Basically what the title says, i'm getting tired of always reading Naruto fics that are Naruto or Sakura centric and I am looking for some change.

Don't really care who it is as long as it's reasonably well written.

 

Uchiha Fukurou by ToBetasered is my favourite non-Naruto Naruto fic. It's a Harry Potter reincarnated as an Uchiha story, and it is, quite frankly, amazing. I keep checking to see if it's updated...even though it hasn't been since 2012.

 

I'd definitely recommend this.

Didn't seem to get much love on here, but for me it is a top story!

 

Bleh, I don't recommend that fic, Cas. I criticize it a little in that thread, but to summarize: it is hilariously grim dark, past the point of rational evil (like, past amoral characters looking out for themselves into 'everyone not in akatskui is a retarded evil sadist").

 

As I did in the original thread, I strongly disagree with this characterization. Nothing happens in the story that doesn't also happen in real life, either in quantity or depths of depravity.

The story is not persistently dark. Yes, bad things happen to good people, but they don't happen simply for the sake of edginess, they happen as a realistic result of characters acting based on their circumstances, personalities, and principles.

I do have criticisms of the story - primarily the pacing, and one thing that happens to Tenten somewhere in the last arc - but I do think it is worth trying, especially if you like drama as a genre (I don't, as a rule, but this makes it work, in my opinion. I would almost call it archtypical while avoiding many of the pitfalls; similarly, the author's other main story fits more into the subtle horror genre, which I'm also not a fan of, but somehow works there too).

As for recommendations:

Blind Stars of Fortune
Branches
The Empty Cage (and side-story, Swapping the Cage)

 

I mean, I agree that real life has comparable and greater horrors. But I have never found Naruto as a world compatible or compelling with that kind of grim reality.

Naruto-verse is dark because it is a world of recurring war between magical ninjas, and civilians are often caught in the crossfire.

In canon, the most emotionally wrenching scenes for me was the Nagato/Naruto confrontations when both admitted they didn't know how to fix their broken world's constant slide into war. The series is rightly criticized for its constant flashbacks and callbacks to previous generations, but the one thing Kishimoto gets right is portraying the recurrence of violence and revenge and tit-for-tat violence.


Almost every important villain in Naruto has some understandable motivation, some hint of grey to make you sympathetic. Naruto's entire schtick, especially post Jiraiya's death, is forgiving enemies to escape hatred.

And in this fic, there are few redeeming qualities to any enemies. Naruto and Sasuke are both complete assholes. Akatskui are pretty unambiguously good (tbh I read it ~ 8 Months ago, so I may be slightly distorting details.)

There are few honorable enemies whose motivation is somewhat understandable, just enemies who Tenten is mostly okay with killing.


I will be giving the fic a reread because I feel dishonest criticizing it after reading it so long, but this is my tentative opinion on it.


Recs:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5821042/1/The-Reluctant-Hokage

Explores a Hokage! Itachi which feels a little bit like wish-fulfillment but is fairly good.

 

Ok, that might be fair - I can't compare it to the original series in tone as I gave up after 9 episodes (and then tried the manga, gave up after 9 chapters).

 

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8963527/1/Tale-of-the-Setting-Sun, while technically about Naruto, is really basically from Minato's perspective. It's probably the most accurate fanfic about Minato ever written - in terms of how Minato views things and does things as a ninja. I'd recommend it; although it STILL says Naruto's name, not Minato's.

 

One of the best Minato centric fics I've found is a relatively obsure/low favourited one called The Flash. Be warned though that the story is AU but that doesn't negate how awesome it is.

The low number of favourites does make me wonder if I'm missing something huge though. I want to put it up for review but want my first review to be something that's actually good.

 

This is good, and I see just one obvious reason as to why the story has fewer reviews, favorites and follows than other stories of obviously lower standards of both the writing style and plot.

It's simply that most fanfiction readers have more interest in reading about the main character of canon, so if the story had Naruto, the titular character of the fandom, playing a major part in the story and marketed [For a lack of a better word] it as such, then I could bet a hundred bucks that the story would garner more attention.

It doesn't do the above, and people, myself included, generally aren't really interested that much in a story that is completely Minato-centric or [Insert character name here]-centric.

Otherwise, the writing is sound, the grammar and prose is decent at the very least, so I'd suggest putting it up for review. Those are the primary things you need to worry about when you add a thread about a story in the Review Board. I think.

It does however have a few discrepancies, but I'll leave that for when someone puts it up for review.

 

OP, I don't recommend you read the story mentioned above.

:facepalm There's a reason why this fic is obscure.

