dl316bh

I dont mind a love interest. My problem was the status. Sakura was classified as main character, main heroine, yet she didnt do squat for majority of the series. When she does, its overly dramatic in romance.

That was, sadly, a problem with the series in general. That manga focused way too much on Sasuke, to the point he seemed more like the protagonist during certain periods. Then Naruto himself started getting downright weird about the Sasuke issue and started feeling crushed under the weight of the "bond" theme

Also he has a very weak mindset making this manga a weekly isn't a smart choice ether. 

Not a lot of choice, there. At first glance, this seems to be much in line with what he'd done previously, a shönen action series. Which means it's probably going to have a lot of page space used on fights and a lot of meandering, meaning the plot would feel like it was going nowhere fast if it came out monthly. Basically, it would have the problem Boruto sounds like it has. Could you imagine if Naruto came out, with no changes to how it was done, on a monthly basis? How many people, here and elsewhere, who kept up with it in its heyday would have lost interest?

Also you wanna brilliant Sci-fi samurai manga I have one word for you GINTAMA!!!     

I've heard positive things about Gin Tama, but I mainly skipped it because it's the same length as Naruto. See also, Bleach and One Piece, the latter of which is even longer with no signs of stopping. I think I just don't do big, epic length manga anymore after everything that happened with Naruto. Once they get past two hundred chapters my brain just starts weighing whether it's worth putting in the time.

There isn't one now. Most of the ones from that boom have ended. At the moment most of the shounen manga being produced is modern or Medieval European style. Cyber/Scifi story are actually kind of low right now from what I've seen. Also samurai isn't far removed from what he was doing with ninja by the end of Naruto. Also Japanese themed stuff generally is safer in the local market, and since he got burned by trying to overly appeal to the west be to avoid them for awhile. Even those robot behind the kid if you showed them to someone who really watched robot/sci fi/future anime will probably be able to tell you where they were inspired from.

 

So overall this comes of as him playing it incredibly safe.

You're right, from what I can tell Japan's not doing a lot of sci-fi or Samurai stuff at the moment - those genres seem to come and go with them like waves - so timing-wise he'll be fairly distinct in the market. The only one I can think of off-hand that's going right now is the Kenshin sequel/lost arc, which I thought got derailed by the author getting nailed for kiddie porn, but upon checking seems to have resumed earlier this year. We'll see how it goes, but he doesn't have a lot of competition so it might give him a niche for now.

That crack about the ninja being more like samurai by the end got a chuckle out of me, by the way. They barely ever resembled ninja, but it really did break down the rest of the way in part two.

 

There will probably eventually be a girl in the story either one of the samurai or just a plain love interest. What he really needs to do is make sure there aren't any love triangles.

Or just steer far away from more than one potential love interest, if he decides to include any. I hesitate to call what Naruto had love triangles. It was two main characters with all the chemistry who had tertiary "love interests"; the males secondary love interest he barely acknowledged until the heroine chose the abuser and it was time for some good, proper marrying while the female loved her secondary despite all her seeming growth and he never gave a crap about her until it was time for some marrying amidst some lengthy wanderings. Still one of the most bizarre official pairing resolutions I've ever seen.

We were just discussing this in one of the Boruto threads last night. Didn't expect to hear anything about it the next day. We don't see much in that trailer, but I supposed it might be Battle Angel Alita-esque and a bit of that vibe comes through in the style.

I was right about the cyborg bits. Ninja/Samurai Cyborg in a Japanese themed land with Naruto-like cities with cyberpunk aesthetics instead of feudal.

Yeah, you were pretty on point. Now, whether the plot does anything with the genre or if it's just used for visual effect is what I'm curious about. I never pegged Kishimoto as the sort of writer who would revel in cyberpunk style or themes. It could just be a sci-fi Seven Samurais inspired deal, given the name, which wouldn't even be the first time that happened.

Smart move of Kishi. Have Samurai 8 consist only men, avoiding female cast at all cost. Well played.

Not like the guy can write them for s***, so might as well cut that off at the pass and avoid any potential fandom shipping that grows out of control, I guess.

So, I take it from this summary that they took the glacial pacing of the previous seven hundred chapter weekly manga and thought it would work monthly? Because it sounds like almost nothing happens.

Guys, don't make me become a mod here. Y'all need to settle down. Most of you were off-topic anyways.

You got it boss man. I was in "don't read and just post dumb gifs" mode anyway. Wasn't gonna go anywhere productive aside from me giggling about it.

Seems people have struck a nerve with you.

