My Living Curse

And that is why this is the catch-22

Either you say this scene is not important and cant be counted as SS development or you do count it and realize that the whole thing is one big fat lie and Sakura fell in love with a disguise and not the man himself.

Geez, iCarly did a better job at explaining this. "She is not in love with you....she is in love with what you did."

Which reminds me. There was an interview between Kishimoto and Shonen Jump back in 2006. And one of the questions/responses was quite interesting.

Shonen Jump: Which of your three students would make the best ninja instructor?
Kishimoto (talking as Kakashi): I think it would be Sakura. She has flaws in her personality, like stalking Sasuke. But Sakura is the closest to being normal. Naruto is stupid, and Sasuke is not a teacher-type. He keeps to himself.

Interesting how things turn out in 2014 huh? Also another little tidbit from that same interview.

Shonen Jump: Sakura and Rock Lee don't appear to have any of the special powers that ninja like Naruto, Sasuke, or Gaara have---do you think those two characters are popular because they provide a kind of reader's-eye view of the story as it unfolds?
Kishimoto: Is Sakura popular in the U.S.? Well, Lee only has Taijutsu. And as a girl, Sakura is physically weaker than the others. So I can see why it's easy to empathize with them. They represent human weaknesses.

Well, it's Togashi's fault that he coudn't develope Kurapika better.
*In Stallone's voice* You know, Obito was a great guy!

Correction. He was the COOLEST guy! *cough*

The plus side of the arc is they made sure Obito is the coolest guy ever.

If Naruto was a shojo about Hinata....then yeah, NH makes sense, but the manga was not called "Hinata"

A little unrelated to the topic, but since you brought that up hehe! 

Naruto: (Train hard, fight for your dreams, become Hokage and prove yourself. Okay cool, awesome start!)

It eventually becomes Sasuke Shippuden: "You're my best friend!". Then Sasuke Shippuden 2: "The Search for Sasuke". We also get Shikamaru Shippuden for a brief period (not as bad actually, pretty good arc). 

Then Naruto FINALLY makes something of himself by the time of the Pain Arc, restoring "some" dignity to the series, as we return to Sasuke Shippuden 3: "Return of the Emo Avenger". Then we get Madara/Rin/Coolest Guy Shippuden, and finally the on-going never ending prologue shoujo of Hinata-sama-Shippuden and her husband.

So again, WHY exactly is Naruto the main character again?

Kushina: Honey, I think he's talking about that creepy girl who, from what I've glimpsed from his memories, used to stalk him and could barely string together coherent words into a sentence when talking to him.

 

Minato: Wait, you mean that young Hyuga girl who tripped and fell on her face while our son was dying, whereas the girl I assumed was going to be our future daughter-in-law was saving his life?

 

Naruto: Yup, that's Hinata!

 

Minato: Kushina, please tell me that you told him not to-

 

Kushina:-fall for the first girl that liked him, especially if she was a weirdo? Yes, I did.

 

Minato:...Son, I think we're overdue for a talk.

Reminds me of this. Classic ain't it?

His getting beaten up was so unnecessary. What could he possibly have told them about Sasuke? He's a fire and lightning user? He has the same dojutsu that all strong Uchiha have? He can stab you in the lung with his hand?

 

It's really not inspiring to get beaten up over some generic "information I won't give you about my friend". It would be one thing if Sasuke was hiding somewhere and he knew where, but refused to tell anyone. Or if Sasuke had this great weakness that would instantly defeat him. He got his ass kicked for nothing.

 

It was like he was going out of his way to get beaten up just to show how much he loved Sasuke. Which is exactly what Kishimoto had in mind.

I agree. Exactly what info could he have said that common sense didn't already dictate? Besides, I use this manga panel a lot, but I still love how Sai tries to knock some sense into Naruto's potato head.    Falls on deaf ears though. 

Sai: " Sasuke has done nothing but hurt you"

Naruto: "I used to hate him. But Sasuke is my friend! We connected yay!

However, this even flows through another question is how did Sakura not know that Sasuke wasn't Sasuke in Chapter 3? If they are all ninja and they all know that you can disguise as someone else so easily in a casual sitaution and get away with it. Why didn't Sakura question chapter 3 in the first place wondering if that was really Sasuke or not? Obiviously, the personalities were different. He went from avoiding her to suddenly showing all kinds of affection and running away to take a dump? Doesn't sound like Sasuke to me. Not his usualy behavior.

I'd agree with Bail, she wanted to believe it was Sasuke so she went with that. Now if years later (if the topic was brought up) she would've figured something was off,  and she could've understood that was Naruto in disguise. But again, that would require "clever & consistent storytelling". *cough* 

Also wish Naruto's transformation jutsu  went off just as they were about to kiss. The reaction on both their faces would've been great! 

I mean I think Sakura would have more of a kinky side, way more than Hinata.

Hmm. Now that I think of it! 

yes of course, when I said that, I merely meant personality haha.

