After reading all of this....it makes me wonder...
What was the point of Sasuke at all? If everything just went nowhere and no moral or improvement was met....then why did Sasuke even exist outside of "because we needed a rival to copy DBZ?"
With everything you just posted and the logic of it all behind and what it lead to....
WHAT WAS THE POINT OF NARUTO THE STORY AT ALL?
Every character has become so.....pointless that it doesn't seem like this story should exist at all.
I just want to point out Yahagi was still involved with the manga at that point in time. So no, to anyone thinking "if only Yahagi was there," even if he was there through the rest of the manga this most likely would not have been fixed.
First, "In a good story the characters write the plot." Second, remember that analogy that Kishi gave that went something like "if a character originally like orange juice but he needs them to like apple juice he would rewrite the character to like apple juice," in order to explain to fans Sasuke change in personality (little did they all realize his actual story was removed long ago without them caring) after the ending? So going on with those two "thoughts" in mind, Kishimoto had a core plot he wanted to tell in part two that went something like; "Naruto and friends would fight the Akatsuki, they would defeat the Akatsuki, Sasuke at some point would kill Itachi, Naruto and Sasuke would have a final battle, Naruto would win that final battle, Sasuke would return to the village, then he would become a Hokage with his kid painting on the monument in the epilogue." So the characters needed to follow that path no matter want, but also need to adjust to his editor's desires with the natural follow of the characters' arcs a distant third concern (if that.) So when ever a character's arc went against that plot or his editors desires he had them changed.
Just looking at Team 7:
Sasuke had two goals at the start of the manga; Kill Itachi and restore his clan. I'm repeating myself for effect here. So once he killed Itachi he should first realized that revenge wasn't worth all he went through then had some personal introspection and revelations. Then after probably wandering around for a bit, he would have returned to the village on his own to work on his second goal of restoring his clan. But that cancelled out the final fight kishimoto wanted. So that had to be ignore, he was told the village was to blame so that he was stuck on avenger mode through the rest of the story -in order for kishi to get that final fight no matter what happens- with no true way of fixing it even by the ending. So Sasuke had to become a wanderer by the end, because no one could really believe he would settle down in the village after that change, but he needed to produce a kid for the next gen as well. Turning him also into an absentee father.
Sakura was to become a strong both as a ninja and a woman as well as fall in love with Naruto. Though their were some problems she was well on her path through part one and most of part two, until till the end of the Pein Arc. Where kishi's new editor told him Sakura was hated causing him to have second thoughts about her and eventually drop her as the heroine by the end. With her character arc completely abandon she was reverted back to what she was originally a Sasuke fangirl and nothing more then that. A housewife only fit to raise Sasuke's child by herself with no help from her former teammates, instead of the hokage's wife and head of the village's hospital.
Kakashi was the mentor that was suppose to guide the group then slowly fade into the background so by the end they are running the show while he looks on proudly. Instead he became too popular so kishimoto rarely wanted to use him. Then the anime team thought it would be cool if he was the hokage for their dream movie where hinata get everything they wanted to give her, making him take the role Naruto should have had at the epilogue's most crucial time.
Naruto, I think all of us have covered this multiple times, was suppose to be the greatest hokage. But kishi gave up and he became what he was in the end.
Any point was abandon along the way for one reason or another.
Also Boruto has the same problem from the first chapter alone. By showing us the fight between Bolt and Nail. We now know for sure their will be a fight. So the story must work towards that fight no matter what even if it doesn't work for their characters' arcs. Then again they pretty much made Salad into what ever they want seeing by the latest chapter.
Edited by Bail o' Lies, 05 April 2017 - 09:11 AM.