I just found this in tvtropes.org ...Its very long, so youll need patience to read it all. Okay, here we go: The Naruto Shipping Rollercoaster by Not Here To Cause Any Trouble An insight into the series main Romance Arcs and the associated shipping madness. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Something about the way romance was hadled in the Naruto franchise is... off. Its true that in the Distant Finale the author finally deigned to clean up romantic loose ends and sort out the Love Dodecahedron which had had refused to budge for ages; but for effectively the entire manga, the question of how the romance in the series was going to resolve was left very much up in the air. Most infamously, the author Kishimoto Masashi (often referred to by fans as Kishi) zealously kept alive a dangling, driving question which drove a large portion of the fandom insane - whether Naruto was eventually going to have romantic success with his crush Sakura despite her complete, irrational infatuation with his Rival Turned Evil Sasuke; or turn around and fall for his Shrinking Violet Stalker with a Crush Hinata, to whose plight he is completely oblivious for the better part of the manga. The author did not make life easy for the people who got emotionally invested in this question. The romantic resolution being put off until the final chapter is par for the course, but the way in which it was done raised more than a few eyebrows, and forcefully tugged at the sanity of more than a few shippers. Moments appeared to happen without rhyme or reason; a romantic subplot would be brought up, advanced an inch, and dropped again, only for the author to pick it up three years later right where he left off, or worse, right where it was before the last moment happened. To make matters worse, both Sakura and Hinata were very evidently and deliberately teased as valid options right up until the third-to-last-chapter(!), although by the end it was becoming increasingly obvious which one was going to happen. During the few days nearing the release of the distant epilogue, chapter 700, the Naruto fandom was at the boiling point. The opposing factions of the Ship-to-Ship Combat were each utterly convinced that the Ship Teases thrown their way were the real deal, and the rest were Red Herrings, and their animosity literally dominated the discourse relating to the franchise (partly, but not exclusively, because most of the other driving questions had been answered already by that point). If that wasnt enough, official and unofficial hype started trickling in regarding a movie which would heavily deal with the romance in the series, and finally get to all the development and wrapping-up that the shippers have spent years hoping for. The fandom was flooded with rumors of spoilers, fake spoilers, spoiler debunkings, fake debunkings for spoilers, and fake debunkings for fake spoilers — pertaining to the manga, the movie, Word of God and what-have-you. When the resolution was finally published, all hell broke loose. Some fans of the option that didnt happen, that have been strung along all those years only to be ultimately disappointed, went as far as to say the manga ended 200 chapters ago and start a petition for banning Naruto in the US unless the ending was changed. And then, inevitably, some even went as far as to respond like this◊. If youve ever been to a really long-running Shipping War before, and particularly if youre generally a fan of big damn coming-of-age stories, all of this may seem oddly familiar to you from somewhere. If youve ever been to a really long-running Shipping War before, you also ought to know that theres really no way to sum up the weight of the evidence for you. The context and timing of every little tease were hugely important, and fans would go to great lengths to interpret even the most insignificant details as evidence. What we can do is attempt to briefly cover the rollercoaster timeline. Take note that even briefly can kind of stretch out when youre covering 15 years of plot. Take your time to appreciate the fact that fandom did not experience this in the same pace at which you now read it; rather, the below stretched on for years, and every single mid-point in it represents weeks - and sometimes years - of the fans being left to speculate on exactly the development mentioned up to that point. So without further ado, the timeline goes roughly as follows: Part I shortly dabbles in the Sakura option by introducing Narutos crush on her, having a moment between her and Naruto where Naruto says to her exactly the romantic nothing she had always fantasized about hearing from Sasuke (except she doesnt know its him; fans of the pairing spent years obsessing about that precious moment where she would finally find out). Later, Sakura blushes at seeing Naruto display his increasing strength, which signals that the Sakura likes Sasuke and thats it equation may not be so set in stone as previously suspected. Then the Hinata option is introduced properly in an arc where Naruto sees Hinata