What happened?
I'm going to go ahead and tell you now that I like Naruto as a whole despite how poorly it regressed throughout it's run. This is just my opinion on why some things I feel went wrong with the series.
Naruto is a gary stu (predictable and safe). Normally this can be forgiven due to him being the MC of a shonen series. Unfortunately, his character become more about Sasuke in the sense of him being one of his goals. The hokage and other underlining themes and development were sacrificed because of this.
This alone resulted in Sasuke and the Uchiha Clan becoming a "plot tumor"
Sasuke/Uchiha: The Uchiha clan, and Sasuke in particular, have done nothing but become more prominent in the story as time passes. It's gotten to the point where the Uchiha clan is responsible for the entire plot of the manga. Sasuke started out as merely The Rival to Naruto (though he clearly had greater story importance than other such rivals due to also being Naruto's teammate) who wanted to avenge his clan, but as the Uchiha presence expanded, so has his. He's arguably had more face time in the manga than the actual protagonist (he hasn't, though he's had more than every other character despite being largely absent for the first three arcs of Part 2), and in the arcs shaping up to be the climax of the series, it's mainly Uchihas who accomplish anything of importance.
Not only that, Sasuke and Uchiha were continually used as the driving force behind the series. This made Sasuke's actions inconsistent and contrived. Their entire clan were characterized as over emotional allowing them to be manipulated and manipulative.
Hashirama Cells
The First Hokage possessed a rare ability to control wood, something done by combining water and earth elemental chakra. In the beginning, this was just one of ten possible chakra combinations, with no reason to believe it was any more special than lava chakra or ice chakra. As the series has progressed, however, the importance of the first hokage's cells, which possessed this ability, has grown to the point where the amount of characters that possess them rivals the amount that possess the sharingan.
You must be registered for see images
I'm going to go ahead and tell you now that I like Naruto as a whole despite how poorly it regressed throughout it's run. This is just my opinion on why some things I feel went wrong with the series.
Naruto is a gary stu (predictable and safe). Normally this can be forgiven due to him being the MC of a shonen series. Unfortunately, his character become more about Sasuke in the sense of him being one of his goals. The hokage and other underlining themes and development were sacrificed because of this.
This alone resulted in Sasuke and the Uchiha Clan becoming a "plot tumor"
Sasuke/Uchiha: The Uchiha clan, and Sasuke in particular, have done nothing but become more prominent in the story as time passes. It's gotten to the point where the Uchiha clan is responsible for the entire plot of the manga. Sasuke started out as merely The Rival to Naruto (though he clearly had greater story importance than other such rivals due to also being Naruto's teammate) who wanted to avenge his clan, but as the Uchiha presence expanded, so has his. He's arguably had more face time in the manga than the actual protagonist (he hasn't, though he's had more than every other character despite being largely absent for the first three arcs of Part 2), and in the arcs shaping up to be the climax of the series, it's mainly Uchihas who accomplish anything of importance.
Not only that, Sasuke and Uchiha were continually used as the driving force behind the series. This made Sasuke's actions inconsistent and contrived. Their entire clan were characterized as over emotional allowing them to be manipulated and manipulative.
Hashirama Cells
The First Hokage possessed a rare ability to control wood, something done by combining water and earth elemental chakra. In the beginning, this was just one of ten possible chakra combinations, with no reason to believe it was any more special than lava chakra or ice chakra. As the series has progressed, however, the importance of the first hokage's cells, which possessed this ability, has grown to the point where the amount of characters that possess them rivals the amount that possess the sharingan.
Sakura:
She was an addition made by kishimoto's editor. She lacks a proper background and development.
Overall, She's way too human for this series, which isn't a bad thing and one of her best traits. despite that, her character become absorbed into Sasuke to the point that it stopped her potential and destroyed her.
Pairings:
Major reason why Sakura/Hinata are awful (on top of being females).
Hinata: Originally intended to be a villager. Kishimoto made her a shinobi, gave her a background story that interconnected with other characters, and something to overcome.
Then proceeded to make her the safest character in the entire series. She had no flaws outside of confidence and power, Her ideology overlapped with the 2nd safest character (Naruto) so much that she stopped him from converting after Neji's death and in hindsight was literally created specifically for him in a shallow way. Much like the contrived reasoning Sakura loves Sasuke.
(her development went from "i'm not confident but I love Naruto" to "I'm confident and I love Naruto").
(her development went from "i'm not confident but I love Naruto" to "I'm confident and I love Naruto").