The problem with this manga are the fans imo.
For me, shippuuden went downhill from the start. Kishimoto took one of the most original and baddass characters he had created(Gaara) and turned him into a p*ssy. This is not about responsibility as kazekage or any of that bullsh*t, this is about character personality. One does not go from a total psychopath to a monk in two-and-a-half years. And no he doesn't have to be killing people in sight like he did, but you can see the difference between how he was when he fought Kimimaro and how he is in Shippuuden. It's ridiculous, it's not even the same person.
This is the same with Naruto, which, as already mentioned here, turned out Jesus all of a sudden. Not only that but Kishimoto managed to ruin his personality too and that is the thing that pisses me off the most. Naruto used to be a lovable character, he was human. You could see the struggles of every character! They all had different personalities. When you get to the point when everyone in the manga goes like: "I WANNA BE HOKAGE!", there is something wrong there.
My point is, Kishimoto ruined Gaara's unique personality by making him be a total fanboy of Naruto, which in turn, turned out to be a total douchebag. Believe me, I really loved Naruto as a character but now he just doesn't feel like the original good-hearted, human Naruto. Kishimoto created a really good set of original characters and never used or developed them because the retarded fanbase only wants to see explosions and planetary proportions of jutsus. Why even bother to explain what's chakra or how jutsus work? They don't give a sh*t, they only care about who's stronger, who's the more, the most, the bigger! They don't give a sh*t about originality or plot of the story for that matter.
My guess is that the fanbase consists of 10 year old kids that didn't grow watching this and want to make this the dragon ball of their generation, or of people that have actually grown up watching this, like myself, but the difference is that since they're lacking in size somewhere else in their lives, they love big stuff and exaggerated jutsus.