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So this is more of an opinion essay/think piece on the never ending discourse regarding whether fujoshis fetishize gay men or not.

TW: discussions of rape and other forms of sexual assault. Crude language too.

First things first, let's define what is a fujoshi. The word fujoshi, which literally means ‘rotten’ and connotes the presumed, perversions of women who fantasize about male-male eroticism (Pagliassotti, 2013) are also widely considered to be heterosexual women who seek erotic content of homosexual men to fulfill their own sexual fantasies through a different lense, one that by removing the female character found in heterosexual romances, allows women to indulge in "perverted" writing without feeling the urge to condemn the text that'd otherwise happen if it was a fictional woman going through these scenarios.

Think of the amount of BL works depicting rape, kidnapping, sexual acts with dubious consent, physical assault such as choking or slapping and other forms of violence. In BL works these acts tend to be presented as desirable. The bottom, who is usually the one subjected to this violence, will say no to these acts but the top will ignore the pleads because he knows deep down the bottom desires what is happening to him. There lies the fantasy.

Under patriarchy women have a deeply complicated relationship with sex. As a woman you can exist as either the whore or the madonna. Women who enjoy sex proudly and loudly are quickly labelled as whores and thus degraded by both men and other women, becoming outcasts of society; for women sexuality is shameful and must be hidden at all costs but this of course, doesn't stop women from having sexual desires and urges. This creates a very interesting phenomenon; you want to mantain your respectability as a woman because you're not like one of those sluts that actively seek to be degraded through sex and penetration (all sex is degrading when you're penetrated, that is the patriarchal view of sex), but you still desire to be touched and feel physical pleasure so women end up developing "taboo" sexual fantasies, acts that normally you would be disgusted at, except in the privacy of your mind.

Naturally, the erotic content aimed at women consists for the the most part of a woman forced or coerced into sexual acts that she deep downs know she enjoys and actually wants. You cannot be a slut this way, you did not open your legs for a man he did it! her forced you! you didn't want to do the things he made you do because you're so pure you could have not thought about them in the first place! but he still made you reach an orgasm, didn't he? Women become passive agents during sex to avoid the stigmatization of slutshaming.

This of course is a reproduction of rape culture in media and is the reason why so many women became detractors of heterosexual erotica. That's where BL comes into question; take the female character out of the equation and instead insert a male character with a preference for penetration and have him go through the same stuff, bonus points if he's very feminine looking. The character is still being assaulted and violated but by making him a man instead of a woman you distance him from the female audience thus minimazing the guilt and shame women'd get from reading such stories.

It's no surprise that these stories have become so popular among women, they have the erotic taboo elements so many fantasize about while making sure women don't see themselves directly in the abuse.

This is the issue that gay men in real life have with fujoshis and BL as a whole. And I get it.

It's understandable why gay men find unappealing the idea of being used as self-inserts put through grueling scenarios to fulfill somebody else's sexual fantasies and that somebody else being someone that will never have to go through the struggles of a gay person will, similar to lesbians not liking being objectified in porn by straight men for the pleasure of other straight men.

There's other cases of marginalized communities being used as some type of doll for sexual scenarios, for example black men who are often fetishized over their penises by white people to the point there's a whole porn category for it: "my wife tries a BBC in front of me", "Twink destroyed by a BBC", "Sucking a BBC for the first time", and many more titles likes that in every porn site you can find. Asian women are also fetishized by westerners, they're attributed naivety and innocence traits and are portrayed as naturally submissive to fulfill a borderline pedophilic fantasy. Latinos deal with fetishization too, as a Mexican myself I can attest that latinas and latinos have been painted as oversexual beings that always want to have sex and are always down to have sex with anyone available.

All this fetishization leads to dehumanization of the group you're protraying in your erotic works or media so of course it will have its detractors.

So yes, I can acknowledge the feelings of gay men regarding certain BL stories. Those certain stories definitely dominate the BL market but here's where I have to say those are not the only type of stories you can find in BL and that's not fully what the term fujoshi encompasses.

I mentioned at the beginning of this post that fujoshis are considered to be mostly straight women. I think that is an unfair generalization to make, there's also queer women and trans people, both men and women, that proclaim themselves as fujoshis who have found a safe space in BL fan communities to explore sexuality hand in hand with GL content and communities. After all BL is still queer content that can be and is enjoyed by queer people.

Aditionally, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with straight women enjoying queer content. In the same way queer people can enjoy media depicting heterosexual romance I believe straight people can also enjoy queer media. There's a difference between a someone who's fetishizing a group of people and someone who's engaging with gay media like they would for any other type of media. I do find it to be a dangerous path to act like it's wrong for heterosexual people to enjoy queer media and push them away from it, queer media should be consumed as much as straight media.

