Naruto: The Manga Vs. The Anime

[Miyabi]

The Manga -

I feel that the manga was, and continues to be with new chapters, one of the better laid out manga there are.  The story is amazing, everything links to plot points further down the line.  Nothing is left to just dangle. 

The Anime -

They do a decent job of keeping with the story, then suddenly they add like 50 episodes of crap that they pulled out of nowhere.  I mean, what's up with that?  Why can't people just leave stuff alone?  In my opinion, that ruined it fo me.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

They ran out of manga story and wanted to keep the anime going in order to keep making money.

[Miyabi]

No they didn't.  There are still over 200 more chapters from where they currently are, as well as new ones still coming out weekly in Japan.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

In Japan, when they were making the anime, they had caught up to the beginning of the next big arc in the manga, and if they had started animating that arc they would have caught up with the manga's then-current chapter within 13 episodes or so. They had no idea what would happen next in the manga, so instead of making those episodes and trying to guess what would happen next, they made a filler arc instead to let the manga get further ahead and start a new arc.

That is what happened. I keep track of these things. I work in the manga/anime industry. This is a common occurrence in anime. One Piece has had a lot of filler arcs, and Detective Conan, and Bleach had one. The other option is to go in a completely different direction, like Kenshin did, but this is often less popular with the fans.

[Miyabi]

Yes, I suppose that would happen.  -les sigh-  It would just be nice if it didn't. ha ha. 

But like I said, other than the random tangential story I think they did an OK job.