" With the finale chapter finally here, I have conflicted emotions. I feel both happy and sad. The only thing I'm completely sure of is the gratitude I feel toward the readers. Thank you for supporting me until the end. Otsukaresama, believe it! "
- Masashi Kishimoto
While chapter 699 more focused on the transition of Sasuke Uchiha, chapter 700 focused around Naruto and the children of Naruto and his friends. As previously stated the chapter was produced in colour, first and foremost hopefully all naruto fans were grateful for this. As to produce a whole chapter in colour must have taken quite some time.
I must first indicate that we didn't get no indication between how much time had passed since the fourth great ninja war in both chapters. Kakashi had also stepped down as the 6th hokage and was alongside his long time friend Might Guy, who is wheel chaired after heroics against Uchiha Madara in opening the 9th gate and battling him as an equal after he became the 10 tails Juubi and had the power of the sage of six paths.
If your looking for closure with previous events, you may be sadden as Kishimoto gives snaps of the previous Kage's who battled Madara together in the 4th great ninja war. The only one who looked the same Tsuande as she uses her Jutsu to make her appearance younger. It was extremely surprising to see Onoki still alive, i guess that was just for the fans.
The chapter then focuses around the pairings of the surviving rookie 8 and ninja's of the surrounding villages who got together with the ninja of konoha. Kishimoto definitely wanted to surprise us with some of the pairings.
Naruto ended up with Hinata which should be no surprise to Naruto fans, the chapter dedicated a lot of chapters to their son Bolt which in a few different sites was 'Baruto' for short. He resembled naruto while their daughter resembled Hinata both with the 6 cat scratches on their faces like there father. Kishimoto wanted to show how history repeats itself by making Bolt a trouble maker and painting the faces of the Hokages exactly like his father did back when he was around the same age. The reason a lot of Manga fans related to naruto was because of his struggle of being alone and neglected and having no one not even parents, would be far fetch to say we can all relate to the story but the similarity is being a manga fan you were sometimes neglected and left to be alone as it was consider to be 'un cool.'
Much praise can be given to this chapter but at the same time it has it fault's it failed to close events and give explanations. Maybe if this chapter was posted as an epilogue of chapter 700 it would have been understandable, we got no explanation to how Naruto became Hokage, what happened to the sinister Orochimaru, where are the rest of the tailed beast and last but not least did Naruto take the Genin exam?
To my understanding there is a new series starting in the Spring of next year that could potentially fill in the gaps, they still had to be addressed in this review, there are negatives when you look at the character developments of Naruto and Sakura, part of there goal was to bring Sasuke back to the village which was hard to understand as he turned to a rogue murderer that tried to kill them any chance he got. Saying this Naruto's other goal was to become Hokage, i adored this moment while reading the chapter as a fan this is a pinnacle part of the story I longed wished to see after 10 years of reading Naruto.
Would like to thank Masashi Kishimoto for giving us 700 chapters of greatness. In the words of his protagonist 'believe it.'
