It wasn't an open ending, I know that there are people who preffer it that way but I honestly find that option to be lazier than having a long time skip. I wanna know how their lives turned out to be by actually seeing it rather than just hinting it in the vaguest way possible and for Naruto that epilogue was a necessity since the fandom, for a shonnen series no less, somehow became the ultimate shipping war tournament over the years, it wasn't about fun action and nice characters anymore but rather about who would wind up making hentai with who and an open ending rather than ending the war would have given it even more room to grow over the years. Is everyone (myself included) happy with each and every couple?, no; is that better than certain crack pairings that make way less sense than some of the ones that became cannon? heck yeah.
He gave everyone a fairly happy ending. But Neji died!! is that such a bad ending for a Ninja? see it from their point of view, if you die protecting your comrades and village then your life was worth it, that philosophy comes before growing old and making a family in their culture. Heck, unlike what some people say Kishimoto did not pair everyone up at random; single men: Shino, Gaara, Kankuro, Konohamaru, Udon, Kakashi, Gai, etc. Single women: Tenten, Mei, Moegi, Kurenai, Hanabi?... all of this is as far as that one chapter could show us without it being 108 pages long (last FMA chapter btw).
Naruto grew up. He's not exactly the same as when he was a kid!! which is the biggest argument I can give against people saying he's yet another Goku wanna be, he's a much well rounded character who had enough subtle changes through out the series that putting him in a position of great responsability and power isn't just believable but also a well earned position after all of the growing up he has done since chapter one. This Naruto is a grown man with a time consuming job and a family by the end of the series and, to those already questioning him as a parent even though we've seen in that position for only one.chapter, he's already a far better parent than Goku ever was as he is making sure he's kids recieve good training, he has an actual job, he actually tells them stuff about growing up rather than just letting other people do it for him and he's not spoiling them rotten like others have pretty much suggested him to do; cut it out people, our boy in no longer 12.
this one is more of a general question but I feel like answering it anyway: How old are the characters? I am shocked that so many people have given it a 10 year time skip when the easiest way to know is by looking at Kurenai's daughter (it's a girl, Kishimoto said that he planned for the baby to be a girl, and if you pay attention to her figure you can tell it's a girl), she is obviously somewhere between 15 to 18 years old and she was born around the time the war broke out, the war broke around the begining of Fall, Naruto turned 17 in October 10th while they were all fighting Madara alongside the previous Hokages; 17 + 15 = 32 years old at least for our main group of Ninjas, if my math is correct then I don't think the rumor about Hinata being pregnant during "The Last: Naruto the Movie" is true as their children seem to be around 10 years old at the time of the epilogue and Naruto's generation of Ninjas are 19 at the time of the movie. I am not ruling out the rumor but I have no idea of how people came up with it anyway. (all of these numbers only matter if Kishimoto has a better sense of math than Toriyama and J.K. Rowling, so far there is some evidence againt this but we'll see)
The Konoha 11's adult designs: I don't hate any single one of them, I really don't. The series is far more realistic than most in terms of how the characters age as you can see their growth over the years as something that makes sense, I may or may not be biased towards the guys with beards cause I finally saw the Hobbit movies (I am that one person who preffers The Hobbit over LoTR) but Choji and Kiba make them work very well in my opinion. Naruto's hair is just fine the way it is cause making him into a copy of Minato would be too distracting in both the real world and the Ninja world, people need to see Naruto the person and not Minato 2.0 as certain fans have been turning him into since it was confirmed who his father was, if anything Kushina 2.0 would make more sense as most of his personality and fighting style is similar to his mother's and the similarities with his father come from very recent training. Hinata and Tenten are probably the ones who changed the least (with everyone be it fan or casual reader claiming that Hinata ages like wine, the older the better)
Belive it or not, the children's names. who names their kid Salad?! the same autor who named his main character after ramen, has side characters named warm and cold (look up Bee's students), has a Raikage called A and his Little brother is called B btw, a dude named Mighty Guy, a girl called firework (Hanabi), so many people named after animals be it their first or last last name and the one character who's name is totally normal (Sakura) has a name that sounds boring as there are a 100 different anime characters with that name; Boruto? I'm cool with that, Himawari? that's cute, the Ino-Shika-Cho trio had pretty much no other choices available given family tradition and we don't know the name of Rock Lee's kid yet but someone called him Little Lee and I find that so adorable that I will do the same for now . How about naming the kids after someone from their past?! I don't like that idea, there is too much baggage that comes with those names, too many sad memories and in Naruto's case that would mean giving his kids the name of someone who was there for him for a few years or even just a few days before leaving again, he knew his own mother for less than an hour! he may be glad about who his parents were but he was never actually raised by them, if anything his parents got lucky that he turned out ok as the people they left in charge of him where there for him once he was already an oficial Ninja but not before (minus Iruka, Sarutobi and Teuchi to a lesser degree) and Hinata's clan is kinda messed up in spite of the newer generation being on the right track, therefore making the references as subtle as possible is by far the better idea.