The story is written in third person but the author makes quite consistent errors where the suddenly use the first person for a sentence. There is even an example of this in the first chapter.

If written in the first person for the entirety of the chapter this would be okay, but the chapter was written in third person before and the author immediately goes back to it. This error, where a character corrects themselves and the author changes tense for it, happens quite a few times. Seeing this in the first chapter was a good indicator that the story wouldn't be as great as you guys said it would be.

The author has annoying habit of telling us the passage of time and the location of the character outside of the actual story. Every chapter and every scene break the author will say something along the lines of "Three days later in the Hokage tower". This isn't a play or film; this information could quite easily conveyed to us in the actual story, and it would help to pad the story out. As it is the story is incredibly bare, there is only dialogue and the most basic description of how a character reacts to the dialogue. As cliché as it is to say: the story is all tell with no show.

The characters are terribly written, especially Minato. He is the most intelligent person ever when we first see him, despite him only being three. As a three year old he has a perfect understanding of death, has an advanced grasp of language and can speak perfectly - minus a bit of a stuttering - even though he just saw his family murdered. From there it just gets worse. Other characters are just as bad and are all one dimensional. Jiriya even describes their single defining concept for you when he gives his genin nicknames. How helpful of him!

Sakumo Hatake still starts the third war but he does it differently. Rather than trying to save his team mates from death, he instead loses his shit becaause his friend was killed and someone kicked the corpse. You'd think an S class shinobi would know better, but nope. The intelligence of characters seems to vary depending on what the plot requires (usually it requires the characters to be unimaginably stupid).

The author destroyed Minato as a character. In canon he is an incredibly smart person who worked incredibly hard to get to the top. In this story his teleporting is not from a complex seal but is actually a fucking bloodline ability! Minato no longer has to work for anything. He is literally the most powerful person in the universe and as such I don't care about him (not that I would have otherwise. The author couldn't write a compelling character to save their life).

Word choice and phrasing leaves a lot to be desired.

The pacing is terrible. The plot is terrible. The fight scenes are terrible.

I'd write these last points in detail but its one in the morning and I want to sleep.

EDIT: Just give an example of poor word choice.

About two paragraphs into the first chapter Minato refers to his Mum as "mommy" and then a sentence later refers to his dad as "father". At first I thought this was some clever word choice on the authors part to show us that he has a good relationship with his mum and a not so great relation ship with his dad. Once sentence later we see that he actually has a good relationship with his dad so I was proven to be wrong which makes Minato calling his dad "father" is weird, made even more so when you consider he is only three years old.

In the same paragraph Minato says he had an "amiable" conversation with his dad. A three year old should not know this word, and definitely should not be able to use it in a sentence.

These are just two examples of the problems that the story has with the voice of the characters and narrator, and a large part of it comes down to poor word choice/phrasing.

 

Multiple POV

The Reluctant Hokage by Aishuu

The Sandaime comes to an obvious solution for the Uchiha Rebellion. He knows, after all, that a boy willing to kill his family to save his village from civil war and the world from a fourth bout of apocalyptic violence, can have nothing but the heart of a Hokage. Itachi Uchiha is your Godaime.

Itachi-centric

Not Sick by Ser Serendipity

In one world, after defeating his brother, Itachi Uchiha dropped dead, victim of a mysterious disease, and the future of the ninja world was set for the worse. However, in another, Itachi was not sick. From this small difference, many changes will spring, and many plans will be overturned. The path of the last of the Uchiha, and the world itself, will be altered forever.

Dairy of a Madman - Memoirs of a Nukenin by Bloodreaver Alpha

Uchiha Itachi.Missing Nin, Akatsuki member, mass murderer.He has power, and a lot of it.But after an encounter with the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki, he begins to wonder what the point of it all is.What good is power if you've no good reason to use it? NaruxYugito

Note: This was written before the Itachi-as-hero reveal, but the author did revise thing somewhat to make the story technically compliant with canon - it's just that, by necessity, Itachi's driving motivation isn't protecting Sasuke, or the world, here.

Mikoto-centric:

One Small Kindness, and its sequel Daybreak: Part I by DigitalTart

One Small Kindness: Uchiha Mikoto takes the hand of an outcast child, and with it rewrites the destiny of her clan. AU. *SEQUEL UP*

Daybreak: One of Konoha's greatest enemies is long dead, but Akatsuki lives on, and a new threat to peace is rising in the shinobi nations. The question is... who are the heroes, and who are the villains? AU. Follows One Small Kindness.

Minato/Kushina centric

The Girl From Whirlpool by SilverShine

When Naruto's father met his mother, his only impression was that a village out there must have been missing its idiot. Minato/Kushina.