Such a cowardly excuse like that is why I'm unable to accept NH. The Last wrecked Naruto's character and did a great job turning him into an a-hole.
Not only did it make him out to be clueless and disconnected with his own feelings—when in fact he knew what he wanted right from the start—, he also saw Sakura as a trophy to be won because of his rivalry with Sasuke (even though Sasuke was never romantically interested in her to begin with).
How they managed to twist Naruto's genuine interest in Sakura into something so shallow and cheap still baffles me, especially since it was shown time and time again that had he'd seriously loved and wanted her from the get-go.
They didn't want Hinata to be seen as Naruto's "silver medal." Since chapter three of this 700 chapter manga we have known Naruto had some level of feelings for Sakura. Which meant that hinata as far as everyone knew; even if they got together was Naruto's "second choice." They didn't want that, and they didn't want the audience to think that. So the last's goal was to make sure hinata wasn't seen as the second choice. In order to do that they made her princess of the hyuga clan, the goddess of the moon, as strong as the six path sage, heir to six path sage's brother, constantly tried to make her look as pretty as possible, change their backstory, got Sakura to help push them together, the illusion, the contest between the scarves of motherly love versus true love, and so on.
The problem is that by doing so especially that speech Sakura gave to dismiss that Naruto ever had genuine feeling for her on any level. But by saying that his feeling for Sakura were a lie then that meant Naruto was lying about one of the first thing we learned about him for fifteen years. If he was lying about that; what else was he lying about? By doing what they did in the last they destroyed one of the most important parts about a story; the likability of the main character.
Edited by Bail o' Lies, 25 September 2017 - 04:05 PM.