NH and Hinatards fanbase are ridiculous small in west and NON EXISTENT in Japan.
Most of the Hinata/NH fans are "louder ghosts". Ghosts are pretty useless for view/sales/Support. Look at the pathetic Hinata position in the poll (While Sakura is in #3 and could get #1) and the The Last movie Fiasco.
Sasuke/Kakashi was promoted much more in the Movie material than the own Hinata. When Japonese people noted Sasuke/Kakashi wasn't in the movie and story was a simply Hinata's fairy tale. The Last FLOPED HARD.
Wich resulted in Kishimoto writing a full volume about Sasuke/Sakura and their daughter and turn Sasuke the main Character in Boruto Movie.
I still didn't know what Ikemoto wanted to archieve with Hinata randomly slaping a boy who made her desapear 2 seconds later.
This is just pathetic...
The last marketing was definately a trap, they knew that Hinata didn't sell in Japan and even if they wanted to succeed in continuing in the west, they knew that they couldn't just advertise that it was a big Hinata love fest., they wanted to give false hope of the majority of the fans. While they expected a fall down (mostly NS but also, like you said, Kakashi, Sasuke and team 7 central fans in general), they still did it as they expected the west to help them after the backslash. It was a big mistake on their part as the the majority of the sales are from Japan. Japanese fans are very loyal people, they are not greedy when they really want to support something, unlike the west that use illegal streamings and read manga for free while not necessarily buying (or not as much as Japan). So when you get a marketing team playing dirty trick like they did with the Last, you get Japanese fans pissed because they feel betrayed, especially when they had the nerve to play the ''no refund ticket policy'', something that never happened in previous Naruto movies. With that, you get the backslash of the majority of the japanese fans upset and no longer want to support anything of the franchise.
I don't know why they would put Hinata after so long of being inactive/not being involved in the manga. If Hinata was indeed more popular in the west, they would have given her a more important role in the manga way before this moment yet they didn't so I presume that they realized that Hinata wasn't as popular in the west as they expected or at least, not enough to boost the sales after the ending and mostly, the whole The Last fiasco. The only thing I see is a desperate move to try to see if maybe they could once again reach the Hinata/NH fandoms in the west.
At this point, I just don't understand why they still play this game, outside of being totally desperate, as the majority of the fans of the original story left (and not in a good way), the pairrings fans and the new fans of Boruto are not enough to boost the franchise at least, not in the long run. If they didn't have a stick in where the sun doesn't shine, they would just do a reboot, fixing some of the problems (mostly after Pain arc but could have changes before, depending on what they want to do). It would be a big work on their part but it could be done, if they really want to....but they won't as this move will show to the world that they kittened up big time, even if these changes would give a ''better light'' to the let say for example SS/NH (if they still would take that path, for example). Also, even if they make changes, it probably won't do the trick, like I said, the majority of the fandom left with a bad taste in their mouth and while it might peak some curiosity, I don't think it will be enough to bring back the franchise to its glory days.
Speaking of changes, out of curiousity (dunno if it was discuss before so sorry if it was) but if you were in charge of changing parts of the manga, what would you do (seaking to whoever want to give imputs and wish to do it of course) ? 
Edited by Serenity Namikaze, 19 January 2023 - 01:45 PM.