From what I read on spoilers, they did vastly improve Broly's backstory (I will tell you that he doesn't even know Goku at first, much less the whole "I hate Kakarotto so much because I somehow remember being driven insane by his constant crying" schtick) and, despite further retcons also improves on the Saiyajin history, and including bits from the Dragon Ball Minus manga like Goku's mother, Gine (and eliminating the Bardock films from canon; none of that "see the future" stuff).

They even change Broly's transformation to being a "Wrathful" mode, which is something he himself has (losing control to his power basically), and his SSj form is otherwise just a "normal" one like Goku, Vegeta, and others have and so returning the "legendary" status to SSj as a whole rather than making Broly's "special".

I haven't watched any of the Broly's past the first one. Heard they were crap. I thought he was killed though. Do they explain that or are they just going with the whole "loose canon" thing with the movies so no one worries about it? I remember most of the original DBZ films past the first couple didn't put a ton of effort into getting them to line up well so they just seemed like an alternate universe story, kind of.

Eh, virtually everything I talk to who watch Rogue One without nostalgia goggles largely agree that the characters were the weakest part, including Jyn - favorites are almost always K-2SO and Chirrut Imwe and/or Baze (more for his weapon and final sendout) while the rest are seen as boring. Not "bad", just boring.

"Bland" seemed to be the word of the day with it. Like I mentioned earlier, it seemed to be forgotten pretty quickly. I think it's status as explaining something from the original movie didn't help. It was kind of expanding on one or two lines from the original film. That's a bit of a hard sell. All anyone seemed to want to talk about in the aftermath was Vader, then it just kind of went quiet. Which is, in my experience, strange for a Star Wars film. Say what you want about Last Jedi, but people were talking about it, at least.

And, sorry to bring it back up, while there's no doubt that there are feminazis in the minority who want to reverse the status quo (usually infiltrating various groups), a majority of people I've spoken to who support equal rights for females simply want just that -  equal rights. It's easy to try to claim "equal rights" as "special treatment" if you most likely have never had to deal with the issues the (legitimate) groups are addressing and so don't see them as a big deal.

I agree with you a hundred percent, but I'd say it's best to just let it go, man.

I didn't want to have to, but since it seems like others aren't going to let sleeping dogs lie after some attempts by yet others to get it back on track, I'm just gonna go ahead and say it to anyone else who wants to actually try and get me to engage on this. I've got a standing "kiss my ass" policy on The Last Jedi, my feelings about it and anyone who doesn't like what I've got to say about "anti-feminists" or whatever kitten they get their drawers in a bunch over. You want to engage in conversation about the stupidity of plot points, go ahead, I'll be happy to have a civil conversation. But I've got no time for the rest and if you want to try, I'm just going to make dismissive wanking motions at you and mock you. Probably just put you on ignore if I feel my eyes hurting from rolling them too much.

Whatever you are saying with everything you just said is counter intuitive to your original thot, white knight.

Oh man, haha, you want to go there?

That's hilarious coming from you and half the statements you've made across this forum, not just now but from how I remember you from the old days. I think you might be the person I see try and play this whole series off as if it were a romance manga with the hilarious stupidity of the end pairings being why it sucked - yeah, I'm sure NaruSaku would have fixed the derailing train that was the plot - the most of anyone while also acknowledging it's actually an action comic that probably had more issues than that. So don't come to me about counter statements, Jamesy. Just move along with your day constantly whining about how Naruto's actually a romance manga somehow. Or whining in general. You'll be a lot happier.

I remember browsing Love HIna fanfiction back in the days. Most everyone wanted Keitaro to be paired with Motoko or Shinobu because Naru was a "Tsundere kitten!" It just feels really weird to me to be into a series that contained a trope that would trigger you so bad. If I felt tsundere characters were immoral or just painful to watch, I would simply not look at the series. Just having that element should be a sign it's not for you. Some will argue back "Well, if it was a boy hitting a girl, you would call it abuse!" While I might find such a thing disturbing, I would at least recognize it's intended as a comedic effect.

I can't remember if it was the manga or the anime - probably the anime - that had her hitting him every few minutes, it seemed like. I'm good with the slapstick and understand that's just something Japanese fiction likes and isn't meant to be taken seriously as violence (fiction always ramps up drama and reactions anyway, even here), so I always just raise an eyebrow at people who get upset about it. But I remember thinking it got uncomfortably silly in Love Hina. But that might just be my opinion. I don't think I ever finished it.

WatchMojo is full of kitten. I know that seems like a petty thing to say just because you don't agree with a list, but they do have a pattern of not thinking things through.

Yeah, they did a best anime couples and worst anime couples and Kirito/Asuna were on both.

