I have the feeling that the main reason for the death of narusaku was the whole boruto thing. I mean it totally does make sense... With the byakugan naruhina child an the sakusasu sharingan salad, the new series has a lot better selling potential considering the amount of naruhina and sakusasu fans out there. For my own sanity I have to belive that the decision against narusaku was made to get the most cash out of the boruto series. It seems to me that the ending parts of naruto were really weird and some of the characters (especially sakura) lost all their character evolution in an instant for no logical reason. Maybe all the narusaku hints and moments like the kushina similarity or the minato advice were kind of a rebellion of kishi against the power of the monyseeking management that forced him to end naruto the way it did.. Maybe the "kiss" of sakura to naruto when she healed him was a last little gift for the narusaku shippers...
But maybe thats just me wishing that naruto should have gotten "the girl" .. I mean even kishis wife was narusaku shipper..
Bolded: What you said is the most probable reason why things got messy starting near the end.
By what Kishimoto said in his interviews, it seems that he had no other choice but to change what he wanted originally to do in the manga. Usually, studios and anime companies do this for keeping the selling and business going well.
He didn't work on any of the ending pairings toward a path where they could be shown to the audience with no confusion.
The contrary was happening. NS kept getting moments and parallels till near the ending. Whereas, NH had two recalling moments, Hinata's confession and the hand holding, where they were one sided from Hinata and nothing shown from Naruto.
Conclusion: NH happened.
SS, well, Sasuke being aggressive and what with it all, then him magically having affection to poke her forehead, and Sakura's character development flew out the window in a blink of an eye.
Conclusion: SS happened.
You can see that Kishimoto didn't do as much as he invested for NS.
In short words, something or things happened with Kishimoto that made him do this.
Edited by T XD, 28 September 2016 - 08:30 PM.