I left this one for last cause it is a fangirl rant in every way, shape and from (you may skip it if you like): OH MY GOD NARUHINA AND SHIKATEMA ARE CANNON I AM SO HAPPY MY 2 MAIN OTPS CAME TRUE!!! SHIKADAI IS PRETTY MUCH ALL I EXPECTED THEIR KID TO BE AND NARUTO AND HINATA HAD THE CUTEST KIDS!! BORUTO IS GONNA GIVE HIS FATHER SUCH A TASTE OF WHAT DEALING WITH HIM WAS LIKE AND HIMAWARI IS THE SINGLE.MOST.ADORABLE.THING TO EVER APPEAR IN THE HISTORY OF THE SERIES PERIOD!!!!!
and now for what I do not like which is honestly what I do not care about as the ending is fine by me:
SasuSaku... these two are the main thing I do not care about. I love the series, I really do, but among their main protagonist Naruto is the only one that has mattered to me for many years now and Kishimoto could do whatever the heck he wanted with those two and it would have made no difference to me. Neither one is good enough for the kind of love and care Naruto has given them over the years as he basically chose them to be his family (he didn't choose them to make a family with him, just to be there when no one else was), Kishimoto has such a talent for making secondary characters as interesting and likable as a protagonist, to the point where they could easily drive a story by themselves, but Naruto is his saving grace as far as protagonists go since the other 2 are kinda useless (they mostly work as a plot device actually). Their daughter on the other hand... she just might be what saves these two in my book so long as she doesn't turn out to be annoying emo bitch 2.0 and is far more useful to the overall story than her parents ever were.
We never saw Kakashi's face. I'm actually pretty neutral about this one since Kishimoto himself mentioned how he was afraid of letting people down with the result after fans had been waiting for such a long time; on one hand it is pretty much the cowardly answer to just not show it, but on the other hand even if he gives people what they want at least half of the fanbase would still bitch about it... It is impresive how much emotion he can pull out of Kakashi while having only one eye to work with most of the time though, so there's that
And that's honestly it, I have far more possitives than negatives to say since I wasn't expecting a 50 chapters finale to round up a cast of over 300 characters, for real: 6 villages, countless enemies that die and come back in typical shonnen fashion, smaller villages that are part of the World at large, tailed beasts, talking animals and much more politics that one realizes at first glance; he had to wrap that up in 44 pages? no way in hell.
thank you for Reading and if you enjoyed this one, I made anothe journal regarding the series here: cari28ch3.deviantart.com/journ…
to those who made it to the end
and that is all for now, I will talk more about the characters in general later but I will have to think long and hard since it will be dificult to talk about them without repeting what everyone else has already said :bademoticon:
Thank You for 700 chapters of awesomeness Kishimoto!! (okay about a 100 or so were kinda longer than necessary but in retrospect things were mostly good)
TMNT Fan-service and Mutants could go OverboardI am loving Season 2 of TMNT in almost every way possible, but I say almost cause there are some decisions I can not seem to get behind of and that has me worried. One complain I have seen about the season is how the number of mutants seems to be getting ridiculously big and that has marketing purposes all over it; while most of these mutants have been pretty cool there are many of them who seem to exist solely to sell toys to old time 80's fans (Razar, Baxter-fly and even Mutagen-man); don't get me wrong, I have nothing against them getting back a piece of their childhood but... it is being really unbalanced.) then I will gladly say stop; give the fans some nods when it is necessary and not just when you don't know what to add in just to reach the 20 minute mark, because without those last 15 seconds the episode would fair much better for those who ship it and those who don't. Spoiler alert: those who don't ship any turtle character will likely be even more upset than those willing to accept it, keep in mind than even with that crush being established on the first episode those people have stuck around for 3 seasons so far.
One thing I loved to death about Season 1 is how it had subtle references to every incarnation of the turtles such as: Karai being Shredder's daughter (2003), Hamato Yoshi turning into Splinter (1987), the bandannas colors are a reference to all TMNT media with the exception of the original Mirage Comic (1984) where they all wore red and so on. The new mutants were all pretty coo