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SuperChief

Member Since 25 Oct 2014
Offline Last Active Mar 09 2016 04:54 AM

#882435 new kishimoto inteview about ships

Posted by SuperChief on 16 October 2015 - 09:58 PM

His wife and other grown mature women involved in the anime production thought the endgame pairings were shyte? How shocking.




#862885 Hating Sakura

Posted by SuperChief on 31 July 2015 - 04:08 PM

Can't hate a character for terrible writing.




#862878 The NEW NaruSaku Debate Thread

Posted by SuperChief on 31 July 2015 - 03:39 PM

If we don't have one already, we should have a dedicated thread that chronicles Kishimoto/Studio Pierrot kitteny since the end of Naruto. Every dumbass statement, retcon, etc. should be archived, varying versions included, so that we can present a timeline of kitten that makes it clear and undeniable how kitten this franchise has become.




#755429 Why Did Naruto Let SasuSaku Happen?

Posted by SuperChief on 08 February 2015 - 05:03 PM

That's the thing about contrived writing, you really can't blame the characters. The author essentially just vetoes their behaviour to fall in line with what he wants, regardless of how inconsistent characterisation may be because of it.


#717579 The Last theory: Collection of Info & co.

Posted by SuperChief on 28 December 2014 - 03:34 PM

Creative minds tend to be enburdened with regret sooner or later when a creator knows they've made a terrible decision and their creation is left poorer for it. Give it some time, eventually Kishimoto will admit to being full of kitten. Not now, and probably not for years to come so long as the movies continue to be produced, but eventually that nagging voice in the back of his mind telling him how much he kittened up will win. It'll be just like with Rowling and RH. Kishimoto will admit he wrote NH for reasons that had little to do with the manga itself.


#716801 The Last theory: Collection of Info & co.

Posted by SuperChief on 27 December 2014 - 03:54 PM

I wonder how much longer I'll care for this. I'm looking forward to the day I move on completely.


#716572 The Last theory: Collection of Info & co.

Posted by SuperChief on 27 December 2014 - 02:46 AM

I remember defending Neji's death once when it came under fire as being too random. I argued that Kishimoto decided to kill off Neji to illustrate the gravity and inherent unpredictability of death in war by sacrificing a character that was fleshed out and whose death would resonate with the audience. 

 

Then the cupid comment happened.




#716268 The Last theory: Collection of Info & co.

Posted by SuperChief on 26 December 2014 - 08:06 PM

SKET Dance has a really sh*tty, dissatisfying ending for shippers. Total cop out. I hate that in anime and manga. Makes me wonder, have none of these mangaka ever actually been in a relationship? It's like they're so socially awkward they're terrified/resentful of writing an actual conclusion to their story.




#714956 The Last theory: Collection of Info & co.

Posted by SuperChief on 24 December 2014 - 05:48 PM

But you see, who knows how many people are out there like that. Because Kishi knew where to hit the soft spot with these characters and made people follow them and strive for them and see each other in them and you basically come now at the end of the show showing what? That you'll lead a miserable life and all that. So how can these people even hope for a better world when not even fiction gives you hope? He f**cked up BIG TIME!

 

I hope he cannot kittening sleep at night and that it will haunt him forever!

 

 

I hope to god that it isn't true, but if it is, it's an extreme example of just how egregious Kishi's mistake was. When he sold out to SP, he forgot one of the most basic, but iron-clad ideas in writing, i.e. that people inevitably and actively draw connections with characters and ideas. By selling out to SP, he allowed them to butcher his work so tremendously that all characters, Hinata excepted, were completely different. He allowed SP to openly state in the most disgusting of ways that the connections fans drew didn't matter because SP had their own agenda, which revolved around a big breasted side character with little relevancy to the story, in the hopes of gaining money.

Seriously hope it isn't true, Kishi isn't worth it.

 

Kishimoto bears no responsibility whatsoever for this alleged suicide. It would be grossly irresponsible to jump to conclusions, and leveraging this tragedy, if it did indeed happen, to lampoon Kishimoto is distasteful to say the least. I think we're better than that, so let's not do that.