almost killed by her homicidal cousin, and sympathizes with her plight so much that he swears on her blood to kick his ass. He almost falters due to self-doubt, but she gives him a very nice pep talk (this is kind of a running theme) and he succeeds. Looks nice, except that at this point Hinata disappears off the face of the storyline and is not heard from again for a few hundreds of chapters (this is also kind of a running theme). Those few hundreds of chapters do contain a final relevant moment in Part I where Naruto witnesses Sakuras reaction to Sasuke being hospitalized and waking up, and sees them metaphorically drifting away from him, signifying his feelings that Sakuras feelings for Sasuke are so intense that theyre a barrier between him and the two of them. But thats it for Part I, and come Part II begins the golden age of the Sakura option: Hinata, as mentioned, is MIA for arcs upon arcs; Sasuke, who was previously the lightning rod for all of Sakuras romantic affections, has defected to the side of evil and become a massive douche; and the story becomes largely focused on Naruto and Sakura as main characters, and starts being coy regarding the possibility of Narutos feelings for Sakura being reciprocated. Sakura asks Naruto whether she has become more womanly during his absence, their new sensei tells Sakura in regards to Naruto that I can see that in reality, you... and lets the readers fill in the blanks, and Naruto decides to never rely on his Super-Powered Evil Side again, because it made him hurt Sakura. Looks nice, except at that point Hinata returns for another one-scene wonder (this is kind of a running theme). She gives a despairing Naruto a pep talk, confesses her undying love to him and performs a suicide charge at an apparently invincible villain because she absolutely cant stand aside and just let Naruto die; and for her trouble she is unceremoniously stabbed in the neck, apparently to death. At this point Naruto loses all reason and goes on his single most over-the-top berserk rampage in the series, which is supposed to result in a Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies scenario, but doesnt. This is a turning point (in a later deleted tweet, Kishimotos assistant mentions that Naruto has stopped chasing Sakura since [that arc]). During the story phase following this episode, the manga blatantly pushes Hinata as a love interest for Naruto, and downplays Sakuras prospects in that regard. As Sakura is running to aid Naruto in his final battle, she thinks I will be there for you - not just me, but everyone; earlier, but more significantly, in a move which she figures will cure Naruto of his destructive obsession with Sasuke, Sakura confesses her love to Naruto and makes a speech which is a verbatim readout of the favorite talking points of the people who ship them together, except she doesnt mean any of it. Naruto calls her out on lying to herself, in what suspiciously looks like an outright Take That, Audience!. Meanwhile, Naruto & Hinata get cheesy scenes involving the phrase I can see it in your eyes and as she runs to aid Naruto in his final battle, Hinata vows to walk beside him after the war and hold his hand. During the war, when Naruto is on the brink of despair, she gives him a nice pep talk and they actually hold hands. OK, so its obvious where this is now going, right? Not so Fast, Bucko! Hinatas act has always been to do a huge Wham Episode reagrding her Romance Arc and then promptly disappear, and this time is no different. After she holds hands with Naruto, she disappears back into the crowd of side characters, and stops being an influence again. Meanwhile, Narutos resurrected dad arrives on the scene, comments basically that Sakura totally reminds him of Narutos late mom, and proceeds to ask whether Sakura is perchance Narutos girlfriend. Naruto, incredibly, answers well, yes, come to think of it —, which earns him a smack upside the head. For maximum effect, this harkens back to an earlier comment made by Narutos late mom when he met her in his mindscape - find a girl like your mom, she said. When it was drowning in the noise of the earlier push for the Hinata option, this comment was a faint curiosity of a fan theory, but suddenly now it is spoken aloud by an actual character calling back to it, and seems mighty significant. To top it off, Hinata remembers she exists again, runs towards Naruto, falls on her face and is promptly forgotten again; and Sakura gives Naruto a mouth-to-mouth CPR, which certainly gives off vibes of nudge-nudge-wink-wink. Then - in a final grand act of muddying the waters, and what may be seen as the author accepting and embracing the degree to which he had strung fans along - Naruto actually recalls the aforementioned conversation he had with his mother, talks about each and every point of the conversation one by one, and then when he reaches the part about finding a girl like her, he gives a little pause and goes Well! Anyway..., elegantly neglecting to address the issue at all. But, of course, every