Thank you all for the good laughs. This is such a fun thread. 
I think this is my best attempt at listing my favorite Naruto characters:
Kushina (Loveliest Mom)
Minato (Best Dad)
Jiraiya (I miss you so much)
Itachi (Cool Incarnate)
Guy (What a guy!)
Naruto (Protagonist and the Champion of Talk no Jutsu)
Hinata (Best girl won, yay!)
Hashirama (Best cells in the history of the universe)
So in the end, which was worse, Naruto or Bleach?
At it's worse Naruto just felt like really shitty bad storytelling. Just stupid.
At it's worse Bleach feels like Kubo is trying to insult my brain. I don't think I will survive the last chapters of Bleach so yeah Bleach is worse.
So in the end, which was worse, Naruto or Bleach?
You've gone to the future and seen Bleach's ending?
Gonna be that guy and say Haku was a special kind of stupid and Zabuza was not that impressive for being one of the most dangerous ninja's in his village. Also he got talk no jutsu'd in the end. The techniques and fighting style used during the arc was great. But the characters were lacking.
Obviously the arc had flaws like Sakura doing nothing, Zabuza's switch at the end was kind of rushed, the Sasuke/Naruto vs Haku fight scene seemed a little rushed and the Nine Tails really won that fight but it still had a lot of great stuff and every thing in it is exactly what part 2 needed.
Great world building and non ninja enemies a long with actually interesting themes and creative battles and heart, non sucky main characters and villains, great art,great optional climaxes, interesting political discussion ans inter village relationships, cultural exploration,good designs, it showed the makings for an amazing Shonen.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
I mean seriously where the hell did Gato come from?
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/house-of-1000-manga/2014-11-06/naruto/.80741
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/house-of-1000-manga/2014-11-13/naruto-part-ii/.80991
Naruto complete manga review by former Shonen Jump editor Jason Thompson.
Thank you for these links, very much appreciated.
I think Naruto is more disappointing in that it started out pretty good and kept the quality for a few years, and even in Part II I think there are some signs of a good manga trying to get out. But my god, the rest of it is such crap.
However, Bleach, has become so pretentious and amateurishly done (and it didn't quite as much going for it at the start either) that I can't even really muster any feelings for it anymore.
Also, even to the very end, as horribly executed and undeveloped as it was, Naruto still at least kept me invested in wanting to see Naruto and Hinata hook up. I don't think I have anything invested in Bleach anymore (used to be an Ichihime fan, but even that I don't care about anymore).
So yeah, I'd say Bleach is worse.
Naruto played a huge part in maintaining the anime/manga scene in Europe after the DBZ hype, so at least for that I have to give Kishi some credit. Success does not necessarily prove good work, but it's something.
In general I do think that Kishimoto is a great artist and not a downright terrible mangaka, he just couldn't handle the 300 chapter+ challenge.
Also what Nobody said.
Naruto > Bleach, by far.
To be fair, not many can. 300 chapters is a long grind.
I can't think of many series that maintained any semblance of coherence past that point.
@Sen:
To be fair, not many can. 300 chapters is a long grind.
I can't think of many series that maintained any semblance of coherence past that point.
Here is the list of all of the titles with more than 40 volumes(+300 chapters weekly or +150 monthly), looking at the titles, that most of them I never read thoroughly, but heard about, I don't believe many lost a semblance coherence, I can be totally wrong but I don't think so.
By losing coherence I meant that they lost sight of the original plot, and that the central themes were stretched and warped beyond the original vision to the point where the story loses any meaning.
Something like Hajime no Ippo. Sure the plot makes sense on a superficial level. But the past 700 chapters haven't contributed to the story in any way, shape, or form. Recent chapters have as much value as your average Rorschach inkblot.
(Not entirely relevant… but I wanted to use it somewhere.)
There are genres where this is a bit more acceptable. But the vast majority of those titles (that I've read) are long runners for the sake of being long runners. By the end of the story they're unintentional self-parodies. If you described the ending of Dragon Ball to a fan at the beginning of the story, they'd laugh at you.
