lol i cant believe this kind of debate on HnE of all place. i have to repeat (again) that sakura's role as the heroine has been accepted by almost all the readers. even by hardcore hinata fans. only few of sakura haters tried to deny this fact.
and from kishi's interviews, especially the recent one. he even said he was afraid of sakura might look ugly. and he has been trying to increase her popularity
im not saying im satisfied with his way of treating sakura. and i have a bunch of scene in my head to make sakura a better character. but at least i do know the author himself tried, even if he failed to a certain degree. he did never neglet her and thats enough for me
Well, my argument wasn't whether or not Sakura is the heroine--clearly her growth, no matter how retconed in the end, and participation were the most vital of all the gals--but whether or not the growing preference for moe heroines in shonen manga and Hinata's popularity played a role in NaruHina happening.
As to the Kishimoto quote you mention, the version I have access to says:
"Kishi is troubled by Sakura’s popularity among the readers. While he was drawing covers, it was easy drawing Naruto and Sasuke, but for Sakura Kishi have to spend more time re-drawing and adjusting, worrying that he might draw her ugly. Sakura’s family is not revealed because of popularity reasons, but Hinata with low number of appearances were consistently popular with the readers, Kishi once had the idea to change Hinata to the heroine."
This supports my theory that Hinata's popularity was a reason NaruHina happened. It also, sadly, suggests Kishimoto's only interest in developing Sakura was superficial--to keep her from being ugly. If he cared about her character growth, he would have included her parents, but he didn't, because he didn't want to improve her overall character appeal. It seems an intentional oversight that, with two teammates (three, if you count Sai) who are orphans, her parents are never involved. We meet at least one parent of nearly every other Rookie. Why not Sakura's, the heroine's? To keep her from being too popular.
Since no one else seems to want to discuss externals influences and larger trends, like the diminished popularity of characters like Sakura, I'll drop it, but I still think it is a factor worth considering.
Here you go :3 http://bleach.wikia....opularity_polls The most recent character poll is the 4th.
Out of those I'm only familiar with Blue Exorcist and Magi. Magi doesn't have a moe lead, just a serious-type girl lead. Morgiana displays both cute and tsuntsun qualities (like when she got ticked off over Alibaba going to a brothel and created an earthquake).
He does seem pretty easy to influence. I'd hope most mangaka wouldn't behave like he did and be willing to give up on a character due to popularity. It's pretty disappointing Kishimoto turned out to be this flaky. As shown with Rukai's popularity, a competent writer can make a character lovable, regardless of the trope they may or may not fall in. This is why I can't simply blame it on the 'tsundere'. I blame it on Kishimoto.
Sakura and Hinata basically tied, each winning 5/10 of the popularity polls. I don't really think that shows she was a complete failure as a character, just Kishi's handling of her fell. From the pairing polls that I'd see before the Pain Arc, Sakura always showed up as being more popular to ship than Hinata. That's why I got the impression it was more the aftermath of the Pain Arc that hurt Sakura the most. But that could just be it hurt my opinion...since I definitely fell out of enjoying the manga during the beginning of the war arc.
From what members on this site have said, the movie has been in the works for 2 years. Which means everything in the past 2 years was done with Kishi knowing the end pairings. His new excuse is that NS was a red herring all along...though I'm not sure I buy that. If it is true the movie was being worked on for that amount of time, it's likely that the CPR scene and even moments before were done with Kishimoto already knowing NH was going to happen.
Not to mention Neji died for NH, and even that took place before the CPR scene.
Thanks for the link! Although you were holding out--the most popular was Hitsugaya! LOL Either way, how cool for Rukia.
It's true, Morgiana has the ability to express her anger, but her subdued emotions of all kinds make her more moe than not. The same can be said of Akatsuki in "Log Horizon." Maybe they're hybrids?
Anyway, I hadn't realized the movie had been in the works for two years. Then again, just because it started so long ago doesn't mean they knew what would happen from start to finish so long ago. Still, how disappointing. I'm having trouble finding when the "Is she your girlfriend?" scene was written, but Neji's death would have been about two years ago in the manga. In the recent interview, Kishimoto actually says he let Neji die so Hinata could be closer to Naruto. If I were a big Neji fan, I would be seriously peeved. Sigh.
But this thread is supposed to question who's the heroine and why.
I absolutely think NaruHina happening has everything to do with Kishimoto and his being influenced by external pressures, pressures which other writers would disregard in preference of staying true to their characters instead of bending to the will of trends. It's becoming more and more difficult to believe Kishimoto ever had a cohesive, determined vision for any of the characters other than Naruto and Sasuke.
After all, in the same interview as mentioned above, Kishimoto apparently said:
"Kakashi got more popular than Naruto so he had to decrease his appearance."
Yeah, popularity having a hand in Kishimoto's decisions is difficult to deny.
Of course, NaruHina happening does not make Hinata the heroine--the end would have panned out the same with or without her in the story, since any number of other characters could have said to Naruto what she did when Neji died.