Okay, I'm past chapter 400, and my gosh, Sasuke is more annoying than Sakura now. He's even more annoying than Anakin, dammit. How does this whiner have such a big fanbase? Anyway, here is some general snark for what I've read so far.

Firstly, the Kakashi Gaiden:

I actually spent £7 on Volume 27 just for this. Minato is the best thing about the series. He's such a cupcake! So wholesome! Dammit, Kishimoto.

Yah yes!

Also, I watched Tsunade's Infinite Tsukuyomi dream, and why do you do this to us, Kishimoto? Why?! Tsunade's tsukuyomi dream is forever my headcanon!

Anyway, on to the snark...

Wait, what? That's how easy it is to kill a biju (tailed beast)? I know they explained later that they distributed them for power balances and whatnot, but like, I don't know. If killing the host kills the biju, then surely someone would have thought, hang on, these beasts have killed countless people, why not just kill the host and be done with these hazards, or find a willing victim to sacrifice their life to destroy the biju? Up to then, I assumed that killing the host would just release the biju.

So for the Gaara rescue arc, Sakura was actually somewhat likeable. She was a valuable addition to the team, and she seemed to have matured emotionally as well. And then...

... she's right back to being a useless crybaby again. One arm injury is enough to floor her. Later, Yamato says Naruto's attack was like poison, but dammit, Chiyo just did a truckload of stuff with Sasori's poison coursing through her body the whole time. We've seen countless ninja carrying on with missing limbs and being stabbed right through the chest. Come on, Sakura.

And as soon as she sees her Sasuke-kun she's back to being the good old Sakura we know and hate. Come on, Kishimoto. You gave her a great start, and you had a clean slate after the time-skip. Now was the perfect time to drastically change her character for the better, but no, you regress her right back. We've seen you can write good characters, so why don't you put in the effort for Sakura, instead of having her back to crying every five minutes and going "Sasuke-kun! Naruto! Sasuke-kun!"?

I got too annoyed to save any more screenshots of her sobbing.

Have you noticed how so many of the single female characters have to simper over a guy? Hinata, Ino, Sakura, Karin, even Shiho, the cipher corps woman, doesn't escape it.

Out of all the main female characters, Tenten, Tsunade and Temari seem to be the only ones so far to have been left unscathed. I know Temari and Shikamaru end up together, but at least she doesn't seem to be all about a boy, like the other female characters are. Tenten doesn't count, since Kishimoto often forgets she even exists, and Tsunade just gets sexualised instead (seriously, compare her anime outfit to her manga outfit, plus all the close-ups of her cleavage).

The reason this bugs me so much is because I haven't seen this from one male character so far. Naruto was shown early on as liking Sakura, but I don't think it's come up since then in the manga at least (I seem to remember it being more of a thing in the anime?). It was certainly never a big part of his identity (unlike Sakura, whose whole reason for being is getting into Sasuke's pants, but I ranted about that enough in my long-up essay) [Edit: I forgot Lee liked Sakura, but even then it wasn't his whole raison d'etre. He was all about that taijutsu].

Kishimoto's manual on how to write female characters

I had high hopes for Karin, but we just get Sakura Mk II instead.

Mind you, at least she's useful. I just don't get it. It would be fine if you had a roughly equal mix of males and females being obsessed with romance, but it's always the females, and it's so infuriating. Please make it stop.

The censorship in the English release was so stupid! They already showed Asuma smoking (is Asuma supposed to be a play an "asthma" by the way?), but they had to censor any scene with Shikamaru smoking. I'm guessing it's because he's still 15. I'm anti-smoking, but even I though this was a dumb edit. I don't think Shikamaru ended up being a smoker after this, it was just one fag in memory of his sensei.

The edit was so obvious, and yes smoking is bad, but so is slaughtering your clan, so..?

Anyway, back to Sasukin. Gosh, he's so annoying. Lemme just look at a picture of Guy and Lee being wholesome to lower my stress levels.

That's better. Where were we? Gosh, Sasuke is annoying.