I just shrug and move on - and I think they have different people doing the lists and presenting them, which explains the discrepancy - but it's worth a chuckle and an eyeroll.

Yeah, this is a bit of a disturbing trend. They bash the idea of feminism without realizing that this ideology can be interpreted many ways like religion. A movie or series gets a female lead, the "SJWS" are taking over! They freaked out over Wonder Woman back then, and if a female gets so much as a moment they freak out. Even if many female led movies are bad, they act like it's because they star women, NOT because of a bad story, bad acting, etc. Or in some cases, suddenly act like they actually cared about a property before (She-Ra) Hell, if a female character has one measly flaw they denounce her as a bad character. 

Honestly, it feels like a fad and characters like Sakura unfortunately get caught in it.

I talk about this a lot with a friend of mine who has a philosophy degree and pays a lot more attention to the goings on in the world, including stuff like this, and we've kind of come to the conclusion that it's an outreach of identifying spaces as "theirs", seeing the writing on the wall and not wanting to give it up. Speaking as a straight white male, we've traditionally held all the power in the world, including in entertainment. I think in the last couple years, there's been a realization that's been changing - female characters aren't just there for eye candy anymore, women are actually admitting to and openly enjoying video games more, there are more female and ethnic leads in games/comics/film - and there's been a panic and, despite the fact that it's probably way too late now, an attempt to push back and put the genie back in the bottle through harassment and attempts to run people off.

We saw this blow up fairly recently with Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which, gonna just go ahead and say it, I might like even more than Empire at the moment. That entire movie was an examination and deconstruction of the things that had happened through the entire franchise to that point, from the "we stay and fight to the last, we can pull this off" type of last stand that could cost everything if it failed to outright putting into the text of the franchise that the Jedi got too far up their own ass and ended up sealing their fate because of it, as well as explaining things you don't think about but which are equally important, such as "who funds these freaking space rebellions?" with an honest "oh damn" moment. What's focused on by the type of people in question? Too many women doing cool things, so they must hate men, Luke didn't just join and kick Kylo Rens ass - even if his story was ultimately far more powerful this way and even if, when he came back at the end he was still so rad he metaphorically saved the day over the telephone - so they must hate men, focusing on dumb things like "why don't they just warp speed carriers through all the fleets" like the "resistance" wasn't already incredibly resource starved in that movie and couldn't afford to just warp spaceships into the enemy willy nilly and so on. There's not liking a movie and then there's just being silly about it.

A lot of those screaming "SJWs!" at films don't seem to have a problem picking and choosing, like I don't see them screaming such a thing about Jyn Erso in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story; with numerous calling it one of the best Star Wars films.

You know what's funny? I think the people who honestly believe it's one of the best are in the minority. I've never seen discussion of a Star Wars film go quiet so quick in my life. Conversation dried up about that film before it was through its first month and even then it seemed like all anyone wanted to talk about was Vader showing up and dicing people up with a lightsaber like the "badass" they thought he should be.

Which, hoo boy, could I say things about how stupid I found that and how blatantly a "look who it is" cameo it was. Mainly Vader wouldn't kittening soil his hands with that business. I swear, it's like people didn't even watch the original trilogy sometimes.

You don't see them screaming about Leia herself when she shows off badassness in the OT.

I think what most of fans like that remember of her, honestly, is the bikini. Because that's all they ever talk about. And even that's funny. I keep thinking, you know, how Leia choked the life out of the person who put her in that outfit to degrade and oogle her the first chance she got. Anyway, I think it's let slide there because she was "best girl" and the only one of note, really. Like, what other significant female character is in the original trilogy? Mon Mothma? That's the closest, right? And she doesn't do much more than exposit a bit.

Nisekoi's Raku Ichijo and Chitoge Kirisaki - This actually makes sense in the story, this is an example of butthurt shippers who liked Onodera.

I never, not even once, felt sorry for anyone upset by a canon pairing like this. If you can't see a pairing like this coming, you either don't understand structure or fiction or are willingly ignoring the obvious. I don't even care who is "best girl", it's just not happening. They're the title characters. The title is literally a word translated out to describe their relationship at the start of the show. It's the same for something like Golden Time. Like, really? Cool, you like Linda, but she's not the main character and is not one of the two leads the story revolves around. She's an important character, yes, but she was never winning. It'd be like if Toradora had Ryuugi hook up with Minorin other than the girl he stands next to in all the promotional material and whom the entire opening revolves around in addition to him. To bring it all back full circle, Naruto is one of the only ones that bucks the trend and what happened? It rang false with both the canon pairings. Why? Because all the development was put into the relationship between an entirely different pairing, so the canon pairings come off as shallow and downright silly. There was a reason everyone on the board back in the day was sure NaruSaku was happening. Hinata and Sasuke sure weren't getting the development with the leads.

