Bail o' Lies

Right. Let's get to it. Before anything else lets look at how Sasuke and Sakura got together.

He had just lost his arm, reflected on what he had been doing, and admitting defeat. When Sakura appears after some pondering he apologizes to her for how he behaved. Then he leaves for his wandering to find atonement and implies to start a relationship with her.

Sasuke felt sorry for how he treated Sakura, so he got together with her to make up for it. Since, she was in love with him. That doesn't mean he ever fell in love with her.

What happened after they got together? Well, he kept on wandering to the point he spent 12 years going out of his way to not see his wife or daughter. (And as a kindness, I am only considering the manga. Where at least he didn't enter the village during those years; just going to his and Naruto's private tower for their 'rendezvous.' In the anime, even in the first arc, he was constantly in and out of the village and still avoided his family at all cost.)  After he stopped doing that, while he cares for his daughter, he never mentions his wife Sakura. Seriously, after Kodaichi left she cease to exist in the manga.

Now. Lets look at Sasuke's thoughts and behavior around Sakura.

The Bench scene he chewed her out for her rude comment.

Before the Chunin exam, he chewed her out for focusing on trying to get a date with him, instead of training as she had fallen behind Naruto as far as he was concern.

Him leaving the village, he makes it clear, he doesn't have any romantic feelings for her, while he did enjoy the time he spent on team 7, she is not that important to him, and he only cares about revenge and is willing to abandon everything to get it.

After leaving the village he doesn't comment often on his feelings towards Sakura, because as far as he was concerned he made it clear how he felt about her and ended their bond when he left the village. However, both times he meets her, he tries to kill her, and people around them note; he has no hesitation in his attempts. If people didn't stop him, he would have killed her at least three times.

693. Kakashi asks why Sasuke mistreats Sakura so much when she loves him. Sasuke makes it clear he doesn't love her, doesn't understand why she loves him, he himself doesn't understand what she sees in him to make her like him, and thinks she is just delusional.

So Sasuke doesn't hide the fact that he doesn't like Sakura and he thinks she should stop chasing after him. He doesn't say it all the time when they are teammates because its rude, but he will say his peace if he feels prompted. Once he leaves the village, he just stops caring about Sakura seeing her as nothing more than a deranged annoyance.

So how would if Sasuke didn't leave the village go? Well, they were only on an active team for a short amount of time before Sasuke left. The time between Sasuke leaving and the end of the War arc is about 3-4 years. While that may be three to four years to bond and fall in love...That is also, three to four years for Sasuke to get tired of constantly telling her, "leave me alone, I don't like you, and I don't want to date you." Till he finally snaps and ask her why she even likes him. She tells him about the bench scene. He tells her that it was Naruto.

Also Naruto held himself back for all those years due to his promise of a life time. No promise, means he is free to try and win Sakura's love.

The difference between Naruto and Sakura in this scenario. Is that Naruto will continue course of training and growing stronger. Sakura will likely languish as while she has the desire to grow stronger, she only got the drive after seeing Naruto injured trying to fulfill his promise to her. That doesn't happen, she likely won't go to Tsunade for training and languish in mediocrity. Which will keep making her look worse in Sasuke's eyes. Making it less likely for him to grow fond of her, but more disgusted with her.

So the answer is No. NS was suppose to happen but the pairing changed at the last second. Sasuke always disliked Sakura and didn't want together with her till a mandate order them to get together. Leaving or staying wouldn't have changed anything.

Damn, telegraphed since the chapter of "death". So much for so little...

I think that it was an option but wasn't planned and they were forced to add it to give the daughter powers. So she could fight and be a main character. Of course whether I am right or wrong, this is very by the numbers and generic.
 
To make my thoughts on this a bit clearer. "Do you believe they planned to give the daughter Kurama when they killed him?" That would require Ikemoto to care about another Next Generation character Kishimoto made, besides Bolt, enough to want to do a story with them.
 
Part Two has been Ikemoto addressing problems people had with part one to appease his bosses. One of those being that most of the casts' presence in the manga has been nonexistent.
 
