Naruto is my first foray into Manga, and I undoubtedly enjoyed it. Fun characters, frenetic action, an engaging mythology…it’s good stuff.
Yet, all I can think is: I should have read this 15 years ago.
Why didn’t it resonate with me more?
I think it has to do with timing. There are certain stories and writers that I’ve come upon at just the right time in my life—The Dark Phoenix Saga when I was 10, R.A. Salvatore and Drizzt Do’Urden when I was 15, Jane Austen when I was in college, David Foster Wallace when I was in my late 20s—to connect with on a level that went far beyond my feelings for any particular tale. It wasn’t so much my age, I think, as it was the stage or place I was in life that made it the right time for those particular stories to work themselves inside of me and become a part of me.
Undoubtedly, I’ve read other books at the wrong time and missed out on what might have been a magical experience at another time. That’s how I feel about Naruto.
I think I would have felt this on a much deeper level had I read it when I, too, was on a quest—a quest to figure out who I was and what I want and how to get there. That’s not to say that I’m not still on that quest, of course—every day that quest begins anew, and every day I try to take one step closer to achieving goals I’m still far from attaining. But, I generally know which way the compass is pointing, and I’ve passed milestones that seemed far away when I was, say, in my early 20s.
Had I encountered Naruto then, I think I’d have become an addict. As it stands, I appreciate it as an entertaining yarn and something I may go back to someday, but not something I feel a consuming need to continue with.
But, hey—that doesn’t mean it won’t hit home again at some other time in life, eh?
(Did I just write a serious and pensive review about the exploits of a boy ninja who enjoys making clones of himself that look like scantily clad centerfold models? Yup. Weren’t expecting that, were you?
AND THAT’S EXACTLY WHY I DID IT.
So there.)