I got an email from Victor a week back and after a few exchanges we decided to meet up this morning on a glorious sunny Tuesday - the conversation was amazing and he brought with him quite a number of unique pens. He has an arsenal himself with a Lamy 2000 - 55 years edition, a pair of Vietnam’s special releases Lamys, a Pilot Custom Sterling Silver with a whole pokemon on it, and that’s still not the end of it. Oh and behold - a while box, but then, my glance was caught by Jiraiya (you know, that old dude with white spiky hair, I’ll show you later), and a lot of feelings started to invoke - it was the box of the Montblanc x Naruto Meisterstuck LeGrand, and from now on let’s just call it the 146 Naruto to make it short.

Taken out of the white paper sleeve, the 146 Naruto came in a typical single-pen faux-leather textured pen case. I’m glad it does not come with the all so humongous square Writer’s Edition boxes or one of those display stand - well, one might argue that their Naruto figure at home could totally do the trick of holding the pen up in its full glory.

Now, at first glance it’s a typical 146 and there is no doubt about it, and I got to give props to the design team for their effort in incorporating the anime aesthetics into a luxury product. From afar, it does not scream “NarutOoOoOoO” in our faces but there are still a few things that bother me a bit with the overall look of the pen, but I’ll get to that part later.

The Naruto is the closest to the Ultra Black Legrand with all the ruthenium plating and metal parts, and even the nib is also ruthenium coated except the Leaf-village symbol in the centre of the 14k gold nib. From looking at the first few photos of the promotional materials I thought it was just going to be a typical “modding project” of Montblanc with just adding the extra print of the main character of the series doing his usual T-finger-pose, an orange clip, and leaving it at that. However, the design laser etched on the barrel was the thing that actually changed my mind about this collaboration - there is the cloud motif usually found in traditional japanese fabric and was very prominent in the Naruto anime series.

The barrel is the more tastefully done part of this pen and that also includes the tiny pop of orange at the nib collar, it does remind you that this is a special thing you’re writing with and of course, I do like the Leaf symbol etching on the nib - it’s really detailed and brings out the best of what Montblanc is capable of.

Still, I wish the same thing could be said about the cap. It wouldn’t have been even just a tad less obvious if they kept the “collaborative” details to the bare minimum with perhaps, the usual ninja head band design on the side instead of the main character etched onto it, plus a lot of orange paint on top. It adds a bit of color to the pen overall but the orange clip is already doing that job. From what I could feel with my grubby fingers, the paint of the clip is done similar to what we see with car paint job - a layer of primer, then orange powder coating and a bit of electricity to bring it all together. There are bits of sparkle on the clip as well and I’ll ask Victor for an update in the near future to see if either the paints on the clip or Naruto etching came off in any way.

Other than the cap taking away the focus on the more nuanced design elements of the pen, the Naruto 146 is a solid pen from a user perspective - it’s not weighty or unbalanced similar to other resin 146s, the nib writes extremely well from what I can tell and it can last you a pretty long while. There is a “but” coming…and it’s going to be on the question of value - $1,035 on their US website, and I’ll leave it to you to be the judge. Some might feel like this is a worthwhile price tag to pay for a writing instrument with added bonus of having their favorite childhood nostalgia engraved on the cap, or this is a campaign the brand pulls off to get the fountain pen community and the fans talking about how things should be done, or in their words - how they take story telling seriously.

Overall, I have a pleasant experience handling the Naruto 146, with a heart full of mixed feelings, I bring you these lines of thought, but I would like to know what you think as well, what kind of collaboration would you like to see next from the brand, and who knows, the lads might actually do it ;)