So, I just finished watching both Naruto and Naruto Shippuden (only the canon or mixed canon stuff - none of the filler) and I was pleasantly surprised. I knew Naruto was popular but hadn't given it the chance because it seemed to young for me.

Someone strongly suggested that I give it a shot and I really enjoyed it.

Early Naruto was a bit slow paced and kind of random but once the Chunin exams rolled around I was pretty hooked.

Shippuden was good but it seemed like the power scaling got out of control in the last war.

Still, I enjoyed it overall and would recommend it to others.

Naruto is indeed quite good. The filler stuff was horrible when I was following it as it aired, and that's why I stopped watching it. Might return now that I can carefully select each and every episode to not fall again into those massive fillers.

I must admit the power scaling got out of hand after Madara showed his face on the battlefield. Up until then it was easy to follow, but after that it went nuts. In just a few days two characters saw their power increase tenths of times, something that didn't happen during their tough years of training.

But yes, definitely an anime to recommend. It didn't change or leave anything out of the manga, as far as I'm aware, which is also very nice.

EX Palen : yeah, I only watched it because I knew I could skip so much. I knew how long it was and didn't ant to bother with all the filler. I think I watched a bit in Naruto but skipped ALL of it in Shippuden.

And yes, when Madara shows up the entire thing goes insane. Well, for a bit it was okay because of how many old characters show up and what not but it really doesn't take long for things to get out of hand. It went from 2 guys that hit their peaks somewhat naturally to them being so OP that no one else was even useful.

That's about my only real criticism. Everything else was fine to me.

Naruto to me seemed like something that had been planned out to run as long as One Piece, but the author likely got bored and stuffed an info dump into one random last arc, where we ended up with the Great Ninja War. I thought that Naruto peaked with Pain, and whereas Madara showed great promise as a villain, he too fell victim to Kishimoto wishing to just be done with it.
One thing I can say for certain is the characters, even when barely used, are all pretty memorable, and the world building in Naruto captivates even to this day.

On another note, One Piece is far superior to Naruto in almost every aspect that Naruto excelled at, as well as not having many of the issues Naruto presented by the end. It's truly unfortunate the One Piece Anime isn't very good, as the Manga is a master work, with every arc becoming better than the last. (Except for a couple minor detours about halfway through.)

pennylessz : Yeah. I kind of felt that too. It seemed like everything leading up to the fight with Pain was pretty tight and made a lot of sense. Once that was over it felt like things went off the rails and wasn't as well done. I Madara/Tobi was always supposed to be the final story arc but it felt rushed and not as well written as previous arcs.

So, would you say the Naruto anime is better than One Piece? I've considered watching One Piece but at this point there is so much to catch up on that I don't want to do it without a lot of recommendations.

The One Piece Anime is only good for about 400 episodes, and I don't think it ever reaches the heights of the Pain arc. There is a fan project called One Pace that fixes a lot of the issues with it, but I've never personally taken the plunge, as I just read it instead.

One Piece itself as a narrative, after about the first 60%, is consistently better than everything Naruto ever did. It's just a shame the Anime didn't adapt it proper. The big issue is that One Piece puts the filler directly in the episode. The episodes are long and drawn out, you can't easily skip the filler because it's mixed with the plot. One Pace does of course seek to solve this. So if you wanted to dip your toe in...

http://zippyshare.com/onepace

They used to have a steaming site, I don't really know what happened to that.

Anyway, it's recommended to watch the regular Anime till about episode 325. Or you could, you know, just endure the horrible pacing. Or just not do it. Free world and all, but I'll always stick by the Manga.

I really want to get back into it but the length has always scared me so I never did. Back in high school I watched the first 20 or so episodes but at times it felt more like work trying to catch up with how many episodes there were and it only got longer from there.

I would try skipping stuff, but I dout I know enough about the series to be able to tell what can be skipped in the 1st place.

zanderlex : I use this site whenever I watch an anime so I don't have to watch all the extra filler crap.

https://www.animefillerlist.com/

That is unless I've heard the filler is good. I actually enjoyed Bleach filler while I was watching it but I find it is the exception and not the rule.

Also with longer/completed series I can't spend the time on the filler when I know the next canon episode is a few clicks away.