I don't get it either. I've always seen NH as a ship for Hinata fans, not Naruto fans -- that it's about wanting to see Hinata validated and her feelings returned more than wanting to see Naruto validated and his feelings returned.
I mean, the story is called
Naruto, right? Not
Hinata...?
I've never been able to understand how anyone can be a fan of Naruto (the character) and not want to see him get the girl he has always loved. In the girl department, Naruto has always been about Sakura. Always. It makes no sense to me -- literally none -- to ignore Naruto's heart and instead choose to hope / demand / expect he will give up on his feelings -- not only because he would have to settle for someone other than who he wants, but also because it would be so contrary to his nature.
Does not compute.
Man, that's sure not true for me. I can't relate to Hinata in any way, and don't even consider her relatable to the fictional universe she inhabits.
And as for Hinata's popularity in the West, is it the influence of feminism that has so many in the West rallying around Hinata? Or is it something else? Interesting questions....
As for NH, I can't help but wonder if there's not a very different sort of psychology at work behind its popularity.
Its not a matter of hating Hinata, its a matter of hating her fanbase and how they have this notion that she is so critically important to the story when she is not. Its easy to say it like this:
Guys and girls in western cultures think its obvious that all cultures are like theirs, mainly America. I live in America but I still stand by the notion that I live in a grand nation of idiots who still don't have a concept of the outside world, and I study geography, I cannot tell you how sad it is when there are people who don't know the difference between Austria and Australia.
Anyways back to Hinata, guys and girls find her easy to relate to because of the culture in the U.S., part of it could be sterotype romances here, the relation to other western romance media, feminism, etc its hard to say exactly but the basic notion is
it just fits their perception regardless of the story, they like it because they enjoy it, there is nothing wrong with that but when there are those who want a pairing that can damage the story just for their own satisfaction, then that's the issue.People who like Hinata may have done so but have little to no knowledge of the following:
-Difference between manga and anime
-fillers
-differences between western and eastern cultures
-ways of showing affection in different cultures
-the context of lines and dialogue
-character development
-character archtypes like tsunderes
-roles of characters (main like team 7, major like Shikamaru, Itachi, and Tsunade, minor like Kiba and Hinata)
-Difference between comedy and outright abuse.
Many fans do not understand this stuff and its just bad, they don't understand that Sakura is a Tsunadere type character, her hitting naruto is just comedy and yet they demonize her and don't have an issue on this with other anime such as lucy or erza smacking natsu, rukia smacking ichigo, or nami whacking luffy, zoro, or sanji etc. They blame one but not make an issue with the rest. They wonder why sakura is the center of attention and not Hinata, all the attention and hinata gets in fillers, technically it did not happen. Hinata is a minor character, I'm pretty sure she is not even in 100 chapters in a 600 plus manga series, even if she is, she is absent for the majority of part 1 and 2 with minimal roles.
Hinata's overall development can be like this, part 1 in the chunin exams is her only real big role still in any arc to date where she is a constantly reoccurring one, after getting steamrolled by neji and then seeing Naruto beat him, her importance in part 1 ends, no sudden importance for the remaining arcs. She is done in part 1 from this point on and just fades to the back line, anything else with her is just another minor appearance with not real development. In part 2 she suddenly reappears to see Naruto in the Sasuke and Sai arc yet its only for short term humor, no development. She joins up with the others much later in the itachi pursuit arc but that arc is centered around Sasuke and Itachi, Team 7 has a minor role in it yet they still get hardly any development, she has no development in this arc again, nothing gets her character driven further in this arc. Naruto and Sakura at least stepped up their goal to locate and bring Sasuke back only to meet failure a second time and grow on it more. Hinata did nothing. Then guess where we come to, steamrolled by pain, the biggest difference between here and the anime with her though is she gets battle time in the anime and gets inserted in many flashbacks but guess what, all those events with her are just again filler. All she did was speak, get smacked, and then 6 tails comes. Fans claimed Naruto was worried, yeah he was cause he was scared he would do to not only her but the whole village as he once hurt Sakura. It was his incident with Sakura that made him scared, not what happened to Hinata only. But again after all this, Hinata fades to the back, a 3rd time for a long while. Then we get the to the 4th ninja war. Yes this long arc was divided between so many people but even then Sakura still got more screentime in facing the 7 swordsmen for a short time and busting the white zetsu, this proved to at least move the story along a bit just to give more of a war role to Naruto at least. Hinata just comes in to get a short reminder from Naruto and we only see a small memory of the pain incident, nothing more. Then 615, people thought this would be the biggest thing ever, guess what it was a short speech, it ended, now we move forward.