#714691 The Last theory: Collection of Info & co.

Posted by SuperChief on 24 December 2014 - 06:33 AM

I haven't posted anything lengthy for a while now, not here or on tumblr or anywhere else really. I've mainly been processing the news and events following the end of the manga, the release of movie and everything else that's been going on since. I'm long since past the shock. That was the easy part. The disbelief that Naruto ended the way it did lasted a few days. I was in denial because I simply couldn't believe this was it. But as the days crept by I was forced to realise that, yup, this is it, this is ending we got. It happened.
 
The initial anger I felt is still there to some extent, and I'm afraid it will be there for quite some time to come because, if my anger and disappointment is to be proportional to the love I once held for this series - and I say once because the ending has well and truly ruined it all for me retroactively - well, I guess I'll be angry for some more days to come.
 
What I find so embittering about this ending I suppose, really more than anything, is in fact tied to the characters and the treatment they suffered in the end. I went through my teenage years with Naruto, I grew up, learned and experienced a lot of things, and the attachment I feel towards these characters is immense. The characters on Naruto weren't anything like the cast of seasonal anime. It wasn't that I followed them for 12-24 weeks and then said goodbye to them. No, I had these characters with me for years, on a weekly basis, and they were important to me.
 
That's why simply thinking about the ending can get me angry in no time flat. Even when I think I've gotten over it, even when it's been days since I allowed myself to get upset with whatever little tidbit of information that has made it over, even when I have no reaction at all - I can still get so angry about it I have to suppress the urge to write a lengthy rant on how and why Kishimoto is a liar and a horrible person that betrayed the expectations of his fans and mutilated his work to make a few more bucks to add to the piles of money he's already made. It's so easy for me to get upset, and I suppose that really just speaks to how invested I was in this series, how much I still care even though I wish I didn't.
 
There are a lot of things I can complain about when it comes to the ending of Naruto, from the unresolved plot points to the sudden disappearance of significant characters, to the utter lack of satisfactory closure. At the top of my list, I can complain about the fact we never got to see what Naruto's answer was to finding peace, to ending the cycling the cycle of hatred that had plagued shinobi world for so long. We never saw him become Hokage. We never saw him achieve his goals, only what came after. We were given all this build up, but where was the payoff? It was so anticlimactic to just have it dumped on us like that.
 
Yes, the world is now at peace, and yes, Naruto is now Hokage - but that's all we got. Nothing else. It's like we were shown the leftovers of a feast rather than being there to enjoy it in the first place.
 
No, instead of watching Naruto finally grow up and become the man we were waiting for him to become for so long, we were forced to witness his character assassination. We were forced to witness his defining trait of emotional competence to be thrown out of the window and for him to be reduced to a retard that couldn't tell the difference between love for an food item and love for the opposite sex (even though the manga clearly showed he knew what was meant), and we had to sit and watch as one of his strongest bonds, the bond of deep friendship and companionship he shared with Sakura, was ripped apart, reduced to a mere extension of his rivalry with Sasuke (which made so little sense my head hurt), and we then had to suffer through blatant retcons - all for the sake of propping up Hinata as his one true love, a character so insignificant her popularity was by and large resultant of beta males' fantasies and wish-fulfilment, and who had more screen time in filler than the original source material.
 
Everything about the Naruto ending was contrived. It didn't feel like the natural, genuine culmination of years of work, it wasn't the satisfying ending I had hoped to read. It felt manufactured and sterile. This was not the ending I had imagined, and I have a hard time imagining it was the ending Kishimoto set out to write, or even really wanted to write given the discrepancies and the violence it did to pre-established facts and developments within the manga.
 
No, the ending felt like the product not of an artist that had laboured with love and poured his heart out, but rather that of men in suits that had studied a bunch of graphs, facts and figures and used those to determine what would happen next, what would be best for the brand as a whole - and make no mistake, Naruto is very much a brand now. How can it not be given how closely Part III will follow, and with its own movie set for a 2015 release no less?
 