For example, remember Neo-team 7 members Cups, Salad, and Konohamaru barely existed in part one and they were suppose to be part of the main cast along with Bolt and Nail. Konohamaru barely existed, even before Nail appeared, that it would be easy to forget, that he is suppose to be the Team Captain and Jonin Sensei. Therefore, the main cast main teacher and adult role model. Now, he may be involved only because Moegi has been absorbed and one of the tree people wants to eat him. Cups pretty much just hanged around Salad and they barely even talked about let alone developed his story with his "Sun" Bolt; until part two. For Salad, they seemed to actively want her to have nothing to do in the story till the very end of part one, where she is now in the lead to be Bolt's love interest. 
 
So going off that. She was at best intended to be Moe's civilian love interest, before the executives had enough.
 

Sorry wasn't sure anyone was going to comment

Honestly, it not much of a problem one could already guess it would happen from last chapter and once you talked about spoilers (which means it was something that either interested or pissed off people enough to talk about.) It was clear what it was. I more just reminding of my policy of not looking at spoilers till the summary so it is an honest reaction and thought at the time. Then edit to fix mistakes. I needed to do something yesterday so I had to cut the ending short and came back to it.

https://myanimelist....514#msg70751514

gotta love how the minato manga brings us ns fans out of the woodwork

...Again, Other because you watched it, you assume Kishimoto must have watched it, and been inspired by it. When there has never been mentioned of it in any interview. 

What has been mentioned is Slam Dunk, (and how it inspired the Naruto-Sakura-Sasuke dynamic,) which I assume you haven't read/watch.

Other there is a difference between speculating that Kishimoto may have been inspired by something and declaring it to be true. There is no evidence of him being inspired by that dragon quest anime, there is of him being inspired by Slam Dunk.

Crimson Fox, the assistant is Ikemoto that "volunteered" to work on the Boruto manga, which is a massive failure. However he has been dealing with a burden that should have been Kishi's for the past ten years. To openly stab him in the back would pretty much blacklist him from the industry as no one would be able to trust working for him. If there is to be a rewrite of the ending it has to be handled carefully. Granted I get the increasing feeling that the various companies are tired of Boruto's poor performance.

For stories it always best to go for a simple answer only going more elaborate when the simple doesn't fit.

No matter what it quite clear that Kishimoto didn't really look into his fanbase, more than he was told by others, till after the ending.

Just so everyone understands Slam Dunk is considered THE SHOUNEN SPORTS MANGA. The one that set the standard that all sports manga follow after. It also still one of the most profitable manga ever and I think still in the top ten. It was huge in the 90s.

Phantom/Kagomaru, people don't like the rug pull out from under them. If they get invested in a story they want a satisfying pay off. Part of that for romance if a manga spend years building up a couple they expect them to get together. That not happening greatly annoys the sexually frustrated Japanese.

Other, Kishimoto has never mentioned the Dragon Quest anime you watched as his primary inspiration for Naruto in any interview. He has mentioned that the NartuoXSasukeXSakura dynamics were based off of Slam Dunk. Which I assume you have not watch/read. Hanamichi Sakuragi was a dumb punk that falls in love with Haruko Akagi an avid basketball fan that has a crush on the ace's of her high school's basketball team the gifted Kaeda Rukawa. To win her affection Sakuragi joins the team and is rivals with Rukawa. In Slam Dunk, none of them end up together at the end. Rukawa was never interested in Akagi, and Sakuragi eventually became more interested in focusing on basketball. So if Haruko got together with Sakuragi, She would have been Haruko Sakuragi. Haruko Sakuragi. Haruno, Sakura. Sakura Haruno.

Crimson Fox, it is clear that you have given a lot of time to thinking deeply into why the ending happen, and you hope that Kishimoto's reasonings were just as deep to justify your contemplations.

The simple truth is this. Kishimoto did not have any long term story with tons of intricacies. His story is quite simple. For most of the characters of Naruto, unless they managed to hold his interest, their initial story was all they were going to get. 

