That's being kind.
You have however managed to pretend they are good.
There are tiny miniscule specks of decentness within the shit river of Part 2, and most of them are only cool for being so damned unlike everything else around it. Like Killer Bee beating the shit out of Sasuke, which was promptly ruined by the ol' deus ex machina eye.
Tada.
Yes, Sasuke started acting like a petulant child after Itachi died, that's when it started. Absolutely.
Yeah, it pretty much is.When you find a criticism of mine that can be deflated with this explanation I'll show you Pain being a good character.
Bleach is mostly unbeleivably lifeless, not outright awful.
It's like going on a date with either an incredibly boring personalityless person or a smelly loud and obnoxious person. I'll take the former.
I like how you associate calling Naruto awful with calling it the worst thing ever.
HO HO HO, tough guy on the internet!
I'm not quite sure why you break things up to respond to them like that, as if answering things sentence by sentence somehow makes your points stronger, rather than meandering, then veering wildly away from the argument as a whole.
Anyway, don't misunderstand (or make assumptions). Me saying Sasuke was acting especially like a petulant child after Itachi's death does not preclude me from thinking he's always acted like a stuck-up child. It was just all the more unbearable in light of Itachi's sacrifice.
Let's get right down to it, though: the major reason why people really hate Part 2 was because of all its wasted potential. I'm not an apologist who likes Part 2 or even likes Naruto anymore. Compared to Part 1, it's a shit sandwich. But hey, if there're parts that I like, I don't go and pretend they don't exist (which I may do with Bleach) or rationalize them away. I enjoyed seeing Sasuke look like a complete and utter tool - first by Itachi dying, then by Killer Bee kicking his ass, then by duping him after his eye-hax. I enjoyed seeing Shikamaru pwn Hidan repeatedly. I enjoyed the rescue Gaara arc, on the whole. I mostly enjoyed watching Deidara fuck Sasuke's shit up until the end. Seeing Hinata get stabbed was pretty cool for me too 'cuz I never liked her anyway and it made the fans rage. Seeing that the 1st Hokage was such a badass was nice. Kyuubi coming out and doing his thing was pretty peachy as well. Most of our expectations for what characters will do come from what liked best about them in Part 1, so I try to take that into account while evaluating Naruto. Now, most everything else dips into bottomless pits of bubbling bile. The bad of Naruto is really, really bad. But the potential for unsuck still exists. I'm interested in seeing what this summit of the 5 Kages amounts to, for example. Could lead to some awesome things, could be another crap arc. But at least I can say I don't know it's going to be ass like Bleach.
I say it's mediocre, but Naruto is probably awful. But no matter how bad it gets, no matter how unrealized – it won't be a harem manga. It won't be one of the legions of shounen with cardboard cut-out characters ('cept lolPain and lolSai), and completely unrelatable villains. It won't be like Bleach in which each arc is literally a cut-paste of the arc before it. It may not be focusing on the things we liked it for right now, but at least its fights won't be dull, slogging, DBZ-esque romps through "NOW I HAVE THE HIGH GROUND" land. There are series with much less invested and much less personality than Naruto. They just don't disappoint you because you didn't expect anything of them in the first place.
 
