In his charming essay in the Austin Chronicle, Wayne Alan Brenner writes about how he introduced the Fantastic Four to his daughter and how his daughter introduced Naruto to him.
By the time I'd finished the third volume, I was hooked. The characters, a group of young adolescents trying to survive the rigors of their renowned village's ninja academy, were so wonderfully fleshed out by mangaka Musashi Kishimoto – in the writing and the drawing. These weren't stock characters with a few choice quirks added for identification's sake. These were kids – Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Rock Lee, Ino, Shikamaru, et al. – with complex backstories informing their decisions, with choices made based on hard-won personal knowledge and social machinations going back generations. Here were astonishing skills and martial techniques that weren't the result of gamma-ray mishap or genetic cataclysm but, instead, years of dedicated physical training and the study of ancient ways of controlling the body's natural energies. A slapdash junk load of mystical mumbo-jumbo requiring much suspension of disbelief, at times, yes; but compelling nonetheless.
And the drawing! The sharp delineation of the characters and their environment, the pacing, the rhythms of accelerated time arranged in strategic panels. The shorthand depiction of motion and speed and impact, the sheer cinematic direction of the battles fought, ink lines flying like shuriken against the masked background or the panel's stark white. Roll over, Jack Kirby, and tell Steve Ditko the news from Japan.
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