:clap: Smiter, you are the BEST!! Especially since your last words are right. If you ask me, it's sad for sure, especially since Kishimoto-sensei allowed himself to be judged as one of the worst mangaka in Japan of these last few decades. And I doubt he'll ever rebuild his rep and career after he did this with the ending...
Thanks, Bryon. I didn't expect to get all these likes for my post!
Yeah, it's really sad. If Kishimoto had stuck to his story and character development, he could have given the manga a much better ending. Let us actually see Naruto become Hokage (not Kakashi, he never had interest in the role and only did it because Obito told him to), let us see Sasuke leave with Team Taka, and either pair Naruto with Sakura (explicitly or hinted) or leave it open-ended pairing-wise. Above all, KEEP EVERYONE IN CHARACTER!
By sticking to the development he had already established, Kishimoto would have been able to bow out with grace, and he would have still been free to pursue other stories. The fans would still be interested in checking out any new works he put out.
But the way Kishimoto has ended it, a lot of people won't be interested in anything new he puts out. Like you said, it will take a miracle to restore his reputation, and he seems to have neither the ability nor the inclination to do that.
We have evidence that naruhina was not meant to be canon in the fact that hinata herself did end up being teased as a child. They had to find out a way for Hinata to take Sakura's place, the actual heroine (The girl who we know WAS teased as a child), and this is the perfect way to establish a relationship way back when. Hinata is essentially taking Sakura's place now. But why build up the backstory for Sakura, for her to have done literally everything that Hinata is getting now, if she wasn't meant to end up with naruto? There is no way naruhina was planned from the beginning, none.
Exactly! It really shows when Studio Pierrot had to retcon Hinata's character so much and, like others have said in this thread, it makes no sense at all. Why would Hinata be bullied for her eyes when her clan is highly respected? Like you said, they took Sakura's forehead and turned it into Hinata's eyes.
It's quite striking how they took elements of NaruSaku and NaruSasu and transplanted them into a NaruHina retcon in the movie. Not only does it highlight the massive lack of development between Naruto and Hinata in the manga, but it also shows how shameless Studio Pierrot are.
Even without Sakura having childhood flashbacks, she still had a lot of development and build-up with Naruto in the manga, right from chapter 3.
How are NaruHina fans satisfied with all this? Simple: They care more about Hinata than they do about Naruto. In fact, I bet if Hinata were to be split off and made the main character of her own series, her fans would go with her and never look back. It's not about Naruto for them. It's about Hinata. That's why they don't care about the integrity of the story, or how unfounded the end pairings were. It was just about the fairy tale ending for their fairy tale character, Hinata.
Not all NaruHina and SasuSaku fans are pleased with the ending, but it's true that the ones who are really pleased about it only care about the "canon status" and/or Hinata herself. Others have shown misgivings about how the ending happened, because they were well aware of NaruSaku having all that development. Most of them even expected NaruSaku to happen instead.