Okay, probably bad wording...best ninja? He had access to train with the best ninja in the world? Kakashi was said to be so good he mastered 1000 jutsu, was said to be as smart as shikamaru, have senses as good as Kiba, and more....and yet he never once utilized Kakashi's knowledge. He met and was godson to Jiraiya who was greater than Hokage level and had tons of skills. He met Killer Bee who was said to be powerful too and while he appeared as an idiot was actually an unorthodox ninja. He is genetically related to several ninja gods, and was even the reincarnation of one and ended up marrying back into his own family.
He was supposed to have the bloodline advantages of the Uzumaki, said to be one of the strongest clans in Konoha yet somehow got wiped out.
Of course, Naruto is not exactly "best student" either as he is stupid, lazy, and could not care less about what being a ninja is. He just want attention.
Going back, Naruto should have died at least several times in part 1. Naruto also should have lost in the chunnin exams twice.
Too bad that writing sucked on a lot of that. And also how everyone else tried to mold him to be a ninja THEY thought was the best way, given some of Naruto's experiences led him to want to follow his own path before that got tossed out the window, and how it turned out when he didn't seem to change a damn thing about the ninja world.
In terms of many battles, it was either dumb luck, unpredictability, or something else that helped Naruto quite a bit in Part 1, James, like how he was panicked enough to fart when fighting Kiba, but also how in the fight, he used unpredictability to get the best of him at times, like tricking him with the Transformation Jutsu into thinking Kiba had kayoed Akamaru instead of Naruto, so he'd take Akamaru out of the fight. Or with Neji, how even when Naruto used Kurama's chakra to release his Tenketsu after Neji sealed them with the 8 Trigrams 64 Palms, that Naruto's tenacity and willingness to never give up helped him win when he tricked Neji with a Shadow Clone, and then broke his fingernails into the dirt to be able to win.
Personally, I never liked the idea of Naruto and Sasuke's reincarnation concept. It takes away from who they are. That's why for my fanfic, I tweaked it that they're descendants to Ashura and Indra, with Naruto indirectly being one and Sasuke being directly. The idea of it too is that, since it seemed to be forgotten, Naruto may be related to all of this stuff, but that he actually has his own kind of growth, his own way to become stronger regardless of his ancestry.
It's like with Jon Kent in modern DC comics. Even if he's the son of Superman, Jon is different from Clark in how his growth with his powers has been. While Clark had years to get adjusted, Jon hasn't had as much time, and initially, he has a hard time using his powers effectively until he receives training to get the handle on them from Damian Wayne. That's the approach I want to take to explain Naruto and his growth in my fanfic.