This aversion to straight women who enjoy mlm stories has led to shippers of mlm pairings from media that's not sold as BL (Naruto, JJK, etc.) to frantically trying to prove they're not a straight girl. Again, it defitnitely needs to be told that not everyone who ships mlm is a straight girl, these are still queer spaces occupied by queer people, however there's still nothing wrong if you're a straight girl that ships mlm because anyone can (or should be able to) notice queer subtext, which leads to my next point.

When it comes to online discourse surrounding fujoshis it's always presumed that mlm ships from non-bl works came to be because a silly horny straight girl saw two boys breathe next to each other and decided they would look hot together regardless of how they're actually written in their respective canon works, I'm sure there's definitely some mlm ships out there that abide by these standards but not all of them do. I've noticed that when it comes to mlm ships that aren't endgame but have actual homoromantic writing in their canon work homophobes tend to weaponize the term fujoshi against its shippers, hence the frantic need in so many mlm shippers to prove that they're not the stereotypical fujoshi.

I believe that is the harmful fujoshi stereotype here, not that straight girls like to ship boys with other boys but that the shipping is shallow. There is this assumption that no one takes homoromantic and homoerotic writing seriously and everybody is just here for the shits and giggles, which I find quite frankly offensive. It's anti-intellectualism to pretend there's no place for interpretations through queer lenses of any type of media.

As a SNS shipper I can guarantee everybody that's not in the Naruto fandom that shippers in this community take queer analyses and readings of the manga seriously here. Sure, some people joined because they thought both Naruto and Sasuke looked cute together or because they accidentally kissed and presumed that moment to be fujoshi fanservice but once they're in they start seeing all the queer writing in the actual manga. SNS isn't the only ship where this occurs.

SNS shippers care about the writing of the manga and its characters perhaps more than any other subfandom in the fandom, to the point several shippers were able to predict what was gonna happen in the manga years before it actually happened.

On top of all that we have endless metas, masterposts, essays and manifestos that show SNS shippers having such deep understading of Kishimoto's writing and the characters he's created. SNS fanworks have dialogues that are exactly what the characters would actually say, in the case of By My Side even the panels are the same, you can read the full doujinshi here. For more examples of other doujinshi predicting manga chapters click here.

Fetishizers can't predict the writing of a piece of work because they wouldn't care about the writing in the first place, they're just here to see two guys suck each other off.

So when the term fujoshi is weaponized by het!shippers towards mlm shippers (not just SNS shippers) I find what they're actually trying to do is shut down any and every queer reading of media and to paint all shippers as shallow & mindlessly horny morons in an attempt to delegitimize us and our arguments. You know how it goes "why does everything have to be gay? why can't they just be friends? y'all always turn everything gay". In some cases they take it a step further and start accusing mlm shippers of supporting incest to the point they've even created the term "pseudo-incest" that supposedly represents two men with no blood relation but have such a close relationship they could be brothers (so basically, not incest). What is funny is that this term is exclusively reserved for mlm ships, you'll never hear anyone use it for a f/m ship where both characters have refered to each other as siblings even if they don't have blood relation. Textbook homophobia.

Queer and straight people can spot queer subtext (that sometimes isn't subtext but actual text), this does not make them fetishizers, to imply such to silence their analyses is homophobic.

So, if you're a straight girl who noticed the queer subtext of any media then don't be ashamed or scared of it because you liked it, don't let the homophobes corner you, *you* are the one who understood the text. And if you're a queer person then defend your stance even more proudly, don't be one of those pick-me gays that go "well, I'm gay/bi and I don't see it as gay" just because they want acceptance from the homophobes. Inquire, question the status quo, look deeper into the meaning of things, I promise you once you spot the first sign of gayness you will find more layers to it.

Finally, regarding the explicit sexual content in gay media:

Y'all have very weird opinions on bottoming. I already posted about it here. But basically y'all need to stop seeing the bottom as the girl of the relationship and need to stop seeing being penetrated as an act of humilliation. I know some people like when the traditional top/bottom dynamic is subverted (I do too!) y'know when they make the top shorter than the bottom, or the top is the feminine one or stuff like that but you gotta keep in mind that no matter how they look, they're still both men so it's still a gay ship, the bottom being a feminine man doesn't make him a girl, that's still a man.

Likewise, there's nothing wrong with explicit sexual content. Over the past couple years people have taken this weird almost puritanical stance on sex scenes not just of gay media but all media where they just want them to not be included at all and it's just bizarre, there's nothing wrong with sex (and no, you're not being oppressed or traumatized by a movie because it has sex scenes my god).

Personally, I will always defend sex scenes in gay media. Give me more The Handmaiden idgaf. Gay sex has been taboo, criminalized and hidden for decades, it should now be CELEBRATED and SHOWCASED as the act of love it is as much as straight sex. Furthermore, you don't have to choose one or the other when it comes to gay media that's sexual and the one that keeps its rating PG-13. You can have both, you should fight and demand to have both, you can have your Heartstopper and your Interview With The Vampire. I really don't like when some people go "finally a show where the gays aren't always f*cking" I sense sinister vibes...

