Idk if this is a hot take or not but, War arc Climax is the best part of the series.

The worldbuilding and female cast is not nearly as bad as people make them out to be

I like the Kaguya fight, don’t care about the story but the fight itself was a breath of fresh air after SO6P Obito & Madara fights

My other hot take is that Naruto has great female characters. I feel like the inclusion of women is adequate and realistic. In real life too all the presidents are men until they aren't. And ninja is a profession that skews male but still most teams have 2 boys and 1 girl and I feel like that's a fair representation of the intended audience.

I am glad they never had a storyline about a girl wanting to become a ninja and people telling her she can't do it because she's a girl. In Naruto gender just doesn't matter, there's just less female characters, which likely reflects the readership of a shonen magazine.

Yes the women often have crushes and are healers, but I feel like in a way he gets women.

In many ways Naruto was ahead of its time in terms of feminism.

Tsunade was considered the strongest ninja in Konoha at one point in time - maybe equal to Jiraiya only. She took on the responsibility of defending Konoha, with the specific goal of fighting Orochimaru the next time he attacked the village. This never came to be because while Orochimaru was rebuilding his strength, the Akatsuki became problematic and then Orochimaru died. She would have fought Pain (and maybe she should have fought him sooner), but she used all her chakra to heal the citizens (already a really strong move). At that point her strongest ninja beside herself was Kakashi (Guy wasn't there?) and then Naruto who surpassed Kakashi with futon rasengan. Naruto came back from Mount Myoboku exponentially stronger so at that point he was the strongest ninja in the village.

Hinata's dad has only daughters and never once considers them less suitable to be his heir than Neji.

Many characters fight alongside their dad, but Kiba fights alongside his mom (and sister). She's an active kunoichi despite having two kids (and being a single mom).

My hot take is that the series is good from start to finish.

I like tenten

Danzo is one of (if not the) best written characters in the series. He is the epitome of a "shinobi" and personifies the entire world the author built.

Hot take: Naruto is not a character who should be known for hard work. Yes, there are times that he does work hard but most of his achievements come from the fact that he is either destined or because of the nine tails. It’s especially annoying in his fight with Neji cause Naruto just ninetailed his way to victory.

His methods are what make his character so good. Danzō haters conveniently forget that shinobi society includes grown adults watching children murder one another in the Chunin exams. It's an annual cultural custom for shinobi. Celebrated even. Shinobi culture includes their favorite Hokages sending kids on combat and war missions, resulting in many of them KIA.

What in the series is darker than that? Nothing. But you never see fans hate other characters for participating in this culture and furthering it.

But Danzō engaging in espionage, assassinations, counter intelligence, and government control is somehow worse? Are you kidding me? This guy is the asshole? The guy who operates his own clandestine black ops militia and does the dirty work so that kids don't need to do be put in those situations? Please. How about thanking Danzō?

Danzō never committed any crimes against other nations. Why? Because it's fair. They all do it. Every other nation has a Danzō. They're just not as good as him so it looks like he's always the one screwing the other people over.

Danzō doesn't operate on faith or trust. He operates on reality and certainty. Danzō would be just as uncomfortable with a plan that had a 10% success chance as he would one with a 90% success chance. That is why he screwed the Uchiha over. Was there a chance to avoid a civil war by placing faith in Shusui and Itachi? Sure. But it was a certainty that if they were all dead, the war doesn't happen.

That was easy an decision for Danzō. Probably didn't even need to sleep on it. He is the most realistic, grounded and well written character.

Those two aren’t hot takes just wrong sorry. But love the tsunade prop

Itachi is a pretty lazily written character that large portions of the fandom have circlejerked themselves into believing is well written because he has so much surface-level coolness.

Hot takes? 🤔

Howabout this fandom puts far too much stock in clan names and doesn't seem to understand much about how inheritance actually works.

Like for instance, assuming that someone having a Senju grandfather (whose full parentage is unknown) and an Uzumaki grandmother (whose full parentage is unknown) will automatically have all the best traits of both clans even when their own full parentage is unknown.

Or for another example, assuming that someone who doesn't come from a big name clan couldn't also have some OP inherited traits, perhaps from ancestors who were members of a big name clan that married outside of it, perhaps recessive traits that were passed along for generations just waiting for someone with the right combination to be expressed.

