Before I say anything, I want to say that I’ll still ship NS no matter what. This is hardly the first time I’ve shipped a noncanon pairing, but I will admit this hits me extra hard because I was so sure that we were right about this and I’ve invested more time than I’d like to admit debating in favor of its likelihood of being canon as well as its merits as a ship (of which it has a ton!).
I also want to say that I feel really bad for NH and SS fans because they have gotten so few moments compared to NS in my opinion and I would be pissed if a ship I liked were executed in such an offhand, hamfisted way. I originally shipped SS/NH when I got to the Chuunin Exam arc. I understand the appeal of both ships. I really do, but neither ship was given nearly enough interaction after that arc in my opinion to become a strong pairing in canon. I have read AU fic which fixes this problem with SS and NH and I like it, but for the canon manga, NS seemed like endgame.
I’m very disappointed with the ending of Naruto. I haven’t been thrilled with the pacing and focus for a while, but I was willing to let that sort of thing go because I really thought that the major plot points, i.e. Naruto and Sasuke’s friendship, Naruto becoming Hokage, and the romance subplots, would be resolved in a way that would be satisfying. I was so wrong on 2/3.
I loved Part 1 and the beginning of Part 2 to pieces. I loved the set up for Naruto and Sasuke’s bond and then separation, the set up for Team 7 to train under the Sannin, the setup for Akatsuki to hunt the tailed beasts, etc. I loved the Gaara arc in the beginning of Part 2, Sai’s introduction and interaction with the team, the Kage Summit, and Killer Bee. Looking back, I can pinpoint Pein targeting Konoha as the turning point for the downfall of the plot.
So let me address the plot first because I would have never continued this series if I didn’t like the premise, setting, and characters. Plot is a huge reason why I got invested in the series in the first place. I think this is a very detailed world that Kishi put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into. He’s spent over 15 years working on this project. If he lives to be 80-90 years old, he will have spent roughly 17-19% of his life on this. He will most likely end up continuing to work on it in the future if this Part 3 announcement is correct. I say this because I know that with this much material and backstory, it can be difficult to include all info and subplot development “on screen” without slowing down the pace to that of cold molasses. Some things had to happen “off screen” to keep things moving. However, in my opinion, he made some bad decisions about which subplots to show and which to imply happened off screen.
So what happened off screen? Naruto became Hokage, smaller side characters got paired up, Hinata won over Naruto’s affection, Naruto got over his affection for Sakura, Sasuke became interested in having a relationship, and they all had kids.
I am completely fine with Naruto becoming Hokage off screen because we all knew that was going to happen. It’s been his goal from Chapter 1. He says it all the time, he gains the support of his mentors in meaningful ways throughout the story, and his disposition lends itself to the job in my opinion. I am so glad that Kishi had Kakashi become Hokage first though because not only does that wrap up Kakashi’s personal arc as a ninja who went from not caring about his peers at all to caring for the entire village, it’s realistic. Naruto is 17 years old at the end of the war. Say what you want about Gaara, but he was the Kazekage’s son and would be intimately familiar with the position like no one else. Also, he sorted out his issues in his personal arc already. He was basically used as a tool for Team 7 to go on a mission in Part 2. His character development was a non-issue. I still think that it’s very odd that he was made Kazekage so young, but I think he should be considered an exception. The previous Mizukage was also very young, but he was a puppet, so I feel like that is a strike against young candidates. In any case, Naruto being shown in an epilogue being Hokage is A-OK with me and it makes sense for the story. No one wants to read about how he learns how to do paperwork. That would be so boring.
Smaller side pairings that happen off screen also make sense. They are side characters. It would be really weird to take time on the romance of a side character. ShikaTema was done really well as a side romance. They met and got to know each other through their tournament fight and then in Part 2, it was heavily referenced that they’d kept up communication and even worked well together on assignments. Then, Shikamaru has the conversation with his dad about how scary women are, in reference to his mom, and Shikamaru PICTURES Temari. It’s a really natural way to hint that he’s attracted to her, considering her as relationship material.
Having kids off screen is also cool. While I side eye everyone and their mother procreating, I understand ninja parents wanting to have children early because who knows if they will die soon. And as much as some want it, we aren’t going to see the decision to have kids (or the conception hehehe) in a shounen manga.
