Title: Sealkeeper: He Who Binds
Author: Syynistyre (now Eyazharid on ff.net)
Rating: M
Genre: Adventure
Status: In-Progress
Library Category:
Fandom: Naruto
Pairings: None officially
Summary: His sister may have been given the Kyuubi, but armed with Namikaze Minato's greatest sealing masterpiece, Uzumaki Naruto will carve his way through the shinobi world- one body at a time.
My rating: 4/5

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11651066/1/Sealkeeper-He-Who-Binds

Where to begin? To start, I'd like to point out that I could have very well missed this fic being posted elsewhere, but a forum search revealed nothing, so here I am. It is very popular on ff.net, and while that's not saying much, If nobody has posted anything on this site I would be very surprised.

This story, as far as I can tell, is completely AU apart from the Kyuubi attack, and some major canon plot points, such as the sand/sound invasion. Even that is done differently, however. The Naruto in this fic is in a world where Kushina and an OC sister survived that night, and they grow up relatively normal. All I can say without spoiling the plot is that if you can get past the first (say, 10) chapters, then you will probably love this fic. Naruto develops a mindset similar to that of Danzo, of all people, and it's done while keeping the multitude of characters this fic balanced extremely well. It has distinct, different POVs, a level of world building that I find is only matched by the highest quality of Naruto fanfiction, and a set of interesting characters/events. Romantically, Naruto has several different prospects that serve as a flavorful spice to a story that notably does not make relationships the focus, only an added element on the overarching storyline. The story's political aspect is admirable without developing into any cliches that other Naruto and/or HP contain.

To criticize, I find that the first actual chapter past the prologue contains one major cliche that is probably the worst in the story. It features the infamous

Spoiler

"Kushina abandons naruto"

schtick, but even that is done in a different way than most. Additionally, sometimes the story can be somewhat slow. Not scrawling, per se, but still slow.

At the moment, this story is approximately 560,000 words and contains 83 chapters, updated weekly. Another positive point for this story is that it has been consistently updated for a while, so there is little fear of sudden withdrawal.
The only reason I did not post this in the library review is that I genuinely believe someone has already posted this before.

If you can get past the first few chapters and into the meat of the story, this is exceptional.

Additionally, this story features Naruto "equipped" from birth, though he does not realize it until later, with what is entitled "Namikaze Minato's Greatest Sealing Masterpiece, the SealKeeper." From what I can tell, it is a type of seal that can be modified to suit any purpose.

This story contains some really strange stuff as well, such as:

Spoiler

A temporary female Orochimaru, a Mikoto that survives the massacre but leaves Konoha anyways, and an Itachi that unknowingly pervs on his mother

Even by my DLP-tuned high standards, this story is a 4/5.

 

2/5. What was the entire beginning? Plus no repercussions for killing a member of another Clan. I stopped reading at chapter 10.

 

There are repercussions, pretty much right after it happened. I tried to point out in my post about that. If you read through chapter 15 or 20 and still don't like it, I'd recommend dropping it. The entire next stage and the rest of the story all stem from Naruto's reaction to their retaliation.

In my opinion, this is too good of a story, especially with the current state of Naruto fanfiction, to pass up without reading through a portion of it.

 

This is really bad.

The author has a weak grasp of the English language, most evident in his wordy sentences. For instance: "The excitement in the air rang more clearly than the academy bell ever could have as countless students raced out from their first day, eager to tell parents and siblings about what they had and would learn under the tutelage of experienced Chūnin instructors."

Such a sentence drags on and on, boringly.

More so, the writing's style is the epitome of cliché. Evidenced by a paragraph in the first chapter which reads: "Like acid it spread, a ravenous beast that devoured everything it encountered as it coursed through his veins. He was aware of screaming- his own, most likely- but he felt an odd detachment from the sound that failed to invoke any recognition within his heart. No, there was no time for such trivial things when he was busy feeling his innards liquefy and weakened bones shatter under the unexpected strain of melted muscle. The smell of burning flesh assaulted his nose as his skin shriveled away and the taste of his own blood filled his mouth."

Everything underlined can be considered a cliché. But even worse is just how hard paragraphs like this try. It's so evident that the author truly wants it to seem epic, but such a style is hard to pull off without sufficient skill, and most of the time, it fails.