From the series I've read on that list, it doesn't inspire confidence.
@Sen:
There are genres where this is a bit more acceptable. But the vast majority of those titles (that I've read) are long runners for the sake of being long runners. By the end of the story they're unintentional self-parodies. If you described the ending of Dragon Ball to a fan at the beginning of the story, they'd laugh at you.
Considering the original premise of the series i.e. mountain kid teams up with city girl to find 6 balls like the one the mountain kid has….I'd look at the person laughing like they had two heads or something.
"He grows up, and abandons his family to train with the rencarnation of his strongest enemy, now good, after a final tournament, the end"
Not that farfetchd.
@Sen:
By losing coherence I meant that they lost sight of the original plot, and that the central themes were stretched and warped beyond the original vision to the point where the story loses any meaning.
Something like Hajime no Ippo. Sure the plot makes sense on a superficial level. But the past 700 chapters haven't contributed to the story in any way, shape, or form. Recent chapters have as much value as your average Rorschach inkblot.
!
(Not entirely relevant… but I wanted to use it somewhere.)There are genres where this is a bit more acceptable. But the vast majority of those titles (that I've read) are long runners for the sake of being long runners. By the end of the story they're unintentional self-parodies. If you described the ending of Dragon Ball to a fan at the beginning of the story, they'd laugh at you.
From the series I've read on that list, it doesn't inspire confidence.
Good analysis. The magazines, editors and publishers pressure the author to go beyond his initial vision for his work, in order to maximize monetary gains. If only authors resisted such pressure and ended their stories on high notes, not only that will make said stories better, more believable and not thinly stretched, but the authors will have more time to create other great mangas. Just imagine if Kishimoto and Kubo ended Naruto and Bleach after the Pain Invasion Arc and SS Arc respectively, and then made other projects. We could have had Naruto and Mario. 
An author can go beyond his initial outline and timeline for his manga, and stretch it without it losing its substance, however this needs careful planning and devotion. Mr. Oda comes to mind here.
"Naruto drags badly for the last 20 volumes, and there's 2 or 3 final bosses too many, but it's a good manga."
That's basically how I feel. Before the war mistakes were forgivable and the rest was still enjoyable, but that war man. That fucking war.
I thought Naruto was finished? Happy to be wrong!
Yes, Springtime of Youth is really refreshing and amazing at washing away the tired, dragged Naruto-kun. Alas, surely it won't survive the main source by long?
Wasn't there a rumor that it would end, but another similar would pop up that centered around Sauce-kay instead?
It already ended months ago, with 39 chapters.
Speaking of which, chapter 37 is out on MangaStream…
Wasn't there a rumor that it would end, but another similar would pop up that centered around Sauce-kay instead?
In my humble opinion, its very improbable that a series centered around Sasuke would be as lighthearted and fun as Springtime of Youth is. On the other hand, it can prove to be entertaining in shedding light on more of the Uchiha mysteries, Taka adventures or Orochimaru's schemes. If we are lucky, maybe it would even further elaborate on Naruto's ending or perhaps tie to the upcoming mini-series about Konoha's offsprings.
It already ended months ago, with 39 chapters.
Speaking of which, chapter 37 is out on MangaStream…
Thank you for clearing that.
Lastly, Gizmo, I love your avatar. Very cool indeed.
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Absolute Hotness… Arara, I Mean Justice
He's doing us all a favor, Tenten. Trust me…
And to think that Lee almost singlehandedly saved the entire Naruto universe from itself
The hero we need but don't deserve.
In my humble opinion, its very improbable that a series centered around Sasuke would be as lighthearted and fun as Springtime of Youth is.
It is lighthearted! It is made by the same guy of Rock Lee Spin off and some snippets of it appeared in Weekly Shonen Jump.
One of them was of Sasuke trying to buy a drink in a vending machine, but dropping the coin and it falling below the vending Machine and him not being able to catching it and so trying to use all is arsenal of ninjutsu powers to get the coin back.
