Naruto

Naruto is a action adventure shonen manga. It is a very popular WSJ and targets a young fan-base. This is a manga I'd rather avoid to review, since I have split opinion about this manga this is going to be difficult to review.

Naruto is a young rascal growing up in the hidden village of the leave. Like all the kids in this village Naruto is trained to become a shinobi (ninja). Unknown to him a epic beast was sealed inside of him when he was a baby, making people avoid him out of fear the beast might escape and destroy the village. Out of search for attention he pulls pranks and screws around making him more and more unpopular. Until one day he decides to become the next Hokage (strongest Ninja/leader of the village) so people are forced to acknowledge him. The story shows the adventures and changes this young hero goes through driven by his ambition to become Hokage.

This manga is entertaining to read and has a lot of funny elements. This is no martial arts manga in my opinion because the ninjas fight mainly with their magic like abilities. Thanks to these abilities there are very flashy and diversified battles, witch is one of the main strengths of the manga.
Unfortunately a lot off these battles have the same conclusions. Willpower is the most important in a fight and beats superior strength and technique. It also preaches about forgiveness being superior to revenge, because wars lead to hatred, revenge and more wars. Even though its good the author tries to give his young viewers some moral values, it can get boring having most of the fights end similarly.
The main character and the antagonist are very well developed characters. But the other characters often lack depth.
The artwork is not that good at the beginning but it gets better with time.

Even though i read it, find it entertaining and understand its extreme popularity, I think of it as nothing special and a little shallow. It would best be compared with a good action movie. Its flashy, its entertaining but it lacks certain elements to make it a really good movie or epic or  legendary or whatever you wan't to call it.
I might have been a little too strict with this manga because its popularity exceeds its quality. But it's nevertheless a good manga and entertaining too read.