theanimemail - Profile

So, I'd sadly not recommend reading this: the story's pacing is absurd (seriously, this was just bad storytelling), the characters are about as bland as they come, scene and character description are almost completely absent, and the author is thinking about accelerating the pacing even more (I'm on chapter 13). I'm kinda annoyed that I got my expectations up when reading the first chapter; it had pretty good spelling, an enjoyable writing style, and was just... interesting. 

Overall, I'd give this a try: the grammar and use of more complex sentences have steadily improved as the series progressed, the characters feel pretty genuine and believable, and the way it approaches the Naruto world adds depth and rounds out many aspects the anime/manga simply glossed over, and the combat is pretty great. Now, while I love all the aspects above, I have to say that the weakest part of this fiction is the writing style: MANY scenes are completely interrupted by inane monologuing or exposition on topics that should either be addressed in a previous scene or simply not talked about at all (e.g., the random interruption of a stealth mission in order to tell us how they acquired the driver of the carriage); this completely ruins the flow of the story and results in me skimming at least 25% of each chapter and generally being slightly annoyed at the many moments ruined—or at least negatively impacted—by the use of random fact dumping or unnecessary exposition (i.e., work more on the "show don't tell" rule of writing). Nonetheless, if the author works on this aspect, this could be one of the best Naruto fanfictions on the market. Though, seriously, please work on knowing what topics need to be made aware of and which can be skipped; this has made many sections of this story a bit of a slog to read through. Thanks for the great book, and I hope my review helps further your writing :)! _____________ Side note: you might also want to keep a lookout when it comes to repeated words; you seem to use many of the same words within the same paragraph or sentence, which results in the writing feeling amateurish and kinda stilted. For example (there are two): "He heard the footsteps grow closer until Orange-Mask ran past him. Takuma jumped Orange-Mask and threw an augmented punch towards the man's face. Orange-Mask ducked under the punch and stabbed out with his sword. Takuma dodged with a quick step back before going in with a counter augmented-punch." (CH_7.12) "The water tentacles snapped forward and wrapped themselves around Orange-Mask's wrists. Takuma pulled Orange-Mask toward him with the tentacles and went for a stab with a kunai. Orange-Mask resisted the pull, broke free from the tentacle's grasp, and pulled his sword up." (CH_7.12) These are simply two examples of what has happened in almost every chapter and is something I'm surprised no one's brought to the authors attention.

The biggest issue I have with the series is how much of a hard on the author has for the mc; this is mostly referencing how the author ALWAYS feels the need to explain how mysterious, cool, sexy, charming, or powerful victor is in the most... blatant and repetitive ways possible. Please tone it down a bit: I don't need to know how cool the mc is every chapter (I'm not exaggerating, this happens almost EVERY chapter past the 500's that includes the MC). I'll sill stick with it since it has a decent number of good qualities, but damn is the author kinda giving me secondhand embarrassment. Though, I will say that the alt. perspective chapters are pretty great. Also, please stop deleting reviews that are below 4*; it's disingenuous and kinda scummy.

Copy of my review from RoyalRoad: I feel that my edit suggestions comment on chapter one shows exactly why I'm dropping this: the kids at the ORFANAGE speak in an oddly formal manner, words are consistently missing, the story can't seem to settle on which tense to use and subsequently keeps switching between the past and present (it seems to be in the present tense, but the author has done a bad job of bringing out the potential of this writing style), the grammar is "Bleh" and results in a very stilted manner of storytelling, and finally, the author has not fixed any of the above issues despite people bringing this up through edit suggestions. Seriously, I feel like my feelings can be summed up by what I stated in chapter one: "This was terrible and needs a rewrite. I hope you continue to improve as time goes on." Overall, I'd not give this a try. Oh, and if you want further clarification on what about this story needs tweaking, go look at my extensive edit suggestions on the aforementioned first chapter. I'd also like to highlight a quote from yndrelbosch that sheds light on what many will feel when reading this book: "The plot is great, but umm... I'm kinda just rewriting it in my head as I read. Everything from word choice and placement to grammatical and spelling errors. Honestly, I've gotten rather adept at rewriting stories as I read them, the quality around RR never seems to be quite there ~~" Have a nice day.

"The need for immediate gratification is strong with this one." - Sun Tzu

So, it's a pretty interesting story, but the author doesn't really understand how to use commas and positively refuses to use grammar checkers (e.g., Grammarly, Quilbot, etc.); this makes it so that pretty much every chapter has at least 1-2 spelling errors, way too many run-on sentences, and awkward-sounding dialogues as a result of the lack of commas and proper punctuation. Now, while I'm slightly annoyed that the author is willing to spend so much time writing and planning out a pretty good story but isn't willing to spend an extra 3-5 minutes to drastically improve the final product, I have to say that I've enjoyed the story. Law as a character improves as a person, the side characters don't feel too 1-dimensional, though I do think they could've used a lot more development, and the setting and MC's powers are interesting enough. Edit (CHAPTER 285 (Classroom Tension)): I think this needs to be stated as well: the author is pretty bad at bringing emotional scenes to life; they just tell us people are sad in the blandest ways possible, with little to no nuance or, well, weight, for a lack of a better term, behind the scenes (so, in summary, this is an issue of too much tell and too little show when it comes to character nuance and motivation). Overall, I'd give this a read but know that the above flaws are prevalent throughout the book and barely improve as the book progresses.

I mean, I guess? Though the MC doesn't really seem like he places that much importance stuff like power, social status, or anything really related. He also doesn't seem to have a temperament that is in line with trying to ascend higher.