I mean, geez, pattern recognition and understanding the basics of presentation and story structure is a thing.

 

You missed my "sudden" retirement statement when the names first came out. Here's the reason why the names were chosen for Boruto and Sarada: 1) Boruto was named because of Neji's "sacrifice" and said to tied NH together. AKA the editors claimed Neji was Cupid... and 2) Sarada was named because of some sort of "mixture" (obviously, Masashi initially wanted her as a SK child because she looks EXACTLY like Sasuke and Karin when she debuted but because of the NH ending and Sakura needed to be involved somehow, well we gotten this result).

I missed a lot of things dude. But those are pretty stupid reasons. Was that implied, though? That Sarada was supposed to be Sasuke and Karins kid originally? Or is that just speculation based on her appearance?

Probaly just me, but I think that analogy carried the dual implication that if Hinata didn't become pregnant with Naruto's brat, he would've left her ass years ago.

That's the first thing that comes to mind for me. A kid holding the parents together does not imply a healthy marriage, as if everything else didn't already do that. Which makes it doubly sad. He seems to hang around because of the kid, but isn't even a good father.

I said it before, but dude turned out to be someone I thought he wasn't.

To be fair, Hinata is not an anime hero. She never did anything except stand up for herself once and get punked in a futile effort to buy time. So you wouldn't even count her.

I think part of the problem when it comes to North American fans is one I've seen a bit; they honestly forget that it's not made for them and that popular styles, tropes and character types in Japan play into things like sense of humor over there. I see "abuse" brought up a lot in Anime, usually with heroines like Sakura, because they occasionally hit the male main character for being a dumbass, while the other girls an angel because she doesn't do that. Completely forgetting it's slapstick comedy not meant to be taken seriously at all and Japan loves that sort of thing. It's fiction and it exaggerates character tics. Unless it's Love Hina - which did eventually veer into uncomfortable territory with how often it happened - or something like Evangelions Asuka, which was deliberately meant to show how behavior like that in a more realistic setting would send serious mixed messages and is the sign of a screwed up person, it's not serious violence or meant to be taken seriously.

What gets me is that Kishimoto kept listening to the minority fandom instead of the majority, but then again A LOT of companies keep doing this.

If you have a 1000 people make a comment...

50 say Sakura is bad and needs to go
950 say they like her and want to see more of her?
They listen to the 50 and push her into the backlight.

50 people say they like Hinata and want to see more
950 say they rather see more of team 7
They listen to the 50 and make Hinata the main heroine.

50 people say NH.
950 say SNS or NS
They listen to the 50 and make NH canon. (Forget SS being canon. That was just them making an excuse for Sakura to be unavailable. If they really cared about SS, they wouldn't have made it so anti-climatic and treated it worse than NH.)

Why are companies listening to this minority opinion? Who cares if that small amount hated Sakura and wanted her to be with Sasuke? You should know that story wise it would not have made sense. Kishimoto SHOULD have known. It is so obvious. Even Kubo stuck with Orihime despite some wanting Rukia. Why?

The pro-enders love saying the words "It is not your story," but complain when Kishimoto doesn't do what they wanted him to do to the point of even threaten him if NH was not canon.

See... was NaruHina even popular outside the US?

It's been YEARS, so I can't remember, but did we ever find out what the Japanese thought of the pairings? Because realistically, they matter a lot more than we do. Anime and manga are popular here now, but it's still made to be consumed by a Japanese audience and a lot of them care more about that than over here. Wasn't Kishimoto shocked to find out, only a couple years before the end, it was popular over here?

I know SasuSaku and NaruHina were popular over here, but it might just be assumption that it was all "listening to one group of fans over the other". The behind the scenes stuff gleaned from interviews I've heard since poking around here again sound like a Benny Hill routine. There's also the possibility that maybe they just genuinely didn't care when it came to the pairings and just went with whatever. It's not like any of the ones chosen had solid foundation.

Thats so true James I mean if I was doing Naruto I would have just killed Hinata off a long time ago.

Alright, come on. That's almost petty. Hooking up with the main character aside, Hinata was completely inconsequential to the manga one way or the other. She herself didn't really do anything particularly bad. She just wasn't a factor or useful. Hell, the one time she tried she didn't even get a hit in. No reason to kill her and, frankly, even if she'd been killed off that wouldn't make people like Sakura more.

