Naruto started out extremely well. I had everything: great world, fantastic characters, an amazing story and a powerful message that hard work beats out destiny i.e. if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything.

And Naruto (the character) embodied this message, at the beginning atleast.
Spoiler alert from this point.

But at the halfway mark Naruto stopped being this show about how hard work beats destiny. Naruto who has upto this point been screaming that he is goona be the hokage through hard work is suddenly revealed to be the child of the prophecy or something. The only fucking jutsu he learns in the entire series is Rasengan, Shadow clone jutsu and the summoning jutsu. The entirety of Naruto's power increase in the series comes from him being the host of the kyuubi and the prophecised child. The series abandons its message halfway through and makes Naruto look like a hypocrite.

Another thing that pisses me off is how at the ending part, the ninjas stop being ninjas essentially. Every character we meet is a fucking god or has a sharingaan. Hand signs which were pretty cool in my opinion are nearly dropped in the later half. Most of the characters stop being important except Naruto and Sasuke and other characters are put in the background.

Despite these shortcomings, there are many things to like here. The action scenes are always pretty cool. Most of the villains are good except the last one. Overall ok series but definitely downgraded in the second half.
6/10