Now, here’s the nitty-gritty of what I didn’t like. I started to become disinterested in the series during the fight with Pein. In my opinion, having Pein destroy/attack Konoha was too much. Konoha is a tool in the story to increase a feeling of suspense and I think Kishi played this card WAY too soon and ended up negating its weight via deus ex machine no jutsu. By the time the war against Madara came around, Konoha had already been destroyed once and was still a mess. I didn’t feel the suspense about its safety anymore. Kishi tried to up the ante by killing off the original InoShikaCho, but it wasn’t nearly as impactful as I feel it should have been. “But Saku-chan,” you say. “How else would the other Hidden Villages be forced to mobilize?” Half the reason why they mobilized was because their Jinchuuriki had all been stolen, compromising the security of their villages, and the belief that Killer Bee had been captured by Taka. Instead of Konoha being destroyed, perhaps Akatsuki could have tried to turn the villages against each other by framing them for major killings/stealing the Jinchuurikis. Who knows? I don’t think I need to say anything about how cheap Pein’s Dragonball reset no jutsu was. While I’m glad that Kakashi and Shizune didn’t die, the end was so cheap and made the destruction of Konoha seem superficial.
The Kage Summit was fairly interesting and gave us some pretty good updates on the ~feelings~ of Sakura. (I liked her ‘fake’ confession because even though she wasn’t confessing her true feelings, she showed just how far she’s come in considering Naruto’s feelings and how unfair it was of her to have asked him to retrieve Sasuke for her.)
Then we hit the Shinobi war arc and the Ten-Tails revival arc. This was a horrible mess of pacing. We joke that 2 years was spent on 2-3 days, but it’s true. There were so many unnecessary fights that had to be put in to raise tension about how much of a danger the villain was because (shocker) Kishi squandered a suspense tool (Konoha’s safety) too early. Remember the kages arriving only to end up being thoroughly routed off screen to ‘show’ how strong and dangerous Madara was? I also think that the resurrected Kages were brought in way too early and the amount of focus beyond Hashirama, Madara, and Tobirama’s history was unnecessary.
It was total crap that they stuck around for as long as they did. Their bodies were so fragile. I will admit that this is only my speculation, but this is my theory on why those arcs crawled on and on and on. (That’s when I stopped checking updates and felt the most bored with the story.) I know this is a shounen and Kishi loves Akira Toriyama’s works from the bottom of his heart, but in this case, he channeled the worst part of DBZ. Endless power-ups and reversals of who has the upper hand in a fight is bad writing. I hate to say it because I know Kishi works so hard to produce this, but I think he and his editors really dropped the ball on quality control here. Just because it’s SJ/for children/etc. does not mean that it’s ok to do whatever once the series gets popular and not see the story suffer.
I think Madara was a great villain. I wish he’d been the final one instead of Kaguya’s Will/Kaguya. Madara’s worldview was twisted, but you could see exactly why it was that way. He was a genuinely interesting villain and it made sense that he would become relevant in the endgame because Hashirama’s pupil, Hashirama’s granddaughter, and Hashirama’s cells were in/used in Konoha. He, alongside Madara, was a founding force of what we are familiar with in the world of Naruto. Part of the end of the series is how the new generations will have to learn from the past.
Kaguya is a cop out. I’m going to say it. She is a crappy villain. The story would have been better without her. She has no set up and she wasted vital chapters that could have been spent on Naruto and Sasuke having their final battle. Furthermore, she takes the element of human complexity away from the story. Without her, we have a story where humans come to vastly different conclusions about how the world should work because they have different, but equally valid experiences. With her, we lose the sense that the characters’ beliefs mattered. Things only got so bad because of this divine power working in the background. It completely undoes the notion that people don’t always agree, but you should do your best to reach out to them and understand them anyway because their motivations and feelings are important, too. So much for that if a Moon Goddess will undo all of your hard work in order to fulfill some dumbass myth and make super special doujutsu users more OP. (There were other Kekkei Genkai’s that didn’t require this mythological setup, so why do it for the eye ones?) The whole story with the chakra fruit was so bad. The tailed beasts were originally introduced as the manifestation of human feelings. Why couldn’t it stay that way? Why did we need this myth to explain where chakra came from? While I was interested in the more technical aspects of how chakra came to be used, this myth impacted the story in a negative way.
