Miss Soupy

Even though it annoys me to say this but Naruto moving on but could've been integrated and it could've made some sense if it was done right. Have Naruto confess and then Sakura tells him sorry I just don't have those feelings for you. And then Naruto moves on. That's the problem all that love that Naruto had/has for Sakura was just forgotten and not mentioned again. Like it didn't even exist.

How could Naruto have moved on and still look heroic though? Kishi used the excuse that Sakura moving on would make her look like a terrible woman. However, the manga isn't called Sakura. Or Sasuke. Or Hinata. It's called Naruto. He didn't let go of his feelings towards Sasuke, no matter how edgy he got. He's not supposed to quit. Out of anyone in the manga, he's supposed to be the one portrayed as never giving up.

There is no believable way he could have stopped loving Sakura as the hero of the manga. It's shounen. It's not supposed to be this complicated >.<

Agreed with a lot of your points. The ending really did just create more questions than answers, almost like it was all for the sake of shock value rather than making sense. Not gonna lie, the ending wasn't the only thing retconned in Naruto - a lot of part 2 seemed to have opposite messages than were introduced in part 1. Naruto as the Chosen One, for example. Um, why??

Pretty much everything after the Pain Arc...is where things start turning backwards. Pain Arc is were Naruto got his acknowledgement anyways, so it would've been a better point to wrap things up. The ninja war was pointless. All the ninja holding hands and fighting together doesn't help Naruto's character. Naruto becoming a god doesn't help his character. His peak for acceptance was defeating Pain. Everything after that just seemed to transform him into an unrelatable person.

As far as the timeskip ending in 700...yeah, it's all wrong. Pretty ironic Naruto is teaching his child to endure in a world where ninja aren't needed anymore. No wonder he drinks.

I just dislike the staple 'perfect' moe-blob character. She doesn't do much of anything, so she doesn't have a lot of plot related things to complain about. She's not significant enough for that. Hinata's just a background character that people embraced over Sakura, because Sakura is a girl who makes tons of mistakes in comparison. Hinata was given only one thing to do: Naruto-kuuuun! Everything else about her...is fan-made! She exists mostly as a fan-imagined entity, since there isn't enough canon material to flesh her out.

I was kind of worried about that being a possibility... The other day I had a thought that 'maybe Kishi thought Sakura had to mimic Naruto in order to look heroic'. And that's how SS ended up happening. At the time, I kind of felt tired of speculation so I didn't think much more of it.

Guh. And now I guess that's what happened?

Kishi wanting Sakura to be heroic like Naruto and not give up on Sasuke is totally fine. I knew Naruto would never give up on him - he's the hero so he's supposed to do what others can't. Adding Sakura isn't a terrible idea, maybe not neccessary because, once again, Naruto is the hero, but it's not horrible for the sake of a Team 7 together happy ending. (If only we had gotten that!)

Anyways, where things get really messy is when you add the fact that Sakura remains attracted to Sasuke. Kishi left Sakura attracted to a guy who physically and mentally hurts and abuses her. More panels of pain from him exist than panels of kindness or care. Staying fangirl in love with a guy isn't saving him and isn't heroic looking, especially when said guy never returned those feelings at any point in-canon. Kishi's desire to make Sakura look heroic completely backfired, and now Sakura is probably the least respected female character in the series.

It's just...really sad. Wow. Why was the manga called Naruto again? Kishi completely lost his focus on Naruto :l Where we should be hearing about Naruto getting what he wanted, we hear nothing from him. Sakura needs to get what she wants? Sasuke needs to have Sakura, who he never wanted? Where's Naruto? His desires are completely missing from his own manga.

I think Sakura was the heroine for the majority of the story, so she still counts technically as the main heroine. Based on chapters and development and plot importance, she's the heroine. The ending Sakura was just so badly OOC. It's like a totally different person. It's like...the Sakura we were first introduced to. I definitely think Kishi had to bump Sakura down in order to lift Hinata up, so that, at whatever point he made the deal for Naruto GT, he could pull off two pairings rather than one and get more spawn out of the next generation.

He sent Sakura off to fake confess to Naruto right after her 'I don't want to make any more mistakes'. How bad does that look? Pretty bad. Then he just needed a few more panels of her lamenting over Sasuke and he had SS all packaged up.

For NH he had Neji killed. That made that pairing. I feel really bad that a great character like Neji had to be sacrificed for Kishi to pull off a pairing, but that's what it looks like. It gave Hinata a moment of courage. One. And then Kishi could let her character fall back to umimportant as usual.

I mean, if you really want to, you can call Hinata a heroine. I've never really cared about her character myself...and to really have respect for her I expected her to become an awesome Hyuuga leader or something. I mean, for a shounen you almost expect more of a character than 'romance is my entire point'. I go to shoujo when I want to read about characters revolving around romance. Simply deserving Naruto because she always loved him - in a world of ninjas - never really...meant anything to me. But I guess some people find that compelling?

I also don't really care what's in the movie and how canon it is and how it makes NH more believable or whatever the point is.

Because Naruto is a manga.

To me, pretty much any romance portrayal could be said to be cliche. I mean it's all be done before, that's why something like trope assignment exists. I tend to like pairings that are more opposites attracting, or at least the two characters come together to create a better whole. That's definitely done a lot...yet that's what I like to see XD;

I guess the type of pairing I don't like would be...just fangirling the bad boy or fanboying the moe girl. I dunno. There'd have to be more to it than that XD??

