Thing #1: Sasuke the pure soul.
Rocci says that Sasuke is a pure soul and comments how he easily changes his mind. Which is effectively saying Sasuke's a simpleminded fool. I don't really have an argument for this, since, yeah. Okay. I'm going to leave this part as is.
Thing #2: Sasuke on Sakura:
Okay, I admit using Squall was a bad analogy, largely because FFVIII was a great example of how horrible a romance angle can completely bork the entire story. I was largely thinking of his personality and how he's extremely hard to get to open up to others: the Sugar and Ice persona. In that regard is Sasuke like him (we could talk about the other aspects, too, but I just spent two hours writing and deleting comments about FFVIII which had nothingto do with Naruto, so let's not... XD; sufficient to say, I do have some... issues about that one).
But, for all the talk about Sasuke only seeing Sakura as a comrade at best, there's nothing suggesting he only sees her as an ally when he went berserk on the Sound folks in her defense and Sakura initiated a Cooldown hug on him. Yes, he had CS action going on in the first part, but that does nothing to explain why she could get him to calm the bleep down when logically, she shouldn't have without strong feelings involved on his part.
Thing #3: Sasuke, Sakura, and Feelings
@rocci: I have no clue what you're talking about. What point did I say anything about Sakura's feelings for Sasuke being admirable? Because I'm pretty certain never came up here. I think the closest I said anything about that was in another thread, and it wasn't so much admirable that she would remain devoted to Sasuke, but i was her choice, and if that's what she wants, okay, best of luck to you. Because, I don't know; she's not my problem or something. She's reasonably grown enough to make her own decisions about her life, and, if these threads have taught anyone anything, it should be "The more you argue with someone that they're wrong, the more likely they're going to dig in their heels and counterargue you, no matter how nonsensical it will sound to you."
And with that, I'm taking my own advice, and "If you feel that way, I can't really change your mind or something." So, yeah.
Thing #4: The Romantic Triangle Angle
I'm full of surprises. :)
Though I really don't see anything in accordance to "Yahagi said writing a love triangle would make storywriting easier." Not from the posted interview, at the least. To quote:
So, despite what you said earlier, there clearly was a romantic triangle happening, of which you need to develop things on all ends to make it work.
Thing #5: Thank You
Your counterargument is silly and means nothing in relation to my point, which relies on place and setting to mean something different from the normal connotation. Of course, it also invalidates someone's claim on here about Naruto's thank you = I love you NS moment to Sakura when she was healing his and Sasuke's arms, so it's kind of hard to decide how to move on this... ah, what the hell? Moving on...
1-Sasuke easily changed his mind (notably after Itachi's demise ) because Kishi had no grasp in his character. That's why he looks like a fickle person in the end of everything, his decisions changing too much and some of them being kind of forced, this happened because Kishi is not a good writer
The thing about Sasuke being a "pure soul", well that can only work if the meaning of "pure" is on the fact that SAsuke is always honest and blunt regarding what he wants and views
2- The cooldown hug is not a proof of Sasuke's feelings towards Sakura, or anything like that, she was his comrade and he cared for her to a degree also respected her at least during part 1 ( granted all the while being annoyed by her fan girl side).
He reacted to the cooldown hug because with the CS was controlling his mind, he was drunk with the power, Sakura's words made him come to his senses....but...does this means he liked her romantically? No...I mean both Naruto's and Sakura's words also made him come to his senses before his fight with Orochimaru in the forest, so words from his teammates reaching up part 1 Sasuke is nothing new
It's a SS moment that could've set up some kind of progression in their relationship for sure but Sasuke's attitude towards Sakura after this event never really changed other than him beginning to consider her family, together with the rest of team 7, which then ended up quite tragically because of Itachi's intervention
If you somehow still want to argue that Sasuke likes Sakura based on this isolated event then fine, but people from NS and even other pairings could say the same thing based on other isolated events in the story too. Ultimately, Kishi failed to properly develop SS as a whole, especially with the development on part 2 being almost whole on the negative side. It doesn't help that Sakura's crush was always seen as inconsequential and made little sense in regards to backstory.
