Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-24514198-20140531172108

There's no doubting the fact that the general consensus among fans is that Naruto, as the titular character of his own series, possesses an overall decent amount of character development. Meaning, how different has Naruto become and how has he changed from the beginning of the manga to this point in time? At the start of his journey, in the simplest of terms, Naruto wanted to become Hokage of his village in order for its villagers to acknowledge his existence. As the story progressed, he now views his claim to the Hokage title as merely a means to an end for him to stop the cycle of hatred that has plagued his world for so long. A stepping stone of sorts. That alone is good development. But is it sufficient enough for 678 chapters in 15 years? In my opinion: no. Naruto, for the most part, still retains an immature mindset: eg. claiming he wouldn't let any of his friends die while their fighting in a World War.

Nevertheless, the reasoning for this post is to help unravel the other hidden reason for Naruto's lack of character development, that was largely, out of Kishi's hands: which is the criteria for shonen manga itself. In order for a shonen manga, particularly one serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump, to become successful (financially), it has to abide by certain guidelines. And one of those guidelines demands that a story's main protagonist be an overly-powered, gluttoned fool. And since it was always Kishi's dream to have a series serialized in WSJ, he already diminished the potential for his hero before the story even began.

Now of course there are other shonen protagonists who did break the generic mold of the idiot hero: such as Jio Freed from 666 Satan (manga by Kishi's brother), Himura Kenshin from Rurouni Kenshin, and Yusuke Urameshi from YuYu Hakusho. But even though these three hailed from successful series in terms of quality, they largely stayed unknown to today's manga fans because they never played the role of the epitome of the shonen hero. On the other hand, if you look at protagonists who do strictly follow the cliche trend: Goku from Dragon Ball, and Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece, you'll notice that these two, with Naruto, have achieved status and fame that is seldom rivaled by few, and have become immortalized forever within shonen manga history. And as much as I love Naruto the series, it clearly treads towards this way. In order for Naruto to have reached the heights of its popularity that it has already done, I can make the claim that it needed to sacrifice Naruto's character development in the process to fit the shonen hero mold. Almost like a trade off. Success and popularity for character development. That is and will always be his hidden responsibility.

Think about it this way. In my opinion the series was much more grittier and brash in Part I than in Part II. I remember in the second phase of the Chunin Exams, in the Forest of Death, when Gaara ran into some Ame genin, he killed them and made their blood rain from the sky. Not even in the current World War have we seen this type of brutality. Why? Because for most of Part I, Naruto was still a rather unknown series and because of it, had more liberties to portray blood and gore. But now that Naruto has achieved success and became one of the most recognizable series in WSJ, Kishi had no choice but to mold the series into what it helps represent and advertize: the most popular shonen magazine in Japan for kids. In short, Naruto being a shonen protagonist is holding back his ultimate potential for character development. That being said however, for a shonen protagonist, at least for me, he does possess more development than either Goku or Luffy combined. It's just, in my eyes, I truly believe that Naruto would've been better off as a seinen. And in the beginning of Kishi's career, if I'm not mistaken, he was consistently being rejected by WSJ because all of his ideas for a manga were too mature and his writing style didn't match the shonen stable. Even his first one-shot, Karakuri, didn't have the traditional shonen-vibe, nor Naruto's one-shot. But it is what it is, and I'm somewhat content for how Naruto has progressed as a main character, even if others complain to no end otherwise. Anyway, I'd like to know if others agree with me or not.  