Sorry, I know it's just a couple dozen chapters left, but it's really painful. I'm gonna try to bust out three posts this week.

This arc was all about building the village to unite the clans, try to stop the endless war, and to allow the children to grow up, but ironically the standard for becoming a ninja is twelve, which last I checked is still a child. I loved how the arc ended with saying the kids can now live long enough to drink alcohol. Nope, still twelve. And clearly people didn't give a shit about their safety; remember how gleeful Anko was at the thought of teenagers dying in a forest?

Man, this kid is trying hard to seem bad ass, but he looks so cute I can't take him seriously.

I said earlier I liked this arc, but to be honest the premise was ridiculous. The equivalent is a teenager from Brooklyn summoning Peter Stuyvesant from the dead and asking him what a "city" is. Like, finding out the government had it in for your brother and family shouldn't make you forget everything you've been taught up to that point. What the hell was the Ninja Academy doing up? Iruka, your students are pathetic. One graduated without knowing what chakra is and the other doesn't understand what a village is. Maybe you should change career paths because clearly you keep on passing idiots.

How the fuck is Naruto totally OK with this? He doesn't even question his dad coming back from the dead to talk with him. There should be questions. Questions like, "I stopped edo tensei. How are you still here?" You can say he can sense his father's chakra, but he sure as hell didn't notice a meeting consisting of him, the Third, Orochimaru, and Sasuke. So undead father shows up to the fight, totally cool with that.

I like how Naruto's supposedly already falling for Hinata at this point, but he still pulls this. Admittedly I'm finding he Naruto/Hinata thing kinda rushed; she just confesses briefly during the fight with Nagato and Naruto never thinks about it ever again, only to hold her hand briefly when Neji died. Well, I guess it's a post-series kind of thing.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa. How the fuck was Minato able to do this? You became a jinchuuriki for like 0.2 seconds before dying. And suddenly you're able to have this chakra shawl out of fucking nowhere? You need fucking time to learn how to do crap, buddy.

Yo, seriously dude. What the fuck.

No one is Kiba. You stopped being important after the "Retrieve Sasuke" arc.

God, remember back in the old days we debated whether Sasuke and Sakura would summon the slug and snake, and some of us were incredulous that they would follow Tsunade and Orochimaru's paths? Well, it only took about 630 chapters to get to this point. The last time we saw this summon trio was back in 157.

...Where did Sasuke's snake come from? He killed Manda.

I like how even at the end of the series, we still never see Tsunade's face when she turns old.

God, this guy went from the scariest dude in the series to the boogey man you scare your kids with.

I mentioned before I'm not certain Kishimoto knew what he wanted to do with Orochimaru, and this is one of the lamest excuses ever. "Yeah, I've been doing all this crazy shit to stay immortal, and since being stuck in a seal on a woman's neck for a few months I've realized all I want to do with my life is watch Sasuke do some crazy shit."

Another problem I have with late in the series is I have no fucking idea what is happening. There's all this crazy shit going on with little explanation. The Third is there thinking, "This is similar to Oonoki's Jinton." Great, what the fuck does that mean? You mean that move where he encased Sasuke in a box? I think that's another reason why Naruto went downhill; if your manga revolves around fights and they're not enjoyable, what is the point?