final grand act requires an encore, which the author provides in the form of Sakura confessing her love to Sasuke again, which he blows off again. Was this the final cue that she will never stop loving him, no matter what? Was this the final straw before her finally deciding she is fed up with Sasuke and moving on? Better wait a few chapters to find out! To make matters worse, the metatext - the mythology of where the two characters came from, what influenced their beginnings, and what the author had to say about them in interviews - was equally suggestive and confusing. Hinata was a very early character thought of at the pilot stage, before the plot was even about hidden villages and ninjas, to serve a purpose that fans could only guess at, before her role was rewritten to be one of Narutos ninja classmates. The author, when blatantly told that fans were hoping she would get her chance with Naruto, answered I hope so, too. Sakura, meanwhile, was known to have been introduced explicitly as a target for Narutos romantic affections when the rest of the story had already more or less taken form; this was specifically due to advice from Kishimotos editor, who took the same opportunity to suggest that Naruto should have a rival, thus leading to the creation and introduction of Sasuke. The story spared no opportunity to stress the strong parallelism between Naruto & Sakura and their previous-generation counterparts Jiraiya & Tsunade, who in turn drew heavy inspiration from their married namesakes from The Tale of The Gallant Jiraiya; Insistent rumors were circulating that Kishimoto drew inspiration for Sakuras design from his wife, and that the love story that led to his own marriage was very similar to Narutos Parents and what would be Narutos and Sakuras: she was a popular girl who never gave him the time of day, but in the end, she learned to appreciate him and fell for him. Another factor fanning the flames was the various scenes and interactions introduced by the adaptations (such as Filler in the anime adaptation). The people behind those adaptations would blatantly take sides on this whole issue, and their conflicting pushes would get the various shippers, like clockwork, to shout oooh my feels from one side and lol this is not even canon from the other. Both the anime team up until mid-part-II and CyberConnect2, responsible for the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm video games, were very clearly hardcore Hinata fans and kept introducing arcs and interactions that put Hinata in the spotlight and portrayed her relationship with Naruto positively, even (especially) during the hundreds of chapters where Hinata would up and disappear as she is wont to do; in contrast, during late part II the anime team seemed to lean more towards Sakura, and kept inserting reminders that Sakura is still the girl that Naruto loves way late into the game, during stretches of plot that in the original material failed to re-assert any such thing. In the end, in the epilogue, Kishi finally laid all the commotion to rest. Narutos love interest, the one he ends up marrying and having two kids with, is Hinata, and the aforementioned movie is set to properly tell the story of how they fell in love. But throughout all of this, fans went completely bonkers trying to make sense of all the subtle little pushes that way and the other. What matters more - who the hero loves from the beginning, or who loves him? Unstoppable rages or parental parallels? Trailing comments or blood oaths? Priority in the creative process or similarities to the cherished love story of the author actually doing the writing? Some fans are under the impression that the pairing that happened in the end was planned from the start, that the evidence and emotional pushes for it were all along more significant and treated as more of a big deal, that the other one was written as just a Romantic False Lead that the author had just a little too much fun toying with. Other fans would have it that the author had no such plan at any point at all, other than the plan of profusely, earnestly trolling the shippers on whichever whim caught him. And what does Kishi himself think? Well, he testifies that writing romance has always been awkward for him, and every time he started writing something romantic he would get kind of embarrassed. He also testifies that he was on the fence about which girl Naruto was going to marry for a while, but he made his choice quite a long time before the ending, and the suddenly flip-flopping feelings that the alternative would have involved just seemed too absurd to him. Personally, I think hes telling the truth, and only one piece of the puzzle is left to our speculation - the one that goes and in the end, for a little while there I kind of indulged in pulling peoples legs. And once you accept that, the full picture finally emerges, and connecting the dots is not too difficult.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 23:57:58 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015