For Sakura that means, near the end of the manga she would discover that Naruto was the one that gave her the forehead comment and fall in love with him. Of course plans change, as there was a change in how girls are portrayed in shounen, going from rarely fighting and mainly just hit the main character comically, to can and will fight while still hitting the main character comically, but that meant Kishimoto never really knew what to do with her beyond that. As he never fully understood the change nor embraced it.

Yahagi was Kishimoto's editor until right before the Pein arc. He was his editor for about 10 years when the average is 2. After Yahagi, Kishimoto went through 14 different editors in 5 years. Rumors have it that after Yahagi his next editor was a big fan of Hinata even wanting her to become the love interest/heroine and was the one pushing her to have the scenes she got in the Pein arc.

You seem to think that just because they didn't get together after the Rescue Gaara arc that Kishimoto abandoned it right then and there. When again, it was more him wanting them to get together at the end of the manga. If they did end the pairing at that arc. Why did Sakura have the moment when Naruto was in 4-tails? Why did she try to feed him ramen after the Shikamaru arc? Why she hug him after Pein? Why did she keep having scenes like that till near the end of the manga? The answer is again, they were suppose to get together until Kishimoto was 'convinced' to change it at the last minute.

Sakura is Kishimoto's type. He married a woman that everyone says is very like Sakura.

Kishimoto has said multiple times he does not get the appeal of Hinata, but went with her because he was told she was what the fans wanted. He understand why people like SS and thinks it's cliche. That might have changed after seeing how far Naruto-Boruto has fallen, but he can't do anything right now without it look like he is stabbing his former assistant in the back.

As for the Japanese fanbase...what has happened to Star Wars is a good analogue. Naruto's manga average sale was 3.47 million. Boruto averages out at around 100k. The SS manga got about 50K. Most of the Japanese fanbase either understand that the ending was a move to appease the Western Fanbase, or just assume it was his intention. Either way most have moved on with only nH and SS really staying around, with SS being the larger one by far.

@Bail I know it wasn't the first one, but it's the first one that I've heard about actually being liked by people.

 

That is true the quality in the west as I said really took a massive nosedive that even something mediocre is viewed as good.

 

Imagine people liking a woman for looking like a woman, and not a man. What a world we live in.

 

The Naruto movie I just find it too late and not what we or "Naruto" needed. It just feels like once again them reading the room wrong and not bothering to listen.

 

The last part, I don't even know what to say dude. In a world of DEI and ESG what you said fits like a glove. And it's likely.

 

 

@Blue So it does look like they actually did something well. Again I've only heard from people who didn't follow the manga and also got tired of the decline in stories in these past years in entertainment.

Just making sure. It is the only one they have done that hasn't bombed.

The problem is that the decline is somewhat intentional and somewhat going too far by accident.

BlackRock and Vanguard are two major investment companies. One of their owners has said multiple times that he wants to control the media people view, so he can change their world views; into what he wants it to be. Western Media Companies go along with it because by this point they are full of useless risk-averse executives without an ounce of creativity, and the investment companies are offering guaranteed money for any project they agree with. They hire non-straight white male people regardless of skill, talent, or experience maybe worse in spite of a lack of it; to produce media for "the modern audience." Of course they are informed they have only been hired because they are not straight white males, and just to produce anything. So they barely put any effort into it or lack the talent, skill, or experience to make anything good. Often times this so call "modern audience" is just themselves. 

In short. The investment company just gives them the money, the company spends the money while not bothering with any quality control, and the staff half ass it. So they produce products no one wants beyond themselves. This 'worked' for awhile, when the economy was good, but now its collapsing and the investment company can't give the media companies enough money to say afloat.

The thing is just because they produce something to lower the standards of the customers. Doesn't mean everyone lowers their standards and blindly consume their product. The customer may just refuse to buy and take their money elsewhere. While also being happy when another comes along and respect them by giving them what they want.

