52 replies to this topic

[KClaws_2]

So, I remember the whole ordeal when the Last came out, and Yahoo Japan rated it as a 2.8 out of 5 or something. That did seem pretty damning, but I noticed how many (particularly the reviewer on Kotaku) denounced them as fakes set up by NS fans in the US.

 

Any truth to it?

 

I suppose it's possible, but I'm skeptical. You can't just simply type in some sentence in english and translate it to Japanese by google translate. The written Japanese alphabet is complex, and it has more in common with the rules of Egyptian hieroglyphics than the rules of any western alphabet. You get it wrong, it's not just a misspelling, You could change the entire word.

 

To see if this had any merit, I went ahead to see if I could do it myself (had I succeeded, I would have given the movie a 3, leaving a note saying this is just a test or something). But immediately it asked for a Japanese zip-code, and I gave up from there. I SUPPOSE I could have just used my California zip, but I don't know what kind of rules/structures the Japanese have for their zip-codes, and I wouldn't know how to find out. To me, that just sounds like a lot of work for trolls.

 

I also discovered something else. This is more happening in South Korea, but given the history and similarities between the two, I feel there is a good chance it could be happening in Japan too: Astroturfing. This is a practice where a company will post good reviews on various forums for it's products to entice people to buy it. Given that the reviews for the Last have twice the normal amount of reviews of the other Naruto films on Yahoo Jp (I looked), and how I heard how short many of the five-star reviews were, it's certainly a possibility.

 

This claim also becomes a little bit more suspicious to me when everyone who has seen the movie but is not super into the pairing/pairings think the Last is bad (to put it kindly). 

 

So, does anyone have any opinions for or against this idea?

[T XD]

Knowing that NH's popularity is low in Japan, I don't think at least half of the reviews are fake.

[James S Cassidy]

So, I remember the whole ordeal when the Last came out, and Yahoo Japan rated it as a 2.8 out of 5 or something. That did seem pretty damning, but I noticed how many (particularly the reviewer on Kotaku) denounced them as fakes set up by NS fans in the US.

Well, this is one problem right here. Kotaku is NOT a great site to go to. They are a click-bait weeaboo site that instantly jumps on the bandwagon of trends and is extremely leftist in their politics to the point that they have tarnished several people's reputations over misunderstandings of their own faults. You can't even crack a joke at them cause they will be super offended.

http://thisisvideoga...ndex.php/Kotaku

They have a bad habit of getting information wrong on many occasions or even purposely trying to trash other companies. Of course, Kotaku and Gawker are parent companies so what do you expect?

They have started fights with Bethesda, BioWare, and Infinity Ward


They push people like Anita Sarkeesian as world leaders and slame people like PewdiePie who is actually an amazing guy. (They accused Pewdie of beating his GF and such which was not true.) They spread lies for click-bait and do whatever reporting they do for the sake of popularity. Did I mention they lie constantly?

More proof


You can't take Kotaku seriously. There are some good writers and editors, but most of it is just garbage and click-bait. Right off the bat you can tell they will do anything for NH favoritism when they call Naruto the Last "The true love letter to the Naruto fans that have been with the series since the beginning" and telling people that anyone who hates it is stupid and should probably be killed. Again, if you know who Gawker is, Kotaku is more or less the same company.

So don't take what Kotaku says as fact until you get it from a more reliable source.

One of the biggest issues is that some people will actually sleep (as in have sex) just so they can push their game to have better scores from them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9GpX-o9SGQ

I wish people would actually look into things now. It's funny how an actors career can be ruined due to a mislabel of a sexual harrassment charge, but Kotaku could use the most underhanded tactics and click-bait to make views and people still believe they are "credible."
 

Edited by James S Cassidy, 25 February 2018 - 07:55 PM.

[harry4e]

I expect there were just as many fake NH fan from the West posting positive reviews than there were fake NS reviews but like all things with current media, they would be pushing their own bias onto the readers, we no longer live in the day and age of true journalism, we live in the world where clickbait, trolling, facebook post reporting and opinion pieces are passed off as true journalism.

 

Most of the reviews were not fake though, as many negative reviews included scenes from the movie itself and their opinion on them. and there were hundred possabily thousands of reviews on the site...it would take allot of planning and to create that many accounts and post negative reviews.

