Saw all of the anime for original Naruto(Hell no, not fillers though) and the beginning of Shippuden in the anime. I also watched all the big fights in the anime. For the remainder of Shippuden I read the manga to the end.
And can I just say, it's not terrible by any means, there are some moments where I do believe it's terrible but as a whole it's not at all terrible. BUT CAN I JUST SAY, it is the most overrated piece of crap ever and I didn't even watch the fillers. It is plagued with terrible pacing, animation(in every episode except a select few), the music is quite good with some pretty solid OPs+EDs as well although at the same time a select few OPs are pure trash(It's just yelling!). But the characters are all whiny, edgelords until Shippuden. The character development is AMAZING but not in a good way. It's not like great characters develop to greater characters. Nono, it's unbearable trash developing into acceptable adults. In Shippuden I don't really hate any of them anymore, although a good chunk of the cast is mediocre. Rock Lee and Guy Sensei are the two redeeming characters that get almost COMPLETELY swept away in the better half of the show.
On that note, let's get to the story. The original Naruto has a complete piece of trash story revolving around two piece of shit characters, Sasuke and Orochimaru. Everything revolves around these idiots. Before I get any further can I just say this show has a TERRIBLE problem with flashbacks. They feel the need to take up at least 5 minutes per episode to review the flashback we just saw. I don't even know how many times I've seen the Sasuke and Itachi flashback, SO TRASH. Hell, in the hyped up 1 hour special for Itachi vs Sasuke, it was 20 minutes, 20 full minutes until we got to any new episode. So no, we did not get an hour special, we got our normal episode with an extra long recap. Trash story filled with trash characters revolving around trash characters. Shippuden gets some things right, most of the characters are now in at least some sense bearable and some have matured to be great characters. At the same time, they completely shoved away every character except the super main(Naruto Sasuke, Sakura, etc), mostly mediocre cast aside. The story improves and gets somewhat more interesting but still not the life-changing tale it is sold to be.
The worst part of Shippuden is how not only was pushing these characters aside not enough, oh no not nearly, they felt the need to kill off some of the standouts in this mediocre pool of characters. Naruto at its best, is absolutely fantastic. Naruto vs Pain was top-notch, Naruto vs Sasuke was beautiful, Gaara vs Lee another great example. BUT MAN, almost all of the other time it is mediocre, overrated, mainstream trash. Not to mention a lot of these best moments are plagued with 15 minute back stories that were recycled from a past episode, so that doesn't really help now does it?
Now the manga, it fixes quite a few of these issues. The scenes are a big improvement considering they simply had to draw still shots rather than animate, I guess it is a given. The pacing was for the most part fixed and you could get through it MUCH quicker. It's quite embarrassing when your show has 700+ 24 minute anime episodes compared to 700, what, 5 minute? Manga chapters. It was definitely an improvement, although, we get this with the sacrifice of the select few really well done fights. All in all, I would never recommend Naruto to anyone,
I was on the verge of quitting way too many times during this series and I consider myself quite the patient guy. I still cannot comprehend how people who live by only watching shounen because of the action can stand this trash. I have no idea how they can sit through 90% backstory and only 10% action to be interrupted by a few flashbacks in between, forgot to mention how much they change the pace for the worst like that. I feel like I enjoyed the show more by focusing only on the good sections, now that I realize how badly I talked about show in this review, I was certainly blinding myself with the few things it does right, which helped in me enjoying it but doesn't help the show is still trash. Don't watch it, Overall: 6/10, I still feel that's too generous but take it as you will.