Naruto is a very long manga. There is no good place to start—it’s pretty much one long linear story. (You can’t jump in at the time-skip either, because you’ll have no idea who anyone is or what is going on.) I can say you will probably save a lot of time by reading the manga rather than watching the anime, though.
I just went ahead and read the fic. I didn’t know who anyone was or why they were fighting each other, but the fact that there is a fight going on is fairly easy to understand—and I have picked up enough background that I know that characters use “jutsu” powered by “chakras” to do their ninja magic. So it kind of made sense, even though I know I didn’t know the context of what was going on.
That’s good to hear. Thank you, CronoDAS. I should mention: I’ve talked to the author, and, since our first attempt at Shikamaru vs. the Logical Fallacies has indeed contained sufficient awesome, we will reboot from the beginning of the Naruto series once we finish and post Part 2 of the current section. In addition, we’ll be attempting to explain things as we go along to the degree that no reader will have to read the Naruto manga or see the anime as a prerequisite to reading LF.
Naruto is a very long manga. There is no good place to start—it’s pretty much one long linear story. (You can’t jump in at the time-skip either, because you’ll have no idea who anyone is or what is going on.) I can say you will probably save a lot of time by reading the manga rather than watching the anime, though.
Let me ask a slightly different question. How much research will I have to do before I can understand this fanfic?
The fanfic is based on an incident somewhere around chapter 330-340. Shikamaru gets little screentime, though, so you could probably just google through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Naruto_chapters_%28Part_II%29 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Naruto_chapters_%28Part_I%29 for ‘Shikamaru’ and read just those chapters, maybe.
(Not that I’d recommend such a procedure. The worse part of Naruto is the fandom and anime. The manga itself is a pretty decent shonen manga.)
Let me know if gwern’s advice works, CronoDAS, if you don’t mind trying it.
I just went ahead and read the fic. I didn’t know who anyone was or why they were fighting each other, but the fact that there is a fight going on is fairly easy to understand—and I have picked up enough background that I know that characters use “jutsu” powered by “chakras” to do their ninja magic. So it kind of made sense, even though I know I didn’t know the context of what was going on.
That’s good to hear. Thank you, CronoDAS. I should mention: I’ve talked to the author, and, since our first attempt at Shikamaru vs. the Logical Fallacies has indeed contained sufficient awesome, we will reboot from the beginning of the Naruto series once we finish and post Part 2 of the current section. In addition, we’ll be attempting to explain things as we go along to the degree that no reader will have to read the Naruto manga or see the anime as a prerequisite to reading LF.