Naruto, Vol. 1

"If you can’t get into the anime then I suggest the manga 10/10"

"100"

"Better than the anime. Its pretty tight"

"My childhood role model and all time favorite show."

"<b>3.7 stars from this girl!</b><br/><br/>To preamble: I have never seen any of the movies or TV show. This is my first experience with Naruto and manga in general. Before reading this, I had picked up two graphic novels in my whole life, and that's it. This is new to me, so if some of the things I say about the art, set-up, or anything sounds strange, blame my noobness. Okay? Okay.<br/><br/><spoiler>CHARACTERS:<br/><br/><b>Kakashi-</b><br/>I think I like him. He wasn't around long enough for me to get a good sense of who he is and if I want him to be around or not, but from what I saw I can guess that he'll be great. He was kinda funny and he did have some moves. But what is with his face never being shown? Gotta be something about that. Not completely sure about him yet. Kind of on the fence about this, but I think I'll grow to enjoy him.<br/><br/><b>Sakura-</b><br/>...unlike this chick. I was really disappointed with Sakura. I knew she wasn't going to be my favorite from the moment she was introduced, but I still wanted to like something about her. I don't. I feel like she's just there to be Naruto's love interest and to have a crush on Sasuke. I don't think there was one moment in this entire first volume where she was being a ninja. And you know (you know!) it's 'cause she's a girl. They even mention in this how girls are too love-struck to want to do anything else or something along those lines. Whatever. I was looking forward to seeing her be awesome and actually do something during that test at the end, but no. The whole time she just hates on Naruto (for whatever reason. Because he has an annoying crush on her..? IDK) and drools over Sasuke (for whatever reason). So yeah, I hope she gets better, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. And I don't really like her personality either. I didn't enjoy how she was written. Oh well... On to her obsession!<br/><br/><b>Sasuke-</b><br/>I want to like him. And I think I do. But I don't love him. I also don't hate him. I just know that I like his character a bit more than I dislike him. Does that make sense? Alright, cool. He's introduced as a really smart loner kind of person. He's the best in the class and everyone loves him (and by that, I mean the girls love him and the guys do not). Which, okay... Some of my favorite characters are know-it-alls and/or keep to themselves, so I thought I'd give him a shot. I am impressed with him. When he's doing Ninjutsu, it's amazing. I do find him interesting, but that moment when he said he has sworn to murder someone... I Don’t Know! (That was another Sakura facepalm moment for me. He says "I wanna kill someone real bad" -I'm paraphrasing- and she's all "OMG he's sooo dreamy." But whatever.) He does freak me out a little, but not the kind of freaking me out that I like to feel for characters, y'know? I'm not totally intimidated by him and I'm not totally in awe of him. Maybe that will come with time, and he will reach that level of awesomeness that I want from characters. But 'til then, overall, I look forward to seeing him get better as a person and as a ninja. But not as much as Naruto...<br/><br/><b>Naruto-</b><br/>Naruto is my favorite. He's lovable in kind of an annoying way, but he's still okay! Now, I really like origin stories and backstories and that kind of stuff, so Naruto being the nine tailed Fox spirit was so cool to me. I was completely expecting this story to be a "The chosen one fights the evil spirit" kind of story. Not "The main character IS the evil spirit"! So definitely like his story and him overall so far. I am looking forward to seeing him improve as a student (if that happens, but there're so many volumes, how can that not happen? Yeah, it ended on a cliffhanger, but will it really be surprising when they get to continue learning more Ninjutsu?). Another thing: What happened to his parents? <br/>I know there were a lot of other characters, but they weren't around as long. I also think they won't be as involved in the story. I could talk about that guy who told Naruto to learn ancient Ninjutsu moves and turned out to be bad. Or that other guy... Oh! Or that one teacher. But nah. I'm good. So yes, there are our lovely characters. Now moving on!<br/><br/>STORY:<br/><br/>I was expecting this to be about kids who go to a ninja school and fight bad guys. I didn't think it would be a Magical Ninja School! I wasn't expecting that at all. And you know what? That is right up my alley!! The story of <i>Naruto</i> so far really fascinates me. It's probably what I'm most interested in and what will keep me reading. I also didn't expect there to be as many jokes as there were. I liked that too.