What was keeping it alive for so long was two things. One, Kishimoto was the mangaka, and two, there were about 3-4 series last year that were up for cancellation before it and WSJ had hit it limit of how many they cancelled per year. That gave this manga more time, but really because of how the manga was done it only let him finishes of the series as quickly as possible.
Its treading because it was announce the next chapter will be the last chapter and the Pro-ending fans are trying to justify why it being cancelled. Mainly, it wasn't bad and if only it could have hit Western shore sooner it would have survived, and Japanese have poor taste.
It had a simple goal, find the keys to unlock Pandora's Box to bring about peace to the galaxy. Then he made it complex in order to tie Hachi to the story; he and his brother are the keys and his existence prevents them from becoming such also their another box.
The main thing I will say is that was a problem story-wise was, he was too focus on getting into space. Or. He was too focus on getting the story started to focus on establishing the story's setting. Vaguely here what happened before going into space. An intro chapter. A few chapters hanging out with that kid, Ten chapters of Hachi/Anna while the villain was coming. (In these chapters also Daruma sometime gives lectures to Hachi about basic Samurai know how, and him questioning Hachi's father.) Then space. Even going into space was pretty much just, well the prologue is now over so lets get the story actually started. This manga should not have gone into space before at least chapter 50 and those chapters should have been use to establish the setting and the main cast. By having Hachi explore his home world, learn more about aspect of the society of this setting, interact with as many people as possible to see more of his personality, and learn from Daruma. Instead, all this story has is a bare bone setting and most of the information comes from a talking-cat that never stops lecturing.
Also, it does not help that kishimoto made the primary abilities of this setting multi layered with the locker-ball, cyborg body, soul sword, schools, princess bonds, robot animal mount/armor, and war god among other things.
Most of the cast isn't bad in concept, but without much focus they are all very bland. Daruma is a frustrated mentor that has a tortured background but not much focus. Hachi is too idealized. And Anna is too much like Hinata as the heroine. Those two clown that join them in space are pretty much are teenage Madara(mixed with Suigetsu) and Hashirama(mixed with Sai).
The romance was honestly more interesting to see how much of it was NS inspired, and to see how much the ending & backlash of Naruto's ending affected him. The problem is the characters that made up the couple weren't that interesting so it was hard to invest into unless you were trying. Also the ten chapters he spent on that could have been used to focus on other things especially so early into the story.
Also, the art. Its parts look nice, but it was too cluttered, which made it hard to know what was going on.
Yeah and from the sounds of it, said goal wasn't even Hachimaru's to begin with and he was forced into it. plus he became a samurai because he admired them but he had no true ambitions beyond that so obviously that was not too engaging. And as you have said there was so much introduced and going without focus or meaningful purpose in the narrative that it lost itself in exposition and jumbled over until the audience long gets bored of it. Naruto at least started off with Naruto having a sympathetic goal. to become hokage so he would gain recognition and you see how crappy his backstory istto reinforce your sympathy for him and that makes him easy to root for. Hachimaru on the other hand doesn't really have much in the ways of a goal and had some family drama that, while serving as a plot point, did not have any real lasting impact nor was it even considered a motivation for him from what I recall. mix all that together and well this is the result. And again it can't be stressed enough that the cash cowing stunt from "The Last" triggered outrage from a lot of fans and they obviously would not give him the benefit of the doubt anymore.
And obviously those defenders don't know kitten to what they are saying about manga marketing. It should have hit western shores sooner? The Japanese have not taste? Do they even realize that western shores and fans are NOT up for consideration in the grand scheme of things of a manga's success or fail until it is considered profitable and stable in it's own native fanbase. Exoporting a manga is an afterthought at best if it is taken into consideration at all. The prime factor is that if a manga sells in Japan. If it doesn't it's a flop. If it's a flop, no export. End of story. And are this *beeps* so deutional enough to think that taking their money is a saving grace in any sense of the word for the series? They think that their money matters if a series gets cancelled even when they have at least one volume being sold in western countries? Talk about FAN DUMB ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Edited by Phantom_999, 20 March 2020 - 04:34 PM.