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Kagomaru

Member Since 05 Apr 2014
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#990998 The Great Naruto Discussion Thread

Posted by Kagomaru on 18 March 2024 - 06:40 AM

What bothers me about neutrality with fictional romance and taking it for as it is that viewers often forget the context of such things. Yes Naruto is a shonen battle manga that does not focus on romance as a theme per say but again there always that difference from other shonen manga that don't care about romance and make couples last second or treat it as a joke at best. Naruto has ALWAYS had feelings for Sakura and it is not a silly childhood crush or a fleeting feeling that he was not serious about or else there would never have been a POAL in the first place. Naruto shows complete selflessness towards Sakura and maturity in putting her happiness above his own. Sakura in turn shows that in her worst circumstances when she is most vulnerable and lost and upset and powerless it was Naruto that comforts her and listens to her problems. that lays the very foundation of how close they become throughout the story. I'm not going to repeat the moments they have together because it would just be redundant at this point. Think of it like this, What if Rurouni Kenshin remained unchanged in it's story and plot but Watsuki decided last second that Kenshin is would be happier with Megumi as his wife because she is more feminine and does not emasculate him, or maybe she looks more like his first wife and chucks all that development with Kaoru out the window. That is essentially what Naruto did at the end, it chucked the development between Naruto and Sakura out the window for a side character that has no real importance to the plot and for the main character in general. What if Slam Dunk resolved the love triangle with Kaede getting together with getting together with Haruko despite not showing any affection for her and doesn't care about romance in general and Haruko saying Hanamichi was only shallowly interested in her? Again That is what Naruto did. Naruto is not like other shonen series in that there is not romantic development at all and the author can slap together couples however they feel last second and whatever pleases them. Naruto had a love interest and they developed together progressively throughout the series and they owe a large part of their growth to each other. Typical romance writing in fiction, even if there is not an emphasis on it. This is different from Dragon Ball where Goku had no such moments with Bulma so who cares if he married Chichi? 

 

I know I haven't posted for a while But I just want to put that out there. In terms of Neutrality, context is very important if not everything

Hell, a similar situation happened to Devil is a Part-Timer.  The author went through over 20 volumes of developing Mao and Emi's relationship, unambiguously showcasing how their former animosity towards each other gradually becomes mutual attraction (with Mao explicitly admitting to himself that he enjoys seeing Emi's smile and wished to always protect her happiness, with him even noting that the emotions she arouses in him are nothing that he's ever felt before). This includes them even co-parenting a child and even establishing that Mao had a shared history with Emi's family that dates back to him meeting her mother as a child.  But what does the author do?  He tosses that development in the trash and put the main male lead with the obsessive big-boobed highschool girl that he's never entertained a single romantic thought about beyond friendship because of shock value and his own fetish.  And what did this result in?  Japanese fans review-bombing the hell out of the final volume of the series and sending death threats to his Twitter and email account.  The second season for the anime adaptation that came out last year also became one of the worst rated anime of the year because of the crap that the author pulled in the source material.  So yeah, a good foundation does matter when developing a fictional romance.




#990993 The Great Naruto Discussion Thread

Posted by Kagomaru on 15 March 2024 - 02:36 AM

The Hinata heartbroken bit, that can be solved easily: have Naruto being honest with her in a private conversation, he is not interested in her romantically. It can benefit her to move on and find someone to be with her. She was never important in the first place. It was her fans (and some inside help) that were pushing her which resulted on how the franchise ended up now.

This, essentially. Not to mention that Hinata seemed perfectly resigned and content when she saw Sakura and Naruto embrace at the end of the Pain arc, which, at the time, seemed to symbolize her acceptance over their relationship. And it isn't as though unrequited love triangles haven't been a thing in shonen manga for decades now. By that logic, why is it okay for Naruto have his heart broken after pining after Sakura throughout the entire manga?




#990919 Whats your OTP now that NS was given the pipe?

Posted by Kagomaru on 06 February 2024 - 12:55 AM

Screenshot-2021-01-05-213015-e1609862715

Please Don't Bully Me, Miss Nagatoro! - Hayase x Naoto

And this is another of my OTPs that just became official.  Like, literally minutes ago.  I'm still giddy after reading the latest chapter.  This was one of the best love confessions that I've seen in a long while. :excited:




#990794 The Great Naruto Discussion Thread

Posted by Kagomaru on 28 November 2023 - 10:08 PM

Yep... and it worries me too.

Just don't watch it, and it'll quickly die off like Cowboy Bebop and the Titans.  One of the "virtues" of Netflix these days is that they are rather trigger-happy with cancellation if the audience reception is poor after the initial season. Especially for LA adaptations for anime and comics.




#990770 The Great Naruto Discussion Thread

Posted by Kagomaru on 25 November 2023 - 07:33 PM

NaruSaku represented one of the last (if not the only) bastions of truly good storytelling this series had to offer. As people have pointed out to you many times, the setup has been there since chapter 3.

