It's easy for some to be insecure when we get chapters like 693 towards the manga's end.
Even though it didn't move SasuSaku (or NaruHina) forward / erase NaruSaku development.
Then we get comments from a composer.
Hinata ending up with Naruto would mean Kishimoto wasted panels of development for a cop out / asspull and would go against Naruto's character. Sakura ending up with Sasuke would mean despite the copious amount of personal development shared between them, at the end of the day Naruto was an errand boy and it took him for Sasuke to suddenly realise his love for Sakura, despite the lack of interaction, murder attempts, disregard for life, indifference and violent genjutsu then proceeding to trample on her feelings.
After all the effort Naruto went through to achieve his dreams at the end of the day he's continuing the cycle of the loser that couldn't get the girl of his dreams that he sacrificed his own happiness for. After all of that Naruto will be left with nothing. If that's Kishimoto's message then he's a really, really terrible writer.
Pairing preference aside, SasuSaku as a romance / pairing is disgusting and insulting. It's supposed appeal doesn't even exist when Kishimoto didn't take the time to properly write scenes where both Sasuke and Sakura bonded on a deeper level, write scenes where Sakura knows the full details of Sasuke's past and his motivations / real reasons for his actions. He would have also informed us of why Sakura actually likes him on a deeper level. All pairings we got a rough idea of why each character liked the other and all the relationships had some degree of positive interaction to them. SasuSaku has none of this.
If SasuSaku was to happen it would not have made any sense for Kishimoto to place Sakura and Karin beside Naruto and Sasuke, parallel MinaKushi with NaruSaku (similar background and relationship), ObiRin and Jiraiya x Tsunade, keep Sakura as Naruto's love interest for the entirety of the manga and then develop their relationship (throwing in interrupted comments from 3rd parties as well).
Quite simply, SasuSaku and NaruHina don't resemble any relationships in the manga and making them canon would spoil the entire series for me cause Kishimoto wasted time for no reason developing one pairing only to pull a bait and switch and make SasuSaku and NaruHina canon. Canon SasuSaku doesn't make sense in the story and neither does NaruHina (which if made canon was spoiled during the IT dream).
Edited by Silent Storm, 19 October 2014 - 07:44 PM.