There's my hot take. 🤷‍♀️

No because there’s hot takes and just factually wrong

cringe edgy takes. Obito is responsible for like 80% of chaos that happened in the series, itachi entire life crime is probably just another Sunday for Obito and Madara is a dick who oppress other villages as seen in Ohnoki flashback

This is crap because Naruto did save the world from calamity. He won the war and stoped the wars between nations. Under his reign, the amount of casualties were less than the previous hokages. He also had more longer periods of peace than any other hokages.

And was the reason in the first place that things got even worse for the Uchiha because the villagers were both suspicious of them and angry with them for not helping during the kyuubi attack when they were not allowed to AFAIK.

Tbh, I don't understand people labeling either Obito or Itachi as heroes, even though I'm just a general Uchiha simp/fan/glazer- idk. All the major Uchiha characters are either villains (perhaps sympathetic villains in some cases, but still) or anti-heroes.

Except Sarada, but that's in a genjutsu of the future. /s

maybe i am blind. but where was kishimotos writing ability even mentioned?? it just talks about stuff fans say

>Whereas Itachi.... followed orders, saved the village by preventing a coup, spied on the Akatsuki for Konoha and Ultimately died trying his best to push his brother to be as strong as possible.

So that makes it ok? He blindly followed orders, so serving your country by killing your kin is noble? Saved the village? By the amount of eyes we see Obito had, flashbacks scenes the Uchiha wasn’t even that big of a clan, you’re telling me they were going to be able to take control of the leaf all by themselves? If they could’ve taken over the leaf then any other nation could’ve also invaded and taken over. This doesn’t even make sense.

Itachi spied? He provided 0 intel to the leaf!

He tortured his brother who he was supposedly protecting lmao. Want to get stronger? Yeah, hate me more. Tsukuyomi your ass lil bro’

>Itachi wanted to save and protect and build stronger, Obito wanted to watch it all burn down.

He killed the clan to protect the village just because he got told that killing them would stop the coup, as if there wasn’t any other way to bargain.
Hiruzen was just as shitty as Danzo because he didn’t even try. “Hey Shisui use your jutsu on Fugaku” lmao what? Get your ass up and use diplomacy or something your lazy old man.

Swagkage mentioned, best youtuber of Naruto, My GOAT.

" Itachi was wrong, but atleast he did it for a noble cause and it saved more people than it killed "

oh yeah? don't forget the part where he also KILLED more people in which that is the entire Uchiha clan

ooh no, don't get me started with reversing the facts " b-but it's Obito that killed the children " nope, it's ITACHI that killed the children, women, civilians.. meanwhile Obito only helps a little bit by dealing with Uchiha Police Force to make Itachi's " killing civilians " task easier. and it's still bad! killing is killing! no matter who you kill... no defending Itachi here.

you know what... " atleast "

atleast in Obito's case, in the end, he shielded Naruto from getting killed thus protecting the next generation of Shinobi and the future

" A Shinobi life is measured by what he did before he dies " - Jiraiya

unlike Itachi who just... died...

Most of these are crap. For example the obito and Itachi comparison makes sense on the surface but if you think about it then it falls apart. Itachi killed his clan because they were about to start a rebellion/he was coerced and even with that he didn't kill nearly as many people as obito. Obito lost one girl and decides to attack his teacher and former home killing a lot of people then eventually starts the 4th great ninja war which kills even more people. His crimes make Itachi look like a saint in comparison, especially since all of itachi's crimes were also obito's crimes since obito helped itachi kill the uchiha.

Edit: actually I forgot he was also the reason Danzo was even able to instigate the rebellion because his attack on the village and murder of Minato. Honestly probably a good thing he died, imagine naruto trying to have him redeemed.

Sakura is not as bad as people make her out to be. She has her flaws. Sakura does have growth from part 1 to part 2 to Boruto. She is a badass.

I mean, Naruto wasn’t some annoying crazed horny fan girl. Naruto Is Sasuke’s biggest fan definitely, but not because he’s good looking or the last Uchiha. Naruto understood Sasuke & was willing to do whatever It took to save him. That Is love.

Sakura is a strong character. People call her useless, but medical ninjas are more important than people think. A lot of people would be dead without her.

I liked Itachi when he was a cautionary tale of child soldiers and alienation. Kinda sucks to throw all those themes away or to turn them into actually being a child soldier is good and was the best for Konoha in the end. Itachi as a tragic tale of a child who was drafted early and never got to be a human or have connections was good leading to him killing his own familiy for power was neat.

I didn’t it was ok I actually though naruto was into sasuke until he started doing stuff for hinata

Yeah, the fact that he was supposed to be feeding information on the Akatsuki to Konoha yet the latter still had no clue what to do about them rubs me the wrong way.

