After I came to the US in 1998, I did not read manga at all for a while. I was aware that many mangas made to US through scan-translation and animetization.
Some time in early November 2014 I heard that "Naruto" was going to end in the main arc manga version on 11/10/2014.
As I recall, Naruto was on the Japanese weekly manga magazine "Shonen Jump" forever, since even before I came to the US. But I never read it much in a coherent manner.
So I decided to read them all, 700 episodes in manga. It took a few weeks with some serious sleep time sacrifice, but it was quite an entertainment.
Some of my random thoughts and impressions.
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Naruto was initially described as a loser-underdog, who makes it through friendship, teamwork and hard work. It is a standard format for mangas in the magazine "Shonen Jump".
Later it turned out he is THE elite with incomparable pedigree. Come to think of it, they wouldn't seal/entrust the power of a tailed beast (something with the power comparable to nuclear weaponry) to random nobody. But this development made me wonder the validity of Naruto's preaching to an elitist kid Neji at the early phase of the story, in retrospect.
It is a long story. In a long story, people change. Perceptions of the character's actions change (like Itachi's actions). Even a villain can show some decency or redemption, or get to explain the reasoning behind (like Danzo). That aspect is a true merit of long story in the world of oversimplified one liner characterization. You can see or learn that this world is more complex than a bunch of one liners and black-and-white characterizations that are common everywhere.
There are many (and I mean many) reflections and explanatory branches in the story. Sometimes they seem redundant and almost annoying. Probably it is necessary evil for a long manga whose each episode coming out weekly. In the real life we hardly get any explanations to what's really going on and why it is happening. In manga we get plenty of reminders and explanations. Certainly they can talk while they fight, and that doesn't happen in real life. It's so manga.
I like the view for leadership."It isn't that if you become Hokage (the leader) everyone will acknowledge you...It's the ones who are acknowledged that can become Hokage".
The last part (the Ninja world war arc) was a big epic, but a bit tiring. The "last boss" showed up one after another (Resurrected former-foes and ex-Kages, Madara, Ten-tails, Tobi, Kaguya, and Sasuke) with all time escalation for the final 200 episodes. What the heck with Rikudou Sennin and Kaguya popping out from nowhere?
It was evident that how video game friendly the entire Manga is. I am almost certain that the writers had game translation in mind from a very early stage.
It was fun catching up on all the story in a few weeks. It was nice to see the characters grow.
I did laugh when I saw Gaara's hairstyle in the final 700th episode. They have grown indeed.