For an example. One of the things they want to change is the standards of beauty. They think the current media makes women too unrealistically beautiful and wants to make them more "realistic." How the West goes about it in video games is taking a model based on a real woman and make the character deliberately ugly. People are able to both question & criticize this by just finding a photo of the model they uglified. When they were just suppose to accept the character as what someone actually looks like, and suppose to consider beautiful.

One of the hot games coming out is Stellar Blade. Which has an attractive woman in a tight cyber-suit. People including Western game developers accuse it of being sexist and the female character being obviously fake. The Korean developers show that the model is mostly one to one between the real life model and the character model.

Now onto Naruto. This Lionsgate movie was 'started' ten years ago. Nothing happened till now, because of the collapse of Naruto's popularity after the ending; until One Piece LA happened. Then likely the narrative of, "hey, One Piece was this obscure anime no one knew about and look how successful it adaptation was. What if we do a live action of Naruto the King of International sales for anime?" Nos, you said most of the people you know that keep talking about One Piece weren't fans of the anime or manga. Why can't the same happen for Naruto? Now will it work?...who knows.

Looks like with have an actual update on the live action naruto movie in that the guy who did shang chi is do it https://www.google.c...1235833511/amp/

...So the guy that did that Marvel movie that was a love letter to China, which was largely considered average/mediocre and forgettable. Well, the cast might actually be/have Asians, instead of vaguely ethnic brown people. So will awkwafina be playing Sakura or Hinata? Since, she is the young Asian actress/singer/comedian they keep shoving into everything.

Since, I know nothing else about the guy. I assume Naruto will be remade, "for modern audiences," and it will at best be average and forgettable.

I think you need some deaths in for some suspense otherwise the conflict wouldn't look threatening. Heck it could even just be some recurring minor characters like those minor leaf chunin or jonin we see, some of the relatives like hiashi dying to protect neji and hinata or at least maybe knowing because he is old. As for the case with guy would of served the mentor death for Lee to grow and frankly naruto nre healing power made sakura look irrelevant for alot of people.

The problem with the War arc isn't a lack of death, its the lack of meaning. Who cares if a character lives or dies if they do not matter in the story?

From what I recall didn't the manga say like 50,000 ninja died during the war. Did those deaths make the story more meaningful, threatening, realistic, and so on? No? That is because, those death's didn't matter. A big problem in Naruto is a lot of the characters (even fan favorites) do not matter. You can kill off 99% of the cast if you want and it won't affect the story that much because they are just that unimportant.

So If I were to change something about the war arc, it wouldn't be to have more characters die. Its to do what I posted above; to have the cast have their final trials to show their growth and what they are going to do after the story is over.

So no deaths in the war, including might guy?

Yes. For Guy he lived to show off Naruto's new power he got from the sage. OK.

Now what you are suggesting. Instead he died. OK. Its doesn't change that much in the story. Even the sequel. I guess people will call it deep meaningful realistic some other buzz word, that he died after giving his all fighting Madara but he was done either way in his involvement in the story. So his life and death is an unimportant coin flip by that point.

The problem with the War arc isn't the lack of death; its that it is largely pointless filler fights. The war again should have been the final trial for the cast; strengthens their resolve to do whatever they are going to to after the story. The problem is the cast is so underutilized and underdeveloped it didn't happen, but it also doesn't matter if they lived or die because they don't have much of an impact on the story either way.

Neji's death matters because was one of the few characters with a story and his death allowed his intended fiancé to latch on to the only other story she had; her feelings towards the main character.

I meant who should have died in the war in general, not only among the k11

And again for a third time, none. They all should had an individual reform that they wanted to work on to change the ninja system. Kishimoto didn't develop them, so most never really had any reforms they wanted to work on. So the ending and the sequel had to scramble to give some for them to do. But that failure doesn't mean the cast needs to die.

A character journey's end does not only mean the only path is their death. It can just be the completion of a goal.

Again, as Nos said. The thing is the none of the K11 should have died during the war arc. The war arc should have been the cast final challenge that strengthen their resolve to go about their individual reforms. The problem is they are so underdeveloped and underutilized that it doesn't happen. So, the War arc is largely filler to pad out the manga's length.

