RulesofNature

I find it generally a place to get a decent idea of what peoples general opinion of a character or a piece of media; just be aware there is bias. Though pages' like Kishi's are too be avoided because it clear someone making sure only a certain message is seen. Though in a way it still shows a general opinion. The nH fans that support the ending are still insecure about it. Honestly, if it was me I would have put all the ending bits in the YMMV page and instead used the interviews through out the years to fill the page with all the tropes kishi says are in his writing and try to make sure he came out as favorable as possible while still acknowledging his flaws.

 

Instead that page is just, "Hinata was always the true intended love interest ALWAYS Sakura was too hated too be with Naruto wait she was never considered a chance to be with him because it was always our princess goddess queen Hinata! HA HA HA AHAHAHAHA AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Oh and he really liked the video games and he forgot to really do a lot with certain characters which he somewhat blames on his editors."

 

Also the fact that interviewers keep asking Kishimoto about it means that it is the question they feel the fans want an answer to.

Pretty much this. Casual fans do not edit wikis, since doing that requires a higher level of investment than simply consuming the media. As such, they are always going to have some bias when it comes to their information. For real, I once saw a infamous Edelgard defender edit her fanwiki page, removing statements from the director that her path leads to tyranny while trying to paint her in a positive light, even using fanon to do so (ironically, TV tropes dismissed that specific bit of fanon, saying the game completely debunks it). And once those biases are in place, it's easy to gang up on someone trying to argue otherwise. You can have canon on your side or even hard facts but their narrative is in place and being spread, informing people less informed and even give them a bias if they do decide to check it out.

Naruto's goals were to win the Sakura's affection and become Kage. Neither of which happened in the end. The manga had one job...get the title character to end with his goals accomplished. One job....

 

I disagree about the Hokage bit. The thing is, Naruto started the series wanting the position but being Ash Ketchum-levels of ignorant about what it actually meant to be a ninja. Compared to some of the things we see happen to other kids or in other villages, Naruto had a pretty rosy childhood. But the issue is the story often forcused on this, this dehumanizing child-soldier creating system, and Naruto kept saying he would change it.

Way I see it, the story shouldn't have ended with Naruto becoming Hokage. The story should have ended with Naruto tearing down the system. He's seen what's it's done to people and should be fighting to stop it. Make him Ninja Jesus. Instead, he fought to protect it (because they needed a sequel) while his son wants to be the village's black ops guy.

Huh. Never thought of it like that. But they were proven wrong either way, And "their wet dreams" bias and forcing everyone to go with that bias has catastrophic consequences to this day 

True. This was just an attempt at guessing where they were coming from.

Even them trying to force the series to comply with their vision a bit of sense when we remember the American market isn't the same as the Japanese. Whereas in Japan the manga was more important with the anime being promotion for it, in America it was the anime that stood out during a period where anime was becoming bigger than it ever was before. Since they're the ones making the product that's bigger overseas rather than Kishimoto's version, they would have more of a leg to stand on arguing their vision was the one they should go with. Their version was the worldwide hit, and they pushed Hinata as the love interest so they thought Kishi should do the same thing.

So, I've been drinking.

SP were the ones who tried to make Hinata more prominent in Naruto, we all can agree to that. But I think a couple of posts ago I stumbled across why they did so. They believed she would become more prominent as the series went on. After all, she was introduced as a girl who was in love with Naruto despite nearly everyone in the village holding him in (admittedly somewhat deserved) low regard. That's a clear sign she should figure prominently into Naruto's future love life.

But the thing is, this was them acting upon an assumption. And as we all know, Kishi had no idea what the story of Naruto was going to be about. His ideas were vetoed by his editor, who pushed him into making essentially Shonen 101. This is back when the One Tail was a beast similar to the Kyuubi, rather than another member of the band. This is before Akatsuki, the retconning of the Uzumaki clan or Uchiha worship. They thought Hinata would figure into what was going to happen latter on rather than falling into even more irrevelence than Yamcha.

It honestly reminds me of a few anecdotes.

1) Detective Conan adapted an early case where the client was supposed to be killed by the Black Organization, but the anime changed it so she survived. All's well and good...until over a dozen volumes later her sister joins the cast with her death playing a huge role in the story. Whoops. So they had to reintroduce Akemi Miyano, kill her off, then introduce Haibara to advance the plot.