This might be perhaps a hot take but I also don't think we should shy away from queer stories that depict sexual abuse either. I understand that they can be triggering for some people but this should not lead to censorship which can be quite arbitrary and cause the persecution of creatives that wish to explore sexulity beyond the confines of what's "proper" or "adequate".

Oh also, maybe we shouldn’t generalize the entire BL industry as an industry that only produces “problematic” stories, there’s a lot of variety out there and it’s actually really easy to find. But the problematic stories should still exist, again I'm not calling for censorship but rather a different aproach to our engagement with these stories.

In conclusion, some fujoshis definitely have weird behaviours towards actual gay men and the way they choose to depict them in their works but also the term fujoshi has been weaponized to silence queer readings of media and art by homophobes, the two can co-exist.

Reference:

Hello! Thanks for the question.

Any person that has read Kishimoto's interviews over the years can see he likes to beat around the bush and sometimes even talk in riddles rather than give a direct answer. That interview with Entermix Magazine where he talks about Naruto and Sasuke's relationship being based on his own with his brother isn't any different.

So here's the whole answer Kishimoto gave to the interviewer. Antis only take into account the last paragraph (because of course they would) but that is really just taking out of context what Kishimoto means.

The quote underlined in green is really what Kishimoto is talking about: their ability to feel each others pain. Kishimoto has been asked multiple times regarding the bond between Naruto and Sasuke and he's never given a direct answer but in each interview he let's us know one of the elements that are part of their relationship. In this particular interview is empathy. They're able to understand how they both feel because they've been through similar circumstances.

Kishimoto uses as an example both him and his brother being subjected to the Paro Special of Kinnikuman (which I believe is pulling someone's arms behind them really hard while jumping onto their backs), going through this as kids was Kishimoto's introduction to the ability of putting yourself in someone else's shoes. In Naruto and Sasuke's case is not that infantile, although they're both lonely orphans who have been outcasts of society, Naruto doesn't know what is like to be a survivor of genocide so it is through life experiences over the years Naruto grows and learns how to empathize with Sasuke and understand his heart. Basically Kishimoto explored in depth what he learned as a child as a victim of bullying his brother experienced before him. This is the first thing I take from the interview.

The second thing that I take from the interview that I find very interesting is Kishimoto talking about his college years in what's underlined in red. He's talking about his experiences with his friends and one sided loves? hmmmm and how he went "is this how my brother felt when he went through this?"

Not just that but in the red rectangle he's even talking about talking about a friend from college (not his brother) and how he thought that man, whoever he was, and himself got along really great. At this point Kishimoto is rambling and catches himself getting lost in these memories so he goes so yeah "brotherly love and friendship are the same thing for me" haha.

So here's where I'd like to bring out an older interview:

Here he's asked about the inspiration for his characters he might have taken from real life. Just like in the previous interview Kishimoto also mentions friends from college as inspiration for some characters (he doesn't specify which ones) and this makes me think...

Kishimoto had a friend in college he got along really great (his words not mine) that might have inspired Naruto and Sasuke's relationship but at the time Kishimoto didn't know how to put into words what he really felt so ended up using Naruto the manga as the medium to explore those feelings.

If we combine both interviews we get that Kishimoto tried to rationalized that friendship he had in college and the feelings it evoked in him with how he felt as a kid growing up with his brother. We're so close we're like brothers! type of friendship but Kishimoto wasn't really sure of this label hence why he spends the entire manga using Naruto and Sasuke as models for this theme.

Here's another interview from 2013 "Naruto Kizuna the Words that Bind" where Kishimoto was asked about Naruto and Sasuke's relationship after the chapter where Naruto tells Itachi he's a better brother to Sasuke than he ever was dropped.

I wanted them to be more brothers than blood brothers. I can tell you that is for me the hardest thing to put into words in this story. And it still is.

It's really interesting how Kishimoto was never really able to put this sentiment of being more brothers than blood brothers into words as we see in chapter 698 where Naruto himself states that he can't put into words why he can't leave Sasuke alone he simply suffers when seeing Sasuke suffer. A chapter that's been so many times dissected and analyzed only for us to get to the conclusion that it is about a love confession.

Also the whole "more brothers than blood brothers" is a common theme in queer media to denote intimacy between queer closeted men who are in love but can't find the words (or courage) to tell each other "I love you". It's literally studied in academia like it's absolutely insane Kishimoto said that and no one questioned him for that LMAO.

I'm serious. This shit is studied fr.

Anyway, I couldn't find it but I swear there was another interview in which Kishimoto talked about how when writing Naruto he always did so in a way he would make his first editor (Yahagi) proud of his work after they stopped working together and how that sentiment also transpired onto Naruto and Sasuke's relationship. If I find this interview I'll reblog it on this post.

