I never got into it. It was one of those series that, when it was super popular and everyone was talking about around me, I was too damn busy with life to get into it. Then by the time things settled down and I was able to check it out there were like a thousand episodes out and I was like "pff screw this I'll never catch up".

In the beginning at least, really did have a certain something that really hooked a lot of people though. Long before it was ever dubbed, or even commercially subbed, or ever aired in the US, it was already very popular here in the United States. There were people all over my college campus wearing Naruto apparel before anything Naruto was even commercially available outside of Japan. I can't think of any other anime series that managed to do that.