However, I would love to see a pink hair blue eyes girl tho! ^^ or a blond hair, green eyed boy! ^^

Oh I wasn't disagreeing. I hope I didn't sound that way.    I just added the thing about the eye colors! 

Given the genetics, I'd love to see those mix and matches!

It's a big deal because how the heck did he survive a ten tails tailed beast bomb (which are the equivalent of a nuclear bombs) and this could of easily used a minor living character instead like C from the cloud, Baki from the sand or even one of the many minor leaf chunin or jounin character the series has shown.

At this point, I don't think Logic is in play anymore. It was thrown away years ago. All the more reason to stay away from this franchise nowadays! 

For Shina, I would adore the idea of him taking after Sakura. I feel like he would excel more in his studies. I would love for him to go into ANBU, or even become a medical ninja like his mama! That would honestly be the best. I could see him watching a medical team go in and save a precious teammate or lil sister's life and then want to do that too. I feel like he would want to go that path. He knows his dads moves of course but as a medical ninja would use other tactics/strategies to be most effective.

The daughter, yes would be more like Naruto. I'm not entirely sure for hers without being an exact copy of Naruto's moves. Although it'd be cool if Sakura taught her how to control her chakra well enough to have incredible strength like her mama. I would have to give hers more thought hehe.

Frankly I'm a fan of the green eyes. They really went well with Sakura's hair    , they seem to also work well on Shina as well. If he developed a knack for medical ninjutsu as well that'd be a great plus! But I could see the daughter taking more after the mother.

I could see him being the more "intellectual" or steady/calm guy, more like Minato or Kakashi. A speedy genius, with the rocking hair of course! 

 

Problem is that writing his fights would require a lot more cleverness and creativity from the author than slapping the bad guy with a different colored/shaped rasengan, so he needed to be swept to the side for the greater good of mediocrity.

Oof! and we can't have that now can we.

Person 1: Hey, let's have a nice, cold, calculated fight about outsmarting your opponent!

Person 2: I like big colorful explosions.

Sounds like a Michael Bay movie! 

Gah I love this discussion about the potential NaruSaku family! *___*

Okay, so in terms of family, kids specifically, it depends for me. Sometimes I can picture their first child being a little girl, but I also love them having a little boy like Shina (who I do see being more like Minato, with Sakura's smarts, but Naruto's looks). I could see him, instead of wanting to be hokage, he would want to take a different approach and go into something like Anbu.

Either way, I always see the girl acting like Naruto more, and being a daddy's girl haha. I see Naruto spoiling her cause he won't be able to say no or like wouldnt seeing the problem with things she'd ask. I see Sakura being more the one who would keep them on task and get her to do stuff like her studies etc.

I can see Naruto similar, only I feel like he wouldn't be that tired from his work. I feel like Naruto would still try to make an effort with his kids. If he did have rough patches at work, I feel like Sakura would be a little more involved too since she was the apprentice to Tsunade so I think she would have more of a role, especially when we look how Tsunade ran the hospital for the most part and was Hokage. So I think Sakura taking care of the hospital and Naruto of course being Hokage would be ideal and make things run much more smoothly. This makes the most sense to me.

But yeah. Those are my thoughts.

My personal favorite picture! 

Still wish Naruto had his longer hair, but it's still some heartwarming art!

A real shame the final battle felt like a watered down DBZ fight instead. Imagine if that fight were instead a creative exchange of high level skills and strategy. Could've gone down as one of the most memorable battles in shounen. 

 Couldn't have said it better myself. And frankly, it's all the potential this manga had that hurts the most. Ah well. 

thing i hated the most; susanoo without eyes. no excuse for that.

It gets better. Remember when sealing each tailed beast into the Gedo Statue took 3 days for each, and longer when they had less than 10 members?

Madara did it all in like what, 10 minutes? He probably had enough time to grab a drink and a bag of chips! 

They were real bastards about it, especially considering they lost too since their ship "won", but it was a pyrrhic victory since Kishimoto didn't do any real development and the story got screwed to compensate for such a shoddy piece of crap, though they didn't obviously care enough about the story of Naruto to complain. 

Reminds me back in 2014 where we had those youtubers out there who were praising "The end of an era" , how Naruto and Hinata were "oh so perfect" and whatnot. Then you had them making videos about why they dislike Sakura (some still make these videos), or why NaruSaku makes no sense (especially ones where they'd take fanart and bash it), etc.

Fortunately there are quite a few videos out there that speak the truth, but they barely get the attention they deserve. Well aside from the completely toxic comment section.

 For us, it isn't about if our ship "won" or not, we also were in it for the journey, to see Naruto's story come to an end the right way.

Among all the issues the ending has, one that bothers me a lot is that we never get a Hokage ceremony for Naruto in the manga. You know, the dream he's had since the very start. 

The closest thing we got was that crappy OVA where they made it a joke. Naruto didn't even get to attend it.