Chapter 321 - Tumblr Posts

Almost halfway through reading Naruto for the first time at 28. Never really engaged with the story in manga or anime form before recently. Blown away by how good it is and understanding now of its continued popularity

Especially Masashi Kishimoto's continually improving art style. Fights were somewhat incomprehensible to watch panel-by-panel in the early chapters, throughout much of the Chūnin Exam Arc, but now they're a true joy to read. Kishimoto's lines are so clean and distinct since Part II of the story began as well. Not remembering off-hand what would've been in Weekly Shonen Jump around the 2006-2008 era (beyond One Piece, Bleach & KochiKame ofc), I'm sure this would've been a distinctive and dynamic looking story each week. My god those colour pages look great, one of the few manga I'd love to re-read a full-colour edition (the use of silence too, I've not seen it used so often and so effectively in a mainstream Shonen story)

A moment in Chapter 321 stood out as an example of why I'm enjoying the heroes/main characters of the story as much as I am. Kakashi is trying to entice Naruto into a further important ninja lore dump and our dumb boy Naruto doesn't want a bar of it. So the charming and guileful Kakashi slips into a coercion of his pal Yamato proving to Naruto that there's no getting around this. It's very simple and is mainly for the gag of Yamato buying the buttering up wholesale, but it speaks to who Kakashi is a senior ninja

There are other moments like the mostly silent panels of Sasuke as a child trudging to the family shrine after the Uchiha clan was killed, or Orochimaru & Kabuto's fascinating codependent situationship or even just in Chapter 320 the silent pages of Kurenai knowing her husband, Asuma, is heading into a dangerous situation

(Of course the female representation is woefully inadequate and it's disappointing to see Sakura grow so much just to be sidelined most of the story, as almost all the woman characters are)