An abysmal horror. Been reading Naruto since I was a kid. Near the end the story went down the toilet and everything sucked but I felt an obligation to the manga because of nostalgia. The ending was the worst and brings me pain even to think about it. There really was no resolution to the core conflict. As the story progressed the characters became less likable and diluted. And the whole "new generation" characters of Naruto are even more diluted than their parents.

Still, I rated the art pretty high. When Masashi Kishimoto started out, his illustrations held a lot of emotion and love. Every time I went to read the Zabuza arc, I ended up crying when Haku died. Of course near the end, the art started to deteriorate (but I admit there were some very moving scenes). I felt that near the end of the series, Kishimoto was totally fed up with Naruto and wanted to end it as quickly as possible, leaving very large plot holes all over the place. And with his love of the series gone, the story became stale. Of course this sort of thing would happen after having to work on the same story for 15 years. There was probably 3% planning going in to the last arc of the manga. Also why did everyone get ugly.