It is lighthearted! It is made by the same guy of Rock Lee Spin off and some snippets of it appeared in Weekly Shonen Jump.
One of them was of Sasuke trying to buy a drink in a vending machine, but dropping the coin and it falling below the vending Machine and him not being able to catching it and so trying to use all is arsenal of ninjutsu powers to get the coin back.
That seems quite promising. Thank you for the explanation.
Lighthearted series with no plot always fails to hook me regardless how funny they are. Gintama included. Burrito at least had something to look forward to. Btw is it just me who reads it for sake of humor? I just can't help it but feel like I'm reading a parody of what this manga once was… Or rather parody of what it was supposed to be.
Excuse me for the confusion, but you said that regardless of the fun factor, you look for plot in your desired series. Then you said you read a series only for the sake of humor. Isn't this somewhat contradictory? Sorry if I got it wrong.
Absolute Hotness… Arara, I Mean Justice
Excuse me for the confusion, but you said that regardless of the fun factor, you look for plot in your desired series. Then you said you read a series only for the sake of humor. Isn't this somewhat contradictory? Sorry if I got it wrong.
Weirdly I think that the contradiction I wrote is correct despite, becaue I've dropped few series midway despite them still having plot ongoing. The plot is a reason to feel motivation to keep reading, but if what I read is nothing interesting then there is no reason to expect that this something what's going to happen in future is going to turn out to be any better.
I think Narutos and BleachS biggest problem at well to go for beyond 300-400 chapters was that their "world" could not handle that much attenion. Why is it that OP still feels "good" too most readers while Naruto and Bleach became "stale".For me I think it is about the enviroment, in OP we still get to see lots of new and exciting things so we don't mind that Luffy and his crew side-tracks from their mission to find the one Piece. IN NAruto and Bleach sooner than later everything looked the same, even more in Bleach than in NAruto, I think that is also why some here said they liked the 5 kage arc more than shown in that graph exactly because that felt like a last try to expand the world, the Ninja-world of Naruto and not have the whole and entirely world be focused around two teenagers as if they are the gods who decides if the world continues to run or gets blown up to pieces.
In OP, while you feel that Luffy is powerful and so is his crew, you never feel like they alone are enough to overturn the World Goverment or to change the world for the better via a rebellion. Heck,they don't even care about that stuff as they are too busy to help other people with their troublesa nad get into troubl for this and that. IN Naruto and Bleach you kind of lost that "power consitent" and it is all "UWAH" "BOOOM" "KAWOOOMM" "ZWOSH", etc.Man the whole Ninja stuff was sooner or later forgotten for nuke-jutsu and "everybody gets revivided and can rebuild their houses via wood-jutsu"-stuff, or in Bleach the whole Shingakami stuff with the squads and their mission to protect people was also sooner than later given away for a handful of powerful guys fighting off a handful of powerful bad guys in 1-1s for this or that reason.
It's why I hope WT and BokuHero can both run for a long time.
WT because of its "realistic" approach in which even normal people can learn to fight as everybody got trion and everybody can uses trigger technology and where even a superelite can be defeated by a group of normal soldiers as long as said normal soldiers follow a strategy, analyse the opponents weaknesses and make full uses of their environment to get an edge over the enemy and such.
And in BokuHero because it reminds you a lot of the good old times before the big threes became what they are now. But man, if BokuHero becomes a 2nd Fairy Tale….ugh, better not think about it! >.<
I think it's not really a matter of Naruto's world being not being able to handle the amount of attention, it's that Kishi hit the limits he set way too early while rushing the world building. In part 1, we got all sorts of teasers about how the world worked, and just how powerful characters could get. The 3rd Hokage and the Sannin were praised as being extremely powerful, and the Akatsuki even more so. Naruto and co. were just genin, so when they suddenly became on par with them at the beginning of part 2, well… the power levels were going to be moot beyond that point. And so Kishi was forced to raise everyone's power levels to absurd levels for villain cred in each new arc because of that rushed development, and it really showed when at the War Arc when Orochimaru and the 3rd showed up again... and were completely useless.
