Currently Running Manga Discussion

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I do agree about it being surreal. Granted that I wasn't following it over the last year and on,y now have been playing catch up, but it's something that iwas first exposed to back in 2005, and it had been something that I'd read weekly for nearly a decade. Even as much as I now hate the series, it's definitely going to feel weird that it's gone, but mostly weird in a good way where I know that I'll never have to torture myself with shitty story-telling on a regular basis.

For the record, I think that up through the Chuunin Exam arc, you could probably call this a decent shonen for what it was, but to me the series just starts going downhill after that, and then takes not one, but a series of nosedives after the time skip, sinking lower and lower than ever before.

Really, I've rarely seen long time skips done well in manga, myself. I'm starting to think that Dragon Ball and JoJo's are the only 2 series which I've read that can pull it off well.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Well, 20th Century Boys and Billy Bat have great timeskips. But if we are just talking about shonen series, then yeah, outside of DB and JJBA, I can't think of any others that have done it effectively.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

True, I forgot about 20CB, but even that is still just one of the few exceptions.

[Nel_Annette]

Naruto isn't completely done. There's still the final timeskip movie coming out where he realizes he wants to bone Hinata. I think that's the plot anyway.

YOU AREN'T DONE UNTIL YOU'VE WATCHED IT. ALL OF IT.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

[Spark Of Spirit]

9 years...

I remember when it came out. People went wild for it. How could you not? Ninjas, crazy powers, intriguing set up...

Then it kept going.

I would be surprised if any of the people I remember raving about it when it came out either still read it or watch it. The series slid into irrelevance long ago and never crawled out of that pit. I'd personally be surprised if anyone ever trusts Kishimoto ever again with all the blunders and bad storytelling devices he used here.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Well, I feel to call it "irrelevant" is a stretch. It's still one of the most popular and highest-selling anime/manga franchises of all time and one of the most widely recognizable among anime/manga titles worldwide. It has many detractors, but it also has far more fans, even after all the bullshit in recent years. And the series was so big commercially, that I'm positive it will still be remembered in the future, especially if they keep it always conscious in the public mind like how Jump and Toei have done with Dragon Ball for two decades straight. I don't think it will be remembered as a great series, god forbid a classic, but I doubt this franchise is going to fade into obscurity, by any means.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

You know what else Naruto is really bad with? Exposition. I mean, I thought that Togashi could get really anal with exposition in HXH, but this series takes it to a whole new level of bad.

For one thing, you have almost entire chapters devoted to just explaining what's going on, which in and of itself wouldn't be so bad, but then all of that explaining to set things up will quickly get ret-conned just 10 or 20 chapters later with even more exposition.

Case in point: Madara is explaining his plan about he and Obito will use the moon for Infinite Tsukuyomi, and he sets up all of this logic for how it works, but then when the characters are trying to find a way to stop him, in the middle of actual fighting, he's ret-conning things that he said before and calmly explaining to them how he accounted for their plans and what's "REALLY" happening, and then he betrays Obito and says that he planned that all along, and then Obito tries to get Sakura to kill him but then Madara says that he already planned for that and secretly gave him a seal that would prevent him from killing himself and protect him from death since he needed him alive in order for his convoluted plan to work.

However, what's even worse is that, putting the exposition aside, doesn't it really force you to stop taking it seriously when the villain, who's in the process of trying to kill the main characters and for a dream reality on the rest of the world is bothering to explain so much to their enemies, when by all means it shouldn't even matter since they won't remember anything if their goal is achieved?

The worst, and most hilarious offender is in the chapter that I just read. Kaguya is somehow using Black Zetsu to hold Naruto and Sasuke in place and drain their chakra, and maybe it's just bad translations, but this is an actual line of dialogue that comes up when he (Black Zetsu) is trying to spout out more exposition: "It's uncommon to see Indra and Ashura Transmigrants cooperate so much. Since you don't seem to know anything, I'll tell you that story while absorbing your chakra."

That just flat-out made me laugh. He's basically openly saying "I'm going to explain things to you guys while I'm actively in the process of killing you." Does that sound like a super serious threatening villain to you? He might as well have said this: "Since Kishimoto lacks the talent to inform his readers through natural story transitions and indirect implications, I'm going to blatantly explain to all of you some more backstory that he just pulled out of his ass to make more sense of things, even though every other time that he's done that he just made the story even more convoluted than before. Enjoy."

[Nel_Annette]

Credit where it's due, Kishi. That final shot of the latest chapter. I did not expect that at all.

Spoiler

They lost their fucking hands. My eyes widened when I realized what I was looking at. Though because this is magical ninja land they can probably grow them back with tree dna or something.

[close]

[LumRanmaYasha]

I personally felt that shot was a bit unnecessary, especially since they'll probably be able to replace those easily enough, but it works because of the mood and subtext of the scene. What I particularly appreciated about the chapter, though, was the talk between Naruto and Sasuke, and Sasuke reflecting on his relationship with Naruto, and his actions to this point. I felt those were actually very well done and effective emotional moments, and a strong way to close off the rivalry between them. In the end, I'd say the fight ended the best way it possibly could, and as such was much better than I expected to be. It can't make me forget all the bullshit I had to endure to get to this point, so it doesn't really work for me as much as I'm sure it does fans of this series and these characters, but as a stand alone chapter and an unbiased standpoint, I would give it credit, and call it "good."