 

If I am correct the whole thing about fake reviews came from someone posting that they planned to create a Yahoo account and were going to post a negative review, and maybe even someone on this forum suggesting others do the same, though I don't think any of us took it seriously, I'm not 100% sure, and this small incident was reported as all reviews being fake.

 

If anything all of us here had a blast as we saw the reviews come in, they were not pleasant. If I was a betting man I'd say the Boruto movie probably had more fake reviews, that movie has suspiciously high rated reviews .

[Nate River]

I tend to agree with harry. It sounds like a ton of work for US fans to leave bogus reviews on a Japanese cite.

James: Gizmodo was the tech arm of Gawker. I believe Univision owns most of its properties now.

[Yyubie]

This is been long time , it's a big talk just after The Last premiere. Half of the review (more than half actually) was negative to the point the score of the movie is terribly low. To save this , SP making tons of android should i say fake account that mostly if you check the ID they just been made that day. The negative review were very depth when they explain why the movie suck , they explain it in detail like a normal review. And the fake account comment is like "THIS MOVIE IS GOOD , YOU SHOULD WATCH IT" or something like that , the characteristic of the fake account comments/review is it short and they don't explain in depth why and at the end of it they always said that you should watch it. I'm strongly believe that this happen because SP saw that the score of the movie is very low like 1,8-2 ish so they have to make something drastic , they order one dude to make this hundreds / thousands of fake account and give it positive review to raise the score and thanks for that dude the score goes up to 4 close to Road to Ninja. But the mistake is only one dude making these account and eventually he thinks it will take forever to do an in depth review and get bored with that many account , so that's why hes making it short review like that.

 

https://movies.yahoo... MOVIE-/349882/

This is The Last Naruto the Movie score today .... i'm bit curious and want to check and i'm bit surprise the score goes down to 2.85 (at least i thought it still is around 3).

 

https://movies.yahoo... MOVIE-/342159/

And this is the score of Road to Ninja movie. It goes down a bit last time i see it (was like 3-5 years ago) it was 4.21 and now it's 3.96. I expect the score goes down because of the new fans that came from watching boruto. New fans that just come in from watching boruto when they saw Naruto manga/anime : "HEY IS THAT BORUTOS DAD?". They saw that Naruto and Hinata is the end game and borutos parents , so obviously when they watch Road to Ninja they gonna think that doesn't make sense , Hinata act like kitten and Naruto and Sakura for the whole movie is close (this is basically an NS movie).

[harry4e]

Yeah the positive reviews were suspect, even those who couldn't read a word of Japanese, could see many of the positive reviews were remarkably short, and many of them were really highly rated despite being short, it didn't make sense that long in-depth reviews that were negative were being buried yet the short reviews were being pushed to the front page,.

 

In hindsight the best thing everyone could have done is completely ignore the movie, not give it any attention, that would have buried the series much quicker, The current mindset of allot of people is to pay good money for something when something is so negatively affected, to see for themselves, or just to be part of the conversation. It's why the Transformers movies are still going, or why Adam Sandler keeps getting hired,

 

That's what I did with Boruto, I largely avoided it, giving it any attention is still attention and for media that's all that matters to them as both can generate sales for them.

[BlueStarSaber]

I have been checking out some of the reviews by Google translate and here is one I like

"Movie made by Hinata Proposed Staff for Hinata
kur ***** Mr. January 7, 2018 23:35 VIEWS 317 Helpfulness 5
Comprehensive evaluation ★★★★★
It was a different person from Hinata of the original, it was Hinata like Orikyara.
It is important to knit a muffler from my sister to Naruto, it is ashamed of white eyes, a blunt bullying bully that does not suit the spider's nest, followed by a stingy twinkle and goes along without idea, this fan seems to be satisfied Is not it?

It seems that the staff is a movie made with the intention of playing Hinata.
I am overdoing and the prototype of Hinata is gone.
This movie was not NARUTO, it was HINATA.

By the way, I saw it from the beginning of NARUTO serialization,
I have all the comics and I also watched anime.
I also saw all NARUTO movies.
I am also watching BORUTO animation and comics.
I'm not stupid, I love Naruto.

I think that I could have made something contradictory to the original so far.