Mighty Guy is often used as comic relief. However, he's genuinely an awesome person. He actively petitioned the Third Hokage to transfer Kakashi out of ANBU for his own well-being. Kakashi went from being a stone-cold killer, isolated from his peer group from the Academy, to an excellent sensei who overcame his darkness. Mighty Guy did much to make that transition happen.

1. If Shisui was not beaten by Danzo and the entire ANBU, the show would’ve been called Shisui instead of Naruto and the entire plot and events would be drastically different.

2. Gai should have died. Naruto randomly getting resurrection powers completely invalidated his sacrifice and also stuck him with life in a wheelchair and is honestly just sad. We were robbed of the ultimate character death and perfect sendoff.

3. Gai does not get enough recognition for literally saving the entire world. Without him to smack Madara around long enough for Naruto to arrive, everyone would be fucked. Gai is both the strongest ninja and the most important and deserves at the very, very least, a spot on Hokage mountain.

1. Itachi's abilities in Shippuden got out of hand and started screwing the powerscaling. If you look him you lose, if he points at you, you lose, if he wants to go all out he gets a mech and undying flames, it's not even strategy just nonsense.

2. Six Paths Madara's regen was overloaded bs and he shouldn't have been able to recover (especially so quickly) after Night Gai. It should've been, Night Guyi shuts Madara down to almost death -> Guy dies -> Zetsu bullshit kicks in right before they seal Madara -> Kaguya bullshit happens.

3. Neji dying over the irrelevant Hyuga Clan leader is a slap to his whole character arc. Main branch still main branches and we lose a beloved grown side character to a glorified splinter.

4. BONUS* Orochimaru somewhat becoming fodder in comparison to the cast is blasphemy. Sure losing to Itachi is reasonable, but him getting instant Genjutsu'd to loss does Orochimaru, a legendary Sannin feared by nearly all in the first whole show a huge disservice.

Also fuck Susanoo.

I'll give you some actual hot takes

1. It's better that we don't know anything about Sakumo because if we learned more about him it would ruin the mystery/hype

2. It's understandable that none of the older villagers wanted to adopt the Kyubi's vessel.

3. The reincarnation plot was a good late addition to the series

1. Hebi sasuke was the best version of sasuke

2. The power scaling got out of hand as soon as susanoo was introduced

3. Sasuke beat deidara without any plot armour

I see people ask why none of the villagers adopted Naruto all the time lol

1. Sakura was a useful character, even if kinda bitchy
2. Nagato was a sad bitch boy that nuked his best friends vision of the Akatsuki, and disgraced him using his body as Pain

Eta: add on about nagato he was 100% a hypocrite. He couldn't "let go" or "find peace" with his parents being accidentally killed by leaf Shinobi in the war, BUT he was 100% okay with being fed, trained, and cared for BY a leaf Shinobi later on.

3. Sasuke's pain and trauma was pretty justified to me, with the way itachi attempted to handle it.

Itachi is poorly written as a character.

Final fight should be between Juubi Madara vs revived Hashirama

The show should've ended after Pain. With a final arc for Sasuke vs Naruto and thats it.

Nagato should have stayed the original owner of the rinnegan.

Obviously it could have been written way better, but Sasusaku wasn't as bad as people say it was. Here's someone's analysis that I think is amazing, but a lot of people disagree with me and deem there was nothing redeeming and zero build up, so that's why it's a hot take since my opinion isn't popular

https://sasusakuanalysis.tumblr.com/post/172086469375/from-sasukes-perspective

hot take...

me too.

Apparently no opinions allowed on the naruto subreddit.

Pain arc definitely did a lot of things right

The chuunin exam/invasion arc and the pain arc are two of my absolute favorites

Shikamaru v hidan was a personal fave

oh man I think about that every day. sage cloak naruto was goat character design

Just nod and agree with Naruto fans dude, straight up you can’t have any opinions about what you think is cool here… I mean Boruto bad!

yeah I see that now lol. I could have sworn I've seen lots of people get backlash because of this opinion

I feel like the backlash is for people who say “the series should have ended with the pain arc”

lol I swear I saw people get criticized for saying this, but apperently its a super popular take and Im like "wtf" lol