This series has abandoned all attempts at meaningful storytelling, hence why Boruto is the universally acknowledged trash fire that it is. For all your sad efforts at appealing to popularity (i.e. hey guys, look at this random poll I found that ranks SasuSaku as the greatest anime pairing ever!), this is a truth you are utterly unable to ignore; your precious pairings coincide with a formerly universally popular series that has gotten so bad that an entire alternate future video game has to be released just so people might acquire some interest in the actual finished product. Whereas you see this and grow frustrated, I see this and smirk with vindication.

You keep your canon trash fire (where in recognition of how awful these characters have become, Naruto and Hinata literally become fodder for the ole stuffed in the fridge trope). I'm content with fan creations (art, doujin and fanfiction) celebrating not what is, but what could have been.

And I'm sorry, but there's no way that poll can ever be taken seriously.  NaruHina and SasuSaku ranking higher than TwiYor and Kirisuna is an absolute joke.  Especially when even the series itself has taken cracks at NaruHina by pointing out that Hinata is an incompetent mother via Naruto insulting her for abandoning their children in a crisis, to Toneri straight-out saying to Boruto that Hinata was a consolation prize for his father. 




#990716 The NEW NaruSaku Debate Thread

Posted by Kagomaru on 31 October 2023 - 06:23 PM

 

Honestly if they kept going with what nick Spencer did I'd see more people reading those comics. Granted they are rebooting ultimate spiderman under John Hickman telling a new adult spiderman I hear discribed of being like Peter B. Parker from spiderverse.

 
Where did he say this? If it was because of the ultimate universe, that logic would only work in a eleseworld universe without the main continuity like injustice.

Though etheir way I'm not suprised as bends has always had a mixed bag of a reputation with comicbook fans.

Nah, he made this statement years after he finished his Ultimate Spider-Man run.  And hack writers like Jason Aaron followed his lead by substantially altering long-established lore in Thor's mythos and dragging said-character's rep through the mud just to prop up Jane Foster. As for the new Ultimate Spider-Man: apparently, this version got his powers and became Spidey *after* he already had his own family.  Heck, they revived the original Ultimate Spider-Man a few years ago(don't ask why, just know that the explanation is stupid), and he's semi-retired from being a superhero while settling down with his Mary Jane.  Which is further galling and hypocritical since a major reason that they created Ultimate Spider-Man was because they were convinced Peter was more "relatable" when he was a highschool kid without any serious romantic relationships.




#990675 The NEW NaruSaku Debate Thread

Posted by Kagomaru on 05 October 2023 - 10:07 AM

 

Oh gee, I WONDER WHAAAAAT is wrong with the relationships........... (stares at the manga pre-692)

 

Surely it has nothing to do with it being pulled out of the @$$, incompatible personalities (Naruto is a man child and Hinata passively enables it) shallowness (Sakura drooled over Sasuke's HAWTNESS, and not him as a person, Hinata vicariously wanted to be confident like Naruto despite being branded as a failure, and never looked at him as a person either) lack of investment on the relationship on the men's part (Do Naruto and Sasuke look to be "in love with" their wives to you?) etc. etc. IT'S ALL IN OUR HEADS, BECAUSE WE ARE SALTY STUPID NARUSAKU FANS, that don't appreciate the genius of the story that is Naruto Uzumaki falling in love with his soulmate, Hinata Hyuga!!!!!!!!!  :zaru: *Blow my brains out* 

 

Serious question. Does anyone else here feel it is too late to complain now? As I stated years ago. Just give it a rest and move on. I wonder why anyone sticks with the series at this point if they realize or already understood how bad it is currently. All of this analysis of the NH's and SS' relationships is done to death and guess what, you don't need to be a certified RELATIONSHIP THERAPIST to see what is wrong with these couples. This is old news to anyone that actually reads manga/watches anime on the regular or actually sits down to think "IS THIS what I want in a relationship?"

 

*I'm not aiming any of this at you you Bluestar, Just want to make that clear*

 

True enough.  The only thing revelatory about the repeated analyses is that a wider portion of the western fandom seems to finally be catching on and accepting what we've been saying here for nearly a decade now: That NaruHina x SasuSaku are toxic, stagnant, and incompatible. Also, that the "Hinata is a goddess" rhetoric seems to be fading.




#990618 The Great Naruto Discussion Thread

Posted by Kagomaru on 21 September 2023 - 10:50 PM

I disagree that TV Tokyo and the studio have nothing to do with it. They completely changed the dynamic of the romance in Blue Dragon when they decided to make the anime.

