YMMV / The Element of Time

• Ass Pull: Raizen managing to have a sword sealed and at the ready to use to slice an arm off of Sasuke and Naruto each at the end of their battle at Uzushiogakure after previously having supposedly used them all up in his ultimate finishing move he'd tried to use against them and exhausted all his other options. The author himself realized this after one reviewer pointed this out, and deliberately addressed this with a flashback sequence in the very next chapter.
• Catharsis Factor: Just about any major villain's defeat is bound to serve as this. But for a very specific example, the defeat of Zurui. Considering how prideful and arrogant he proved himself to be, all the powers he stole over the course of his first and final appearances (with the victims of his ability thieving including Kurotsuchi, Haku, Genyumaru, Hinata, Akari, and Felix), the fact that he almost killed Haku not too long after stealing his cryokinetic powers, and his complete Lack of Empathy or remorse after Zabuza himself took the fatal blow initially intended for his old partner he'd come to view as a surrogate son, his subsequent crushing defeat and death, plus the subsequent return of all the powers he stole to their rightful owners is just that much more satisfying.
• Evil Is Cool: Raizen, without a doubt. His utter ruthlessness, great skill at plotting, willingness to give his foes their props when said props are sufficiently earned, unique powers, later revelation of being a possible ancestor to Felix himself, sympathetic backstory and motives, desire to have the peace and freedom from his inner pain and trauma that death would bring him once again after having it cruelly taken away from him by Caius after his first acquisition of it, and secret hope that maybe he is still capable of being wrong about the inherent impossibility of the true lasting peace that he'd once hoped for all combine together to make him a very well written and developed villain to the readers.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Karin and Suigetsu turned out to be this long before they even physically appeared in the story. It even reached the point that the author ended up pairing them up together and having to pair Kimimaro, whom he'd initially hoped to have as Karin's love interest, with someone else instead.
• Genius Bonus: Naruto has always had luck on his side in canon. Take the fact that the first Canon Foreigner from the Elder Dimension (and, naturally, the first one to explicitly assist Naruto in this story) is named Felix into account, and it would appear the author has taken this detail to its logical extreme.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Over the course of this story, Itachi, who serves as Team 7's sensei in the events of the new timeline instead of Kakashi, ends up chosen to serve as the 5th Hokage in Tsunade's place. This information proves rather eerily prophetic since, in canon, Kakashi himself ends up becoming the 6th Hokage when Tsunade retires after the 4th Great Shinobi War.
  • Due to having no idea what sort of name the girlfriend Kishimoto had implied Itachi had before the Uchiha Clan Massacre had, the author chose to name her Azami. Come the moment where Kishimoto finally revealed Itachi's canon girlfriend, complete with name ^note  Izumi, and the author was actually just two letters away from giving her the exact same name that Kishimoto himself picked!
  • After getting caught up sufficiently with canon (at the time) to be aware of the Sinju having been hinted to be sentient and a potential Man Behind the Man for Madara and Zetsu, as well as the deliberate creator of the Jyuubi, out of a desire for vengeance against Kaguya for eating its fruit all those centuries ago, the author naturally chose to incorporate this idea into his story, while also having it be a Man Behind the Man for Raizen alongside Caius. Multiple canon chapters later, it can be easy to infer that this choice may have been amongst the factors that left him no other choice but to finally accept that the story would now have to just be officially considered a full AU and stop trying to reconcile it so often with canon due to it later turning out that, in the canon story, the Sinju's implied sentience, desire for vengeance, and responsibility for being the Man Behind the Man for Madara, the Jyubi, and Zetsu was just a Red Herring for a different villain...Kaguya herself!
• Narm: At least one reviewer has openly stated that it's hard to feel fully immersed into the story when some of the characters are given jarringly western influenced names like Felix.
• Pandering to the Base: Happened at least twice (possibly thrice) thanks to the end results of some polls the author set up for his readers while writing the story. When he was preparing for Karin's introduction into the story, he gave the readers the opportunity to vote for who they wanted Karin to be romantically paired up with while privately leaning heavily towards pairing her up with Kimimaro. Unfortunately, when the overwhelming majority of the readers who voted ended up voting for pairing her up with Suigetsu instead, he reluctantly acquiesced to their wishes (but not without allowing the readers to help him pick who to pair Kimimaro up with instead to show that he had no hard feelings over the matter). He then may or may not have done so again after choosing to acquiesce to the readers' wishes again when the overwhelming majority chose Daisuke in the poll for who Akari's love interest would be (despite possibly having hoped to pair her up with Konohamaru instead). And then again, when despite hoping to have Sasuke become the new jinchuriki for Isobu, the overwhelming majority ended up voting for Hinata instead.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Of all the characters that could have been picked to play a prominent role of any capacity in the story, who would have guessed that the unnamed random man Orochimaru had been using as a host body at the time he finally attempted to take possession of Sasuke would be amongst that category?
  • For that matter, out of all the villains in canon that ended up undergoing a Heel–Face Turn in this story after never doing so in canon, about how many readers would have guessed that Kin Tsuchi would be amongst them? Or that she'd end up on a team alongside Haku and the aforementioned nameless Orochimaru host under Zabuza?
  • Considering how it turned out to be a completely non-sentient Red Herring in canon, and how many fanfics have since accepted and rolled with the later canon twist of Kaguya Otsutsuki (even if grudgingly), it can be a bit surprising nowadays to find a fanfic where the Sinju turns out to indeed be the vengeful sentient Man Behind the Man it was initially implied to be in canon.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The Sound Four/Five are very anticlimactically dealt with over the course of Orochimaru's attempted invasion of Konoha during the new timeline, with only Kidomaru being allowed the dignity of an onscreen fight and death (and while all four of them physically appear as Edo Tensei later in the story, they still not only get defeated very quickly, but Sakon/Ukon never gets the chance to show off his powers). Sai, Ino, and Chouji also all get rather limited screen time outside of battles. Borace and Xackary also get very limited screen time later in the story following the moments in which they appeared earlier in the story.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: If the story had been able to have the chance to do so without those elements potentially just feeling shoehorned in at this point, just think of how awesome it could have been if Toneri Otsutsuki and the Tenseigan had gotten included at any point.