The pacing was definitely a problem in the anime but it is a really difficult task imo to introduce so many new characters and make them important in a short span of time. Everyone almost instantly loved Rock Lee, Neji was loved by some and hated by some but tbh I loved his personality and imo he had the best character design in OG Naruto (even better than Sasuke and Shino), Hinata instantly became a girl everyone wanted to cheer for because of her acquiring a never giving up attitude from Naruto to prove her dad and Neji wrong, Gaara was a menace everyone feared, Shikamaru also became a really well received character and finally, Orochimaru scared the shit out of every single person watching Naruto by doing all that shit in the forest of death. Kishimoto already had proved himself capable of writing a really good antagonist in the form of Zabuza but he took it a step further by writing a character like Orochimaru. The three stages of exams were also brilliantly planned and written imo. Its still considered one of the best anime tournament arcs ever if not the best and there is a strong reason for that. Also, The Chunin Exams arc had my favorite OP from OG Naruto. Most of the people prefer OP5 over OP2 but I liked OP2 a bit more than OP5. So, in short, it is a really good arc imo but its okay if you dont like it since you are entitled to have an opinion.

Yeah, this is one of the most common criticisms for Naruto.

The setup to the arc was great, with Shikamaru grieving and apparently coming up with the perfect plan to defeat the duo with just his team. However, everything about the execution felt rushed. Two thirds of Inoshikacho were given nothing to do, and Naruto's victory was not satisfying either, not only because he had no personal connection to Kakuzu, but also because he had to be dumbed down to be defeated.

If Ino and Choji at least stalled Kakuzu to buy some time for Naruto and showed off their improvement over the timeskip, I think a lot of my issues with this arc would be fixed, but I hate how they were portrayed and how the author was only interested in Shikamaru and couldn't care less about them.

Felt like Naruto took the spotlight from them when it was supposed to be about Team 10 getting revenge for Asuma

Naruto should not have been involved in that fight at all.

It would showcase that Naruto isn't the only shinlbi that matters in the verse and have given more payoff to other characters.

It also would have made the rasenshuriken reveal way better since he'd have first used it against pain after several chapters of buildup and hype surrounding it.

Just have the rasenshuriken showing against Pain be more impactful. Especially since we already knew the Rasenshuriken was dangerous to the user before the whole Kakuzu thing.

I mean, it is unrealistic to think chunin stand a chance against Kinkaku, or that a chunin level shinobi could mind control Obito, but they still pulled those things off. Stalling Kakuzu for a while, especially when they are supposed to be a stall team, is nothing crazy imo.

This generally bothers me in many Fighting Shonen, the protagonist is the "god" on whom everyone has hoped and waited for so long and saves the team with the last final and necessary blow. The indomitable hero, it's a common and clichéd Shonen trope.

Why is Konoha doing all the work against an international terrorist organization? I never thought about it until now but some of the other countries really should have taken down a member or two instead of letting Konoha and Sasuke do all the work.

Why would anyone accept guarding the kid that caused at least one death to a loved of his/her

Did you not see how quick the top ninjas were up to "get rid of Naruto" the moment they knew he stole the scroll

Mostly due to retcons.

But aside from that. Konohamaru is related to him and his dead sons son. Naruto isn't.

And Who would want to look after Naruto? Kakashi also didn't offer and he's universally loved.

And in what world would giving Naruto special treatment be fair in a village that is made up of Orphans due to the 9 tails attack.

What about them? Hiruzen couldn't afford to show special treatment to the kid everyone hates.

We see that Hokage position doesn't actually pay all that well. So Hiruzen is basically giving Naruto his monthly wage.

>The third Hokage is infuriating,

He knew how the villagers hated Naruto and was a soft ruler.

Hiruzen could've used his authority to force any adult to take care of Naruto but that doesn't mean he'd be loved or that there wouldn't be a risk of traitors who'd kill him.

Kakashi isn't a suitable candidate; he's a mentally drained kid who was FOURTEEN years old when Naruto was born. Tf kind of parent would he be?

Jiraiya? Just like Tsunade, dude was gone and hard to find and even if they found him, he'd never take responsibility same as he didn't wanna be Hokage.

The Sarutobi clan? Not even Konohamaru had his parents around.

Hiruzen himself? Naruto would end up like Boruto, home alone all day and basically the same because Hiruzen's wife died.

Basically, Naruto was cooked.

https://preview.redd.it/ff10rdvrrlqe1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=4586d85f9b1d5f6de6c6fbfa432e4f8be8494786

I don't think that the grandson of the third got a personal trainer and the son of the fourth got dick? When did naruto get a trainer?

When anyone tries to defend hiruzen this is exactly what I think of. His grandson had parents and he gave the kid a 24/7 Tutor. Why the actual fuck didn't naruto get fucking anything