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. It's 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
wasn't 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 didn't 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 you've ever been to a really long-running Shipping War before, and particularly if you're generally a fan of big damn coming-of-age stories, all of this may seem oddly familiar to you from somewhere.
If you've ever been to a really long-running Shipping War before,
you also ought to know that there's 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 you're 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
Naruto's 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 doesn't know it's 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 that's 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 Sakura's reaction to Sasuke being
hospitalized and waking up, and sees them metaphorically drifting away
from him, signifying his feelings that Sakura's feelings for Sasuke are
so intense that they're a barrier between him and the two of them. As a
curious aside, the very last time we see Naruto in Part I, it is Hinata
who is shown watching him leave the village to train with Jiraya, while
she promises that she'll also do her best to get stronger. But that's 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 Sakura's 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 Naruto's 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 can't 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 doesn't.
This is a turning point (in a later deleted tweet, Kishimoto's 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 Sakura's
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 doesn't 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 it's obvious where this is now going, right?
Not so Fast, Bucko! Hinata's 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, Naruto's
resurrected dad arrives on the scene, comments basically that Sakura
totally reminds him of Naruto's late mom, and proceeds to ask whether
Sakura is perchance Naruto's 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 Naruto's 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 Naruto's 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 Naruto's romantic affections when the rest of the story had
already more or less taken form; this was specifically due to advice
from Kishimoto's 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
Sakura's design from his wife, and that the love story that led to his
own marriage was very similar to Naruto's Parents' and what would be
Naruto's and Sakura's: 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. Naruto's 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, and how the other option was laid to rest.
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 he's 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 people's
legs". And once you accept that, the full picture finally emerges, and
connecting the dots is not too difficult.
Epilogue: A month or so after this essay was written, Kishimoto more or less confirmed its conclusion. "Naruto ending up with Hinata
was decided in the very early stages of the story," he reiterated, and
then added the aforementioned final piece of the puzzle: "So Naruto & Sakura being close was a deliberate mislead, a red herring, from the start. That's why scenes like Sakura being compared to Kushina, Naruto's mom, were introduced." The Trolling Creator theory, which many fans had called - and which TV Tropes had also called - has been finally confirmed by Word of God.