Here is an obvious example of what should have happen with Neji. Hinata's and Neji's fathers fight it out. Hinata's father loses to his brother due to some reason. Neji and Hinata step in. Neji shows off moves that are only taught to the clan's heir. His father realizes that his brother is grooming his son to be the next clan head by marrying Hinata. After he is defeated and is being seal away. His brother, son and future daughter in law all show their resolve to reform the clan. Yes, it makes clear by this point Hinata should have moved on from Naruto. He thanks and forgives his brother, apologizes to Hinata, and gives some fatherly advice to Neji; all the while lamenting he won't be able to go to their wedding but he will be watching and always be with them.

Here is one for Sakura. She fights Naurto's grandmother, that as a joke looks exactly like a mature version of his sexy jutsu minus the whiskers marks. This leads into two jokes during the fight one, Sakura constantly thinking about how she will never let Naruto use that jutsu again because it will embarrass their...I mean his daughters and two, how there is no way she is Naruto's grandmother as that would make the Fourth his father and Naruto would have told her about something that big. Grandma Namikaze didn't approve of Minato and Kushina and hopes they didn't get together before she died young; when Sakura finally just asks if Minato knew any girl from the Uzumaki clan. Which annoys Sakura, causing her to fight harder to defend her man...wait not man; she meant friend, just friends. When she is defeated and being sealed away Naruto comes in, she instantly realizes that he is her grandson, and through some quick banter between him and Sakura realizes she is her future granddaughter in law even if Sakura won't admit it yet.

What Nos said. Anyways, its not like most of them are that involved enough in the manga story to add anything beyond shock value; beside Shikamaru.

Who would care if Kiba or Shino died?

Hinata's death would mainly just be to end "her story." So, her obsessive fans working in the anime staff can no longer keep trying to make her the core of the story.

Chouji? Kishimoto already killed Asuma for Shikamaru's growth.

Lee was pretty much replace by Gai in part two; so why bother.

Tenten is not that important; besides the Lee Spin off manga.

I guess Ino the only one because her death would affect Sakura.

Holy, there is some takes in that thread, even fans of it call for Infinite Tsukuyomi reboot, lol

And 90k sales for 20th volume? Not horrible, but it's surely not a heavy-hitter from Naruto days at all.

It is average for most manga, far below average for a Shounen jump manga to the point it probably would have been cancelled long ago if it wasn't protected, and an embarrassment for a sequel to a story that was once #2 of all manga IPs.

I think it has started to sink in that while part two despite being better than part one. Mainly due decent pacing and seeming to have something of a plot this time. Is still going to be a dull waste of time, at best. It is going to be Bolt fighting those tree-men, Nail still trying to kill Bolt for stupid reasons at this point, Punk being a nuisance, and none of the characters people care about mattering, again. So, it would be better to just reset than waste another 3-4 years on this failure.

Well you can't fix what's already broken beyond repair. And this goes for Netflix and doing a live action Naruto, its going to flop big time but again if they do make Naruto and Sasuke gay for each other. Well we can have a great time laughing at the NH fans who will most likely have a fit over this.

More funny if Hinata gets cut out altogether since this is a female director doing this and yeah look at what woke feminists have done recently to others franchise.

The only way to fix Naruto-Boruto is to reset before Boruto existed. Even the supporters of nH/SS know that, and Boruto has existed for as long as their parings have been canon. The pairings will depend on the writing staff.

A female character with Hinata's level of notoriety getting cut? Hollywood does not remove female characters they have a problem with, they 'modernized' them.

Like I said before, 'what they do with Hinata largely depends on, do the women in the writing staff see themselves in her?' Granted even they don't, they will just change her into them. In doing so, they will probably see parts of Hinata as sexist (her breast/submissiveness/devotion towards Naruto) and remove them, while highlighting the parts they like (the anime version of her charge against Pein with less focus on Naruto, her fight against Neji with less cheering from Naruto, and slapping Naruto after Neji died.) RTN-Hinata is a very likely possibility of what a live action Hinata will be.