This, combined with a lack of knowledge of grammar conventions make the technical aspects of the writing bad.

As far as the ideas expressed in the story, it's unremarkably juvenile. Lines such as "Hell, with his absolute lack of Uzumaki Luck, he wouldn't be surprised if she felt his very existence was mocking her, taking from her everything she held precious in her life" represent ideas so overdone and childish its hard to take seriously. This becomes a larger issue with the narrative trying to go for a more mature tone.

And what mature story couldn't feature prostitution! That's how you know that character is serious and there are mature themes. Take a look! "'The red light district, I'm not surprised.' Despite the early time of day, the red light district was roaring with activity as the more seedy citizens conducted less than savory business. Seedy citizens like the one he was following and – considering what he was and was going to be doing- he probably fit into that category now too. Fucking fantastic." How mature!

Just to drive it home, look how the author describes women: "Her figure was average, with B-cup breasts and a narrow waist that widened only slightly at her hips. Light skin was fairly clean, or would have been had she not fallen on the muddy ground. She wasn't anything special, but she was certainly good looking enough to distract a man from his worldly woes when in her company." Hell, Donald Trump talks about women in a better manner.

That's not all though, what would a strong Naruto story be without a healthy dose of pedophilia be:

This is complete hot fucking garbage. If I was a mod, I'd ban you.


1/5.

 

Is there some kind of invisibility field on the words in my first post that cover when I said: "get past the first 10-15 chapters"? People don't seem to see that for some reason. Yes, this fic struggles in the beginning. I said it, the author says it in his AN. It only really hits its stride in chapters 15-20 and beyond.

 

The first chapter is so pathetically bad. This dude will need 10 years to get his stuff readable.

 

Well, he did take a few years off from writing it, I believe. Anyways, if anybody gets past chapter 20 and still doesn't like it, then, by all means, flame. The first chapter sucks, but basing the entire work off the first part makes it really easy to miss a potentially good fic. "Pathetically bad"? I've seen a lot worse from fics that got better reviews overall.

I must say, you make Taure look like the kindest, most gentle reviewer on this site.

 

I'm vaguely receptive to requests to read one or two chapters before it "starts to get good" but 10-15, let alone 20 chapters is asking way too much.

 

That's fair. I think the first few chapters only are really bad to those with the highest standards. This is a large enough fic with enough work behind the later parts of the world building and character development that I personally think it's worth it, but it is certainly not for everyone.
For those who are worried about the more mature aspects of the story, there are no lemons so far, and Naruto does not actually engage in any such behavior until

Spoiler

Chapter 75, which is about 500,000 words into the story

 

I read the first couple chapters, skimmed the next handful, jumped ahead to chapter 26, and the very first sentence showcases the same problems that Sey highlights.

I copied from the first sentence to some arbitrary end point, and I was going to only highlight the weakest verbiage, but then I realized that's all of it. It does not get better as the chapter goes on or changes scene and POV.

This description of Hanabi and Neji's interaction was almost comical in how over the top it was. I can tell this is especially awful because I genuinely like scenes and characters like this, they're my greatest weakness in fiction and I'm starved for them, but even I only think this is almost not terrible.

So I skipped ahead to the latest chapter. Again, Just copying from the start to some arbitrary end point.

I know what the author is going for with his style of writing. I love writing that oozes with character voice, I love it when narrative and character is so intermingled that you can't tell one from another. That style of writing is very hard to do, some of the best writers in the world struggle with it. It's something you have to specialize in, and there are some authors right here on DLP that do that style of writing really, really well. Unfortunately, Eyazahrid is not even an "okay" writer on a fundamental level, let alone specializing in such a hard-to-write style. His word choice is weak, sentence construction is monotonous and lengthy, and description is shallow and unevocative when not outright useless.

To top that off, his characters are so shallow and uninteresting that even if his prose could make Tolkien weep, his writing would still not be engaging. Characters just don't feel real. At all. I don't know when and where in the timeline we are at chapter 83, but no part of this interaction between Naruto and Sakura seems genuine to me. They're both ninja. Presumably by this point they've both done ninja things, but Sakura's a shaking damsel in distress barely able to do her job that she's presumably trained years for.