What I disagree with you on is that TV Tokyo was collaborating with Studio Pierrot to have that happen, not that Studio Pierrot has nothing to do with it.  What happened to Blue Dragon is purely SP's initiative, because as they've shown us throughout Naruto/Boruto's run, they have established a notable precedent of bias when it comes to their depiction of assertive women vs non-confrontational, big-boobed fanservice. With Blue Dragon,  they did more than rewrite the romantic dynamic of Kluke and Shu's relationship, they completely altered Kluke's character into a tsundere for no apparent reason and made her a healer instead of an offensive magic caster as she is the original canon of the games.  Whereas with Bouquet, aside from her being an anime-original character created by Pierrot for fanservice and to be nothing but an obsessive love interest for Shu, her ability literally revolved around her getting butt-naked and then later on, she got the power to transform into whatever she sees (including a version of Kluke with a larger bust, which is SP's infantile way of saying "Shu doesn't need the real Kluke since our OC can become a better/sexier version of her if she wants to") and copy any Shadow power that she wants. You even have the villains of the series constantly commenting on how hot she was during the series' run. In other words, she was a complete Mary Sue.

 

Then you got Twin Star Exorcist, where they made Mayura (the soft-spoken, big-boobed childhood friend of Rokuro, the male protagonist) seem more important in the anime than she actually was in the manga, and even tried to suggest that Rokuro had feelings for her when he's completely oblivious to her and primarily focused on Benio in the source material.   They even mildly attempted this in Black Clover's anime adaptation at first before they were shut down by Tabata, who's one of the few Japanese creators to openly confront and criticize any changes to an adaptation on social media.

 

Point that I'm making is that this is all SP's prerogative, where they take liberties to facilitate their own barely concealed fetishes when it comes to female characters.




#990591 Whats your OTP now that NS was given the pipe?

Posted by Kagomaru on 16 September 2023 - 09:14 AM

So, after playing the absolute hell out of Tales of Arise,  I come out of it with three new canon ships representing different facets of the NaruSaku relationship:

 

Alphen x Shionne

 

Law x Rinwell

 

Dohalim x Kisara

 

__shionne_kisara_alphen_rinwell_fururu_a

Just re-affirming my love for these ships after the trailer for the expansion/sequel of Arise dropped the other day.  I'm looking forward to seeing what Alphen and Shionne's dynamic has become after a year of marriage and to see if Law x Rinwell and Dohalim x Kisara has developed.




#990581 Whats your OTP now that NS was given the pipe?

Posted by Kagomaru on 10 September 2023 - 02:40 PM

They about to become cannoooooooo!

Honestly, they've been canon for 30 or so chapters that at this point,  a confession is merely a formality.  They do nothing to hide their affection and attraction towards each other even among their friends and family, and everyone just treats them as a couple.  Not to mention that by Chapter 122, they're both more or less aware of each other's feelings.




#990576 Whats your OTP now that NS was given the pipe?

Posted by Kagomaru on 09 September 2023 - 09:05 PM

Screenshot-2021-01-05-213015-e1609862715

Please Don't Bully Me, Miss Nagatoro! - Hayase x Naoto




#990507 The NEW NaruSaku Debate Thread

Posted by Kagomaru on 24 August 2023 - 01:46 PM

 

Did the author try to deceive fans who preferred the 'Narusaku' relationship, instead of developing the 'NaruHina' couple? If this was indeed Kishimoto's intention, I find that he is much worse at developing romance than I had imagined. I believe he attempted to emulate romantic elements from 'Slam Dunk', but in the end, he seemed to adopt the approach of 'Akira', where unexpected couples were formed at the conclusion of the work.
 
An example of a couple that surprised many was Vegeta and Bulma, which became quite popular, unlike Sasuke-Sakura and Naruto-Hinata, which grew less and less popular. If he wanted to avoid scrutiny, it would have been simpler for him to not explicitly demonstrate the protagonist's feelings, as was the case in 'Bleach'. However, even this approach had its complications for the author.

 

No, Kishimoto wasn't trying to gaslight anyone.  The quote that I posted is just the desperate, self-deceptive rationale that NaruHina fans clutch to because acknowledging the alternative - that it only came about because he was forced -, is too bitter a truth to accept.  He's stated in the past that he doesn't understand Hinata's appeal and that he resisted when people tried to convince him to replace Sakura with her as the lead heroine.  Add to that, he confirmed that Sakura's confession to Naruto was genuine, to say nothing of the numerous parallels that he's drawn between between them and other relationships in the series. (Rin/Obito, Jiraiya/Tsunade,  Sakura's parents as well as his own)

 

Then you have his father directly comparing Sakura to his wife,  Naruto introducing her as his girlfriend (with her not even denying it), saving Naruto with the Kiss of Life, etc.  You don't put that much ridiculous effort into structuring and developing a relationship with a clearly romantic tint for hundreds of chapters, just to go "Psyche!  The real heroine/love interest is the side character chick who contributes absolutely nothing to the overall series and barely interacts with the protagonist because boobs and men love submissive females! Kakakakaka!"  He wasn't even involved with the Last aside from the movie novelization and there, he illustrated that Naruto's feelings for Hinata were out of obligation for not realizing that she was in love with him.  Dude has even gone on record of saying that the NaruHina couple is "born out of pity for Hinata". 

