Naruto is so fucking amazing man. I could write essays on characters, emotional moments, the soundtrack, great fights in it etc. Strategy, stakes, tension etc. Naruto delivered so much, so hard. It's no wonder it was so widely beloved even across the world. The days of the big 3 were truly the best, we were so spoiled back then. It really was the pinnacle of anime and manga, despite all the lows, the slumps and such too.
I kinda really took ongoing series for granted too, having something continuous to watch every week at least. And also having SO MUCH to binge if it was far enough too. I remember binging hundreds of Naruto episodes and chapters back in the day before I caught up, man....
I completely lost my mind when this came out and Shippuden happened:
The post timeskip, I first saw the post TS stuff in the manga but seeing it all animated instead was a completely surreal, all new kind of experience that made me fall in love with the series all over again too.
Oh no, my Narutardism is actually returning after all, I knew it would happen the longer I spent here, it was inevitable, unavoidable lmao.
Naruto had so many fucking amazing OPs and EDs that I still listen to this day and the GODLIEST soundtrack aside from Fairy Tail too and a lot of Bleach too at least . It added so much to the experience. The Narutimate Accel games provided SO MUCH insane hype to the characters too, made them look like extreme badasses even more than the Pirate Warriors games amazingly do with One Piece characters too ofc.
Naruto's characters were so iconic, so well written and memorable, I loved them so much from early on and that sold me hard on the series. Naruto was such a likeable, relatable, tragic MC despite how obnoxiously annoying, loud and attention seeking he was but he had a heart of gold and his backstory perfectly explained why he was like that. The Sasuke and Uchiha obsession both in-story and outside of it, including by Kishi and the fanbase got on my nerves but I did always find Sasuke to be a really tragic and thus sympathetic character despite his outright shittiness at times. It's not like he wasn't justified nor unable to be understood why too.
Fuck man, the memories are slowly comig back to me, Naruto was the wildest, most intense, gripping rollercoaster of its time, it balanced and gave so much. The legendary hundreds of episodes of filler literally that traumatised us all too lol, literally 80 episodes of consecutive filler during the worst of it too.
But I wouldn't change a thing either, it would stop the series being what it is despite all the major flaws it has too. And thus I stretch that to Bleach, Fairy Tail, One Piece and other series too. Art is art after all.
God knows I've lost count of the amount of times Naruto made me fucking cry, made me cry harder than even "Dragon Bawl" did lmao. Although to be fair, the ending of DB GT made me fucking cry hard and lowkey traumatised me as a kid lmao. I can't believe GT is almost 30 years old too, WTF MAN!?