These people seem to like the idea of Kishimoto being a master troll, without realizing they are actually damaging his reputation in claiming that. Even bad writers are at least genuinely trying to make a story. If we take there word for this, Kishimoto only wasted everyone's time. In addition to wasting our time, he wasted the NH fans' time. Instead of developing the relationship clearly so no one would cry foul, he instead gave us no reason to like NH in the first place.

That's just a silly notion in general and I don't know why anyone latches on to it. Because it's admitting that a work, one they'd claim victory in regard to a part of it, is essentially shallow and without merit. If you're making something just to "troll" your audience, it's probably more because you have absolutely nothing to say; a good example are those controversy generator games that go super edgy dark and violent and sick to get eyeballs and kick up a fuss only for it to have no real value. it's something you'd expect out of a total hack. Not exactly flattering to the guy they seem to want to prop up and excuse. In fact, it's probably worse than the criticisms. And also makes their "victory" meaningless.

Besides which, no author putting a decade plus into an action adventure series that saw a startling amount of success is going to "troll" their audience. Especially not for something like pairings, which were so minor to the series that we found out in the end no real thought had been put into them. After all, Naruto's not romance genre by a long shot. Authors usually have something to say or at least an idea of what they want to do. Even things with a clear "take that" to the audience - Evangelion springs to mind - is still trying to say something.

 

It's nothing new. Young people see something they like, they get butt hurt when they find a critical opinion. It's so important to them to feel validated they will attack anyone who thinks otherwise. Unfortunately, some carry this attitude well into adulthood.

Yeah, I always bristle when I see that "young people today" stuff. Or blaming the internet. It's such old man kitten. We were like that too. I was a little kid in the nineties and can remember it pretty well and oh boy, this kind of behavior did not just spring up in todays generation, the internet just let it stretch to people outside of your immediate community. There's a reason we all look back on our younger selves and think we were idiots. We're not all enlightened or anything compared to later generations.

Sword Art Online also had the excuse that the first half of season one took place over, what was it, like, two years in-universe time? Things happened offscreen. We saw the big moments up until the lead-in to the final battle, where we stuck with them pretty consistently. Plus, say what you want, but at least it had some development. Sword Art Online's problem is that a concept that could hold up multiple anime seasons is rushed through in half a season. Which, I mean, they had what they had at the time - the series that fills in the missing time hadn't gone too far when that first season aired - but probably suggests maybe it should have waited a couple years. But I digress.

 

How can SAO be so harshly criticized with things like "Kirito is too broken. The characters are too flat. The plot is too confusing," but Naruto get a pass for showing so much focus on Sasuke for no reason, plot induced drama, weak sauce explanations, anti-climatic endings, and massive asspulls at every turn.

Is that what the fandom looks like now? I wouldn't know. I don't participate anymore. Anytime I see Naruto brought up these days, it's not positively, unless it's like, "OMG best girl won lol" or whatever. I don't see too many people with good things to say about the plot. I've seen some who were happy about the end pairings say yeah, it was kind of crap. But that's not directly involved in the fandom.

 

Now, I did have someone say to me that maybe I am too easy on some anime and too harsh on Naruto...to which I thought about deeply, but then I realized something.

Normally I try to cut stuff like this a little slack. Because, I mean, it's shounen. They're often long runners that decompress the hell out of themselves and wind up going off the rails. It happens. Naruto's unique in that it crapped out pretty hard and had serious story problems. He didn't even get to be Hokage on his own. If I remember right - and I've done my best not to think about Naruto much since the ending - it's handed to him off-screen before the epilogue by Kakashi, who was hokage for a bit because how the hell else does Sasuke get pardoned at that point? It's given to him by a fill-in and not even on-screen.

Amazing.

 

No other anime series has ever treated me like garbage like Naruto had while also spitting in my face.

That's why I stopped reading it. I assume you held on until the end, yeah? I gave up after Pain (Pein?) and the great Konoha resurrection. I used this forum for a while there as the only real contact with the series, popping in to see what had happened until it ended.

I couldn't believe the balls it took to do that. Destroyed the village, then pulled a mass resurrection because Naruto talked him into it. And people call superhero resurrections bulls***. This also has the Akatsuki finally just wiped out. Part 2's supposed antagonists and a group hyped up to be a big deal, gone because the group couldn't so much as go to the grocery store without someone dying. Dudes could get in a schoolyard slapfight but they'd probably lose three people. Dudes could've died going outside and tripping on a crack. As I recall, this was also around when Tobi was revealed to be a goddamn Uchiha - Madara, as I recall, but then I later heard no, he wasn't really Madara, Madara was someone else he worked with and he was kittening Obito - and ha ha ha, no all around.