The world building was wasted when Kishi decided to throw out the Cold War-esque stalemate between the 5 ninja villages in favor of Uchiha madness and endless forests. Hell, there was Gato and his shady offscreen businesses, and the daimyos who the Kages supposedly answered to. There was a lot of potential in the Naruto world, but it was just thrown away in favor of the Uchiha/Senju being responsible for starting everything.
Bleach is weird in that Kubo "SUPPOSEDLY" looked at other cultures and used them as inspiration (names, designs…and that's it) but it NEVER occurred to take a page from Soul Eater and decide: hmm, MAYBE ALL of after life isn't supposed to resemble feudal Japan and maybe the after life is different for other parts of the world. If he JUST did that, maybe he could have had a more interesting set up in terms of world building but...naaah.
Naruto on the other hand forgot the possibility of having other factions BESIDES ninjas. Kishi did a "fair" job by having the different villages and their suposedly "unique" cultures but...that's as far as his creativity got. Not to mention he pretty much went the Kubo route and instead of hving blank backgrounds, he had dreadful ROCKY backgrounds. So freaking bland.
Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pomeranianhero
deviantart: http://pomeranianhero.deviantart.com/
Naruto on the other hand forgot the possibility of having other factions BESIDES ninjas. Kishi did a "fair" job by having the different villages and their suposedly "unique" cultures but…that's as far as his creativity got. Not to mention he pretty much went the Kubo route and instead of hving blank backgrounds, he had dreadful ROCKY backgrounds. So freaking bland.
Didn't it have samurais besides ninjas?
Still waiting for the talking animals explanation.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p308/Freddy_Mugen88/Anime_Manga/Naruto/Rock_Lee3.jpg
He's doing us all a favor, Tenten. Trust me…
@Purple:
And to think that Lee almost singlehandedly saved the entire Naruto universe from itself
What are you guys, totally heartless? Why would you want to deny Naruto the chance to meet the coolest guy ever?
I am genuinely curious what would've happened if Kishi just scrapped the Uchiha completely. The only good thing to come from that was the idea of the Sharingan as a copy-cat technique. Having a ninja being able to copy any jutsu and movements is pretty damn cool and could become an interesting plot element. But nope, summoning big-dark-samurai-dudes and casting illusion and hypnosis and what have you is a much better alternative.
The tailed beast ended up in a similar situation. They are one of the things I loved the most about the series, but in the end we only got to meet three hosts and beasts, and the rest were shoehorned in as afterthoughts, while Naruto took all the glory and became buddy-buddy with the 9-tails.
Its amazing how bad this manga became.
What are you guys, totally heartless? Why would you want to deny Naruto the chance to meet the coolest guy ever?
You slay me. 
@James:
I think Narutos and BleachS biggest problem at well to go for beyond 300-400 chapters was that their "world" could not handle that much attenion. Why is it that OP still feels "good" too most readers
You mean to people who don't complain about the timeskip, the flashbacks, or certain arcs being somewhat underwhelming?
Kakashi in the background with zero fucks given.
Rock Lee is the single best manga ever created, rivaling One Piece itself just for this part alone.
!
I think it's not really a matter of Naruto's world being not being able to handle the amount of attention, it's that Kishi hit the limits he set way too early while rushing the world building. In part 1, we got all sorts of teasers about how the world worked, and just how powerful characters could get. The 3rd Hokage and the Sannin were praised as being extremely powerful, and the Akatsuki even more so. Naruto and co. were just genin, so when they suddenly became on par with them at the beginning of part 2, well… the power levels were going to be moot beyond that point. And so Kishi was forced to raise everyone's power levels to absurd levels for villain cred in each new arc because of that rushed development, and it really showed when at the War Arc when Orochimaru and the 3rd showed up again... and were completely useless.
The world building was wasted when Kishi decided to throw out the Cold War-esque stalemate between the 5 ninja villages in favor of Uchiha madness and endless forests. Hell, there was Gato and his shady offscreen businesses, and the daimyos who the Kages supposedly answered to. There was a lot of potential in the Naruto world, but it was just thrown away in favor of the Uchiha/Senju being responsible for starting everything.