I haven't liked Naruto since the start of the war arc. That's when things looked like a terrible fanfic and I couldn't really get interested in it. Now that it's over, I guess I now feel free to look back on the things I did like in the series. The ending is such a mess that I have a hard time accepting it's even part of the same story. Because of that...I can see AU ideas that actually make a lot more sense than the canon material XD So I guess...that's comforting? The Naruto that I did love can stay alive in fanworks and be far more entertaining than the canon material.

The way I see it, the hero is the hero because he does the things that others cannot do.  Especially in a 'shonen' story.  The hero is a not some weak, lame, flip flopping MC, that would be a different genre entirely.  And the hero gets the girl.  The hero always gets the girl.  Thats why we like these types of stories.  The hero always gets the girl.
 

Pretty much this, especially the first part. The hero is supposed to do what others cannot, and I had always assumed that meant changing the ninja world, not simply achieving god-status powers to kill an alien. I thought there was more to Naruto's story than that...but apparently not. Everything from the war arc on was just...the opposite of what I expected. Suddenly all the other villages were quite happy to work together to fight zombies. Rather than making Naruto struggle to unite the world, that obstacle was resolved without his help. So what did he do that was so different than anyone else? The only thing Naruto did differently in the cycle was to decide not to kill Sasuke. That's it. Honestly, Naruto should have ended with Part 1; it would have been the same story...just not dragged on for no reason.

It kinda feels like neither pairing was all that important. I say that based on their lack of in-story development - if Kishimoto had felt these pairings were important, I can only assume he'd make sure they received the correct amount of material support. SS was impossible to support, as up to the last chapter Sasuke hadn't been saved. Even after that, there wasn't any indication that Sasuke loved Sakura. People might claim you are meant to assume so, given that they ended up with a child, but the scenes Kishimoto chose to show of end-game Sasuke were him as a wanderer and absent father. Clearly family life was not important for Sasuke's conclusion. I'm not even quite sure what to make of his 'sound in the bushes' moment, if that is meant to mean something like...he's still unsettled, still in danger for his life, or just left with paranoia. It's not clear.

I found it extremely strange that Sasuke's end moments had nothing to do with Naruto...especially since the entire story focuses around those two. No matter what SS fans can say, Sasuke's canon most important relationship has been, and will always be Naruto. Sakura, I think, was just paired with him out of convenience. The same with Hinata and Naruto. It's for the children of the next gen to keep the story going. It's basically allowing for Naruto GT. Need spawn to continue the story.

As far as NH...Kishi had more room to work with these two, as neither one of them was an absent villain, and they had opportunity to interact in a normal way. Only...they didn't. For every NH moment, there were double, if not triple NS moments. NH was completely one-sided the entire manga...and apparently needed a movie in order to change that. Regardless of Kishimoto's involvement in the movie, the manga should contain what is neccessary for the story. Excuses like 'he ran out of time' shouldn't matter - it's HIS manga! Choosing to have a movie after the fact just tells me he sold out for money and additional hype. As far as the manga is concerned, NH wasn't important. Even in 700 they weren't shown together as a happy family. Naruto acted...nothing like Naruto. Hinata's place in the world...well we simply don't know what she has accomplished other than having Naruto's children. Same with Sakura.

I guess my opinion is that these pairings were thrown together for the next generation. It's basically a non-ending. Kishimoto's priorities became something different, and the consistency of the story suffered for it.

If I had to pick which pairing was more important to the story...I'd have to pick SS, simply because it actually motivated plot in some form, unlike NH. Sakura had both Naruto and Sasuke in mind when she chose to get serious about being a ninja, and saving Sasuke was the the main motivation/obstacle for the main character.

One thing I noticed about the ending was that Sasuke was the only main character to benefit from the resulting pairings. Sasuke was technically no longer a villain. He was still loved by Naruto and Sakura, regardless of his actions. He was...at peace (I think?).

Naruto - the main character, the hero - ended up with a minor character. That is a step down, regardless of how nice Hinata is. She is a minor character...and not the character the hero was shown to be in love with for the entirety of the manga. Naruto gave up on something he wanted. He settled. Naruto's character lost something.

Sakura...well, most people understand how disappointing she became as a character. She regressed to a fangirl equal to her part 1 self. She put herself down in front of Sasuke, being reduced to a blushing, nervous girl in his presence. That's EARLY part 1 Sakura. She lost all development from the Forest of Death onwards just from 699 alone. She tanked as a character.

Pretty much seconding what Broken Figurine said. It's really frustrating seeing all the shaming posts going around for any criticism towards Naruto's ending. No reader is forced to agree with or like an ending simply because the author 'worked hard' to deliver it. No one should feel shame for disagreeing with plot elements that didn't make sense or receive adequate development. Don't let anyone make you feel like less of a Naruto fan for not simply accepting what the author put in front of you.

That being said, acts of actual violence or threats against the author are not an acceptable outlet.

Naruto isn't just about pairings...and the problems with the ending go away beyond just NS not happening. What exactly will 'being official' add at this point? Fans have already begun writing/drawing their own endings to make up for all of the missing pieces. It'd be better to just encourage the fans to continue creating fanworks that make more sense rather than an attempt to petition Kishimoto. He chose his ending - whether you think it makes sense or not is up to the reader.

I was also a noobie during the flash chat era XDDD;; I had joined the forum to enter a fanfic contest, and actually managed to win a prize!

Gah, that was a long time ago...but h&e led to forming some great relationships :3

Loved these. She really has a knack for capturing the true spirit of the characters. It was nice remembering them this way...rather than the OOC mess the manga ended on >.<