Catch fans that I have supported so far with movie awards Kakashi and Sasuke, open the lid and see Hinata Hinata, do not be foolish about NARUTO fans! At that time it was expired w
NARUTO is the story of Naruto, Naruto's dream is Hokage and marriage is not the goal.
And it was Dr. Dolphin who has always supported Naruto 's dream for teaching Naruto first of her love.
Later, a lot of colleagues, teachers and parents were connected to Naruto.
The most contradiction in this movie is a blind place for Hinata over Naruto's original work, a bond with everyone, a connection.
And the screw is really cool in the original work is a nice young man.
Lastly I took my life and protected them.
To treat it like that ... ...

Naruto 's final episode of animated cartoons could not be seen in Hinata Hinata.
The main character of NARUTO is Naruto! !
Do not make Naruto a tool to lift Hinata!"

[Gravenimage]

As long as there are people who understands this^ then there's still hope for humanity.

[James S Cassidy]

I tend to agree with harry. It sounds like a ton of work for US fans to leave bogus reviews on a Japanese cite.

James: Gizmodo was the tech arm of Gawker. I believe Univision owns most of its properties now.

Kotaku, Gawker, Gizmodo, and several other sites. The jounalistic interegrity of these sites is appaling and it has been proven several times that they are extremly biased one way or another. Which is a shame because they do have some great writers, but the editors are extremely lefitst and always put their own political agenda into something that shouldn't be like a review for a game.

[DrK]

The idea of the importance of everyone, including Naruto, and for that matter even Dr. Dolphin, being pushed off to the side so that Hinata can have the spotlight is really not hard to see when you watch that movie. It's the most obvious thing about it.

[James S Cassidy]

The idea of the importance of everyone, including Naruto, and for that matter even Dr. Dolphin, being pushed off to the side so that Hinata can have the spotlight is really not hard to see when you watch that movie. It's the most obvious thing about it.

It is not that hard to see anything, but people love living in denial to suit their own ego.

Hell, people are being accused of racism just because they didn't find Black Panther all that good. (If you don't agree if it the best movie of all time, then you're racist.)

[DrK]

It is not that hard to see anything, but people love living in denial to suit their own ego.

Yeah, and everyone else suffers for it. Even Dr. Dolphin.

Edited by DrK, 02 March 2018 - 10:35 PM.

[Gravenimage]

It is not that hard to see anything, but people love living in denial to suit their own ego.

Hell, people are being accused of racism just because they didn't find Black Panther all that good. (If you don't agree if it the best movie of all time, then you're racist.)

 

It's the same thing if you don't ship gay pairings and they immediately call you a homophobic. It happened to me debating with a Bumblebee fan in YT (Yang/Blake pairing from the show RWBY). I told him I don't ship gay pairings and he quickly accused me of being a homophobic even when I have gay friends and I easily get along with them.

Edited by Gravenimage, 03 March 2018 - 01:47 AM.

[Moon_Girl]

Your first problem was listening to Kotaku. 
I remember the chaos on the internet when this all happened. There were a TON of Japanese criticism. After The Last, on 2ch (Kind of like 4chan, but I don't know if it's as bad as 4chan. It's certainly one of Japan's top 'forums') exploded with hatred for Hinata, NaruHina, the Last and Studio Pierrot. There were several Anti-Hinata active threads. That's how bad it was.
The negative reviews are very real. There were a ton of witness and reviews to go along with it outside of that site. The Last was nothing but a stain on the series for many reasons. From the movie itself to the scam that was made to trick people into pre-ordering the movie tickets (making them think it was a Naruto, Sasuke and Kakashi focused movie) and then refusing refunds when the buyers learned it was all about Hinata.
The score would have been lower than that, I assure you. But there were hired reviewers to give it 5 stars and it was obvious. They all said something generic like "GOOD MOVIE WATCH IT ALSO BUY THE NOVEL". Things like that. The real fake reviews were the 'positive' ones written by hired people. It's super sad when you can pay people to give false reviews. Anyways, I'm pretty sure the movie would have dropped down to a 1 star if the fake positive reviews didn't happen. 

It doesn't matter how much time has passed, I remember witnessing the storm that was the Naruto Ending. Looking at all the live updates and posts. 
I remember one Japanese fan watching the movies in theaters and they saw some middle schoolers there shaking their heads and going "Why?" over and over. 