3-I believe I already said my thoughts about this matter in a past thread, the SS relationship was not healthy in the manga, if you had a friend or a dear person (in RL) who was in a situation like that would you honestly just say "good luck to you" ? I find that hard to believe.
Many people who read the manga hated Sakura ( thanks to Kishi's sloppy writing mostly, some people liked her and genuinely wanted her to develop properly, and of course there are some that with some twisted logic think that her happiness was in a relationship that never felt right within the manga itself...
I think maybe you just fall into the kind of people that just didn't cared that much for Sakura in the first place... that would pretty much explain your response
4- I need to thank you for posting that quote up
But once I established the triangle, it became a lot easier to create the chapters after that. I was surprised by how good the advice was. And that's why I tend to listen to what he tells me.
Here it is, basicallly setting up the love triangle was a means to an end and that was to make it easier to set up chapters and character interaction.
The love triangle was never idealized to finish in a certain manner since the beginning, I think you can agree with me on that since it's quite clear... Kishi and his editors changed ideas multiple times since the beginning of part 2 ( where Kishi really began to think about Naruto's pair) ...so much that parts of the romantic subplot got messy and toxic even
5- I don't care if the point I estabilished invalidates some other person claim here. Naruto's thank you to Sakura in the last chapters was not romantic either
The thank you in japan ( Arigatou ) is just thank you my friend, that's it, it expresses gratitude.Futhermore "Thank you" unlike "I like you/ I love you " has only one meaning in japan and you're trying to argue that somehow Sasuke's thank you in Sakura's confession was romantic in some degree and yet the only argument you show is the invalid one relating to "the setting and the place"
Sasuke after getting away from konoha shows how he cut all of his bonds from konoha in his first appereance in part 2, he genuinely thought he had... until Naruto proved him wrong in the KS arc, but that's more because their bond was something else beyond even simple comrades and/or teammates. If Sakura was truly special to Sasuke in some degree I wonder why didn't he thought of her individually at least a little? The answer is either a) Kishi didn't care or b) it wasn't Kishi intention to show he really had feelings for her in first place.
Thing #6: Other Stuff
Yeah, there's a great wide world out there, you know. I'm not going to say NS doesn't have some love in Japan, but I would advise against presuming that just because one NS fan from Japan (no matter how impartial you paint him, dude is still an NS fan on this site) is telling you about the greatness of NS in Japan, it doesn't mean that it's really hitting like that. In fact, just from my own knowledge of Japanese culture from the times I was paying $18 per oversized Ranma and Tenchi manga books, that doesn't seem entirely right (then again "tsunderes").
Did you presume this? I never said our japanese friend here told us that NS was REALLY big in japan, it's pretty much known that the yaoi pairings were the major thing there, especially KakaIru
But yeah, you have to look at a lot more than just comments from 2chan to try and get a bigger picture of what's going on when you yourself don't know the language and/or have lack of access to their material. Because rumors are nasty pieces of work when you can understand them; in foreign languages, you may as well think it's gospel truth because "X doesn't have reason to lie." And believe me, I've seen some rumors that sent me to the optometrist to get my eyes refitted, as hard as they rolled out of my head, because the so-called "rumor" just reeked of petty vindictiveness, not to mention it was next to impossible to provide any proof or substance. And yet, I'm pretty certain that certain people will buy into it because they want to believe it's all true or because it supports their stance, and who cares if it's true or not?
2-chan is just the biggest foruim in japan though, especially regarding animes and such.
So I don't agree with you, I think we can get a general view from there, a bigger picture as you said so...
And not knowing the language didn't matter, we had two translators here, our friend from japan and another one, no less capable though
The comments weren't really rumors...they were the actual thing with source and everything, if you want I think a poster from here @NaruSaku4life3g was the one that began posting them on tumble, you can talk to him if you're curious...
