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The war arc and power-up/fan-service nonsense severely damaged this manga in my opinion, but I really, really enjoyed this story overall.
I grew up watching kung-fu/ninja flicks so I can always appreciate ninja stories, but this manga truly set itself apart from the rest to me with the chakra system and techniques. I really started enjoying the story during the chunin exam arc. I loved the ninja team dynamic, and I can never forget how blown away I was by Neji's fight vs the Spider ninja. I loved how they narrated their techniques and strategy.
By early part II, when the rookies were older and stronger with new abilities, forget enjoying the manga, I was addicted. Sakura's fight with Sasori also blew me away and I couldn't wait to see what new abilities the other akatsuki had as well as the rookies(I was particularly anticipating Neji's). I thought Sauske's progression training with Oro was really cool and I was really enjoying the dark avenger direction Kishimoto seemed to be taking him on when he created "Hebi" --I thought it would have been the beginning of a new clan he wanted to rebuild, or perhaps a possible counter group to akatsuki.
To me the manga started to really take a dive around the Pein arc, when none of the rookies really had anything to show for all their time off-screen, and only Naruto and Sasuke were really progressing. It was still an awesome story with great techniques/jutsu and fights, but all of these bells and whistles were now fixated on only a couple of characters, which began to really annoy me despite how cool the techniques still were. I missed seeing the diversity of part I, and the story started feeling very forced and contrived(more than usual). How can an entire village (especially Konoha) seem so useless against Pein?
The last arc before the end that I really enjoyed was the Kage summit (minus naruto letting that cloud ninja beat him up). The bee and naruto arc was nearly unbearable, and the war arc... I honestly almost stopped reading the manga for good when I saw the rookies in kyuubi cloaks with rasengans. How could Kishimoto humiliate them like that? Anyway, at that point I just wanted to see how the story would end. I followed it for this long, so why not...
Much to my surprise, I really liked the ending and it was far better than what I expected from the manga at that point. It seems like Kishmoto had a very polished idea for the ending for quite a while, but perhaps struggled with the latter parts of the middle because he changed his mind about a few things. Who knows... I really enjoyed their dialogue at the end, as I always wished they had more dialogue throughout the manga; and Sakura coming in to heal was very team 7esque.
I love the ninja techniques in this manga so much that I will most likely read Boruto along with you guys, but I wont take it nearly as seriously as I did Naruto.
Also, a major part of the fun this manga has also been reading these forums: The funny, sarcastic barbs from people like vindi89, Itachi-san314, artful_dodger when proving someone wrong and winning a debate, voices of reason like James(unless you insult one-peice :P) and hunter, and of course the fanboyish people (who shall remain nameless, but you know who you are :P) who always defend a naruto powerup to the death, and argue for even more of them no matter how ridiculous it becomes lol --I'm half joking. All jokes aside, I had a great time reading this story along with you all.
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