[FINAL CHAPTER] 700: Uzumaki Naruto!!!

[rouge_angle]

Naruto manga
1999 - 2014
Fifteen years. And what a run it's been. I will be the first to admit that this manga has plenty of flaws. Once or twice in the past, I've actually stopped and asked myself why I was still reading it. And the answer to that question is that I'm attached to this manga. I've grown attached enough to these characters that I

Comments

[senior_witch]

Thanks for giving us different transcriptions of Sasuke's and Naruto's children's names. I could have lived with "Bolt" as a reference to Naruto's father, but Salad(a) was just too stupid, so I am glad you pointed out that it should be Sarada, and Boruto for Naruto's son is better than Bolt.

My first reaction to that chapter was "oh, no, it's like that epilogue from Harry Potter", but now I feel more comfortable with it. Kishimoto had to find images for peace, which is not easy, and he did not too badly. Everyone having children is okay, but they should not all be the same age and they should not all look like their parents and behave like their parents. It's nice that we seem a couple of international marriages, not only Temari and Shikamaru (which actually had some build-up), but also Choji and Karui from Cloud village. (And of course they needed to import women, as in Konoha's rookie teams there was only one girl to two boys.)

I did not get the impression that Sasuke was far from home. I thought he was busy in the woods surrounding Konoha, guarding the village, but not roaming the wilderness. He had too little luggage for a long journey, so I thought he would return home in the evening.

Count me among the fans who consider Naruto's attitude towards his son creepy. It's not that he is busy - this may happen, and it may be that he does not realize that he's spending too few time with his son. Also, there's no fixed amount of time parents should spend with their children. Some children need more time than others. Also, most children understand that their parents need to work. But if there's obvious signs that his son feels neglected, Naruto should not tell him "that we all suffer from it" but react to it.

Actually my impression is that Kishimoto tried to give all the children their parents' personality, which in the case of the other kids is a bit boring and shows little understanding of how children are really affected by their parents's personalities (sometimes they just become the opposite of their parents, and most of the time it's a mix between being just like their parents and being the opposite of their parents), but which is all in all okay. Yet I have huge issues with Naruto'sson and Sasuke's daugher having personalities that resemble their fathers' personalities when they were the same age, because Naruto and Sasuke were not cute kids at the age of twelve, but they had huge problems from what they had gone through. Both would have needed some support from competent grown-ups. Neither got any; while Naruto got idealized, Sasuke got demonized, and neither had a chance to learn to be a true human being. Now their kids show huge issues too, and while that may be realistic (I consider writing a fanfic that includes transgenerational transmission of traumata) it's also sad. Sarada creeping around all time, not talking to any other kid, just watching them from behind this or that pillar, is not a nice view, and if I were Sakura (or Sasuke), I'd be extremely worried. With Boruto, it may be that Naruto overinterprets that prank, but it seems as if he is quite angry at Naruto.

Well, yes, I would also have liked to learn what happened to Team Taka (I really like the three of them), to Orochimaru, to the Elders. These days I am busy writing a long text about the manga, summarizing what it meant to me, trying to take leave, trying to accept that I once had huge hopes for this story but that they did not come true and that I need to go on living my own life.

Edit: Naruto looks just like my little brother at the age of thirteen. My little brother was really a cute thirteen-year-old, but first, Naruto is supposed to be thirty, not thirteen, and also, he does not much resemble his younger self with a much broader face.

[senior_witch]

Commenting to my own comment, because the last one was too long for this addition:

I have now had time to reread the interaction between Naruto and his son, and it's creepy. I mean, I guess everyone can remember times when their parents had little time to care for them. But with Naruto and his son, some things seem to be quite bad. First, I think it's quite extreme that the son says "I hate the Hokage". I don't know the age of the son, and maybe at certain ages there's times when a child sometimes says this and it should not be taken too seriously, but if the son is twelve, this might be different. Naruto's behaviour is far worse. He should not tell his own son that all the village is family for him or tell him he must be a ninja who needs to endure. He should tell him that even though he has to work long hours sometimes this does not mean that he does not care for him and should make clear to him that being his son, Boruto will always be special to him.