My journey with the Naruto series

It was around 2001 and a friend with whom I used to discuss mangas' stuff told me about and borrowed me the first Naruto volumes. I liked the story immediately but after some time, I was not able to follow it anymore. I had to deal with things which were eating most of my time...

In 2008, I came to get back to Naruto thanks to TV shows. So, from the manga, I got to the anime... It's only in 2011 that I started to check Naruto-related things on the internet and discovered that one could read weekly chapters thanks to scans. From that moment on, I read the chapters I did not have the opportunity to read before...

Unfortunately, I used to live in a place where one could buy mangas' volumes directly in manga-specialized shops. But since 2008 I'm living in a town where there are no manga shops.    

Anyway, Naruto will definitely form part of my manga collection when I will be able to buy the manga personally in a shop (and not through internet - I'm still suspicious about Net things, call me retarded if you want). Oh, "manga collection" I said, lol! I've given almost all my mangas written/drawn by other mangakas to my younger cousins for them to have the opportunity to know and appreciate them. Maybe my bad or my good...

2001, wow! I guess the anime wasn't even out yet, right?

I know Naruto for 10 years now (10 years shipping NH too, lol) , it's been a long journey for all of us, hahahah!

I wish I had a manga collection too , there are zero manga shops in my town.

AAAh, it's amazing how long we are waiting for the outcome of this manga, right?

^When I said "around" 2001, it could also be between 2001 and 2003. I just can recall it from a particular part of my life but I can't remember which year it was exactly (only the beginning of 2000 something).

As for the mangas shops, I tell you, where I used to live before, there was one manga shop (which had everything related to mangas). It was like a temple where I could spend hours...

First heard about it back in 2003, but declined to read it though promised that if it made it to Cartoon Network that I would watch it. In 2005, Naruto made it to Cartoon Network and I watched & became hooked.

In 2007, I wanted to add some "Naruto-related" stuff to my Livejournal icon options. That's when I first ventured into the online fandom... I learned some things then and that's why I started reading the manga. The anime was very fresh in my mind and that's why when I read the manga the difference between became apparent in unintended ways (though sometimes I do think some changes were completely done on purpose).

I'd been following some of the big-wigs silently long before I finally chose to make the fact that I was observing the fandom for over a year known. I officially joined NarutoForums in 2008 (which was the only part of the Naruto fandom I truly felt like following after my year of lurking in a variety of places at the time). I thank a lot of wonderful people in the joint NaruHina/SasuSaku fandoms (even if some only ship one pairing and not the other; but a lot of us ship both--there's a reason that the largest Naruto-related pairing club on Deviantart for a very long time was the NaruHina/SasuSaku one) for a lot of my knowledge now--including learning where to find things out.

^

Like Yamasaki, when Naruto came too CTN in 2005 i watch and became hooked. However do too the amount of Filler eps and growing burned out by it i left., however i came across a Youtuber who reviewed the manga and stayied with him (for a time i forgot that i even was sub too this person). When Hinata confessed in 2010 (i remember it well because i was watching a NASCAR race at the time and was checking Youtube out) and i was SOOOOOOO happy she did confess. Ever since then, i've been keeping up to date on it.

@ Yamasaki Akaiko: Now that you mention your activity on Naruto-related forums, I realized that I should have talked about it as well. When I started to catch-up with the manga again in 2011, it was through french scanlations. One had the possibility to leave comments and to discuss after the release of every chapter.

Then, as I was already in love with NaruHina, I started to look for pairings-related things and found a forum where every pairing had its own domain. It was in April 2013 that I started to write in this forum. Unfortunately, there were so much trolling around as well as bashing and insults... Then I've found the NaruHina Forums one month later, waited one month and registered afterwards. I'm happy that it happened this way because people are very nice here. Since I registered here, I only read the English translated chapters.

@ racefan1992: I get what you mean with the filler episodes... Worst of all, sometimes here (Central Europe), they were interrupting the anime at a point to come back on old episodes and when they were supposed to come back to the point where they interrupted it, they literally skipped some important parts of the story.

That's how I looked on internet and discovered the manga scan chapters which I read straight away. This could explain why some parts of the anime filler got mixed-up with some canon facts in my mind. From there on and thanks to some discussions I had, I decided to forget the anime and to focus on the manga.

I really dislike it when fillers are subtly integrated into original facts. That's why I think 100% filler episodes are better because the watcher is already aware that it does not belong to the original story. But when "canon" episodes are released, it would be better (imo) to have the corresponding manga chapters nearby to see what has been changed, forgotten or added.

^

I've talked too someone at work and he said "what canon anime episodes?"

Sometimes it is really hard too tell weither an anime episode is filler or canon. Because sometimes filler does bleed over.

(Although i still contend that Ep. 166 is better then chap. 437 because of Hinata accurate character showing. Minus the Filler crap in it of course.)

I have been a Naruto fan for about 2 years now give or take a few months. My son is a big anime fan and introduced me to Naruto and Hellsing. I didn't know Naruto and Hellsing were based on manga at the time until I started getting involved in different forums. Sometimes I still get things confused between Anime and manga though I have gotten better about it. Within the last year I have gotten into Naruto fan fiction (I read and write fan fiction in general anyway) So far as filler goes for anime I liked most of the filler for Naruto before the time skip, but the only filler episodes from Shippuden I like is the three tails arc, I love Guren and Yukimaru's interactions. Plus it blended so seamlessly into the anime and was so well done it could have been in the manga.

@ racefan1992: I'm happy that I read chapter 437 before watching episode 166. I admit that the graphics in ep 166 were well done but there were some stuffs which I did not appreciate such as they "forgot" to show Naruto's reaction after hearing Hinata saying: "I love you".

@ meow69: I can understand this confusion. That's why it would be probably better to have the corresponding manga chapters next to you when the episode comes out.

Well, part of the reason NarutoForums was huge was prior to 2011 when NarutoForums instituted a system that breaks up fanclubs... if you tried to search for "NaruHina" on any Internet search engine, the first provided link was to the NaruHina Fanclub at NarutoForums. The same was true for some other fan club topics, but I mainly was there for NaruHina. ;)

Yamasaki Akaiko wrote:Well, part of the reason NarutoForums was huge was prior to 2011 when NarutoForums instituted a system that breaks up fanclubs... if you tried to search for "NaruHina" on any Internet search engine, the first provided link was to the NaruHina Fanclub at NarutoForums. The same was true for some other fan club topics, but I mainly was there for NaruHina. ;)

Oh! I think I was writing there last year in April but I stopped because of the reasons I've written above...