In the end, we get a 5 chapter copout fight that takes place at the Valley of the End which uses nostalgia to try and cover up how rushed it was. Compare this to the original fight which was 15 chapters. (218-233) I’m not trying to say that length necessarily means better quality, but only having 5 chapters shows how weak their motivations were for fighting. How are you going to be Hokage if everyone hates you Sasuke? It was really anticlimactic. In my opinion, I think Kishi botched this plot ending which had the potential to be very emotionally charged. (I like that Kishi decided to have them lose their arms though.)How many of you were in awe of their fight at the end of Part 1? I know I was. But this final fight? I really couldn’t be bothered. I couldn’t wait for it to be over.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about main pairings. I am shocked. I really can’t believe that we were wrong about this. There are times when a story doesn’t go where I initially want it to go, but the set up the author does wins me over. This is NOT one of those times. This is Harry Potter all over again. I admit I’m extremely biased towards NaruSaku. I like how their canon interactions have progressed and I have quite a few ideas about how they would keep on progressing post-series. And that’s in my head. But it was inspired by canon events which happen throughout the story, not randomly at the end.
I think that NH and SS shippers should be furious that they didn’t get the same setup that NS did.
Before I go any further, I want to add a disclaimer.
Quick list of reasons for NS/Anti-other pairings that suck and/or are hypocritical:
1) Naruto loves Sakura and does so much for her. He deserves to get her love in return.
2) Sakura is the Heroine, so she should end up with the hero.
3) Hinata is a stalker and too submissive.
4) Everyone has to be paired up at the end.
If you use any of those justifications, please stop. They are so hypocritical and bad.
To get back to the discussion, Naruto being able to know what Sakura needs to hear in chapter 3 shows that he understands her. He knows that she was also bullied as a child and I think he admires her for being able to overcome that time in her life and gain confidence. I don’t know if he realizes it, but both of their confident personalities come from a bit of faking it till you make it. Sakura had Ino help her to gain confidence in her forehead and Naruto has Iruka to help him gain confidence in his worth as a person. Obviously Naruto’s situation is more intense, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t similarities between their early childhoods and it provides an opportunity for them to build understanding. Sakura isn’t ever going to understand what Sasuke experienced. She probably won’t fully grasp Naruto’s hardships, but they are more similar to her own, and she has spent so much time with Naruto as he continues to experience prejudice/different treatment because of his status as a jinchuuriki and she wants to protect him from that.
As for Sakura liking Sasuke, I think the crush was about gaining confidence in herself as well as admiring someone who was seemed very confident and competent. I can see why she idolized Sasuke. In her view, everyone respected and accepted Sasuke. That is something that Sakura wants and admires, so she crushes on him. This is also what Naruto wants, so Naruto makes Sasuke into his rival. I think both Naruto and Sakura use Sasuke as a vehicle for their feelings of inadequacy. I don’t want to make this sound like they don’t really care about him, because I know they do, but they were 12 and I don’t know many 12 year olds who immediately know that they’re not being completely realistic or going about things the wrong way.
In Chapter 3, Naruto inadvertently cements Sakura’s crush by saying her fantasy line while disguised as Sasuke. This is a really sad scene to read over because I feel like this moment made Sakura feel like Sasuke also liked her and that he just didn’t know how to show it. (I will take a moment to say that this is my least favorite trope in romance.) Naruto has sabotaged himself pretty hard. I was waiting and hoping for Sakura to find out that it was actually Naruto who said it at the end of the manga, but it turns out that’s not happening and somehow Sasuke gets a forehead moment and pokes her forehead a la Itachi poking his? In a display that doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s like Kishi forgot that it was Naruto in a Henge way back in the day.
I don’t think I can say things better than the Manifesto here, so I’ll link that.
Going into the finale, why would Kishi write Kushina being like Sakura and then telling Naruto to find a girl like her? And if Naruto was getting over Sakura at that point because of Hinata, why would he agree with his dad that Sakura is his girlfriend?
