Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-27312470-20160124013012/@comment-3261234-20160124043435

I think everybody realised so far that the series switched from a ninja series to a DBZ-akin series long ago. I wish it would not have been like this, but I could always go back to the (in my opinion) better parts of the series like the first and ONLY Chuunin Exams (the filler failure doesn't count) or the Sasuke Retrieval Arc. Naruto, Sasuke and Kakashi getting these convinient powers was the lamest asspull I've ever seen, but it happened, so we have to deal with it.

Also: "...everybody seems OK with this and still somehow gets excited for, well, anything in the Naruto series at this point"

This is indeed the case for a large part of the audience, that's true. Basically everybody from the main audience in Japan read the manga and is fine with every new content, no matter what quality. In countries outside Japan however, I saw different reactions, especially on sites like reddit. The percentage of these fanboys people charmingly tend to call "Narutards" seems to actually be lower than I expected, or they simply don't care and keep their opinion for themselves.

And the protection of main characters...well, plotshields are a thing in basically every long-running shounen, but at least it's not as bad as in Fairy Tail, IMO.