YMMV / First Try Series

• Accidental Aesop: Nepotism will get you far!
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Kakashi promised to become Naruto's sensei, but was distant to him because Naruto looks like his parents. He becomes less distant (and more possessive) when someone else gets the position. This ACI recurrs in several of Lucillia's fanfics, too.
  • Danzo became the Well-Intentioned Extremist he is, partly due to disillusionment from Hiruzen.
  • Some reviewers do this with Tetsuo, too, primarily how he goes about teaching Sakura and Sasuke in Team Tetsuo. Is he a teacher who gives them the lessons they should have learned in the academy, or is his teaching style overly harsh to the point of being counterproductive, if not intentionally cruel? When Sakura almost goes AWOL, thereby ending her ninja career and ruining her life, is it mostly her fault for her lack of discipline (and her mother's for spoiling her), or does Tetsuo share a fair portion of the blame^note Some of Tetsuo's detractors point out that Naruto was the one who ultimately talked her down, and conclude that Tetsuo isn't any good at holding the team together for forcing her to go on a two-month camping trip that he knew she wasn't prepared for? Does Tetsuo care about Sakura and Sasuke, or does he see them as a means to an end to help Naruto become a Chunin, to the point where it's detrimental to the two of them individually and the team as a whole? (The fact that he once saw Naruto in a similar way can be seen as proof that he doesn't see anything wrong with seeing his subordinates this way, and/or that he can warm up to them)
  • One reviewer proposes that Naruto doesn't necessarily prefer Tetsuo over Kakashi because Tetsuo's a better teacher, but because he's Naruto's first Jonin instructor, and one of the first to treat him as something other than the host of the Nine-Tailed Fox (i.e. like Kakashi did in canon).
  I was wondering why I liked [Tetsuo] back in the other fics, and realized I did not - Naruto did (espeically[sic] during his emo-trip in first try: team 7). And then I realized: Naruto liked him because he was treated the same as his teammates, and does not have any reference.
• Broken Base:
  • To a degree, FT:S got hit with this thanks to Sasuke's sperm-donor children, which is unsurprising considering how controversial the Uchiha Clan are in Canon.
  • As detailed under Alternate Character Interpretation, some reviewers for Team Tetsuo are divided over whether Tetsuo's a good teacher, particularly whether his harsh teaching methods are a necessary wake-up call for Sakura and Sasuke, or merely counterproductive.
• Fridge Horror: In Team Tetsuo, Hiruzen discovered that the Academy was being sabotaged when Naruto and his team were reviewing their history. Which means that the sabotage still continues from Team 7 to Shippuden and won't be found out until it's too late.
  • It's not "Fridge" anymore - in Chapter 4 of Shippuden, Sakura notes how much less competent the younger ninja recruits are than even her own peers, but because the curriculum isn't that different from her own time as an Academy student (only over 3 years ago), she hasn't realised that it's the cause of decaying standards
• Growing the Beard: The original First Try was a well-constructed story, but suffers partially from lack of focus on team relations and being over very quickly (the side stories do a good job of remedying this). First Try: Team 7 improves by being longer and having more focus on these faults. However, the fandom appears to be in universal agreement that Team Tetsuo is where the series truly exhibits beard growth - a proper break from The Stations of the Canon, Character Development galore, original plotlines and themes, and arguably an even better story than the primary First Try story plot (it certainly seems to be the most popular). Many fans consider it part of the Main Series even though by label it's only a Spin-Off.
• More Popular Spin Off: Team Tetsuo is largely considered a more interesting and well-written story than the main FT Series - rather than following The Stations of the Canon of the manga's Part 1 (with mostly characterisation differences), it creates new plotlines whole-cloth and the plot goes gloriously Off the Rails; Tetsuo remaining Naruto's teacher with Kakashi as The Lancer also enables both characters to broaden their horizons, while Naruto's teammates Satoshi and Suzume aren't as Out of Focus; and minor characters like Sakura's parents, Zabuza's fellow revolutionaries, and Hibachi get larger roles in the story's subplots, thus furthering the world-building and overall scope of the plot.
• Tearjerker: In FT:S, when gambling takes over Satoshi's life and Naruto tries to hold an intervention, but fails.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • While the narrative in Team Tetsuo presents Tetsuo as a better teacher than Kakashi, and that his harsh teaching is necessary to prepare Sakura and Sasuke to be ninjas where the academy failed to do so, some readers believe that his training methods are more likely to push Sakura to the breaking point before she learns anything, particularly when she nearly deserts and Naruto ends up talking her down. There's also the reason why the team was formed- to give Naruto a shot at the next Chunin Exam- which more or less overestimates Sakura and Sasuke's competence and treats them as a means to an end.
  • Naruto in Team 7. While he's understandably less than thrilled with his teammates, he doesn't even seem willing to try to help them. He ends up passing the test by accident when he feeds Sakura the lunch. While the narrative presents him as a superior ninja who's too good for the team, in actuality, his lack of regard for his teammates would make him "worse than trash" by Kakashi's standards.

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