NH can happen but it would just be bad considering the current state of things, basically the thing many NH fans have is, they try to make Hinata part of team 7 when she is not even important to the story. Kishi could have killed her off in pain and it still would not have changed much. Her role is expanded so much in the anime fillers, its sick. Fans tend to try to treat her like some goddess and hate Sakura calling her some demon b**** even though this demon saved their beloved goddess (and kayatsu would not have been able to, she was out of Tsunades chakra to heal others). It does not help that Perriot does some of this too, letting it get out of hand. As far as I am concerned Hinata is nothing more than romance fodder if NH comes up and a poster child. Perriot could make a poster of Hinata defecating on anything and fans would still buy it.
There are fans who forget this is an action series first, comedy/drama second, romance takes a backseat to all of this. They wonder why is it always Sakura Sakura, not Hinata? Sakura is the heroine, the story revolves around team 7 not team 7 plus Hinata. Its like they want to void so much of the story not realizing Sakura herself is part of some of Naruto's most major development points like Sasuke, Kakashi, Iruka, Jiriaya, Tsunade, Shikamaru, Bee, Nagato, etc. Hinata has done less than all of these others yet they try to assert her as something much stronger or important to the story.
I like NaruSaku but I still watch it mainly for the action. Even then they act like NaruSaku is impossible never considering foreshadowing and the way things progressed, they just try to cut out Sakura's development which revolves around Naruto and Sasuke. Hinata only acnhors onto Naruto, without him she is not any character at all, even with him, she seems to only copy him. Yet with such "assuredness" in their pairing, they still feel they need to make a case out of RtN or the parallels. RtN is non-canon they should take conform in that, we only count it because it proves the parallel and pairing can work, we know its non-canon but things like this are still in character and can work in the future of the manga. They try to argue about the parallels when its been proven again and again they relate back to team 7 not Hinata in anyway shape or form. The Huyga are not even important to the eye of the moon plan as some speculated.
The main point is, they try to advocate or think Hinata is something more important than she really is. The story can continue without her, her death would not impact anything. There were times when Kishi could have used Hinata, given her better development, even with her 2 big moments, they were short and still severely limited. They had some quality but still no romance on Naruto's side. Even being underplayed twice. Making Hinata's development just get nitro boosted again and again is very weak and lazy writing. All that remains for her is simply just confronting Naruto and taking her place as clan head. In fact her better developed ending as I see it would be her being happy for Naruto, Naruto could even confront her on the confession and still tell her he thinks she is good but he does not feel the same about her.
The worst part about NaruHina is that if Naruto goes for her, it would literally be him downplaying himself and settling for her out of a mere second place choice. This is the biggest flaw and makes so much of the story f'd up on a character design point for Naruto and Sakura, it reduces Hinata's overall role as a character. Many say Sakura going to Naruto would be out of a second place incident, not it would not. Naruto has a reason and seeks validation in himself to be worthy of Sakura, he is not taking advantage of Sasuke's abstance, he would only go to Sakura if he completed his promise or if Sakura came to him on her own. Naruto respects her to let her make her choice not because he wants it, because she would want it. Naruto respects her happiness and if that happiness is him, then he would accept it if she came to him. Some fans even made an issue of why has he not moved over to Hinata after the confession, its simple, the goal is Sasuke. Sakura takes a backseat to this, Naruto wants Sasuke so he can be accepting of himself to be hokage. No Sasuke means no hokage which means no sakura confessing to. He cannot just jump over these 2 to reach Hinata. Fans think this can just happen and don't realize the damage it would bring to the story. Even with Sakura's confession, Naruto giving up would just bring so much more chaos in the story design is he did not forgive or got over her, it would make NH even worse by all accounts. These fans don't even consider these factors and just take things word for word without considering context or story/character design, logic, pacing, consistency, etc. It would be bonkers to consider Naruto does not forgive Sakura or is over her when Sai told him the reasons even taking partial blame and yet he can forgive some who did really bad deeds like Nagato and Kurama like it was nothing. this type of logic is just insane to imagine in the story.
I can never understand how such a simple role for a minor character can be twisted into something so distorted and insane, it makes me want to pull my hair out. Case in point, they merely want their pairing to be canon with no regard to the story, think that their larger numbers should have some meaning of entitlement, or to just plain not agree with them means you are a heretic. Its what greatly shames me because Hinata is a good character in her own right, she just has an overblown preception of a legion of crazies who think she is something she is not. They basically want this series to go fanfic and we hope kishi does not do this. Worst they don't even consider or know Sakuras character, they don't even think where she can go or become, they just white her out.
NaruSaku exists in the story, it is intertwined with it, not NH. NH can happen but it would just be very very bad. Kishi could have done more with Hinata but in most of the story and downtime for other development, he chose Naruto with Sakura, not Hinata. Hinata has been sidelined so much making few appearances over the years, that is just not good on her character and practically what makes other fans tired of her. We dont hate hinata, we hate the delusional part of her fanbase. I still cannot get over how there are people who argued on RtN being a NaruHina movie and doing nothing with NaruSaku and yet they still try to justify Hinata fitting Kushina.
This type of logic makes me want to do this:
Insane fans--->