So based on these three interviews we get the elements these dynamics lent to Naruto and Sasuke's bond. Ability to feel each other's pain; empathy. More brothers than blood brothers; intimacy. Wanting to make his editor proud; acknowledgement. There's a lot Kishimoto took from different relationships he had in real life for Naruto and Sasuke's bond but antis only parrot "HE BASED NARUTO AND SASUKE ON HIM AND HIS BROTHER!!!" like no, that's not true Ellen.

In other interviews Kishimoto has also stated how Naruto is basically him in some ways and a lot of people in the fandom if not the majority think Kishimoto used Naruto as his self-insert and I want you to think about the implications of that keeping in mind what I just wrote.

I've been wanting to write about Kishimoto's misogyny present in Naruto. I find that in the sns fandom we're often hesitant to talk about it because we feel it might undermine our ship, after all "Naruto and Sasuke are accidentally gay because Kishimoto can't write women" is one of the most prevalent anti arguments we're constantly hit with. However, like other blogs have written, I don't think Kishimoto's writing on women created an accidental byproduct in his writing when it comes to Sasuke and Naruto's relationship. If anything, I find the way Kishimoto writes women supports the notion that Kishimoto knew what he was doing when writing Naruto and Sasuke's homoerotic bond.

Because the way I see it, Kishimoto writes women like a petty fujoshi.

Naruto is a shonen, so like every other shonen it will have a male main character, it will focus on its male characters the most and the bonds between male characters will be usually the most important ones. The writing of female characters tends to not be as compelling as the one their male counterparts receive. The target audience is not that interested in them so the writers oftentimes won't invest their time developing them any further.

This is the case of Sakura, who was introduced as the heroine of the story, potential love interest and the only female character of the main cast. Kishimoto saw she wasn't well received in the audience and didn't bother to give her any more background.

So why do I say that Kishimoto writes the way a petty fujoshi does? The first reason is Kishimoto seems to hold the belief that women can't be friends with one another and see each other as competition for the attention of men, amongst other undesirable traits. The second reason is Kishimoto seems to hold contempt especifically for the female characters that come in between the pair he actually likes, Naruto and Sasuke.

To explain further the first reason. In the interview with Kobayashi I already linked, Kishimoto expressed he wrote Sakura seeking to create a "realistic female character" but was surprised when the female audience of Naruto showed their dislike for her. So let's stop for a moment here and think about what makes Sakura "realistic" in the eyes of Kishimoto. In part 1 she cared more about her physical appearance over training and becoming a better ninja, so there's the first "realistic" trait Kishimoto gave her, Sakura is vain. Sakura doesn't care about the feelings of Sasuke or Naruto and mocks them for being orphans or undermines whatever trauma they've been through and compares her parents annoying her to literal genocide, so those are the second and third "realistic" traits Kishimoto gave her, Sakura is insensitive and superficial. Sakura doesn't have any female friends and sees every other girl as a threat to her, she's in constant competition to get Sasuke which stops her from nurturing real friendships with other women, that's the fourth "realistic" trait Kishimoto gave her, Sakura is insecure about other women. Plus all her constant crying and whining we see throughout the series.

So we learn through Sakura what Kishimoto considers to be "realistic traits" in women, he thinks women can't be friends with one another because we're in constant competition over the attention of men, he thinks we care too much about our physical appearance which in turn makes us too incompetent for other tasks, he also thinks we're so full of ourselves we are not capable of understanding somebody else's pain (or maybe a man's pain?)

Is this bad writing? not necessarily, Sakura still fulfills her role in the series (after all this is a love triangle where she and Naruto are competing over Sasuke) but is it misogynistic writing? yes, it very much is. People seem to think that if you have misogynistic or racist or any other type of bigoted writing in your work then it's bad writing but if that was the case more than half of classic literature would be terrible and we know that's not the case.

Now let's move to the second reason. Kishimoto holds a particular contempt for the women that come in between Naruto and Sasuke, if you don't ship sns it may be harder to spot because you see it as a broader misogyny when it's not. What do I mean by this? There's is specific violence Kishimoto reserves exclusively for the Naruto and Sasuke's potential love interests: Karin, Hinata and Sakura. You don't see this violence perpetrated against other female characters.

There is this misogynistic violence Kishimoto writes against those three girls in which he basically uses them as a punching bag. Even though those three girls are ninjas the scenarios in which Kishimoto puts them don't allow them to defend themselves, in fact, they're not even given the chance to enter the battlefield as skilled fighters like other characters (whether they win or lose).

Let's start with Hinata. In chapter 437 she confesses to Naruto and enters the battlefield knowing she's gonna lose and very probably die

She then gets one-paneled and if it wasn't for Sakura she would've died. A pretty humilliating moment where she can't hit, not once, the enemy. Kishimoto used her as a prop for a bigger arc for more important characters (Naruto hearing the confession he'd then repeat to Sasuke at the bridge) only to then discard her. He cares so little about her as a character he gave zero importance to her confession making Naruto ignore her and not interact with her for several of the following chapters.