 I think you are going a bit over the top with the woke stuff there. At best I can see them making naruto and sasuke gay, because of how that writing made it look that way and in kohona team gai and the hyuga will probably be more portrayed by Asian actors given they are based on those cultures.

There will probably be more diversity found when the do ninja from other villages because they are from other countries I feel at best or at least do background character that are more diverse or just minor characters no one will care about.

Though even if all the live actions relationships are gay, it be a lot better than the canon romance unless they put in effort to change the romance, though given lionsgate is the same studio that did twilight I'm not hopeful in this aspect

There are now possibly two live action adaptation going on right now. The Lionsgate movie and the Netflix tv show, because of the success of One Piece.

I was being very moderate with my prediction going off trends in modern adaptations.

The cast being Asian is surprisingly unlikely. I avoided race prediction besides Naruto and Sasuke mostly because it is a toss up to what ever the director/writer/producer thinks will be the most progressive and virtuous in order to receive praise and accolades at Hollywood parties. Mostly Blacks and Browns, "in order to reflect the world we live in today." Asian aren't really seen as that progressive for casting.

Ideally: The Leaf would be Asian mainly Japanese, White, or a homogenous mix. Sand village Desert Asian, or Mideastern & Mediterranean. Cloud village Americans. Rock village Chinese, Korean, and Asian that live in mountainous regions. Mist village Rural Japanese judging by how their village looks or Pacific islanders.

But those would prevent the random blacks and browned skin people of various ethnicities that must be in every shot to show how virtuous the directors/writers/producers are and how they are morally superior to both the audience and the creator.  

As for me going through which of the cast might be gay in an adaptation. Modern Hollywood writers do not believe male friendship can exist; if two guys are close, they must be gay. And with all the male friendships in Naruto that is a lot of gay couples in the eyes of modern Hollywood. Also to balance out all the men being gay. Clearly some of the women must be lesbians. Sakura and Hinata might be straight. So that means Ino and Tenten got to be the lesbian couple, and since Tenten is the most sporty looking of the girls they may make her trans as well; so they also have a trans character. 

As for what Lionsgate might do. Well if they look at Sasuke they would see they have another Edward Cullen which means that would have another Twilight Series. Now then the question to go with SNS or SS? Which lead a question of what they think will either get them more money or accolades?

Right now to your response to Therece since they ramble I find it best to break up your response in sections to better focus a response.

 You haven't been on twitter then, you still see ss and nh shippers trying dismiss or undermine narusaku. Also I have seen a lot more what if narusaku videos on YouTube.

Boruto uninteresting and the pairing are a bust. More interesting to talk about what ifs at this point than what is.

 Naruto wasn't really a flat character, unfortunately he got a bit flanderised in part 2 for chasing after sasuke too much.

Boruto is a by product of the problematic aspects of how nh and ss became canon and you can't ignore that. Hence, gaiden pretty much show how problematic the ss family dynamic is and can only be resolved with a cop out or ignore it.

Pretty sure metal Lee has become non existent compared to sadara who at least still shows up.

Metal Lee hasn't been in the manga since...he may have hanged out with the guys playing cards, years ago. Part of the problem is his teammates are two anime original character that have never been seen in the manga. Both who are suppose to be close friends of Bolt. Salad has a role as Bolt's maiden who has complete faith in him, she doesn't have much outside of that role.

Naruto isn't a flat character but he does stop developing as a character around chapter 500. And, there were problems that needed to be address: what would he do as hokage, how was he going to end the cycle of hatred, and why should we care about the chase for Sasuke?

