And by “just,” I mean “I watched it in weekend-shaped chunks over the course of about eight weeks, skipped most of the filler, and got caught up a few months ago”. But it seemed like there were more than a few fans around, so I figured I’d start a thread. I won’t box spoilers, but my description is fairly detailed in places: if you aren’t caught up, I wouldn’t recommend reading on. ^^
In any event, I went in functionally blind: I had heard that there was a show called Naruto, and that it involved ninjas in some capacity, but that was where my familiarity ended before I began watching. In general I could do without a lot of elements of the pre-timeleap, but the bad parts never stood out; most of the things I found problematic were to be expected in a show aimed at Japanese middleschoolers, who I’m assuming are the main demographic of the show: the DBZ-esque powerup sequences that make the show look like a series of 20-minute long bowel movements, the characters’ propensity to yell the name of their special attacks at the top of their lungs, their melodramatic reactions to everything (an evil guy is being evil? I rage!), and so forth. That having been mentioned and ignored, however, I generally liked the rest!
Especially considering that it’s targeted at kids I liked the show’s early attempts at portraying the moral ambiguity and general ambivalence with which the adult ninjas seemed to view their professions, and showing how Naruto and his classmates slowly began accepting that sort of attitude as part of the lifestyle.
The few (and I felt there really were only a few) overarching themes and plots aside, I thought that Naruto was, in it’s ideal environment, a character study that used action scenes (and since this is an unabashedly shounen anime, “action scene” and “plot” are interchangeable) to show off said characters. Unfortunately, my natural reaction to the show really took away from the early section: after only a few episodes I found that I honestly didn’t care about Sasuke: he was gloomy, bitchy, and I somehow found that his issues (which mainly seemed to involve angst over his insane brother and later his quickly-growing inferiority complex) weren’t nearly as interesting as Naruto’s. I thought that this was the case for everyone until I started talking with other fans, and discovered that a large portion of viewers really enjoyed Sasuke and the Sasuke/Naruto dynamic.
Also, it may just be me, but I simply did not see that particular relationship until the very end of the Sasuke Retrieval Arc; to me the show was always about Team 7 as a whole, and how they grew as a result of their work… but the only real chemistry I ever saw between Sasuke and Naruto was the aforementioned inferiority complex. The beginning of the Retrieval Arc made a lot of sense to me: Sasuke was a member of the team, and important to Sakura, and it was on the strength of those two points that Naruto and the hastily-assembled group went off. With that in mind the arc was quite enjoyable, but the big Naruto/Sasuke fight just lacked a lot of impact, since I didn’t really care about (nor did I even predict) the NarutoAngst that apparently came as a result of Sasuke’s departure.
Anyway, Sasuke aside, I really liked Sakura as she was portrayed in the first few episodes: she put on the show of being the epitome of a popular 12 year old girl by trying to act shy, quiet, and extremely girly in public, but through her frequent inner monologues and her behavior in the bulk of the series, she betrayed herself as being, if not a tomboy, a fairly normal adolescent. That set her “I’m going to stop being girly and try hard” revelation up to come across pretty well, and the fact that it was delivered in the format of an episode-long brawl only helped her case. That having been said, though, I think that her character actually started to suffer right around that point; the writers had a good grip on her early character, and they introduced the transition from socialite to badass ninja quite well, but it felt like they never knew how to write her as her character evolved, which led to her becoming increasingly two-dimensional as the series went on.
Naruto himself also seemed to degrade over time, but in his case it may have just been my patience: early on, his character seemed to be fairly sympathetic: he was an ordinary, fairly obnoxious 12-year-old whose natural, extremely strong potential was never harnessed because the village shunned him. That early “Obnoxious but strong” piece was appealing, especially when the show’s setting frequently contrasted Naruto’s rather odd personality with the sulky, quiet, and angsty behavior that we came to expect from “average” super-ninjas. Unfortunately, the overwhelming power and ability that let Naruto get away with being immature to begin with only hurt him as the show went on: I liked the “Immature ninja grows up to be great guy” story that his origin seemed to hint at, but it seemed like, with few exceptions, his powers gave him an excuse to slack off and continue being an immature arsetoad. I got increasingly tired of watching him get away with doing stupid sh*t, and as the show went on I began to care about him much less.
Mind you, there are definite exceptions to my portrayal, and I think they represent some of the best parts of his stories: his efforts (and their results on) the Chunin exam arc was the biggest example in my mind, and in general I think the Chunin arc served as a kind of high point for the show. Finally, I think the Let’s Get Tsunade arc (I honestly have no idea what that one is called) was the high point in the series for Naruto. He got to show off a (marginally) increased level of maturity when he interacted with Tsunade, he got to show off the first 80-some episodes’ worth of training by fighting a giant snake, and he to borrow from Kevin Smith he got to hang out with a really freaky dude who he’ll be able to tell stories about for the rest of his life. (Jiraiya, obviously.)
…but it all went downhill from there, and the rest of Naruto’s life seems to have been a series of bland situations that share a single set of stage directions: get angry, lose your temper, and run in swinging. Heck, that’s a paraphrase from the show. I guess that all in all, my problem isn’t with Naruto as much as it is with the writers’ inability to either take his character somewhere interesting or frame him in a way that made his personality fun to watch, instead of boring.
I acknowledge that my opinion is highly subjective and extremely hypercritical (it’s a kids’ show, fer cryin’ out loud), but there you have it. My qualms aside, however, I’m still watching it and largely enjoying each episode, so I think they’ve done more good than bad. 
Oh yes, and let me take a parting shot at Naruto: Shippuden’s slooooow pacing: I know they don’t want to use up all of the manga story too quickly, but did they really need to spend an entire twenty-minute episode on taking off a hat? (Literally. I’m pretty sure it took the puppet guy a full twenty minutes just to take his damn hood off.)
