Title: One Hundred Days
Author: Aaron Nowack
Category: Adventure
Rating: T
Chapters: 18
Words: 368,971
Updated: April 1, 2008
Published: November 16, 2005
Status: Complete
Summary: Naruto leaves on his three year training trip, and Sakura begins the struggle to improve herself. How much will they have changed when they meet again in one hundred days?
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2663204/1/One_Hundred_Days

This story shows how Naruto and Sakura develop in parallel, one through his travels with Jiraiya, and the other through more focused tutelage. One of the best stories where Sakura is mentored by Anko. Author introduces OCs (especially on the villain end) that are pretty good with some backstory on the Haruno family. Naruto and Jiraiya are great wandering adventurers.

My only regret is that this story doesn't have a sequel.


Checked: June 10, 2012

 

Well-written. Those are some really long chapters.

Sakura's development was good, but I was disappointed with Naruto's progress. It's about as annoying as what happened in canon. He doesn't get nearly enough focus either.

The ending also feels inconclusive.

 

Pretty much that.

 

Wait what? This story was actually finished? Hells yes!

 

I liked it more when it wasn't finished. One could have hoped it'd get better.

 

In case anyone is still interested in this fic, the author is writing a sequel titled One Hundred Weeks.

20k words per chapter. Holy shit.

 

The sequel is shaping up to be pretty great so far, and the part about the worlds misconceptions re: Team 7 and Sakura are hilarious.

 

Read it and thought it was decent. I have to say I don't know if I have ever read a sasuke closer to canon: annoying little bitch.

My two main complaints are the enormous chapters get it old. Would have been better if they were broken atleast in half. Complaint #2 is the characters from other villages who I really don't give a shit about. Sakura's cousin, the people from waterfall, the genin team from the rock. Didn't like them or rye parts from their pov.

 

I'm impressed by how well One Hundred Days has aged over the years.

I'd only read it once before and all I could remember was Jiraiya teaching Naruto a jutsu with a pinwheel which, y'know, doesn't create the strongest impression. So I gave it another whirl to see how well it holds up.

A story exploring Naruto and Sakura's respective journeys during the time-skip is a standard concept but few people ever seem to go that route (even just with Naruto). Honestly, I'd like to see more stories like that considering it's an creative opportunity to work outside of Part 1 and 2's canon story lines. That's exactly what Aaron Nowack did and at a time when a lot of the Narutoverse was still a mystery which, considering he wasn't afraid to start a war or two during this fic, is pretty darn bold.

As such, the story is quite OC-heavy as it involves Naruto meeting people on his journey as allies, teachers and enemies while Sakura encounters ninja from other hidden villages leading up to and during the next Chuunin Exams. Admittedly, not all of these characters were particularly memorable but they were generally okay.

During this part of Naruto's training trip, it was Jiraiya who probably did the least teaching of all the characters who taught him anything, ironically. Which, like I said, was the pinwheel scene where he decided to specifically not teach Naruto the necessary hand-seals; I suppose AN forgot that jutsu like the Rasengan are the exception rather than the norm. But aside from ninjutsu, he does a good job of teaching Naruto and helping him think differently which is key when dealing with the canon character's mindset.

OHD probably has the most interesting interpretation of Sakura's family when they are usually just a clan of merchants - though I'm ambivalent of the storyline with Sakura's mother turned out - and of Mitarashi Anko that I've ever encountered.

Sasuke doesn't show up too often until the end but the story takes advantage of Orochimaru's forgotten ability to inflict pain through his cursed seal, and his obvious superiority to the still learning Sasuke to treat him more like you'd expect from their clearly unbalanced relationship. His attitude isn't like what we know from Part 2 but it does match what we saw right at the end of Part 1 when he fights Naruto.

The story also gives an interesting reminder of how people thought of the Nine-Tails prior to the introduction of the Tailed Beasts. Back then, we only knew that that Shukaku and the Nine-Tails were two different kinds of powerful monsters, implying that similar and lesser creatures could exist. So here we find references to beings like the yuki-onna or dragons and it even ties in summoning animals who are treated as spirits rather than normal living being which frankly makes whole concept of summoning contracts more reasonable.

Ninjas are shown being impressively versatile, more so than what I've encountered in recent memory, though some battles feel like a literal back-and-forth of jutsu slinging. That versatility culminates in Tsunade of all people bringing out Wood Release which I've never seen before - Wood Release was just a difficult ninjutsu once upon a time before it was retconned into a kekkei genkai - and it was even utilized in a unique but fitting way.

The weakest parts of the story were the Nine-Tails's conflict with Naruto which I rarely find interesting in general and here its negative impact on Naruto was more of a nuisance than anything. Jutsu names are typically a mix of Japanese and English instead of just sticking to one or yhe other (e.g. Katon: Grand Fireball Technique) which is annoying. Equally annoying is that every character call out their jutsu every single time and, for some unknown reason, AD refers to clones as "replications" yet I have no idea where he even got that term from.

Ultimately, I still consider this recommendable.

4/5