Next up is Naruto and to avoid unnecessary ranting I shall only review part one and not Shippuden.

I'll save the description, we pretty much know what Naruto is, for those who don't, Naruto is basically a Ninja story about a ninja boy possessed by a Fox spirit who goes through life trying to earn the respect and admiration of the village he lives in by becoming the best ninja around, and there's lots of crazy enemies and this is a Shonen Jump Anime.
Now these days, part one is kind of forgotten in a way, which is a shame because it was Shonen Jump at their finest; I will say that the definition of ninja in this anime is somewhat skewed but then again it's the same for pirates in One Piece. Naruto has never been afraid to take risks early on such as using character types that really don't fit in the show, (See Hinata Hyuuga review on Walk of Fame for an example) abandoning the mission format in favor of a tournament format then changing again to a save the world plot and then by the end of the canon story, switching to endless filler for a year returning to the mission format.
The last part of that was not a proud moment for Naruto, going through a year of filler is like Pokemon going on for months without a single captured Pokemon, it doesn't go anywhere fast and it becomes boring, special mention to the Shino laughing and Curry of life episodes for being the worst of the bunch.
Now I promised I wouldn't rant too much so lets talk about good things.
The cast of characters is amazing, there's never been a character I've hated until Shippuden, which says a lot about how well this show did so early on.
The choreography for the fights particularly with Rock Lee and Gaara are on par with some of the finest action anime on offer.
Naruto is also good at portraying drama, more so than it's peers; it will take a character death very seriously and seeing Naruto himself fail at retrieving Sasuke despite him being billed as the ultimate hero you actually feel sorry for him. Equally you take a lot of the other character's hardships to heart which makes characters like Rock Lee, Hinata & Shikamaru all the more special.
The stuff Naruto does well, it does really well, the stuff it does wrong, can easily be overlooked as filler doesn't do much for most anime anyway and filler seems to be the only thing wrong as the story canon has hardly any faults.
Final Verdict: The first part of Naruto deserves it's high ranking status and it's hype but the decision to end the first part of this long show after a never ending sequence of fillers didn't do it's legacy any good, but then again anything is better than what Shippuden is right now.