"Is RtN Really That Much Different From The LAST?" Or "SP+Kishi Early Confessions"

"Is RtN really that much different from the LAST?" or "SP+Kishi early confessions"

Basically, two thoughts: first, RtN has more similarities to the LAST than a lot of people acknowledge and second, RtN was a pretty damn romantic movie and the Last could learn from it. Also, yes, I am not looking at NS as a BroTP in this movie, because NS never was one anywhere and especially because their counterparts SakuMenma, whose roles they played in everyone’s eyes, are pretty much confirmed canon.

Similarities between RtN and the LAST lie mostly in execution. Basically, a lot of issues 700th (sp-)chapter and The LAST had were foreshadowed in RtN. The fact that RtN is also technically-canon, since Kishimoto took part in creating it, only helps my point (SP+Kishimoto collaboration for the win).

First of all, the main plot in RtN is weak. The whole premise about capturing the fox through putting Naruto in AU is positively nonsensical. This is creator’s (SP\Kishimoto) CONFESSION NUMBER 1 - “we don’t give a fuck about the villain’s motivation and reasoning as long as it gives us the setting we wish for”. (Hello, Toneri and his crush).

Secondly, priorities are broken. Despite the fact that dark-Menma\extracting-Naruto is supposedly the driving storyline, main accent is so obviously made on Uzumaki family dynamics that the rest of the story just falls apart and disappears in the background. All action\villain scenes look extremely rushed and weak (as well as Menma’s characterization) in comparison to the effort put in depicting the process of Naruto opening up to his family. Action|villain storyline OPENLY serves the emotional plot and is treated like the means to an end. It could be ok, but again - OPENLY, BLUNTLY, at a massive cost of quality. I don’t know about you guys, but I can only see this as a big step away from Naruto’s shounen roots, where emotional development was expressed through quality fighting, in fighting and around fighting, not the other way around. Thank God the movie was saved because it was MinaKushi, it is just that good. Anyway, in my perception it is CONFESSION NUMBER 2 - “We somewhat recall that Naruto is a shounen, but c'mon, ain’t emotional issues|dialogs and character angst the main reason our mostly girly audience is reading this?? (Hello, 90% romance movie as a next step). Who cares about fighting villains?”  (well, duh, if you write those villains like cardboard) “Also we forgot how to write good fights”

Thirdly, scene-crafting is weak. This is true both about general story-crafting and fanservice injections. It happened in almost every movie with the LAST being wholesomely made out of this sin. Big portion of scenes in RtN simply stinks of “purpose”. I mean, of course the intent of the author/screenwriter can almost always be deduced, but it has to have at least a little bit of subtlety! Creators of RtN don’t know what subtlety is, which is why almost every scene in the movie is crafted bluntly to make a very straightforward step in story progression (like Naruto not dodging toad’s spit to provoke Kushina’s jump in), almost as often - to introduce an outspoken fanservice moment, which is why there is absolutely no natural flow. There is no concern about strange and unjustified actions of characters (how about tell us how Sasuke can even be a playful extrovert with his backstory? How about trying to justify Shino and Kiba’s disgust of insects\dogs - did they abandon their clans?) if it gives us the needed content (hello, next step - Hinata can’t jump when she needs to be caught, hello, Hinata must be on the same eagle as Naruto, hello, Hinata wears fishnets in winter etc etc etc). Here goes CONFESSION NUMBER 3 - “We know what our fanbase wants, they are all goats anyway, so we’ll throw a bunch of individual fanservice and "anything goes for the story to progress” scenes together, they’ll be happy enough.“ (Hello, NH-fanfiction movie with canon-contradictions that comes next.)

And finally, what annoyed me and many other fans the most, is characters’ preposterous OOCness. To be precise, Sakura’s OOCness. I mean, 1\2 of the movie is basically about Sakura learning lessons that she has already learned in canon when she was basically 12 years old! Her first monologue on the swings about perfection of living alone, having no parents - oh it made me groan in pain! And then she said Sasuke would understand her better, even though he was literally the one to tell her that she was wrong about same statements in chapter 3! (And since then she even learned about his tragic story!)  When I was watching that scene for the first time, I wanted to cry and forsake NS forever, I almost wished Naruto would smack her right there (maybe not) and leave her for good. Now I understand what my heart was aching about. Because in my eyes that was the moment that shouted about the amount of fucks Studio Pierrot and even Kishimoto give about canon material and character development. Thus here are confessions number 4 and 5.