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm still playing catch up, myself, but I'll also give Kishimoto some credit for that one scene that I just read where Naruto through Kaguya off-guard by using the Reverse Harem Jutsu. It reminds me of that scene in Guardians where Star Lord starts randomly dancing to throw off Ronan. It just made me chuckle, and it's one of the few times that humor in this series has worked, because it's so unexpected for what is essentially "the final boss" (or at least I assume that she is) of the series.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Let me be clear, this is still a terrible manga, but in trying to be more positive, I'll highlight 3 minor but noticeable things that I like about these chapters that are close to the end (I'm still 10 chapters behind), as that would be much easier than listing all of the things that I hate, which would go on forever:

-The "final boss" fight is focused on Team 7, and I generally like when long stories pay homage to the very beginning. It's more sentimental in value than actual good story-telling, but I like that notion of having something in the end be full circle of where it began. Of course other series have done it better than this one, for sure, like how the last episode of Buffy has such a great reference and tribute to an iconic scene from the first episode, for example, but all the same, even in this horribly written story, I still get a sense of that sentiment, which kind of gives me something positive to look at amidst all of the crap.

-While it goes to show how much I'm struggling just to find good things to say about this, since this point pretty much ties in with my previous point, I do like in particular how, since it is focusing on Team 7, it's mostly a team fight, even if Sakura is pretty useless, as usual. The bottom line, though, is that, unless it drastically changes in the last few chapters, it's not Naruto defeating all of the big bad guys by himself, but using the help of Sasuke and Kakashi as well.

-Some of the emotional bits almost sort of work. The thing is, those moments themselves are actually decently written. The problem is that, at the end of series like this, it only really fully comes to fruition if it feels like a good payoff to everything that the series has been building up to. Since a majority of the series was utter crap up to this point, even the best writer in the world couldn't effectively make you really give a shit about any of these characters anymore. A good example of a story that really does effectively make you feel the emotion in its final arc through constant good writing is Slam Dunk. But, even though Naruto doesn't have that, I'll give Kishimoto credit for clearly trying here, and his effort in this regard actually isn't bad. It's just that it's his own fault for fucking up his own story so badly that the emotional payoff just doesn't feel worth it in the end. Had the rest of the story been good, then these scenes would actually be really effective, though.

And that's about as far as I can push it. This manga is still garbage, though, but I'd say that in a sense, it can at least be entertainingly bad at parts.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I finally caught up with Naruto. I don't know, that last page kind of made me chuckle for some reason. Anyways, it'll be great to finally put this series behind me in about a week. Then again there is that movie that's supposed to be the true ending, but it probably won't be subbed in high quality until the DVD comes out, so either way, I won't even have to think about Naruto for a long while.

[LumRanmaYasha]

From what I can tell, the movie is just some epilogue kind of thing. At most the most significant thing that will happen in it is that Naruto and Hinata will get together or something. I doubt it will be all that necessary to watch.

[LumRanmaYasha]

So, I've been looking around online, and geez, I'm seeing a hell of a lot of negative criticism over Fuuka's death. Some people are ragequitting the series and staying off of the mangaka's other works for good. Apparently the japanese reaction is just as severe, to the point that the mangaka went on twitter trying to convince fans that the reason why this had to happen will be made clear as the series goes on.

You know why I think so many shonen series play it so safe? Because that's what the majority of readers want to see. Try and do something a little different, and you either get canceled early or you get backlashed. And as a consequence, few mangaka are willing to take risks and try and tell more interesting stories different from the norm. Most of the people complaining about what happened in Fuuka are pissed off because they liked the character so much and they wanted the leads to have a happy ending. And that's fine, I can understand why people are sad, or a little mad, but so many are so vitriolic about this and I feel they are overreacting. I have a feeling that the mangaka had a plan for this. It's not like this development came out of nowhere; there was a fair amount of foreshadowing, in retrospect, especially in the weeks building up to this. I have no clue what direction the series will go, but I think it's better to just wait it out and see, because who knows, it might become an even better series after this.

My concern is that the negative comments might make Kodansha force the mangaka to pull his punches or he succumbs to the pressure and tries to do undo this somehow, but I really hope he just continues forward with the story he wanted to write. Unfortunately, considering this business, I'm not too confident about that. One thing I do know, though, of all the series I'm currently reading, Fuuka is the one where I'm most anxious to see what happens next, and most worried about the direction of it's story. For all the negative comments, it's had to have sparked some extra curiosity in the series among manga fans in Japan. There will be lots of readers who might ragequit it, but I bet many will be curious to see what will happen now, and others who hadn't checked it out might start to and see what's up. So I have a feeling the mangaka is going to really need to win over people in the next few chapters in order to continue this story. He took a big gamble, and now he's got to play his cards just right. I just want a good manga out of this, so I hope he succeeds in that.