Honestly, the ending had such an impact on my life, it's hard to forget. 

[KClaws_2]

Your first problem was listening to Kotaku. 
 

Haha. I wouldn't say I "listened" to them, but because so many look up to them as "professionals", I wanted to get some feedback on any validity to that fake review score thing. I did notice that their opinions seem to differ with the Japanese on some things, like Boruto (let's face it, as long as they push SasuNaru, they'll do fine) and Shin Godzilla. I mean, if that's there honest opinion, they're entitled to it, but I think that difference at times should be worth noting. 

In general, I've been a bit skeptical about published anime review businesses. Best example would be when ANN reviewed the Gundam 00 movie, giving it a D+. The reviewer claimed he saw most of the original series, but others were quick to point out he clearly didn't, citing things he should have known if he did (he said he didn't know who most of the characters were, but the movie was made up of mostly established characters, and he said they pulled the trans-am modes out of nowhere when it has been a prominent feature of the series, ESPECIALLY in Season 2).

 

Still, I think I agree with everyone that a US citizen posting a review on a Japanese site sounds REALLY hard to do, especially if they were never fluent in Japanese to begin with. 

[Kasimir38]

I remember one Japanese fan watching the movies in theaters and they saw some middle schoolers there shaking their heads and going "Why?" over and over. 

Honestly, the ending had such an impact on my life, it's hard to forget. 

 

That's the exact reaction I had when I found out about NH. I was out of the fandom for some time but sometimes followed the series. When I found out about Hinata's confession and her sudden "importance" in the series I dropped it bc's honestly, I felt so betrayed. I was rooting for NaruSaku since Shippuuden day 1. But I still had some hope left, like: He wouldn't be like that, would he. Well, he was like that and NH is canon and what?  

What about Sakura? What about her feelings? No matter if she liked Naruto or not, throwing her into the arms of Sasuke is the most sadistic thing to do. Oh Sasuke - kun, you tried to kill me and you betrayed all your friends. But a girl doesn't change her heart that easily! True Love and all that! I mean, who is Naruto to think that he can easily win me over? Well, yeah, he saved me and cared about me and tried to keep his promises but...I would be a bad woman If I would change my feelings!

 

However, I found out about the Last. SO MANY people worship that movie. But SO many think it's stupid and unnecessary. Bad reviews aren't fake, it's just hard for the NaruHina fans to swallow that their "canon ship" sucks.

[DrK]

What about Sakura? What about her feelings? No matter if she liked Naruto or not, throwing her into the arms of Sasuke is the most sadistic thing to do. Oh Sasuke - kun, you tried to kill me and you betrayed all your friends. But a girl doesn't change her heart that easily! True Love and all that! I mean, who is Naruto to think that he can easily win me over? Well, yeah, he saved me and cared about me and tried to keep his promises but...I would be a bad woman If I would change my feelings!

Imagine if your life was ruined to serve the happiness of someone else. Imagine making great strides in your own personal growth and maturity, only to suddenly lose it because it would serve that person better if you were spineless and pathetic. Imagine if you had to act as if this was actually what you wanted to happen, and that you didn't even want to be happy. Imagine if you had to be the one to engineer the happiness of that someone else even after all of this other stuff had taken place, even though it makes no sense that you would wish to do so, because they aren't even your friend.

 

That's what happened to Sakura.

Edited by DrK, 04 March 2018 - 10:18 AM.

[Kasimir38]

Imagine if your life was ruined to serve the happiness of someone else. Imagine making great strides in your own personal growth and maturity, only to suddenly lose it because it would serve that person better if you were spineless and pathetic. Imagine if you had to act as if this was actually what you wanted to happen, and that you didn't even want to be happy. Imagine if you had to be the one to engineer the happiness of that someone else even after all of this other stuff had taken place, even though it makes no sense that you would wish to do so, because they aren't even your friend.

 

That's what happened to Sakura.

 

Imagine marrying Sasuke.

 

[Tsuki Hoshino]

When The Last first came out they were actively removing reviews that were negative from JP Yahoo reviews. I remember because I had the joy of repeatedly reposting the one from Ramen's friend (iirc) back to the site.

Posted the same review over and over from new email addresses for about a month.

It's not that hard to make an account tbh.

Edited by Tsuki Hoshino, 04 March 2018 - 04:42 PM.