Toy Ninja

Well, they don't want to make him totally out of character.

I dunno how you could keep Sasuke in character at all and have him in a real marriage.. Unless it was with someone who's hopelessly enamored with him and masochistic /likes being Genjutsu-killed. The writers seem to want to preserve Sasuke's lone wolf/ dangerous renegade faux coolness ..and that just doesn't work with the role hes been put in ..married life and raising a child. (at least not the way they have tried to write it)  It's a real mess..

Hinata as a character, I wouldn't call sexist, but at the same time, she's an insult to girls. Her literal purpose in life was to get Naruto's D and honestly, that is pretty sexist in it's own way. One could argue that "Just because she loves a guy doesn't mean it's sexist". But...that's literally all there is to her. She has shown zero ambition in anything that doesn't concern Naruto. She doesn't show any real care for her teammates, her clan, her family, anything. 
That's why, even though I hate her guts, the best path for her would have been to move on from Naruto and become a proper heir to her clan. Anyone who says otherwise really doesn't care about Hinata and all they care about is their self inserting or ship.
 

I agree with you about her being written in a sexist way. I mean.. completely defining yourself through your relationship is really unhealthy. This is never brought up though. It says a lot about the kind of person naruto became that he would want to be with someone like that.

Other then that the relationship is so hollow.. They don't really know each-other in the manga. They don't share experiences together. There is no mutual understanding. They hardly communicate. Its one of the most unrealistic and awkwardly forced marriages I have ever seen in manga. (second to Mashiro and Miho in Bakuman). I also get this weird purity culture vibe from it. It's like people love the concept of perfect love but can't reconcile that with the realities of an actual relationship. So what we are shown is painfully idealized performance and everything else is erased. It's like something out of Victorian literature.   

Sakura...well...the only sexist thing Kishimoto did to her was the whole "She would be a terrible woman if she moved on from Sasuke". That was straight up sexist. There is zero denying that SasuSaku is abusive, mild or not. And it goes both ways. Kishimoto revealed that Sakura followed him around and kept pushing her feelings onto him until he gave up. The Sakura novel backs this up with a passage that says something among the lines of "No matter how many times I'm rejected, I'll keep pushing my feelings!" Not the exact words, but still the same weight. It turned Sakura into a horrible person and in a way, turned Sasuke into a victim. He basically had to say 'fine' in order to make her leave him alone. Apparently it worked. After he knocked her up and she spawned Salad, she stayed in the village while he was free to roam outside without Sakura nagging him. No wonder he never came back to the village. It sounds like they're both at fault and the problems go both ways. Man, SasuSaku really is a huge train wreak.

 

The fact that Sakura keeps pursuing Sasuke after repeated rejections and ignoring his obvious scorn for her makes it seem like she doesn't really care about his feelings, or respect his boundaries. He clearly didn't respect hers.. he just tried to murder her and everyone she knows and loves.. multiple times. The whole "She would be a terrible woman if she moved on from Sasuke" kind of carries this message that if you are a girl and you love a boy who is violent towards you, if you keep on forgiving and loving them then they will change for the better. In truth this way of thinking only perpetuates co-dependency and vicious cycles of abuse.

We are told (not shown of course) that Sakura got what she wanted though.. she got to have cold mechanical sex once with an emotionally-dead murderer..

Where in quote did I attribute that to you? Its my opinion, so I dont understand the needless hostility. I simply disagree about the order. Ive generally been underwhelmed by the arguments that attribute the ending switch to that late in the game. I tend to agree he changed it, but thats mostly based on 297 and the Team 8 arc...two decisions that are, needless to say, a tad odd if he always planned NH.

Nevertheless, the only thing close to concrete that exists, assuming he did change, is that it likely occurred before the Last went into product. Other than that, its speculative. Ive haven;t been all that active the last year. Maybe there are interviews that show otherwise that I havent seen.

As for Kabuto reviving the Hokages...we only know he couldnt because of what happened later. He could have easily done something else, since it wasnt impossible until the point that it was done. Even he could not....are we seriously going to go down the road that issues of internal consistency and logic would have prevented Kishimoto from going back on that or just making something else up. The series cared about this for a good chuck of its run, but not by that point.

Discussing the internal logic of this series is enough to make even the most reasonable person angry.

I never liked kabuto becoming a big player in the war arc. It would have made more sense if he just devolved into a mindless snake monster. Also, because of the way the story is contrived, kabuto comes across as one of the biggest idiots in the manga. Why get involved in the war at all if you are in his position? You could just get the kages you did resurrect to give up all the most damaging secrets, and important info, in their villages histories.. and use that info to blackmail the villages into doing whatever you want. (including breaking up the alliance, having them capture sasuke for you, and get rid of tobi for you). If kabuto had just kept himself hidden and used proxies to contact each of the villages in secret, while never letting anyone know he was resurrecting people, then he would have been unstoppable.. Basically that whole part of the story seems like an excuse for action scenes.

