i've had several bones to pick with naruto for some time; starting with my nuclear hot take, i don't think naruto should have become hokage. there's a thing in japanese media where if people change their dreams or compromise or do something else they ought as well kill themselves, but he's been alone most of his life. majority of show was him getting friends, family etc. which leads to an endgame of him getting a wife and kids then spending majority of his time objectively ditching them, (like the fuckin birthday party shit where he leaves essentially a shit body double instead) being a glorified overworked more intensive office worker? fuck off. bonus points to sasuke who's basically the secondary protagonist realizing how fucked up he did, multiple times, and fucking up in new and interesting ways every time trying to fix it. like basically killing sakura without plot armor, then realizing her feelings and returning them, getting her pregnant, then leaving the village, regularly, even by the time of boruto. so he's a glorified baby daddy nigger vigilante that stops by port for a good fuckin every now and then. fuck off.
how hard was it to have made naruto realize how much hokage was just a job, requiring so much devotion you should be single, that would take too much from his family, take something from jiraiya and iruka and just become an incredibly powerful teacher/ normal person? or for sasuke to just have a generic but fitting shoujo grade ending of like ending with telling sakura "i can't repent for hurting you like i did; but if you'll have me i'll spend the rest of my days attempting to wipe it away with joy" or some shit. there's something about many japanese stories blatantly forcing and requiring an end to have "happily ever after... basically". even fucking high school dxd did that, where the mc winds up being, fucking again, a super overworked leader that sees his wives on wednesdays and can't even react fast if they're in danger or some shit. if naruto HAS to be a hokage, then he should have been a very "family first" one. ie "fuck paperwork, i AM going to my daughter's birthday, i AM spending time with hinata" etc. the entire fucking character was about doing retard shit for friends and family. entire character. with how they ended it he should have just originally capped the fuck out of sasuke asap, if not after fuck up 5 after fuck up 6.a, because that was the logical thing to do.
there was also too much shit that damaged emotional impacts of the whole show retroactively or were done poorly imo, like the smart zombies. i guess he won every popularity poll but madara essentially becoming the final ACTUAL villain of the show was stupid, it's like if you made a show about ww2 and then had a resurrected king solomon pop up that overpowered hitler and had a way to SUPERKILL jews and was stronger than the entire cast but lost because he had to lose. like a fanfic oc. zombies in general were way overused; itachi being able to talk to sasuke and have emotional closure was good, even though it just prevented sasuke fuck up 6.b but led to 7, naruto talking to pain and the "jiraiya's students" dialogue was very powerful (even though naruto responded fucking DUMB character wise to pain calling himself a failure etc). really should have been a smaller arc though and not just had like the last fucking 1/3rd of the show just having a marvel vs capcom tier roster of who's whos walking around. bonus points for the minato shit, naruto already had emotional scenes when his chakra was on his seal much earlier, repeating the entire thing almost verbatim again was a waste and repetitive. there were also many missed opportunities like EVERYONE coming back but jiraiya. fucking kabuto could bring back ashes but not swim? jiraiya seeing pain and naruto ending better than anyone would think possible could have been an emotional top of the show, and not just the shitty little time travel skit.
it should also have just completely ended at The Last's epilogue, maybe with some spin off novels or mangas about daily life beyond, like romantic comedy with him and hinata raising the kids etc. obito's twist and end was pretty good, but kaguya and beyond were fucking stupid, the villains in boruto even worse. naruto already had power creep problems and then boruto is just dbz basically. naruto should have literally whooped the ass of everything around him he chose, forever, until death and possibly beyond if he gave chakra to boruto in case of emergency or some shit. the ""modernized"" design shit is fucking awful, majority of characters act off, all the main characters from naruto are sidelined in favor of new, shitty characters. why the fuck would i want to read a naruto sequel where naruto is a literal sidelined deadbeat dad? sasuke is batman with less personal life? then eventually some of the most powerful characters in the series are killed by dangerhair fanfic ocs. i get it has to be a battle manga but him hiring someone trustworthy to just do world building and slice of life shit in a post war world a while would have been infinitely better