The pairings play a huge role in what I hated about the ending of Naruto. I cared a lot about these characters, so who they ended up with, regardless of how little importance that was in the grand scheme of things to the manga, was important to me. Aside from the Team 7 pairings, I really didn't mind all that much who ended up with who. Yeah, sure, Choji and Karui came out of left of field, but Shikamaru and Temari were obvious, and Ino and Sai at least had something in the manga, so, whatever, that was all fine and dandy.
 
The reason I hate the Team 7 endgame pairings though is different. To start, as the protagonist and the character I root for the most, I was invested in Naruto achieving what he wanted, and amongst a lot of things, Naruto wanted to be with Sakura, the girl he had a crush on since he was a kid, a crush that was never as shallow as some would like to believe, and which later blossomed into the truest, most selfless form of love Kishimoto had written (MinaKushi and their love for Naruto not withstanding). Naruto realised early on, in chapter 4 iirc, that the reason he liked Sakura was because of her determination to be acknowledged. She was like him, and he saw in her qualities that reminded him of himself, qualities he found admirable, desirable and attractive. None of this had anything to do with Sasuke, who was clearly not interested in Sakura whatsoever.
 
For her part, Sakura initially saw Naruto as nothing more as a nuisance that enjoyed being an obstacle to her. Suffice to say, the relationship between those two arose from shaky beginnings. That's what made these two interesting I suppose. Here you had this hero, a misunderstood troublemaker with a heart of gold pining after the insecure bookworm. They were similar in many ways; they enjoyed juvenile pranks, hated to lose, had their own dorky verbal tics and the both of them even had a perverted streak. Of course that all changed, and really, on a number of occasions, we were given the opportunity to see Naruto's growth from the the perspective of Sakura, and it's really that which cemented them as a strong pairing.
 
The thing about NaruSaku that made it great was that was more than just a potential romantic pairing, it was a strong friendship. Naruto and Sakura were companions, they were close friends, they were fiercely loyal to and protective of one another, and regardless of the backtracking and denial, these two loved each other. Even if nothing ever came of it, a part of Sakura did love Naruto that way, and Naruto's first love was and always will be Sakura.
 
I don't buy for a second that these two had so much time and effort dedicated to them for the sake of misleading fans.
 
The fact Naruto's wants and desires were disregarded in favour of Hinata's selfish desires to canonise the parasitic relationship only she and her fans wanted - well, to be frank, I can't quite find the words to express how much that disgusts me, how much it makes me hate Kishimoto and Studio Pierrot, and how much I despise Hinata now, and everything post 698.
 
It's really Sakura that I feel the most for at this point though. I just don't understand why anyone would support her being with Sasuke, much less why Kishimoto had these two end up together. It is endlessly frustratingly to me. SasuSaku doesn't work. The manga is very clear on that. No matter how much SS fans want it to, it simply doesn't, and I hate that their inane theories and rationalisations were ultimately validated. Sasuke will never be the outgoing, caring Papasuke caricature they want him to be. He'll never be some cuddly, smiling figure that dotes on his daughter and cherishes his wife. That's not Sasuke. That's never been Sasuke, and from the looks of it, it never will be.
 
Sakura was at her best without Sasuke. She was at her best with Naruto. That simply isn't questionable. The manga shows us this very clearly.
 
So why did the manga end the way it did, why did Naruto end up with Hinata, and why did Sakura end up with Sasuke? It wasn't like these two pairings were ever actual bona fide rival ships when considering the manga and nothing else. NaruSaku had history, it had development, it had mutual trust, respect, and yes, mutual affection. It had hints, foreshadowing and parallels. It had real growth and real substantial changes that we could observe. Tangible progression.
 
So where did it go wrong?
 
Maddening as it may be to accept, ultimately, the manga itself had nothing to do with the final pairings. It had everything to do with money, popularity and convenience. NH and SS would make them the most money because they were the most popular by virtue of having the greatest combined number of supporters (NS is bigger than NH in Japan apparently), and therein lied the convenience of canonising those pairings and thus lending the series "grand" finale to launching a spinoff franchise.
 
