None of it was any good beyond the first act of it all anyway. Once they did that time skip, it all went way down hill. Anything that made the series decent was pretty much flushed down the toilet. The characters proceeded to make less and less sense, and everyone's powers bloated in a very DBZ kind of way-- I'd argue even worse. Naruto and Sakura's motivations made no sense, and their willingness to forgive Sasuke grew more and more absurd. The show began to no longer resemble ninja, as the author decided to compensate for a lack of an interesting story with a convoluted and messy plot line. This is the same kind of problem that Bleach had.
How do we continue to make this interesting? New techniques, more power, and stronger enemies. Even in the US, comics tend to go this route, and it's the reason interesting titles like Saga and Jupiter's Legacy are so well received. They break free of the brawl mentality that states that the only way to add risk into a story is to make the next bad guy even more powerful. The Star Wars prequel films do this as well. How do we make a character more menacing? Give him a lightsaber with TWO lightsabers attached. The next guy has to be scarier, we will have FOUR lightsabers. So whether it's Japanese, American, or whatever; it's just bad.
Anyway, I'm ranting.
Point is, you're not missing much, and it's a predictable happy ending. Everyone lives, has kids, and it's super peachy. Naruto gives up his silly crush on Sakura and gets with Hinata. He becomes the best Hokage ever, and the world experiences a period of peace unlike any other. Boring, trite and not worth the six-hundred episode slog.
Your support makes Blue Moon possible (Patreon)
