Catwho

If there is a collapse, it will be brief.

There was a great video game collapse around 1983, due to games like E.T. which were terribly coded and not worth the plastic of the cartridge that housed them.   As a result, the US lost its edge in the home console video game market, and didn't come up with a real competitor to Japan again until the Xbox.  

As long as the manga industry in Japan continues to produce high quality series, then the anime industry will continue to animate them.   Same with light novels.  What seems to be becoming rarer is original anime and movies that aren't based on other things.  

Hasn't stopped them from cancelling popular shows before.  We call those shows "FYGRTM - f*** you, go read the manga."  Sometimes it's because there's not enough material to keep going, other times it's because of a falling out between the manga artist and the anime studio (Kare Kano being the most famous example of that), but quite often it's because they don't think the show is making enough money.  

They'll finish out the season, wrap up the story somehow, and call it done.  If you are lucky, they'll resume the series in a few years when more material is out (Full Metal Panic!) and if you are very very lucky, they'll redo the series entirely (FMA Brotherhood.)  

But most of the time, they stop at the end of the season, mid-story, and just never resume, because they won't recoup the production cost via advertising or toy sales. 

In the case of Naruto, it's clearly still got enough of an audience to justify making more filler. 
 

Some other examples:  http://www.dramafeve...he-manga-ended/

They'll cancel the anime if toy sales and viewership drop to a certain low point.  Anime like Naruto exist for one reason: Advertisement.  Advertisement for Naruto products, and commercial space.  

If they're not getting the eyeballs on the cartoon to justify the time slot any more, they'll kill it.

No, I think that Natsu is, in fact, End.  All the Dragoslayers are End.  Speculation: END was the set of demons that Zeref created that could one day actually kill him.  

Back in the Tenrou arc, the first time Zeref saw Natsu, he recognized him, and said, "You can't kill me yet, it's not time yet."

Earlier, during the Laxus insurrection arc, both Gajeel and Natsu got trapped by Fried's runes that would hold anyone over the age of 80.  For years, we've been wondering why.  If both of them are actually creations of Zeref from 400 years ago, it makes sense.

Acnologia has been lurking around for at least some those 400 years.  Guildarts mentioned he was on the 100 year mission to defeat him, and lost his arm and leg in the process. 

What pact did the dragons make to protect humans 400 years ago?  That's the first I've heard of it.  Whatever it is, it seemed to have created the Dragon slayers and to have thwarted the plans of Acnologia. 

Kishi had this notion that he was "bad" at romance.  So he waffled around the pairings, and finally SP said, "Look, we'll take care of that for you with a movie" and he felt like he was let off the hook, which is why no pairings are confirmed at all during the manga proper until 700.

The thing is, he wasn't bad at romance.  He wrote great characterizations and a wonderful take on the traditional painfulness of Japanese views of love.  

What he's bad at is waff and fluff.  But that's okay!  It's a shounen manga!  Nobody wanted, or expected, any kind of waff or fluff from any of the characters, outside of funny situations.  

So someone needs to smack Kishimoto upside the head and tell him to stop distrusting his own ability to wrote a more romantic love between characters.  Because if you ignore the last two chapters and The Last, he did a pretty damn good job.

You know, even JK Rowling let Hermione ends up with Ron because that's what she wrote, that's what she developed, although she planned Hermione for Harry. Writers. What do I know about your mind?

With Rowling, it's a bit different.  She had planned Hermione/Ron in the beginning, and stuck to that plan despite the way the characters grew together in the later books, as "wish fulfillment."  Hermione was her self insert character.  Ron was based off an old childhood friend of hers.  I think her editors wanted Harry/Hermione because it had a huge fandom, but she said no and stuck to her guns.  Unlike Kishi....  Her acknowledgment of it later was that she could, with some distance from the series, see why people like Harry/Hermione so much, but the way she wrote Ron and Hermione's interactions in the series it was pretty clear (to me, at least) how she envisioned the story ending. 

I had picked out Ron/Hermione as the endgame couple by the 2nd book.  It was solidified for me by the 4th book.  I was surprised it didn't go any further until the last book.  I was  VERY surprised by Harry/Ginny, which kind of came out of left field.  Now there's a pity ship if there ever was one....  But it served a very important purpose, by allowing Ron to truly become Harry's brother (in-law) and by giving Harry the huge comfortable family he'd always wanted.  

The nice thing about the Naruto universe is because so many things are genjutsus and tsukuyomis, it's easy to pretend kitten didn't happen.

Hated 699?  No worries, Naruto or Sasuke are hallucinating all that BS while they bleed out in 698.

Hated everything past 693?  No worries, you're still in someone's IT at that point.  Pick whomever you want.