CONFESSION NUMBER 4: We don’t care about Sakura’s character development and image, we can use her for our purposes and totally retcon\rebuild her personality if needed to push the story forward. (hello SakuHina BFF, Sakura being sasuke fanatic at 19 etc.)

CONFESSION NUMBER 5: Since we don’t care about rebuilding personalities, we don’t care about canon material either. We don’t care if original manga story holds scenes that totally contradict what we are showing here. We don’t care if our scenes make characters look like they have brain-damage or amnesia. We don’t care if it makes the ideas in the original manga look weak. (Naruto being emotional impotent, NS being a rivalry game, Naruto giving up both on Sakura and HInata, etc.).

Confession 6 comes from the fact that Sakura’s development is basically reused, just as Naruto’s acceptance of his parents (though less, ‘cause impostors, right?lol), just as quite a bunch of battle scenes (Minato vs Tobi = Naruto vs Menma).

CONFESSION NUMBER 6: We are not too good to use scenes and developments that already worked in the manga. These are proven to be popular goods, we can milk them as much as we need, even if we give the spotlight to other characters. 

Just like that I think that RtN was indeed a forshadowing of what was going to come. Yes, the content contradicted the end a lot. The most obvious - there was a lot of NS tease and NS development as well as ship-sinking of SS and NH and Naruto learning what good parenting means (lolololol). But the underlying features of this movie, the decisions that made it what it was, the approach that was executed - they were all threatening the whole fandom, we just didn’t notice it. 

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And still RtN is a much better romantic movie than the LAST. Depends on how you define romance, of course.Naturally, I don’t mean the culmination scenes, because obviously kissing, confessing and getting married in "canon” is as much romantic resolution as it can get. RtN wasn’t a shoujo movie, but it featured an enormous mutual development of a female and male protagonists that was about them understanding each other better on a very deep level and becoming able to communicate ideals solely from this understanding (Sakura telling Naruto what being a hero means and brining his resolution to fight back). More than that - this development was a hard one. It featured two characters literally finding themselves in another’s shoes, which provoked a very sharp conflict of interests that could break them apart just as easily as make them closer. The way they handled it proved how much they meant to each other. Even Sakura, who was selfish in the beginning, was so hesitant about pressing her unhappiness upon Naruto, who finally found his home. 

In that complex scene near the fence we saw Naruto and Sakura not even needing words to communicate their feelings to each other. It was not a happy scene. It was the first time when Naruto actually said he didn’t have time for Sakura (and he suffered for this). It was not a happy scene, but it was a VERY intimate one. This is the kind of conflict that can make people realize the true value of the relationship they have - not some kind of adrenaline ride and a bunch of pitiful memories. I would even go further to say that this is the mild kind of development SN had - development through polishing values, priorities, being pulled apart and still not giving up on each other.

Even better - this was a Naruto movie with intimacy and hero\heroine development, but with a focus on other important themes (family and responsibility). Important to the Naruto universe, to original manga, to the shounen genre. Naruto and Sakura managed to grow together while addressing themes and resolving problems that were way beyond their feeling for each other thus proving wide meaning, stability and productivity of their relationship. On the other hand, in the Last Naruto and Hinata focus pretty much solely on each other. Basically all scenes in the LAST are about Naruto and Hinata learning to be comfortable at touching each other. Everything that is happening is pushing them in one direction - into each other’s arms. The conflict between them is solely external, all internal barriers are idiotic (Hinata is still as shy as she was in Part 1, Naruto is an emotional impotent he never was before) and are conveniently destroyed by a genjutsu with no personality developments needed.

RtN gives an image of a romantic story the LAST could have been. Even if it was about NH, it could put NH in the background of something that was always present in Naruto’s story - themes like changing rules, not giving up, destroying the system, etc. Hinata could have helped Naruto in his quest to lead the new ninja world and that could be hard for both of them, but that would make them actually intimate - something I didn’t manage to see in the Last. I am not even mentioning that it would keep Naruto’s genre intact and please a much wider audience.

But to me RtN is the movie with a lot of flaws that still showed me that NS needs not more than a tiny little push to become canon. Like that scene in the end, if only Sakura invited Naruto to have dinner with her family…

But. Denied.