2) The relation between Power Rangers and the corresponding sentai has changed over time. While today they have the entire series they are adapting available to review and make plans for, during the original Saban era that wasn't the case. They often were making Power Rangers off a still airing season. This leads to cases like with them planning Power Rangers In Space around space travel due to seeing the robot for Megaranger...except Megaranger was based around technology and did not travel through space. Or how they wrote things for Lightspeed Rescue because it looked like certain villains would be more important, only for them to turn out not to be. Or even relatively more recently, with the Disney staff planning a dark, gritty series to save the franchise from the executives who wanted to kill it (moms didn't like it because it was too violent, this was just before Disney acquired Marvel and Star Wars). Then they were given Go-Onger, a super goofy series.

3) The head writer of Kamen Rider Ghost wasn't that involved with the series, leaving huge chunks of the series to be written by other writers. Then the head writer would come back and introduce something that would contradict what was already put into the series. Ghost is, well, Ghost is a mess because of this and other reasons (losing funding for Kamen Rider Amazons, or dropping how Ghost was originally supposed to fight because parents thought it looked too scary), and the head writer swears he will be more involved with Saber this year (which is a really, really bad series, I'd argue "so bad it's good" though).

I think it's funny that I see Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke, even Gaara merchandise but never Hinata's. Is Hinata as popular as her fans make her out to be?

Ehh. I'd say that as far as supporting characters go, Hinata was pretty popular. After all, it was her brief appearances in the manga that got SP all into her underaged ass, presumably because they thought she would end up being more important in the manga than she actually ended up being. HOWEVER, there is a world of difference between  being a supporting character and a main character and what it means for them to be popular.

Hinata never had what it took to become a main character, especially after they had to throw so much under the bus for her to become one.

I mean, what was the original pitch for Naruto again? He was the son of the fox, turned into a human child in a world with ninjas... I mean, there's a potentially good story there but it would take someone way above Kishi's writing skills to make it into a phenomenon. The final product ended up being Shonen 101, everything one would expect both good and bad out of one of those stories especially as the story changed hands.

I don't think it was so much a matter of luck.

Like my big take has been for a while now Naruto's success wasn't because of Kishimoto. It was because he had a good editor. An editor who knew what sold, and told Kishi what to do in order to get it to sell. I do maintain that said editor planted the seeds that would grow into the many problems the series had, but he at least had a clear vision for what the story should be. And when that editor left, the replacements all pushed for their own things in addition to SP, and since this wasn't Kishi's story in some regards, he allowed himself to be swayed just like he did with his original editor.

Kishimoto just created the product he was told to.

I mean, should we really be surprised? Sakura was always popular in Japan. As one of the core members of the story, she sold merch and was promoted above most of the other cast. And everyone knows she got a Montreal Screwjob at the end for Hinata's sake, doing promos for The Last that said she wasn't the heroine anymore. Promos that got fans very upset iirc.

They know she was betrayed by the staff, but they still want to support her. Especially considering her "replacement" has everything handed to her and is shilled like her name is Poochie.

Yep, exactly. Hayao Miyazaki said it best: otaku's continue to f*** up this industry.

 It's basically a formula for failure. Otaku don't make products for the general masses, they make products for otaku. They appeal to their niche, and that's what Hinata was. A niche. She didn't appeal to general audiences because stuff that caters to otaku tend to have that stigma. Like, some folks have to freaking realize that being an otaku isn't something you wear as a badge of honor in Japan. It's something you'll be ridiculed for, at best you can have some mild otaku inclinations and be safe. Hell, our weebs are horrifying to them from what I hear. We might see a lot of anime being produced now for otaku audiences, but they rarely ever make the kinds of money you get with a mass appeal show

When these guys came in and made the show cater to Hinata and her fanbase, that took away the mass market appeal. They sacrificed the story and the characters for this, and audiences reacted appropriately. SP and the editors, they were the ones who turned Naruto from a manga that was for general audiences to one whose audience was far more of a niche than they realized.

Clearly, the damage control or brand reputation management doesn't work.

The franchise lost 85%-90% of its revenue. Kishi's new manga flopped. Etc.

And the thing is, I don't know how they could ever undo the damage. It's not just the pairing, but so much of the writing has been devalued or twisted in order to keep the franchise going. Like, we can all point out various morals, good morals, that the series did a 180 on at the end. Stuff like hard work over natural talent, or that the ninja system turns people into weapons. Even the bonds of the characters have been shattered, because let me tell you reading the manga there's no indication that Hinata is anywhere close to the level of importance in Naruto's life than Sasuke is. They even killed off Neji in order to give NaruHina a moment, only to turn around and say that the moment didn't amount to much since Naruto didn't talk to Hinata again until years later.

It's a mess, there's no justification for what they did and nothing short of massive retcons, timeline BS, or the like will ever fix it.