It's very different from the way he had written Hinata in her fight against Neji during the Chuunin exams.

Hinata is still a prop here. She's written to support Neji's arc and development rather than her own but Kishimoto still allows her to enter the battlefield as a ninja who will be able to fight against her opponent "with more dignity" to put it in some way. In both fights her opponent is much stronger than her and she knows she will lose, but she's given more respect as a character in one over the other.

Now let's move to Karin. In chapter 480 Sasuke is fighting Danzo while suffering from a total mental breakdown. Kishimoto has him stab Karin and almost kill her.

The point here is to show Sasuke succumbing to darkness he'd even do that to his most loyal follower. But it's also the most brutal form of violence we see against a woman in the manga. Karin, unlike Hinata didn't enter any battle nor was she fighting against Sasuke knowing the risks. Unlike Sakura, Karin wasn't making any insensitive comments about Sasuke that would "provoke him" or anything either. Karin was just there.

And just like with Hinata's confession, Kishimoto shows zero respect to Karin that he treats Sasuke's apology to her as comic-relief. Like the way Karin and Orochimaru get giddy over getting stabbed by Sasuke like okay...

Then you have Sakura who is constantly the victim of Kishimoto's ridicule because she's part of the main cast. Kishimoto wrote Sakura to be kind of an incompetent ninja which feels more jarring when you consider she's part of team 7 and Kishimoto gave all these power-ups to Naruto and Sasuke. In the Kobayashi interview Kishimoto admits the only reason Sakura got to be trained by a Sannin like her teammates is because he had already drawn and submitted a cover where she appears alongside Naruto and Sasuke with the toad, the snake and the snail creating a dynamic for the three of them on which he could not backtrack.

But where Kishimoto's contempt for Sakura is 100% on display is during her final confession. Everytime Kishimoto wants to write an emotional moment between Naruto and Sasuke (VotE1, the Bridge reunion or VotE2) he always has Sakura interact with Sasuke first.

The idea is to juxtapose Sakura's shallow feelings for Sasuke with Naruto's unconditional devotion for Sasuke. But during this confession Sasuke takes it way too far by putting Sakura under a genjutsu that renders her unconscious which is basically psychological torture.

This is Kishimoto mocking Sakura and her stans. It's a full circle moment back to chapter 36, right at the beginning of the chuunin exams arc where Sasuke had praised Sakura's abilities to spot genjutsus (one of the few positive moments these two have) and she was also the member of team 7 with the best skills to escape genjutsu. Now, out pettiness, Sasuke's the one putting Sakura into a genjustu without her knowing how to counter it.

It almost feels like Kishimoto is so annoyed by them he sees them like bugs he's steps on and then pushes aside with his shoe. None of this brutal misogynistic violence is perpetrated against other female characters.

Even when female characters lose fights as is the case of Konan against Obito or Tsunade against Madara, Kishimoto grants them the grace to enter the battlefield as competent ninjas that will be given the space to fight to their best of their ability instead of just receiving punch after punch. Obito and Madara show their respect for both women acknowledging they're capable kunoichis in the battlefield.

But then again neither Konan nor Tsunade are Naruto or Sasuke's potential love interests.

If anything we should all be thankful SasuIno never took off when Ino was introduced into the series because then Shonen Jump would've made Kishimoto write some fanservice about them and as payback Kishimoto would've treated Ino horribly.

All her development we see in the 4th Great War arc would've never happened.

Kishimoto doesn't have a problem writing heterosexual romance either, when he wants to he will give you lovely love stories between a man and a woman, he just doesn't like SS or NH or SK or NRSK or any het!ship involving Naruto and Sasuke hence the lackluster writing for them.

So I had said I was gonna post about my feelings and thoughts regarding the Naruto finale that might contain a few hot takes for some people, so here it is.

THIS IS GONNA BE A LONG POST.

The Naruto ending is universally disliked, there's not doubt in that. Veteran SNS shippers don't like it because Naruto and Sasuke end up with women they don't love and aren't attracted to, and believe Naruto and Sasuke could've end up "single" with no ships confirmed; younger SNS shippers that weren't there when Naruto was still coming out believe they should've ended up together even though that could have not been plausible due to the manga industry quite conservative practices. Het!shippers on the other hand, believe the ending is bad for two different reasons: the first being that some believe that Narusaku and Sasukarin would've made more sense than SS and NH (some say just Narusaku and Sasuke should've stayed single); the second being that although they like SS and NH and the potential they believe these ships have "but wasn't explored further", Kishimoto can't write romance so he messed up both ships, making them bland and barely romantic.