Like I said, I try to treat all characters equally. What I didn't explain is that I read them without prejudice and whatever comes out to me, hey, I make a note of it. Originally, I did this because I wanted to tell Naruto fanfics, but I want things to be within context of canon, so it takes some studying as a writer to get a good grasp of characters and their situations. So, whatever I come across, it's something that I try to use to better detect patterns and locate story points where I can change something and develop a different situation to fit within the work's body. Because I'm not a fan of arbitrary change X stories, as most of them are plain ol' dumb
I don't know about this...I don't think you care about Sakura at all as I said before
And either way, this is irrelevant to Naruto, the author himself didn't care about all of his characters in a equal manner, hell, he didn't even care about his MC's in an equal manner
Anyway though, you have to be careful over these things you do regarding this story, over analysing or over thinking things somehow can end up leading some people into some views that don't make any sense.
This is fairly common among shippers because they tend to analyse everything about their pairing interactions and such, and that's why things like "Sasuke always liked Sakura since the wave arc", "Hinata is Haku parallel" and even NS ones like the " thank you" line from Naruto in the last chapters being "I love you"...
However this is surprises me...generally people who are writing fiction and aren't part of a pairing faction in specific don't usually fall for theses kind of traps that come with over-analysing...so it is strange to me, that you, a person, who says that it shipped NS, over analysing a scene to find SS hints on it...it's like you are trying to justify the ending and Kishi's decisions somehow
I'd say thought that it's useless, there is no justifying, Kishi screwed up his story even beyonfd pairing related matters...
(so, I'm supposed to believe that Naruto is supersmart and has crazy ninja skills, but "for reasons" he's still put on a team with Sakura and Sauske? FML).
Well, Sasuke was the designated rival and Sakura the designated heroine. Yahagi suggested to Kishi that creating a love triangle would make easier to develop new chapters and character interactions especially with the girl since Kishi had few knowledge of how to write females
Let's suppose though that Shikamaru was created as the rival and Ino as the heroine...there still was going to be a team with a "love triangle" going around them, not because they were setting up for a future pairing or anything but having a set of characteristics that you can fall too when you lack ideas on character interactions is useful to the writer
You misunderstood; I was talking about the romance subplot's existence, which you were negative about. The things we were talking about in Part 1, that if that was meant to be as I said it should have been done better, that was all under Yahagi. And, again, I do not know where this idea that Yahagi suggested a love triangle to make storytelling easier came from, but it was not in the link I posted in my last comments, so until someone points out a source, I'm going with exaggeration/assumption.
And the idea that Sakura, whose focal was romance, but "somehow raised above this"... :smh:
I'm not negative to the romantic subplot existence, I'm negative to it''s deturpation and the bad way it was handled especially regarding Sakura
Part 1 really wasn't that strong in the romantic subplot or even early part 2 for that matter, of course in part 1 Sakura was a mostly a fangirl but this was countered by the fact that it was obvious that she would develop somehow in the future and her crush being painfully one sided, as I said the problems came when this plot was brought onto surface once again and thanks to it,made Sakura character regress and hellped ruining the KS story arc with it's badly developed drama
Also the love triangle creation =/= romantic subplot
the romantic subplot regarding the MC was only thought by Kishi after the beginning of part 2, inpart 1 all we had where comedic moments and a bunch of one sided crushes, part 2 began changing this aspect till it ended up becoming a mess after Yahagi got out
Why the love triangle was created though?
Yahagi-san told me to focus on the main character in the first two chapters. And then to use chapter 3 onward to establish the rival and the heroine and create a love-triangle relationship between the characters. I'm not good with female characters, so I wasn't planning on this initially. But once I established the triangle, it became a lot easier to create the chapters after that. I was surprised by how good the advice was. And that's why I tend to listen to what he tells me
Thanks for the quote by the way, Kishi didn't really know how to write girls, so with the love traingle set up, making character interactions and new chapters was a lot easier because the characters had something to fall upon, something stable connecting them that Kishi could use in the future to generate comedic relief, tension, etc
IMO, I understand Yahagi's suggestion because for an amateur like Kishi, having a tool like this would be a really good crutch but I can't helkp to think that this love triangle thing in the long run ended up detracting a way from the whole team 7 bond thing that part 1 was supposed to make us buy