An important thing to remember is that after the chunin exam he realized he should have been worshiping his father all along. Now even in the manga issues still rise up, but that because Bolt is a brat. That was the movie. There was never any chance of Bolt actually opposing anything Naruto does. Only before the chunin exam does he do that and it because his father is neglecting the family. 

Yeah I agree the film kind of killed that option.

At the moment it’s just awkward and lacks dramatic tension. Naruto is still written as a prick but it’s not really acknowledged by the other characters openly. Well maybe a little bit by Tsunade recently.

I guess they could still do it by having Naruto do something really bad that causes a falling out between him and Boruto. I kind of doubt it though.

Shounen jump celebrating 50 years of heroines. I wish salad wasn't there.

 

Well Misa Amane is there so they clearly didn't set the bar very high for what they consider a heroine to be..

Wait. He didn't even inform Konohamaru of this. The guy that is the closest thing he has to a student? The guy he trust to train his son, and his old teammates' daughter? The guy that looks up to, and idolizes him? The guy that is the closest person to being the next hokage besides maybe Salad? The guy that he was next to at the funeral of said grandfather who was crying his eyes out for the lost of his beloved grandfather? One of the first people he connected to in the manga? And he doesn't even inform him of this to see if he is OK with it?

 

kitten him. kitten him. Just kitten him. This is by far the worse thing Naruto has ever done. He has completely ignored the feeling of someone that should in theory be very close to him. Just so he can put his hypocritical sophist beliefs into action.

It's even worse then that. He didn't just ignore konohamaru's feelings. Naruto could have assigned Mitsuki to any team leader. If he just didn't care about konohamaru's feelings then he could have easily assigned the kid to a different jonin to make things less complicated. It's unlikely that mitsuki ended up being assigned to konohamaru just by chance. In any case naruto would have per-approved it. It seems like naruto deliberately assigned mitsuki to his team in some weird attempt at paving over the past through deception. He didn't just ignore konohamaru's feelings but actively tried to manipulate them without his knowledge by having him form a bond with mitsuki under false pretenses.

Maybe Naruto did it to make his choice to continue enabling orochimaru's monstrous research seem less messed up to the rest of the village?

It says something that a character people have seen spend nearly twenty years working towards something be this incompetent at it. It also says something when trying to defend these action they just go, "don't bother he is too stupid to learn."

 

It's bizarre.. it really does seem that Naruto only makes things worse for those around him in the village leadership. I'm trying to understand why the writers write naruto this way? 

My thoughts about episode 73.

You’d think yamato would hate being indefinitely assigned to watch orochimaru of all people. This is how Naruto treats his past sensei?   

During the meeting I felt bad for the village elders having to put up with an idiot in the position of hokage.

Kakashi basically has to step in and tell everyone they are wasting their time blaming Naruto and they should just focus on cleaning up the mess he has made. They all basically have to work around him..

We get to the konohamaru meltdown I thought should have happened last episode.

Naruto says nothing would have been different if he had told konohamaru about mitsuki's origins from the beginning. But if that’s true then.. why didn’t he?... umm... err.... hmm. The obvious conclusion is that Naruto doesn’t even trust his childhood friend and jonin konohamaru to do the right thing on his own.. so he tries to manipulate him…

Shikamaru says personal feelings are forbidden on missions.. umm he does know that Naruto did exactly that.. like all those times with sasuke.. or that time with obito..  or kitten like every single opponent he faced.. Moreover the very reason this problem started was that Naruto made a decision based on nothing but his personal feelings..   

The lab scenes confirm again that orochimaru is STILL doing kittened up human experiments with naruto’s support.

Suigetsu asks that boruto refer to orochimaru as sama. Umm what happened to make Suigetsu give up on his dreams of collecting the seven swords and decide to become such a subservient lacky to the guy who imprisoned and experimented on him as a kid?

Orochimaru saying that there is no reason to worry since mitsuki will literally self-destruct if anything goes wrong made me laugh at how messed up it is.

When boruto and sadara are left staring, horrified, at the cloning tanks I thought.. you know the writers could actually take this in a really interesting direction. With this new generation of kids realizing how kittened up and evil the old generation and village have become and deciding to do something about it. ..I doubt that will actually happen though.   

Naruto will have likely died at some point

Really? I kind of suspected that they won't follow through on this. I thought it could end up being a huge fake-out to fabricate drama/ interest.

