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Close Enough

Seven years ago, I successfully predicted the ending of Naruto. This is proven by the image below, which admittedly could’ve been edited in MS Paint.

But Baka-Raptor, that’s not how it ended!

Not anymore. According to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, it’s impossible to publish an accurate prediction of the ending of a manga without causing the author to change it out of spite. There’s no question that Masashi Kishimoto stumbled upon my website several years ago and wanted to stick it to me ever since. His alternate ending is incontrovertible proof. He stuck with the gist of my plot, but instead of doing anything dramatic, he turned it into a fanfic. I’m not sure whether to be appalled by how sappy it was or impressed by how many ships he sank through canon fire.

Final Grade: +

The long-running shounen anime/manga exception was tailor-made for Naruto. I started reading it during the Chuunin Exam arc. It was excellent at that point and stayed great through the Hidan and Kakuzu arc. It went downhill during the Itachi Pursuit arc and crashed miserably during the Shinobi World War arc. Going strictly by the number of chapters, the good outweighed the bad.

There will be a spinoff series coming out next year. I won’t be reading it.

7 Replies to “Close Enough”

  1. My relationship with the series was eternally fucked after the Dragon Ball ending to the Invasion of Pain arc, which I otherwise liked. The Shinobi War though, now that really sucked balls.

    • Itachi and Pain went downhill for me because the powers were really getting out of hand. The eyes in particular stopped being about increased perception and started being about full-on wizardry.

  2. I started reading Naruto in 2005 and now after 9 years it’s finally over. I’m happy and sad at the same time. Obito being alive and Kaguya are my only two real complaints about the series. It had it’s bad moments sure, but most of the time I really enjoyed it. Now if only Bleach could end as well. Bleach has sucked at least 5 years now. I’m just reading it so that people can’t use the “you haven’t read that chapter” card. I have read every single chapter and it sucks ass.

    • I started reading sometime in 2004. Shikamaru vs. Temari was the first battle I read, and it remains one of my favorites to this day.

      Obito was but one part of the whole “too many sharingans” problem that dragged the series down for me.

      I haven’t liked Bleach since Dondochakka and Pesche showed up. With that said, the manga hasn’t gone strictly downhill for me. There were some parts where it would temporarily get better before sinking back down.

  3. I… mostly enjoyed Naruto? I mean, I was in the middle of a painful breakup with Bleach at the time, so I might have been ignoring significant flaws to get my teen-boy-punchan fix, but I started reading the beginning, dropped out during the “exams”, caught up with the rest on the internet, and started reading again just as Pain invaded.

    Then I dropped out during the final battle, but I don’t remember *hating* the story after Pain. I mean, the reset-buttoning was a bit ham-handed, but… ah well.

    • Hatred or not, a drop’s a drop. The Shinobi World War was pretty damn long too, so if you throw that out, I could also say I mostly enjoyed Naruto.

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