Another reason why the ending is disliked for non-shipping reasons and mostly by Sasuke stans, is that even though in the couple chapters before the 700th one Naruto and Sasuke talk about changing the shinobi system, we see in Boruto that the system has not been changed at all and instead Naruto and Sasuke are reinforcing it despite all the oppression and suffering they were put through it in its name. We even see Itachi, the man who committed genocide being lauded as a hero for his actions and zero reflection on Konoha as a genocidal State. Oh and the Hyuga clan still practices slavery.

So here I come to say the following: Naruto's ending makes sense.

Now before y'all tear me to pieces let me explain myself. The first time I read the finale I thought it was stupid, one reason being that the ships make no sense no matter the angle you try to look at them and the other reason being that Sasuke was now working for the same State that murdered his clan with Naruto now as the head of that same State and making no changes to the Shinobi system (not a very good look on him, right?), so I thought for many years that the ending sucked.

Then The Last, Boruto and Sasuke Retsuden came out and all I could think was "woah this is all really shit from the butt".

But then one day when I was thinking about the manga as a whole, mostly because I was starting to realize that Kishimoto was being intentional in his writing of Naruto and Sasuke's romantic bond and it wasn't accidental like most of the fandom thinks, I just started connecting dots and trying to make sense of the whole story and seeing how the ending fitted into that. I'm someone that whenever it comes to literary analysis and criticism always tries to think about what was the author intention before I label something as bad because it wasn't my personal preference how something was written.

And that's how I realized what there was theme to the Naruto ending is. It's all about conformity.

Now, don't get me wrong the Naruto ending still has flaws, two big ones in my opinion, which I'll point out further down the post, but what I want to do is show you the forest because I feel the fandom is mostly focused on a couple of trees when it comes to the finale. I want you to see the thread of events Kishimoto created and how he was trying to keep it as in character as possible.

So first things first. If you've read Kishimoto interviews over the years then you would know what was the ending he had envisioned: chapter 698. He talks about how he wanted Naruto and Sasuke to have their final fight, make ammends and change the shinobi system together. He achieved two out those three things he intended.

In a quite controversial interview that most of the fandom likes to ignore, Kishimoto stated that he had no emotional attachement to Naruto and Hinata as a couple and it was Studio Pierrot who had pitched the whole thing about The Last movie. He also states that he decided to make NH endgame after Shippuden had started and he had also considered Narusaku as well, but then in another interview that came later he started saying he had intended to make NH canon since the very beginning. He was constantly contradicting himself in these interviews over the years. Kishimoto has also expressed his distate for SS and Sakura's character in general in different interviews.

So what I personally believe is that Kishimoto's editorial, Shueisha, made him change his statements because saying he had no plans for NH and it was Studio Pierrot idea was quite damaging to the franchise (no wonder the interview got kinda buried too, lol).

I think the biggest challenge for Kishimoto was giving the editorial, the studio and most of the fandom the het!ships they wanted without compromising as much the characters the story of his manga revolves around, Naruto and Sasuke.

So we get to ch. 699 where I believe Kishimoto is laying the ground for the finale we ended up getting.

In ch. 698 it seemed like Naruto and Sasuke had been able to resolve their issues and been able to talk about their feelings for each other. Something Sasuke repeats in ch. 699, a chapter entirely narrated by him. However right at the end of ch. 699 we get what seems to be a regression of what we had seen in the previous chapter.

It is implied that Naruto and Sasuke had an argument off-screen hence why Sasuke thought Naruto would not come to see him and bid him farewell before his atonement journey. What was the argument about is never really explained, some fans speculate Naruto was upset about Sasuke going on an atonement journey considering Naruto had pleaded for Sasuke to not be imprisoned and saw no reason for Sasuke to go on a redemption trip. I personally believe it had something to do with Naruto failing to come to terms with his feelings for Sasuke because, as we see right away, Naruto gives Sasuke back his headband and Sasuke says he'll keep it until they have their real fight which is interesting, to say the least, because didn't we just see their real fight the literal prior chapter? basically, we're being told Naruto and Sasuke haven't been able to truly talk about their feelings and put into words what their relationship really is about hence why Sasuke keeps the headband. As long as Sasuke has the headband, it will mean Naruto hasn't been able to truly accept what he feels for Sasuke. In essence, ch. 699 is Kishimoto retconning ch. 698 to give way to what comes later.

After chapter 700 came out we started getting so much content, both filler and canon, that tries to explain how we got there. Let's start with The Last, the movie that tries to explain how the heck Naruto ended up with Hinata.

The Last is sort of a hybrid, it's written for the most part by Studio Pierrot employees who had the idea in the first place and Kishimoto corrected a few things here and there and is also what for me, makes the ending flawed for one big reason: Naruto's character assassination.

Naruto is a shonen manga that's more focused and concerned on it's emotional battles and communicates it to the audience through it's physical battles rather than the powerscaling stuff Naruto dudebros would have you thinking the manga is actually about. So this means that Naruto, its main character, spends the entire manga learning about his feelings and putting them into words. That's what his story is mainly about; learning to love and to be loved.

