User blog comment:FairyRaven/Fairy Tail Chapter 357: The Nine Demon Gates, Review and Commentary/@comment-24097640-20131027000721/@comment-3987368-20131027123352

The concept of travelling to an alternate version of one's own world is nothing new. Haruhi Suzumiya had this as the plot of its movie (The Disappearance of) and you can look at a ton of other places where the same thing has happened. Characters switching personalities or seeing alternate verions of ones they know is not surprising. You Wish (Disney Channel movie), Smallville (live action TV) and Star Trek all have them as a plot at some point or another with some variation so it's not surprising that anime uses it as well. If anything, Road to Ninja has more similarities with one of the first two examples than it does with the Edolas arc.

Road to Ninja's whole purpose was to show the deeper aspects of Naruto's character and how being an orphan affected him when everyone around him knew what a family was like. The opening shows him entirely sad and he ultimately gets his wish to experience life with his parents thanks to Tobi's plan. The rest of the movie plot gets into a standard shonen plot with missions, Sakura being kidnapped by the masked man and Naruto going after her (love this scene since the Akatsuki showed up to help him). One of the biggest differences between Road to Ninja's alternate world and the alternate worlds of other fictions is that this one was originally a perfect duplicate of the main world but was ultimately shaped by Naruto and Sakura's desires. I can't recall if this world always existed in a parallel form though, but since Tobi said he was the creator of the jutsu (note that he kept using the name "Madara" throughout the film due to where the manga was at) it's likely that it was only a recent copy, one which he personally made and which changed a ton of its world's history and reshaped certain events by Naruto and Sakura's entrances, a.k.a the "ripple effect" they talked about.

In comparison, the Edolas arc was basically a travel arc to a parallel world. It was voluntary and the purpose was more of a rescue mission arc. Coupled with the Fairy Tail nakama issue as is the norm, sure, but it fundamentally holds a lot of difference when you look up the issues and differences between it and Road to Ninja.

I'll agree though on your last point. Naruto passed its peak of quality a while ago but I really enjoyed the movie. It did pretty much everything it set out to do and made Naruto all that much more likable of a character. Almost as nicely, there was no ridiculous plot jutsu for Naruto to use (e.g a new rasengan). This would probably be my favorite Naruto movie, which probably explains why I often feel the need to defend it.