I find it interesting how in Japan manga is the more looked at compared to anime in Japan, while in the West you probably find people watching anime more than reading manga. Which does explain alot about the western fanbase views on Naruto given how bad Studio Perriot was with the adaption and portrayal of some of the character's.

This may also be a bit of a cultural thing as well, as I find in countries like the USA and UK you will probably find people's knowledge about superheroes will mostly like come from the shows and movie adaptions rather than the comics themselves.

Same can be said for books with Harry Potter, Lord of the rings and a song of ice and fire which most will know as game of thrones given the TV show.

I'm going to explain something real quick.

When it comes to video releases, Japan is kinda still stuck in the VHS days where you could fit three episodes onto a single tape. When DVDs came out, this continued and they tried this in America. It didn't stick, so we started getting DVD sets with all the episodes whereas in Japan you still buy 3 episode blurays. And in Japan, one of those disks run around $60 iirc. $60 for three episodes whereas in America that would buy you an entire season of a show and, depending on the show, have a fair bit of change still in your pocket.

Manga, on the other hand, costs something like 650 yen per volume, you can read it anywhere, and recycle it if you don't want it anymore (or burn it if the writing goes to crap). Manga is just a lot more accessible, hence why some can sell thousands or even of copies despite having no anime like Dungeon Meshi. That series was selling 350k copies per volume in it's early days, and it's first four volumes reached combined sales of over 2 million.

As far as I know Naruto has long since faded from the public mind even in anime fanbases long before the ending. There have been a few people that talk about Boruto but mainly as they can't like it as much as they did Naruto and they eventually stop watching it.

 

I don't watch anime reviewer often. But from what I understand the big names have long since moved on, and even the ones that were the nH reviewers that convince Kishimoto to go with Hinata have largely stop talking about it because it doesn't get views. Only those reaction video  and the biggest speds like animeballsdeep still talk about it.

 

Now a days, if someone makes a video about Naruto its what went wrong...while avoiding criticizing anything about hinata. 

 

You will never see any of them say, "For the first nine years he had one editor Yahagi. After he was promoted the new editors wanted Hinata to become the love interest which kishimoto didn't want to do at first because for nine years the love interest had been Sakura. This led to arguments that led to kishi having to replace his editor a dozen time in about six years. The constant changing editors and the conflicts he had with them slowly lower the quality of the story." Instead you hear them talk about how their was less focused on characters they liked, the changing morals, the art style, the story, and so on

From my own experience, modern audiences either know to steer clear of the Naruto fandom for it's toxic shipping war, or they don't know anything about the franchise and what happened serves as a horror story to them.

 

Isn't that fandoms in all forms of media in generally?

I wouldn't say so. It's more what I call Standoms that engage in this, where they twist the story they claim to be fans of in order to suit their own wants and desires. They aren't fans of the story as it is or is intended to be. Fans can also acknowledge the negative aspects of their targets. For instance, I'm a fan of the Rising of the Shield Hero novels but I do think that the story started getting weaker following Vol 4.

The other day, was in Narutoforum's fan club section and entered to Luffy x nami thread and read a lots of the hate towar nami just because she hits luffy and start to think, the problem isn't Sakura it's the fandom, they want a waifu don't want a good story or a ship. Don't know why, but the problem i so much deeper than just a character maybe it's because of the fandom aren't capable of pick up some chick,or are really weirdos people. And thinks like these, just improve the assumption of this kind of crap.

It's more, how should I say this, people want anime to cater to them. They want stories that explain themselves through mountains of exposition, meanings clear as day, their ships to sail, all that jazz. I honestly believe that there's a distinct type of fans who actively rewrite the stories they are experiencing so that it says what they want it to say (and when the show doesn't do what they want, claim bad storytelling). Then they'll turn around and praise the writing when they get what they want.

In terms of DVD/Blu-Ray sales? No idea.
All I do know is that Japan blasted The Last with bad reviews. If Studio Pierrot didn't hire false positive reviewers, I'm pretty sure the rating would be lower than it is now. (Which is 2 1/2-3 stars?)

According to Someanithing, in theaters it sold ¥2,000,000,000 worth of tickets, compared to Road to Ninja's ¥1,359,163,387. This is also slightly above the first two MHA movies. But it's interesting that they pulled it after 5 weeks if I'm reading this right. The MHA movies stayed in theaters 6-9 weeks, much like One Piece or weaker Detective Conan films (both of which outsell Naruto). Even the two movies directly below it, Crayon Shin-chan's, stayed in 8-10+ weeks. I'll leave a link if anyone's curious

https://www.someanithing.com/268