Maybe it's unfair for me to take a scene so heavily out of context, but even back near the beginning of the story - just take Sey's quoted example with the prostitute - characters don't feel like they're who we are supposed to believe they are. That prostitute did not feel in any way, shape, or form like a prostitute to me. She felt more like a seasoned ninja playing a bit gag. Maybe she was a seasoned ninja fucking with Naruto for some asinine reason, but then we have to consider that she's trash at her job because, again, she did not act at all like I expect a prostitute to act. Not even a little bit.

And then there comes a point where we actually have to question the author's intelligence and/or world building. Naruto gave that prostitute ¥100,000 that he apparently just had as pocket change. That is over 900 USD. I have nothing more to say about that.

Honestly I would rate this a 2 because despite it all, it's readable. But the more I think about the ¥100,000 the more mad I become, so I'm giving it a 1/5 because I honestly don't think the author put half a second of thought into that scene and I'm personally offended he put less effort into writing it than I spent reading it.

 

I haven't read this and as such probably shouldn't be posting but I saw the thread title and was legit convinced this was a crack fic about a Naruto who worked at OceanWorld.

 

I’d read that. It would at least be something new. (Unless a story with Naruto working at OceanWorld already exists, in which case someone please link me.)

I’m not familiar with Japanese currency, so when I read this through I’m guessing I missed that or dismissed it. That said, I don’t have much experience reading characters who are written well enough to fill your vice. This is probably my greatest chance, sad as it may seem. Overall, however, I posted this with so high a review because I had just finished reading the whole thing, and just sat there in “contemplation mode” for a bit. I don’t tend to critically read fics too closely the first time through. I understand all the negative reviews, and while I can see the points being made IMO this work was better that quite a few in the Naruto library page. To each their own, I guess.

 

This is bad. 1/5 bad for a lot of the same reasons outlined above.

Saying a story sucks for 15 chapters and then gets better is not an argument that holds up under any sort of scrutiny. Even the best author has a rough chapter from time to time, but 15 very long and very bad chapters are not an outlier or an accident. That's a sign of the author not being very good and suffering from a word vomit problem.

Those long, meandering chapter say very little and don't say any of it in an engrossing way. This is a textbook case of a mediocre-at-best author trying to emulate more skilled ones. There is something to be said for a wordy, winding passage that sets the mood or makes a point. I've seen some authors do it. Eyazharid doesn't do that. He even does that annoying fanfiction thing of avoiding the word "said" like the plague, using words like "greeted" and "resigned" instead. "Said" is not a bad word. I don't know why so many fanfic authors act like they are allergic to the word, but it is always a sign that they do not know what they are doing.

Sealkeeper definitely has a wordswordswords problem, but then it can go just as poorly in the opposite direction. I jumped ahead to sample a few later chapters to see if it really does improve (spoilers: it doesn't), and it has a lot of talking heads going back and forth with no dialogue tags. There is little to no effort made to liven up the talking heads and give context to what everyone is saying.

So if this story cannot hang its hat on the prose, then maybe the ideas are good? Let' see. They're not.

We arrive at a lot of weird story choices like the prostitute who repeatedly insists that she fuck an 8-year-old because she has so much work ethic that she insists on "earning" her wages. What the actual fuck? It doesn't make her look like an honest, hardworking person. It makes her look like she was dropped on head as a child or a sexual predator or a sexual predator who was dropped on her head as a child. Are we supposed to like this character?

More to the point, it's another symptom of a mediocre Naruto author: A dogged determination to make Naruto's world harder and darker and edgier by having Naruto hang out with prostitutes and pimps and other black market-types for some reason. It is yet another canary in the coal mine of terrible fanfic cliches.

This story reads like someone was going down a checklist of bad Naruto fic ideas.

 

This story is absolute garbage. The first chapter alone was such a cringe-fest, that I was only skimming it towards the end. That bit with the prostitute alone ... I felt like bleaching my brain after that.

I don't care if this story supposedly "gets good" after 20 fucking chapters and I honestly doubt it. The fact that the author hasn't thoroughly rewritten that first chapter by now tells me enough about him and his story. I mean, on one end of the spectrum we have Lamora deleting 'The Game of Champions' because he was embarrassed by his former writing style and on the other end we have people like this who probably should delete their story but lack the necessary self-awareness.