The Last undoes this in the stupidest way possible. To give Naruto an excuse on why he always ignored Hinata they intend to make the audience believe it's because "Naruto doesn't know what love is" by writing Naruto not being able to differentiate between loving someone and liking ramen. This is absolute nuts. We know that Naruto understands what is love, what is not love and that love doesn't come out of nowhere, we see that when Sakura fake confesses to Naruto, he's able to spot right away she's not being genuine because he understands those three things. So this is the first flaw of the Naruto ending for me.

The second flaw is the dismissal of Kurama and Naruto's status as a Jinchuuriki. I find the most embarrasing thing about The Last to be that they had to put Naruto through a genjutsu so he could hallucinate "memories of Hinata being there for him but he was too dumb to notice" but it's even worse once you remember that Naruto canonically should not be able to be put through a genjutsu in the first place. Studio Pierrot had to break rules of Kishimoto's universe in order to give NH some mediocre development and to me this will always be the worst part of the finale. If you can't make a ship work within the universe rules, then why make it a thing at all?

Some people didn't like that Hinata is totally useless in the movie, but for me this is not a flaw, as it is entirely in character with who she is in the manga. Making her a mary sue out of nowhere on the other hand, would be a flaw of the story.

Now that I've talked about what I think are the flaws of the Naruto ending, let's talk about the things that work in The Last (and I believe is where Kishimoto put his input) to make the finale make sense. The first one being that Sakura is the one that pushes Naruto to be with Hinata. In the manga we see several times Sakura is insecure about Naruto and Sasuke's bond and being jealous of Naruto's spot in Sasuke's heart. Even Hinata is baffled by Sakura wanting to help her and asks her why she's doing all that because she knows they're not friends. We then see Sakura think about Sasuke (who's also conviniently excluded from the movie) and simply say "we, girls, should support each other", she wants Naruto out of the picture so she can have Sasuke for herself and she succeeded. It's also important to note that once Sakura got what she wanted she no longer pretended to be a friend of Hinata, she didn't even kept close contact with Naruto either as we see in Naruto Gaiden, Sarada and Naruto don't know each other like that at all, if Sakura was being a genuine friend to Hinata and Naruto, she would've kept her family close to Naruto's but she didn't.

One more thing that I find works about The Last is that Naruto doesn't passionately fall in love with Hinata, but instead is constantly guilt-tripped into liking her, which is more true to his character. You have a man already struggling to accept his sexuality, who also has his deceased mother's expectation of marrying a girl and on top of that is a pathological people pleaser, of course he's gonna marry the first girl that tells him she loves him. It makes sense this all happened while Sasuke was not in the village. Naruto panicked about his sexual identity and rushed to marry an "acceptable woman" in the eyes of the people whose approval he craves, as we see in the special chapter Kishimoto wrote that came out after The Last: the villagers fawning over Konoha's hero dating the Hyuga heiress.

Likewise, Sasuke not attending Naruto's wedding helps the ending not be as contrived or out of character of them. Kishimoto never wrote anything on why Sasuke skipped the wedding as far as I can recall, but in the episodes that Studio Pierrot made dedicated to Naruto's wedding we see a Sasuke completely absent and detached from the event, something Naruto dudebros use to dunk on him because that made him a terrible friend from their perspective, but as usual they're not paying attention to the full narrative Kishimoto is creating here.

Making Sasuke be happy for Naruto and attend his wedding and give him a gift and all that crap, would've made het!shippers and Naruto dudebros happy but it would be at the expense of his character and the story Kishimoto was writing. Remember, Sasuke had kept the headband all these time until he could have his real fight with Naruto, meaning he was waiting for Naruto to be honest about his feelings for him, so him not attending Naruto's wedding is a way to communicate to the audience (at least the part that's paying attention) that Sasuke is heartbroken by the news.

I believe this is why Kishimoto designed adult Sasuke the way he did and makes him dress the way he does as an adult. All black and depressing. I also believe that Sasuke will stop dressing that way the minute he and Naruto have their real fight, if they ever have it, that is.

Additionally, Kishimoto nailed making NH canon before SS would be canon. Naruto, as I stated before, is the one that struggles with his identity and feelings for Sasuke and the one that has the expectations to marry a woman so it makes sense that he would be the one to marry a woman first. SS becoming canon first wouldn't make sense because not only is Sasuke more outspoken about his contempt for Sakura, whereas Naruto remains polite and neutral to Hinata's feelings, but Sasuke also has no reason to be with Sakura if Naruto is still available, in fact, Kishimoto making Sakura be the one to chase Sasuke after Naruto's wedding because Sasuke never came back, as we see it stated in Naruto Gaiden ch. 10, is also in character for both Sasuke and Sakura, instead of writing it the other way around like SS shippers wished, y'know their whole thing about Sasuke coming back to the village for Sakura and apologizing to her because he didn't realize how much he actually loved her because he was trapped in the darkness blah blah blah (I think this is what happens in filler novel Sasuke shinden lol).