 

And if NaruHina was planned, then he wouldn't go out of his way to show how dysfunctional their family dynamic is or how miserable and negligent Naruto himself is as both a husband and father.




#990498 Whats your OTP now that NS was given the pipe?

Posted by Kagomaru on 23 August 2023 - 09:29 AM

__princess_leona_dai_and_gome_dragon_que

 

 

Dai x Leona - Dragon Quest: The Adventures of Dai.




#990487 The NEW NaruSaku Debate Thread

Posted by Kagomaru on 21 August 2023 - 10:02 AM

 

Where did you get that quote from?

 

They have to: "The answer that is simple. Kushina and Minato have a happy health perfect relationship made even clearer by the one-shot. That are suppose to foreshadow how Naruto's relationship will end up as well as who he ends up marrying.

 
There is an old adage that one will end up marrying someone like their parents. Clearly that was at work in Naruto.
 
Sakura's father was a goofy man so Sakura should end up marrying a goofy Naruto. Naruto's mother was hot tempered, so he should marry the hot tempered Sakura.
 
MK and NS were both based off Kishimoto's own relationship. MK is just more mature, further along, and doesn't have the conflict Sasuke brought to it. The only problem they have, that was introduced by the one-shot, is that Kushina is trapped in a barrier. Which its implied Minato eventually solved by both strengthen her seal, and getting rid of that law so they could always be together.
 
So again, 'The Story of Naruto,' implies that Naruto will live a happy life if he gets into a relationship like his parents had. Obviously that being NS, you have to be either an idiot or deliberately refusing to accept that to not know that. So, the nH fans want to convince both themselves and everyone else that, it wasn't NS that MK was foreshadowing and paralleling to but nH. Sarcasm: Because, it so obvious to everyone that Hinata is exactly like Minato and/or Kushina. Also, ignore that fact that Kushina has cease to exist in Boruto to help bury the fact that, Hinata is nothing like her."
 
If it wasn't subversion. Then its even more clear that it was last minute and wasn't planned.

 

It's a quote from a post at the CloTi blog that I frequent.  The poster was trying to gaslight the blogger (who does not read or watch Naruto) by establishing a false equivalency between Clerith and NaruSaku on the basis that the line from the OG FFVII about how Cloud's mom wanted him to get with a "mature woman who would keep him out of trouble"  is the same as when Kushina told Naruto that he should marry a girl similar to her (or in other translations, not marry the first "weird girl" that shows an interest in him). Basically arguing that it is meant to be a subversion of the MCs going against their parents' wants by getting with women that differ from what their mothers suggested, which is completely off the mark. The comparison is flawed simply because the poster misinterprets that Cloud's mom was describing Aerith (because of the mistranslated "older" line and was properly translated in the Remake), when the conversation was all about Tifa(who Cloud has been in love with since he was a kid). So, in both cases, it's actually foreshadowing of who they would end up with in the future(or in Naruto's case, who he would've been with if not for Shueisha and Pierrot's executive meddling).     

 

It's sad that the poster clearly believes in that "It was planned from the beginning"  schtick that anyone who actually followed Kishimoto's interviews(or just read the manga without NaruHina shipping goggles) would know were BS. 




#990485 The NEW NaruSaku Debate Thread

Posted by Kagomaru on 21 August 2023 - 09:37 AM

Wow, and NaruHinas are clutching onto that "The Kushina-Sakura connection was a deliberate red herring that's common in shonen" rhetoric even now and is trying to gaslight a CloTi fan (who doesn't watch or read Naruto) into believing it.

 

 

This is a common shounen dynamic (for the MC to fullfill their parent's wishes) that often serves the purpose of giving misleading hints. Like, in the Naruto manga, at some point he meets his dead mom and she tells him to find a gf with her own personality. Then everyone started thinking it was foreshadowing for canon NaruSaku. Same thing happens later when..

 
 
 
2.Naruto meets his dead father, Sakura’s beside him healing his wounds and the dad thinks Sakura’s his gf and tells her to take good care of his son. In the end Naruto never ended up with Sakura but with Hinata. NaruSaku was always meant to be a misleading ship (the author himself admitted it) with the sole purpose of spice things up. But people who didn’t let themselves being fooled, noticed that already

 

 

What's hilarious is that they conveniently leave out that Naruto was already crushing on/in love with Sakura long before his mother ever appeared and made her statement.  It had literally nothing to do with any projected need to appease his parents. It was long established that he and his father had the same taste in women.