I've recently run mostly out of reading material in the HP fandom, and therefore I figured I should try some other fandoms to find more reading material. A quick look at ff.net has told me that Naruto is the biggest fandom after HP. Unfortunately I know literally nothing about Naruto. So i wondered if any of you knew of a good fic to introduce the world to a completely newbie. Or alternatively if you knew of another fandom with some good fics and preferably a fic to introduce the world.

 

Well, I would suggest reading the manga before jumping into the Naruto Fandom.

 

Seconded. Especially the early chapters before [REDACTED] and

Spoiler

are good.

 

Naruto world is massive and has some rather unique stuff. You absolutely should either read the manga or watch the anime, whichever you prefer. Go over the source material first! Then start looking into fics.

Manga is original source, and anime is an adaption. The anime also has a lot of filler - if you decide to watch the anime, you could use some episode guide to cut the probably 200 episodes of filler out. If you end up really liking Naruto, it would be best to both read the manga and watch the anime - anime is much more visually impressive and leaves you a good mental image when you're reading fics.

As for fics, we don't know you preferences, pairing, whatever. We have a Naruto library in the Other Fandoms section, go check it out. Some good Naruto stories are also in our WbA.

But seriously, go read/watch Naruto first, then get into the fics.

 

Whatever you do, never ever watch the German opening.

Otherwise, yeah, the manga, for all its flaws, is worth reading, at least until a certain point. The anime is worth checking out, especially until the time skip, however, it is rather long, so, I am not sure if you want/can invest the time. I mean, when I watched the anime, I was still in school, and that was some time ago.

But yeah, manga is probably the way to go for both, getting all the necessary information about the setting and characters, and getting them in a relatively short time.

The problem with giving you fic recs is, while Naruto has great character concepts and great world-building, its story telling has its issues, and there is a good amount of fanfics which are better than canon, so, if you read one of those, decide you like it, and then try to read the manga, chances are you'll enjoy it less.

Not to mention, fics repeat a lot of stuff, so, you'll want your first exposure to elements that you will find again and again in fanfics to be the canon one.

This is not Familiar of Zero, where you can pick up everything you need to know with a fanfic or two. For all its flaws, it has some pretty awesome moments. There is a reason why so many people write fanfiction about it and why so many couldn't stop reading it, even while bitching about so many things at the end.

At the very least, read/watch until the time-skip.

 

Okay, thanks all. I will try reading the Manga and see if it is something that interests me. Well either that or I'll start reading the Discworld series, I've been meaning to start that for a while...

 

This a thousand times over.

Just knowing that the rap included at one point "Sakura the beautiful; Sasuke, he is really cool" is all you have to know about that piece of shit intro. In later episodes they went back to the Japanese openings I believe, but that first one is absolutely horrendous.

 

You can't say that and not link that pile of shit, man.

Observe it in all its "glory": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8xoTBZrzko

 

I hate you, BTT, I really do.

Now if theminikiller never watches Naruto, it will be your fault and after seeing that, who would blame him?
theminikiller : Lol, obviously, the Discworld books are excellent stories, each and every one of them and cannot be compared to Naruto. However, don't expect to find any good fanfics, or a lot of them, not that Discworld needs it. Discworld is amazing to behold but very few people can play in Pratchett's sandbox. Naruto, on the other hand, was practically made for fanfiction.

 

That intro is so terrible I have developed a sudden and unrelenting obsession with inventing a time machine solely so that I could go back and kill his grandfather, creating a paradox and destroying this universe and everything in it.