If Naruto is not available, then Sasuke is in a very emotionally vulnerable position and Sakura took advantage of that. You see the narrative Kishimoto is creating here? There's a thread to follow on why stuff happened they way it did.

Now, I mentioned before that the theme of the Naruto finale was conformity. Here's where I explain how:

The first thing is Naruto's physical appearance. Kishimoto liked to draw a young Naruto all punk and grunge. He even had already made a design of adult Naruto where Naruto looks, well, cool and HOT.

Yet, for the actual finale he gave us an ugly Naruto, but also a Naruto that looks tired and exhausted. How does this tie with the conformity theme? when Naruto was young he used to go against the rules, defy expectations people had of him, tell authorities to fuck off. Like, when he was told to give up on Sasuke when he was 12, Naruto responded "If giving up on Sasuke makes me wise, I'd rather be fool my entire life", this man was a rebel. But as an adult we see him become the head of State that continues to reproduce the status quo that had once oppressed him. Naruto turned apathetic, his appearance reflects his attitude.

And this is consistent with the narrative Kishimoto's been crafting. Just in the same way Naruto conformed to society's expectation when he married a woman he doesn't love and barely knows, he also conformed and succumbed to the shinobi world status quo. It would *make zero sense* for Naruto to revolutionize the shinobi world while married to princess slaver Hinata Hyuga, that'd be an oxymoron, completely contradictory narrative wise. Certainly, Naruto always struggled to find an ideology, to put it in some way, when it came to Konoha and its ninjas practices and had a messed up perception of its villagers (see: the whole Dark Naruto mini plot) but he still wanted to change the shinobi world WITH SASUKE by his side, once the story established they don't end up together and Sasuke isn't by his side, Naruto doesn't care anymore.

This is why I don't find strange that Kishimoto wrote Naruto oversleeping in the eve of his name day as Hokage, a day Naruto had once dreamt about when he was a child. The spark is gone.

But the spark isn't just gone for Naruto, it's also gone for Kishimoto. Naruto didn't even attend his name day because he was knocked out by Himawari. This is Kishimoto being petty. He spent 15 years writing a story where the goal was to see Naruto become Hokage and he knew how anticipated this moment was and he still went and ruined it for the fans anyway. Naruto dudebros were furious about this, but not once did they stop to wonder about the implications of this, what it said about Kishimoto's relationship with his work if it had gotten to the point he went and "fucked it up".

Naruto cared about the state of the world before he became indifferent to it. This is why when Sasuke stans complain about Naruto not actually caring about Sasuke's trauma but can never really explain why Naruto is like that as an adult. They try to pretend Naruto never cared but this is a lie, kid and teenage Naruto was compassionate to Sasuke's trauma and pain even if he didn't always managed it in the best way possible. So, I always feel like they're missing this particular piece of the puzzle: if Naruto can't be his true self then he cannot change the world and neither can Sasuke.

Because the same thing occurs to Sasuke. One blog once posted that Sasuke not caring about his child is out of character, but Sasuke not caring about Sakura's child is very much in character and I feel that sums up Kishimoto's writing of both adult Sasuke and Naruto. This passiveness you wouldn't imagine from their younger selves, takes a hold of them once they become adults and gradually "get in line" to be a part of the real world. Sasuke doesn't care about his child because he had her with a woman he doesn't even like or respect. Sasuke is stuck in time still holding onto that headband, hoping he and Naruto will one day have their real battle.

Sasuke uses the forehead poke, a gesture he always hated, on his wife and child because he, just like his brother to him, wants to distance himself from them. Sasuke now serves the same village that plotted the mass murder of his clan and family because why not? his brother is lauded as a hero for killing his entire clan after all. Sasuke too, has conformed.

I actually wonder if this is in some way linked to modern Japanese culture. Japanese culture and society are deeply conformist with everybody is always trying to fulfill roles imposed in them, always trying to achieve what is expected of them. It could also be about how adulthood sucks the passion and hopes out of the youth (Kishimoto started writing Naruto when he was 24 and finished when he was in his forties). And of course, the closeting of queer people leading miserable lives as pretenders.

If Sasuke is meant to end up with Sakura and Naruto is meant to end up with Hinata then Kishimoto cannot make them happy marriages and give them happy families, he also cannot keep Naruto and Sasuke as revolutionary outcasts that stand up against the status quo, that fanservice would be out of character and out of theme.

This is what I mean when I say the ending makes sense, once you see the finale is all about conformity the thread of events becomes understandable and more heartbreaking too. You don't have to like it, but I do think we have to understand where is Kishimoto coming from when he wrote it the way he did.

The Naruto fandom wanted black and grey from Kishimoto and that's exactly what Kishimoto gave them, black and grey.