Hated 700 and the Last?  No worries, Naruto is still trapped in Toneri's genjutsu from the movie.  He just THINKS he got broken out.  And Toneri is a sick kittening bastard so he's giving Hinata everything she wanted in a genjutsu she's not a participant of.

Last night I was at a dinner with some younger anime fans from one of the local universities (my husband is the staff advisor for their club.)  Everyone who knew about the ending of Naruto agreed it was utter BS.

He did the same with SS only in a worse sexist way , it happened bc Sakura would be a terrible Woman  WTF  who does that   and what credibility is this for the kittening ship  its just there so Sakura to be out of the way of NH  both ships  are pity buy products there is no love in here  at all       .

To me, what makes Sakura  a "terrible woman" is in The Last when she breaks Naruto's heart.

Oh sure, he sheepishly agrees that "he only loved her because of the rivalry with Sasuke" but you know that boy found a quiet place to sob for a few hours after that scene, no matter what the movie implies otherwise.

Fandom acceptance is a funny old thing.

Disney just kitten on 30 years worth of Star Wars lore by saying NONE OF IT HAPPENED LALALALA so they could release Episodes 7-9 with a completely different story.  For some of us who were Star Wars fans when it was really uncool to like Star Wars (for me that was the early '90s) they just totally said that the defining stories of our adolescence aren't canon.   NOPE!  They're "Legends" now.  Yeah! That's the ticket!

It doesn't work like that.  In my mind, the Zahn trilogy is canon forever, and everything else Disney will come up with is fanfiction.

That's why I have no problem wholly discounting chapter 699-700 and The Last, as well as any other kitten that SP and Kishimoto come out with in that timeline.  The very fact that Kishi has all but admitted it was SP's idea to end NH invalidates it as canon in my mind.  

Fan acceptance is hugely important to how some franchises proceed after a reboot.  The Star Trek fandom is actually fairly uniform in accepting the original timeline as canon and all the cool new Star Trek stuff coming out as an alternate timeline (since that's how it was presented to us) so there is absolutely no cognitive dissonance.  You pick the one you like better.  Or you accept both as alternate universes, and play with the universe you like best.

And at the same time, fandoms can smell kitten a mile away and have no problems rejecting things that are clearly ass pulls.

Or, as the saying goes, there was no Terminator 3 movie.

I was actually going to buy all $350 worth of Naruto manga on Kindle if it turned out that Kishi had done a genius twist with chapter 700 and The Last actually ended NaruSaku.

NOPE!  A filthy pirate I shall stay.  There are more worthy manga of my dollars. 

Kishimoto's assistant did it.  

Have you ever heard of "the echo chamber" ?  it's the idea that if you surround yourself by only people who think the same way you do, you hear the conversations as louder than they actually are.

That's why it's so important to have discussions with multiple view points at the table.

If they had done a trial balloon two years ago on whether a NaruHina movie would be welcomed as the ending, but only asked NaruHina fans (like Kishimoto's assistant) they would have missed out on the fact that 75% of the fandom either didn't give a rats ass about ANY of the pairings, or were expecting NaruSaku.

what did they expect? they f**cked the manga up. kishis words made the manga seem like a lie that had been read for 15 years only to find that the manga features deception. an now a movie has totally f**cked it up

I think that's it.  

This was a gamble by SP.  They were banking on the fans of Hinata, and of the NaruHina pairing, being popular enough to overshadow the idea that the manga artist had lied to everyone.

It's a gamble that failed.  Most fans of Naruto were fans of a spunky little kid who had a tragic childhood, who swore to NEVER GIVE UP, who wanted to rescue his best friend and team mate from the darkness, and achieve his dream of someday becoming Hokage.

What The Last turned Naruto into was a broody teenager who gave up on the girl, and was content to let the best friend he rescued be absent doing whatever.  The character we all loved is gone.

What we wanted was one final unified adventure with ALL of Team 7, include Sasuke, doing badass ninja things.  What we got was poorly written NaruHina fanfiction.

What I think really happened:

1. SP decided on the Hinata movie two years ago based on character popularity

2. SP told Kishi of this decision

3. Kishi was a bit annoyed, but said he'd write more NH interaction in the manga

4. Kishi forgot to do this and/or ran out of time (never attribute to malice what can be blamed on incompetence)

5. Kishi got caught when he literally ran out of time to write anything at all hinting at NH, hence chapter 700

6. Kishi has spent the last month of interviews trying to BS his incompetence away

when NS becomes cabon, I swear to God I will buy all of Kishimoto's merchandise and I mean all of it.

I promised I'd buy a Kindle copy of every volume of Naruto if the movie ends NS.  (~ $350....)  And I'll take a screenshot of it and Tweet it to Kishimoto with a thank you in Japanese.