It's not fair to the characters or to the real fans of the characters (you're not a Sakura fan if you ship SasuSaku, go kitten yourself). The message both these pairings send are nothing short of immoral, repugnant and generally reprehensible. And yes, there is nothing we can do but express our disappointment and hurt. That's all that we can do.
 
Maybe Kishimoto will one day express his sympathies with our disappointment, maybe one day he'll admit to the obvious that NH and SS were not the endgame pairings he intended, maybe one day he'll even give us an alternate ending...
 
But none of that will undo the damage that has already been done. The trust has already been broken. The ending happened. It will never change, it will never have not happened. No matter how much Kishimoto may be inclined to try one day, if ever, the ending cannot change.
 
It sucks, but this is it. This is the ending we got, and we're going to have to live with it.
 
</rant over>



#713465 The Last theory: Collection of Info & co.

Posted by SuperChief on 22 December 2014 - 10:43 PM

NH and SS may be popular in Europe and US, but most fans in those regions pirate.




#713453 The Last theory: Collection of Info & co.

Posted by SuperChief on 22 December 2014 - 10:29 PM

 

  • Kishimoto’s assistants said that they believe Narusaku was a more logical ending but Kishi made NH because of personal reasons (fans in Twitter posted tweets about rumours that it was all because of SP and the western fanbase)

How coincidental is it that The Last is already being prepped and ready for the theatres in four different confirmed countries? Three being Western countries with a heavy NH presence in them. I believe there's some legitimacy to these allegations - at least when it comes to the theory about Pierrot turning towards the West for the series' future when their home country is so bitterly divided over their handiwork. 

 

 

I doubt the assistants would say anything to undermine Kishimoto's decisions. Without concrete evidence, I would disregard any such rumour as false.




#713308 The Last theory: Collection of Info & co.

Posted by SuperChief on 22 December 2014 - 06:32 PM

If Kishimoto's contract lapses in 2015 and he doesn't renew, it's highly unlikely we'll hear any frank comments for years to come if ever at all simply as a matter of professional courtesy.

 

The anime industry is especially keen on professionalism and collective responsibility, i.e. personal opinions and and sentiments are kept private. People have had their entire careers ruined by careless remarks, so even VA like Junko will remain largely tight-lipped. Granted, Kishimoto wrote the second most successful manga for 15 years and is something of a living legend in Japan, but I doubt he'll recant any time soon. Years from now, perhaps, when the dust has long since settled and nobody quite cares anymore about Naruto. Maybe then he will be inclined to talk more candidly, perhaps for the sake of his own conscience. That's a big maybe though.

 

For now, we're just going to have to accept that this man is a hack and a liar. He is someone who has betrayed the trust and expectations of his fans and he ruined the integrity of his creation in order to turn it into a brand, the future of which will now be wholly determined by men in suits looking at charts and figures to decide on what happens next rather than what is necessary and organic within the context of the story as determined by the original creator.




#710264 What went wrong....

Posted by SuperChief on 19 December 2014 - 09:25 PM

He capitulated to editorial pressure because he's a coward.




#710227 Which is better - Naruto as 6th or 7th Kage?

Posted by SuperChief on 19 December 2014 - 08:46 PM

Sixth Hokage.

 

Kakashi became Hokage purely as fanservice and for the sake of The Last, which was bullsh**. There was no reason for Naruto not to have been put in the position. Perhaps not immediately after the war, but he should have definitely been Tsunade's successor, which was foreshadowed a long time ago when Tsunade agreed to become the Fifth and told Naruto to grow up and become a good man.

 

Kakashi becoming Hokage ruined that. It also undid Konohamaru's foreshadowing boasting that he would become the Seventh after Naruto became the Sixth. It also did away with the tradition that started with Hiruzen of the Hokage teaching students that would later teach the Hokage, i.e. Hiruzen (Third) > Jiraiya > Minato (Fourth) > Kakashi > Naruto (who should have been Sixth).

 

Lastly, Naruto as the Sixth would've been cool considering he was also the successor of the Sage of the Six Paths.

 

I also hate the fact Naruto was never given a formal leading position. Even in The Last he is still a genin taking orders from Shikamaru. That's bullsh**.