Not to mention that Kishi focused far to much on Uchiha's while the other clans life-style and whatnot barely got anything attention if at all .
Wasn't the Byakugan stronger than the Sharingan? poor Byakugan was forgotten as soon as it was mentioned.
Wasn't the Byakugan stronger than the Sharingan? poor Byakugan was forgotten as soon as it was mentioned.
As soon as your eyes don't let you summon eternal black fire, a giant tengu with impenetrable armor and instant nightmare inducing eternal sealing sword, eternal tsukuyomis, extra lifes. . .
. . .as soon as your eyes don't let you do all those things, I'm sorry but you're a loser in the Naruto world.
Wasn't the Byakugan stronger than the Sharingan?.
The Byakugan is noted to have greater vision and insight than the Sharingan.
Take that as you will.
Why do you think Hiashi worked so hard to get some of that ninja Jesus blood into the family?
In a couple of years both Bolt and Himawari will awaken the True Byakugan which basically shapes reality at the users will.
They should have saved Zetsu for Bolt and Himawari's sleeves.
As soon as your eyes don't let you summon eternal black fire, a giant tengu with impenetrable armor and instant nightmare inducing eternal sealing sword, eternal tsukuyomis, extra lifes. . .
. . .as soon as your eyes don't let you do all those things, I'm sorry but you're a loser in the Naruto world.
So that makes everybody who's not Sasuke a looser.
Also can we safely assume that Yamato married Hinata's sister and they lived happily ever after in Oblivion?
A somewhat accurate graph of Naruto's drop in quality.
Invasion of Konoha was not only part of the Chunnin exam but was really good.
There should be a massive drop after the Tsunade arc, and an even bigger one after the timeskip which makes the series just plain go off the chart's bottom for the entire rest.
With one spike for that guy punching Sasuke.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
That's basically how I feel. Before the war mistakes were forgivable and the rest was still enjoyable, but that war man. That fucking war.
Naruto was really terrible since the timeskip. Not sure how you missed that it all dissolved into endless forests, villain of the week based plotlines, extremely half-assed flat art, zero tension given kids were suddenly taking out the uber villains every storyline or so, and near complete irrelevance given to most of the interesting side cast.
It's pretty much undeniable that the Kishi who wrote Part 2 was no longer an artist, and just a guy doing a job for money.
He lost control of the plot in the Sasuke Pot arc (a terrible arc as well) and never got back on the horse.
The degradation of the art style into bland nothingness alone is proof of this.
So apparently Kishi had planned the ending at least 8 years in advance.
A tweet from the anime series director about the manga ending:
１５年続いた連載が終わった・・・１２年前の制作発表会でご一緒したのがつい先日のように感じます、８年ほ ど前に聞かされたエンド・・・少し微調節がされてますが・・・あんな前からの構想を見事形にして見せていた だきました。・・・・・・・・岸本先生１５年、本当にお疲れ様でした。
Hayato Date, the director of Naruto and Naruto Shippuden tweeted that the ending the manga just got is the same ending that Kishimoto told him 8 YEARS AGO except some minor last minute changes.
[And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon]
@Monkey:
It's pretty much undeniable that the Kishi who wrote Part 2 was no longer an artist, and just a guy doing a job for money.
He lost control of the plot in the Sasuke Pot arc (a terrible arc as well) and never got back on the horse.The degradation of the art style into bland nothingness alone is proof of this.
Pretty much.
Naruto was already worsening before the timeskip but after that things got way out of control. Clearly Kishimoto wasnt giving two shits about quality as long as he was gettin paid.
From simply a bad manga Naruto degenerated into something decadent, reading it having sense only to see how long could Kishi could keep twisting his own work while getting away with it.
So apparently Kishi had planned the ending at least 8 years in advance.
He probably told the anime guy that naruto and sasuke would fight and sasuke would be redeemed, lol. Everything else he just pulled out last minute.
