjutsu. I liked various ideas such as the different levels of ninja which existed: genin, chuunin, jounin, hokage; the need for sufficient amounts of chakra in order to perform ninja skills; the many hidden ninja villages which supported their countries and ruling lords as well as the tensions between them; the presence of organizations made up of outcast ninja who wanted nothing but to cause trouble. There were many other positive signs of Naruto becoming an engaging tale full of adventure and plot twists.

Over 500 chapters later and I must admit I'm no longer sure about this. Around chapter 208, Naruto takes a time-skip of roughly two years and the anime marks this as the point it becomes Naruto Shippuden. The majority of Naruto before the time-skip, as well as the first few arcs of Shippuden, were pretty consistent in quality. Consistently good. There was plenty of story going on which included ninja exams, evil conspiracies, revenge and betrayal, organizations with complicated schemes, etc. You got the feeling that the main plot was moving along nicely (even if it sometimes felt a little slow and unevenly paced), with the side plots serving to flesh out the world of Naruto and its characters a smaller, but no less important, priority.

However, a few hundred chapters into Naruto things start to go wrong, horribly wrong, and it becomes painfully clear (at least to me) that the manga should end with a fitting conclusion rather than drag it out any longer. One problem that's related to the story is the addition of new side plots which seem to either slow down the main storyline so much that it's easy forget what it originally was, or are used as a sole excuse for one of the characters to learn new skills and grow stronger (not much of a problem early on, but now it just seems repetitive and boring). Loose ends start taking way too many chapters to sort out and evil characters too long to deal with. Recent plot revelations disrupt the flow of events and makes me wonder why they weren’t revealed much sooner (other than just to extend the story); I don’t see why it’s necessary to wait hundreds of chapters before being shown Naruto’s full background or to found out more about the history of the nine-tailed fox.

The characters of Naruto play a large part in why I think this series is not as good as it once was, and it's an aspect which is hugely frustrating. It's obvious that for a long-running manga like Naruto there are a lot of characters, but Team 7 (consisting of Naruto, his closest friends Sasuke and Sakura, and their teacher Kakashi) and a few others introduced later get the most focus and development. Naruto’s fellow teenage ninjas all get their moments in the story, but for the most part they are there just to lend a helping hand to the main characters during battles. This isn’t a huge problem initially as Naruto himself is a likeable lead, with bags of optimism and personality which sees him overcome the prejudice everyone has towards him, as well as interesting team-mates with whom he gradually develops strong bonds with. Throughout the first half of Naruto the members of Team 7 each develop at a realistic pace as they gain new experiences through missions for their ninja village as well as encounters with their enemies. After the time skip these characters in particular seem to have matured a lot and are no longer the indecisive or fledgling ninjas who they once were.
At least this is what it seemed.
When the major story events start occurring during Naruto Shippuden, certain characters (without naming anyone) revert back to who they were for no particular reason. The newfound toughness and maturity shown in previous arcs are replaced by actions which portray them as weak or just plain mad, with motives which don’t make sense; this leads to characters which, previously likeable, are now easy to hate. Female ninjas seem to suffer the most though, with most of them made to appear useless in terms of the storyline, or just completely forgotten about; other characters, too, just start disappearing from the story only to turn up again much later. Any character development up until now seems pointless, with much of the more important characters acting the same as they did two years earlier.

Another one of the things I used to appreciate about Naruto was how characters became stronger, built up their chakra levels and learnt new techniques as their ninja training progressed, while there were limits to their improvement. The world of Naruto initially contained certain rules, such as the concept of chakra and self-damaging high-level techniques, which prevented characters from becoming too powerful and no stronger than they ought to be. Shippuden does a good job of ignoring these rules; ideas and reasons which aren’t fully explained allow people to become as strong as they want to be as long as it is convenient for the increasingly muddled storyline. The ninjas in Naruto have special abilities, but they are still human, and therefore should not be having infinite potential/chakra levels. New villains introduced at this point are far more powerful than the recognised heavyweights of the ninja world, using ridiculous attacks several times. Even the title of Hokage, the strongest ninja of a village, doesn’t seem so grand anymore as too many characters surpass most of the existing hokages both in strength and abilities.

The art in Naruto is pretty good and I have few complaints. The main characters, as well as most of the supporting cast, have unique designs which makes it easy to tell them apart. There are numerous fights in this manga, and the majority are well-drawn with a large variety of ninja techniques on display which make them exciting to read. Locations such as the Hidden Leaf Village are quite detailed, and the addition of animals through the use of summoning techniques help to make the world of Naruto even more diverse.

Naruto started off as a very good shounen series, even if a little clichéd, and was immensely enjoyable when it peaked at several points before the time-skip as well as during some of the Shippuden arcs. These moments are memorable and full of epic battles between multiple ninjas, and there are quite a few emotionally moving scenes/dialogue too. Unfortunately, this just makes it feel so much more tragic when much of what was great about Naruto is utterly destroyed by the last hundred or so chapters. It makes it seem as though the creator of this manga has grown complacent over his success, and is now allowing the series to run on its reputation alone. There are still stand-out moments in some chapters which mirror the greatness found in the earlier parts of the manga, but these are too few and are far outweighed by the amount of bad characterization, plot holes and slow plot pacing that have taken hold of Naruto since the time-skip.