The gaiden also gave more hints to nH's family issues as well which were then shown in the movie. But the origins can be seen in chapter 700. Neither Naruto nor Sasuke are ever home and their children resent them for it. But originally, it was easy to assume at least Sasuke may visit from time to time. Then in the Gaiden written by Kishimoto, "Nope, he has never visited them in 12 years. Instead, he has a meeting place outside the village; when he wants to rendezvous with Naruto. In order to make sure, he never has to meet with his so called family." The spin off manga with fanfiction level of writing didn't help, as it showed, "that Sakura clearly gone insane with Sasuke being constantly gone, that she fantasizes about using edo tensei on him, so they can be together; forever."

nH barely has any development and only had a view overrated hype moments that the anime bloated up, while sasusaku at best had a few moments in part 1 however is undermined by part 2 and have a large part of the fandom that hates the ship as a result.

That's because there was 698 chapters of development ruined and ss becoming canon did ruin Sakura's character, yes there where some that hated her but most blamed kishimoto and the editors.

Narusaku has the most development and interactions between a male and female cast and also the one that has the parallels to it. While it may not be as important as naruto's bond with sasuke, it was arguably the second most important relationship to naruto and the story.

In theory in order of importance. It should be. The growing romance of NaruSaku simply because they constantly interact with each other the most since neither leave the village and were suppose to get together. The rivalry of NaruSasu to justify the chase. Then the tragic misunderstanding of SasuSaku that causes problems for both itself and the other relationships.

As her pleads to Sasuke were suppose to show the readers. The bench scene left Sakura with a misunderstanding of Sasuke. She thought he secretly liked her, which he didn't. This prevented her from forming a true bond with him, therefore be unable to convince him to remain in the village. Because she thought he would love her enough to not leave, which he didn't. Since he only saw her as an annoying teammate that he gain some level of fondness during their time together on team 7, but not love more importantly not love strong enough to overrule his desire for revenge.

Sounds more like you are blinded by ss and nh popularity that you don't want to admit their development was poor compared to narusaku.

They seemed to be utterly convinced that Sakura was never thrown away or lost her heroine status...even though Kishimoto said she did due to being too hated. They based this belief on the fact that SS got a spin off manga. Which they assume is because the pairing is so popular and successful. When it could be easily that the companies got sick of Boruto's poor performance. That they decided to check, if the pairings they went with were actually what they were promised they would be, and came up short.

The editors and the hinata fandom are often blamed because there were interviews shown that they influenced kishimoto's decisions of the story's ending. He maybe the author, but he clearly allowed himself to be influenced by them, heck even Yahagi told him not to as a final advice from what I hear.

Doesn't matter if ss fans liked the ship since the beginning in part 1 as I said before part 2 destroyed the reputation of their ship outside their fandom and Sakura's character. Not seeing Naruto as an option just means they blinded themselves to the development that narusaku was having. Plus frankly I find a lot of ss fans self inserting themselves into the ship so you have no right to accuse narusaku fans of treating Sakura a trophy wife.

Whether you like or not Sakura's heroine status was tied to her being naruto's love interest, because that how the story set it up and when she wasn't her role was reduced to the point she no longer appears in the sequel series and at best shows up in a filler or two and some spin offs.

Naruto pretty much set up the heroine in the romantic interest like most Hollywood stories and usa superhero comics do. This could of been different if sakura was set up as the best friend or rival, however sasuke had those 2 roles or she was naruto's sister but she's not no matter how much the ss fandom tried to play on this.

Not everyone who votes for sakura in those polls are sasusaku fans, there are fans who multi ship, crack ship, just generally like her and even narusaku. So no I wouldn't count sasusaku fan alone for her popularity, because its not enough to get he back into the boruto story.

Sakura only appeared in Boruto when Kishimoto was busy with his Samurai 8 manga. Once he was back, she was gone again. And only her teenage version was in the story of that Ninja storm game.

The Last made it clear that Naruto was Hinata's trophy husband, as Sasuke was Sakura's. They were rewards for the girls' devotion towards doing nothing; just as the position of Hokage and possibly Boruto are for Sarada.

The big poll at the start of this year was as most hype for a Naruto poll in the past ten years. With the promise the winner would get their own one-shot. With people voting all over the world. Taking months to collect votes. A random poll conducted by some random Japanese site from 11/14/23 to 11/18/23 mostly targeting late 20 year old women can't really compare to it.