<br/>The way the story was introduced, though, I didn't entirely enjoy. I liked all of it but it was set up in a strange way. I don't know if this is my manga noobness that I mentioned before, but each chapter in the first half of this was completely different than the others! They connected in a vague way, and I understand why they were put in there. I just don't think the real story started until halfway through. Maybe those first few chapters were like foreshadowing or just introducing (which was probably the case) but it was still odd. I don't know how much time passed between each of the different stories/chapters. <br/>My least favorite chapter was the one with the grandson of the Hokage. That was like, foreshadowing TOO much. And I don't even understand why they want to be arch rivals! They want the same thing and they can't both get it, yes. But I feel like they respect each other in some way...? Right? Or was I reading that situation wrong?<br/>My favorite chapter was either Chapter 6 or 7. They had the most action and the art was pretty cool. Speak of the devil!<br/><br/>THE COVER:<br/><br/>It looks kinda neat. Catches my eye..But what is happening here? What/why is he holding something in his mouth? What's with the animals at the bottom? 'Sup with the paintbrush-looking things on his back? <br/>One thing I do like about this: The cover is on the opposite side of what I'm used to. So while it's being displayed on the right side of my bookshelf, I can have the spine showing AND the cover! I can't do that with anything else! That sounds funny when I put it like that, but sometimes it's the little things that make us happy. :)<br/><br/>ART:<br/><br/>I don't have any manga art standards yet, being new to the manga world. But I did like the art. It was hard to follow what was happening sometimes, but that could've been my twice mentioned noobness. I found myself looking ahead to the left just to see what happens next a lot. I need to stop doing that. I do that with everything I read. I think of that as a mini spoiler for myself. I have to train my brain to read one thing at a time and not sneak a peek into the future<br/>I guess this also applies to the story, but the way everything was set up was strange for me. On one page we'd be with <u>these people</u> and all of the sudden, the next picture is somewhere completely different with completely <u>different people</u>, and I feel lost. Somewhat confusing sentence, I know, but you feel me, yeah? It was kinda set up like a TV show would be, going back and forth, cutting to different scenes. Again! Could be a general manga thing I don't know about! Or it could be just a Naruto thing! Not sure. Just mentioning stuff, here.<br/><br/>OTHER THOUGHTS:<br/><br/>I thought it would take me a while to get used to reading from right to left. It didn't. It was actually quite fun and refreshing, in a way. What sucks is that I couldn't write down a lot of my thoughts at the end in my copy because there weren't any blank pages I could use. Have I mentioned that I do that? I write my overall thoughts and feels about a book in the back when I'm done with it. Some of you may hate that and think I'm abusing my books, but I like to think that in the future (let's say 100 years) if someone finds my book collection, they can get a feel of who I was. Like my own personal time capsule but in book(s) form.<br/><i>Naruto</i> is another example of a story whose main character is kept out of the loop a lot, only to be heartbroken and/or surprised by what's actually going on. I'm not really getting tired of that, seeing as it is a good way to keep the suspense up for the audience, but I've noticed it often.<br/>Also, I had the hardest time saying the name of the village! Konohagakure. Even in my head that's tough. I'll work on it.</spoiler><br/><br/>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br/><br/>So. The characters are a bit one-dimensional, but cool nonetheless. The story is fantastic so far! The art was pretty good, but then again I’ve never read manga before. What do I know?<br/>I will continue with this. I do recommend it. It was really fun. I'm not sure when I will get Vol. 2... But when I do! (I will be the most interesting man in the world. Sorry. Stupid joke.) I will come straight here after reading it to give you more of my mangapinions! <br/>If you wanna see more of my thoughts on this and/or talk to me about other cool stuff, check out my blog: <br/>https://dtwizzie.wordpress.com"