In spite of how damning the fake confession was, I think it still showed that while Sakura didn’t think of Naruto in the way that she said, she was deeply guilt-ridden about Naruto tormenting himself to bring back Sasuke. I think in her mind, she wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just her selfish request which was putting Naruto through all of this strain. While it’s hardly the fluffy confession many hoped for, it shows that she is willing to sacrifice herself to protect him. Combined with the other developments prior, I could see her coming to the realization that she cares for Naruto and eventually romantically. From the beginning, I always viewed NS as a slow build. Quality takes time after all.
Let’s not forget that Sakura was prepared to kill Sasuke because he was a threat to Naruto’s life. I felt that she was well on her way to starting to move on from him, but nope. If Naruto, who’s suffered a lot in his life, can’t fully understand Sasuke’s loss, there’s no way in hell that Sakura could ever fully understand. That’s not a bad thing. I’m glad Sasuke’s experience is unique. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But, because of how Sakura previously misunderstood his broody demeanor and warped it into a vision of her perfect prince, I don’t think that they currently had enough setup to end up in a relationship because Sasuke wasn’t interested in her AT ALL.
But, this has happened anyway, so their setup must have happened off screen. This is a BAD development to leave off screen. There was no on screen reciprocation from Sasuke. With main characters, you should not leave major emotional developments off screen! It’s unsatisfying and leaves readers scratching their heads. Similarly with Naruto, I cannot believe that they left him moving on from Sakura off screen. It was something he brought up very frequently and it was almost as integral to his character as his rivalry/friendship with Sasuke and wanting to become Hokage.
I feel bad for Hinata most of all who now has to rely on fic to show how Naruto was able to move on from Sakura. I believe that this NH Naruto truly does love Hinata because he would never get with anyone he didn’t love (see Sakura’s fake confession), but all of this is development that we will never see unless Part 3 is going to be filled with romance flashbacks. I really like Hinata’s character progression in regards to her self-esteem, but I have a hard time swallowing the fact that she never once felt badly about Naruto liking Sakura. I’m not rooting for her to be a vengeful, jealous rage of a person, I just wanted her to talk about it. I think that she’s the type of person who would deal with not having her feelings reciprocated because it’s not the end of the world. She would be happy supporting Naruto even if he never reciprocated. But, she never brings this up. It’s vaguely never referenced either because Kishi is unable to fathom the complexity of her feelings or because he just didn’t care to show it. Both are probably the truth. Other things that I think were skipped in regards to her character were her relationship to her team and to her sister/family. Each time she’s shown, it’s with Naruto, or Naruto is nearby, or Naruto is mentioned. What happened to her personal life like in Part 1 with Neji? Sure things were resolved at home with Neji and the resentment of the branch family, but we heard nothing about the effects in Part 2 beyond Neji abruptly dying to protect Hinata. (Which was also a cheap way to create drama since Kishi didn’t pace well.)
I don’t even know what to say about Sasuke. His origin story and initial rivalry with Naruto were really good, but it becomes apparent that he was not part of Kishi’s original plot plan from the treatment of his character after he talks to Itachi. Everything fell flat. I’m not sure what the hell Karin’s purpose is. I didn’t ship them, but I figured they’d be more likely than SS if it came down to it.
I’m firmly in the camp of “there are no impossible ships,” but I also think that ships require adequate setup to be considered for canon. As an NS shipper, of course I’m disappointed that NS didn’t happen, but I’m also disappointed about how NH and SS were executed. Sakura for all intents and purposes seemed to be an annoyance to Sasuke, and Naruto seemed to only have eyes for Sakura during the manga. To have all of this negated off screen is such crap. The quality of the storytelling took a nosedive. I’ll finish the series and continue to ship NS because I still think that it’s the most satisfying ship when you look at everything up until 699, but I don’t think I can bring myself to read any Part 3 or watch that movie.
;;
WELCOME TO THE BLOG-SPHERE 
Fer sure.
" So I promptly browsed away from the page.
COSPLAY
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I will have it done by the next con. I am also going to fix the wig a little. All of my styling came undone during the course of the day. 
Uh.... that was suppose to express a fist pump... somehow...
