If that is really what he said, then it's a weird way to respond to it. Not weird as in bad, but it is sort of a response a fan would say. I guess what I am trying to say is, does he purposely sound like this to play off giving an answer or does he do it to pretend like he doesn't know. Sort of like the mangaka having fun doing his own work. I also don't see Kishi as being so bad in public speaking or I no longer see this as an excuse because he has been doing it a long time. After a while, you do get used to it.
It's not a good or bad thing with how he replies, but merely....weird.
Interesting that you'd see it that way, I never found his answers to be odd. Personally I always saw it as Kishimoto trying to be kind to the fans without outright telling them his plans for the character. The first rule of handling an interview as an author is to not give away your storylines, or reveal that you have no idea where you're headed with a character. If you do either of those, you have spoiled your own work, and people are not going to react as strongly to the plot twists. So you keep things ambiguous by smiling, nodding, and telling the fans "keep thinking that", regardless on if that's the direction you are heading in.
Moreover, Kishimoto likely has been running off of a very loose skeleton framework. He does not know all the details on the future, so when he replies to comments, it's because he really doesn't know where he is headed with those plot points. Sometimes writers leave things open with no intention to return to them, but follow up on them. Case in point (though this involves more than one writer) is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. When Space Seed was written, we were never supposed to see or hear from Khan ever again. But the story was written in such a way that when Harve Bennett was assigned to write the screenplay, he was able to use the hook of Khan and his followers being marooned on a planet and build a solid storyline around it.
From what I can gather from his interviews and the quality of his work, Kishi clearly knows what he has in store with the main players. But when it comes to the supporting cast, he has no earthly clue what he's going to do with them. That tends to happen when you're dealing with exponentially growing casts, and it's something of an Achilles's heel for Kishi. He makes characters to serve a role in one arc, but they end up resonating with readers more than he intended, so they end up becoming a mainstay of the cast (That's my personal take on the Konoha 11; the fact that his development of them has been spotty at best during Part 2 only seems to fuel this theory of mine). The problem then becomes how to fit them into the story in a meaningful way without sacrificing your skeleton. Factor in pressure from editorial to include said popular character(s), even if it means a force-fit, and you end up with the predicament we are in with Part 2. As well as an explanation for how Kishi deals with discussing secondary characters in interviews.
Edited by TwilightLink20xx, 10 January 2013 - 07:15 AM.