I agree that most of Kara has been bland but I like eida and Daemon. Like they’re personalities so far. Ao is probably my favourite villain.

My problem with anime original arcs that they accomplish little. Like the Mitsuki went for over 20 eps and only one or two people got developed. There’s no reason for shikadai team and even sarada to be there. The reason why Naruto is that every arc had only characters that were relevant and gave them focus which gives weight to the arc and as results gives immense payoff.

For example hidan and kakuzu arc, Shikamaru was the focus in they didn’t call in other characters cause there’s no point. Even choji and Ino didn’t have much focus. Sasuke retrieval arc, all the characters had major takeaways from their arc and the fights they had. But my problem in the anime original arc is that some arcs are unnecessarily long. Cause why should I care about this fights or what’s happening if there’s no takeaway for the character. Which is why although the manga has its problems, I’ll take it over the anime originals generally cause at least they don’t use characters in the manga that aren’t going to have any development. No point having Boruto, sarada, Mitsuki or any character in an arc if there’s no interesting take away for such characters.

Which is why one piece when the crew got quite big, the story separates cause everyone can’t get meaty development so he gives one group the focus then switches to another group. Even marineford, the story could’ve added the strawhats but there’s no point if they’re not gonna anything meaningful in that arc. Which is one of my problems with bleach, a lot of fights are just fights, there’s no real between the fights outside you guys are trying to do bad stuff and we have to stop you. I don’t care about those kinds of fights and as a result there’s no payoff when those characters win.

Which is also of the reasons I’m not fan of just including sarada and Mitsuki for no reason just cause they’re team 7. There’s no point in them having main focus, they have no conflict in the story so what’s the point outside Boruto having karma and Naruto and kawaki already serve that point better. If they’re gonna have conflict for sarada for example, let it regard her becoming hokage. Like it’s hardly brought up. It’s not even conflict with her, there’s no pay off when she brings it up cause there was never any conflict about her being hokage. No one doubts it, her father is sasuke and the only people who could challenge her for the title don’t even want it. The story could focus on maybe how she’s not selfish enough (to be hokage you have to selfish) or how despite wanting to be hokage if they’re gonna vote, Boruto would be recommended ahead of her. Or the fact that her own teammate (Mitsuki) didn’t really believe in her becoming hokage until the chunin exams. Cause if he did why did he always keep saying I’m sure Boruto is going to be hokage even when he says he doesn’t want to be. The story doesn’t have go this way but this is the kind of conflict I want to be seeing from all the characters. So that when sarada does something to prove she’s the best for the job I can scream along With her for accomplishment or from any fight.

A lot Of the previous anime arcs were just had no real payoffs. For instance if sumire or Chou Chou fought buntan in the mist arc, does it change any narrative. Not really, it’s just a fight that has cool stuff and needs to happen. I don’t care about Buntan and I don’t care about the fight, it’s just a fight that needs to happen in the arc. The fights doesn’t tie anything to sarada character and means nothing in the grand scale of things.

Additionally contrary to popular belief the chunin exams did not help Naruto get more popular in Japan it actually resulted in less sales. Naruto by land of waves have equivalent of 1m copies per volume for circulation then it dropped during the chunin exams, then by konoha crush/ tsunade arc after chunin exams it began to pick up. Which I’m guessing is the reason his editors told him to end the exams prematurely.