GO IT, SAI!

Even though I knew he would always survive, I still couldn't help but root for whoever Sasukin was fighting.

You had one job, Deidara. One job.

[Edit: I'm past 440 now, and yes, go it, Killer Bee!]

So after Sasuke finds out the truth about Itachi, I thought, okay, maybe he'll stop with the emo crap.

You see, you stupid brat, my boy Itachi gave everything to protect you, and had to kill his own soul to protect the village and the peace he treasured so much. You get it now, right?

Dammit, Sasuke! That was your takeaway? Really? So everything Itachi sacrificed will be in vain?! Goddammit, Sasuke! He does later say that his targets are the elders, so fair enough, but he also says he doesn't care if anyone else dies. Like, if he'd just said something like, Itachi suffered to protect the village, so apart from the elders, I want as little bloodshed as possible, then I could have rooted for him. Because yeah, the elders sucked and put Itachi in an impossible situation, which cost him everything. So I get wanting to avenge that. But then, dammit, emo boy, by destroying the village, you're just making Itachi's sacrifice worthless.

Sasukin: the DT of Naruto

[Edit: oh my gosh, it got worse]

Already beat you to it, loser.

I get the feeling that Kishimoto wants us to root for Naruto to save Sasuke, but seriously, I just want Sasuke to die. I really feel that this was the point at which we should have started to sympathise with him. Part 1 pre-Tsunade Sasuke was all right. Yeah, he was a bit moody, but given the horrors he went through, you could give him a pass for that. His friendship with Naruto was sweet, and he put Sakura in her place, which will always be a plus point.

But after he recovered from the fight with Gaara, it was impossible to sympathise with him. Just like Anakin, he went from being a likeable kid to a whiny, annoying brat, and I just couldn't like him anymore. Kishi tried, but he just didn't do a good enough job in making us see things from Sasuke's side. All I see is a kid wanting to shoot Sith-lightning out his hands and slaughter a youngling for some UNLIMITED POWAAAAAAAA!

Here is a picture of Menma from Tenten's tsukuyomi dream, because the whole concept of Menma Namikaze always makes me laugh and I need to laugh right now.

Ha ha ha! Menma!

A few side observations:

This is a running theme for Shikamaru, and it's annoying.

For real, though. (Yes, I stole that line from Abridged, but come on, how did no one notice those snake-eyes, given they knew Orichimaru was about? #konohaisdumbyo)

"But I'm not gonna actually nurture that talent or anything, because I'm a crappy sensei who spends more time reading naughty books than training my students."

But seriously, when did that genjutsu training happen, because I think I missed it.

Sakura likes Naruto. I wish Kishimoto had gone with that. Sakura getting Sasuke just gives the message that obsessively stalking your love interest gets results, and also, it's okay if said love interest tried to kill your friends and destroy your village. He's hot, so he's worth it.

Sasuke should have had a bunch of illegitimate kids. You don't "restore your clan" by having one kid who is also a working ninja who could therefore realistically die before even getting the chance to reproduce. He should be having kids all over the place. I think it would have made more sense for him to have a few kids with one wife (maybe Karin, cos she's an Uzumaki), one or two of which would be active ninja, and then have a few more kids with other women on the side. Heck, he could even have had a polygynous marriage.

As much as I can't stand Sakura, I think she would have been a better match for Naruto, as she kind of has the temper of Kushina, and as team-mates for years, they would have built up that bond.

Hinata should have married a civilian, so she could return to active duty after maternity leave. I have no interest in watching Boruto, but from what little I know, she just becomes a housewife after marriage, and that is such a waste of someone with her skill-set. For real, you don't have to marry the person you had a crush on when you were 12. It's not a rule. Her "I love Naruto!" in the Pain battle was just weird. Like, girl, you've been seriously been pining over someone you didn't even see for two years and have hardly interacted with him much since then. Is growing up and moving on not a concept in the Naruto-verse? Kishimoto, are you even human?

The previous generation pairings were the best ones.

Dammit, Kishimoto!