 

It's the Hinata-principle. They're not in love with the character as she is intended, they were in love with the character they wanted her to be. They wanted her to be the "fat acceptance character," and were gleefully willing to ignore all the evidence that she's supposed to be the butt of a joke. Now their illusion has come crashing down, and they're upset over what she actually is.

 

Same thing as people wanting Shinji Ikari to get in the damn robot and kick ass, ignoring that piloting that beautiful behemoth won't magically make his life better.

I agree. I’ve always found that “just get in the damn robot” reaction to be a particularly vapid thought terminating cliché.

It’s places completely unrealistic expectations on a child, it fails to accept the nature of depression, it’s emotionally dishonest, and it completely misunderstands the intentions and underlying sentiment of the original show.

I think the phenomenon you are talking about could be thought of like "projecting onto the ink blots". Its sad when the expectations of the fans starts to effect a story too much. I think writers kind of need to have a sense of artistic integrity. Otherwise their work just devolves into wish-fulfillment, bad fanfiction,or meaningless commercial products.

My thoughts about this episode..

The part with Mitsuki’s home seems like a weird sort of Rei Ayanami reference.

The people Boruto and Sadara are listening in on aren’t just some small town city council having a meeting about imposing $32 fines for leaving dog turds in Senju Park.

They are essentially a secret intelligence service HQ. They’re discussing the sensitive details of covert investigations into terrorism. Lots of people could die if there was an information leak.

Two children can easily just spy on their meetings by putting their ears to the window wall.

I mean for kitten sake how incompetent is Naruto?.. I’m starting to think that Konoha would have been a LOT better off if Danzo had become hokage.   

This episode makes me like Tsunade more.. since she still seems to remember that Orochimaru was  kittening insane and killed hundreds if not thousands of people. He tried to destroy the village. He murdered the third Hokage. He tried to murder Tsunade. He tried to kill Naruto. He performed horrific human experiments (just one of these experiments resulted in the deaths of 59 children), created abominations and committed countless other atrocities.  Actually it seems like he has continued doing this messed up stuff ever since then.. with Naruto’s approval.  

I’m surprised Konohamaru didn’t explode at Naruto over the secret about Mitsuki’s origins.. Talk about character derailment. I guess serving under Naruto has crushed his spirit.

Boruto really is starting to take after his old man.. talking down to Sarada like that at the river.

Naturally when they decide to leave the village its Sarada following Boruto’s lead.. the girls always play second fiddle in Naruto.

So the framing and positioning of the characters, and the overall composition of the cover, comes across as objectifying, starkly sexist, and sleazy. That’s my impression anyway.

It’s not just the design of the outfit but the highly charged posing. Sarada is not in a natural stance or a combative one. This posturing is assumed purely to draw attention along her uncovered legs – completely unlike the other two characters.

Just to make a quick comparison.

Kohaku from Inuyasha was a young character with an outfit that didn’t cover much of his legs. Thankfully though, the way he was presented never really drew attention to this. It was common garb for the time so it made sense that he’d wear it, and he changed into an actual ninja esq outfit to fight because that was more practical. (It was also a unisex outfit)

http://h.mfcdn.net/s...&ttl=1492916400

http://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/721117.jpg 

This chapter cover art presents the characters so the focal points are the faces, the bird and kirara. Same with the color volume cover, the points of focus are on the faces, the same for both characters. The posing is natural and more about presenting their emotional state and relationship rather than their ..err.. physicality.

Hey guys I went out to Tesco's today and I saw a book which had Boruto on it and here is the funny thing it said this "Bourto, like father like son the destiny continues."

 

So the way I see it that Bolt will become a kitten/scumbag like his dad is now and will let killers go and use Sarada just like Naruto used Sakura, so what I think this means is that he will pretend to like Sarada but by the end will fail in love with SP Hinata clone that they have made.

I was thinking i could actually like Bolt if he continued to resent his father and went in the opposite direction to him.. oh well

Why does a fricking 12 year old wear heels like those and clothes like that?

Maybe she’s trying to compensate for the lack of attention from her emotionally-withdrawn violent deadbeat father… 

I'll give her credit for holding her own for the most part until the final  part of the fight with boruto stealing the spotlight.

Yeah that’s true, she did put up a good fight. Also she didn’t really need Boruto's help, he just jumped in.   

One other thing I was thinking about when I read this was.. Well.. this is a setting where, if you put a bit of work in, you can manipulate the elements and do all sort of amazing things. But the kids just want to buy trading cards? I don’t know if that’s really bad writing or if it’s brilliant.

Happy birthday Sakura. Even though the series went off the rails and into a gutter I won’t forget how awesome you were.