r/Naruto•
Dustellar

Just finished Naruto Shippuden! my two-cents...

SpoilerAnalysis

First of all, let me say that I enjoyed it a lot, it's an overall extremely solid anime, not as iconic as Dragon Ball imo (probably just nostalgia) but does a few things better than it, like the character development and world-building, now I can understand why this anime is so popular and appears in so many tops.

What I liked:
-Character development and side-character relevance: this is probably one of the things I enjoy the most in any story, when the side-characters have their moment, it's clear Naruto is the MC and Sasuke the co-protagonist, but seeing so many great moments for other characters was amazing.
-World-building: it feels real and huge, although not so much at the end of the story, for most of it you knew that no matter how strong Naruto and the others were, there were still others strong shinobi out there.
-Solid arcs and villains: not all of them and there are a few tropes they reuse, but overall pretty good.
-Animation: Especially in the main battles
-Battle choreographies: Especially in small and medium size battles, I think one of Naruto's strengths are the down to earth one-on-one fights, where skills matters more than power.
-Great variety of combat: not much at the start when they use substitution and clones almost all the time, but most of the fights are quite smart and varied in the use of skills.
-OST: Amazing! I always smile when I hear Shikamaru theme because I know something really smart is coming.
-I actually like Hinata and Naruto, I know some people here don't like them together because lack of development or even chemistry, but I think that makes sense since they were not teammates, I think Hinata loving Naruto since the beginning is cute and I'm glad Naruto saw that.

What I disliked:
-Kaguya! I don't know what you guys think, but to me Kaguya as "final antagonist" was really bad, I liked her flashbacks explaining her story, her battle with her son and all that, but give me one reason why that final battle couldn't have been done with Madara in mind... or at least Black Zetsu controlling his body! even if Naruto and Sasuke were like a "representation" of her sons, to me there was not enough development, compared to Madara it doesn't feel personal.
-Excessive use of sad backgrounds: yeah I understand that's pretty much the nature of Naruto, I know about the "talk no jutsu" memes and I enjoyed many of those characters, I just wish there were more villains without redeeming qualities, no wonder my favorite arc is the one with Kakuzu and Hidan as villains.
-Giant-size battles: as I said before, I think Naruto is better when it's about small/medium battles, when I saw some battles full of characters throwing "Genkidama-level" jutsus at each other... I didn't like that.

Anyway, I also watched the Boruto movie just to be ready to continue this universe, not sure what to think about it... with such a strong character as his first enemy, I fear about the progression of this anime, I hope it starts really small like Naruto.

Posted Jan 25, 2026, 6:50 PM UTC

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