Masashi Kishimoto is a hack writer.

[Mangod]

Sooo... we had this little discussion about a month ago, about wheter or not Naruto was hated, and I answered that the reason I (and I suspect a lot of other people) dislike the series, is because it's become increasingly poorly written.

Well, guess what? Kishimoto just came out during the Shonen Jump held Jump Festa event, and admited that he had no f***ing clue how the main character is supposed to be able to defeat the main villain. He's out of ideas...

What. A. Piece. Of. Crap.

He's written himself into a corner, made his beloved Uchiha God Mode Sue too powerful, and now he's realised what every other person on the planet has: the main character can't win. This is worse than Aizen in Bleach, and will probably share that series retarded pre-timeskip conclusion as well...

Why did I ever even like this series?

 

[Casual Shinji]

Well, in defence, any series that goes on for this long is bond to suck. You can't really hold that against it, can you?

Is there any long running manga/anime that has a satisfying ending?

...

Exactly!

 

[Queen Michael]

Well, in defence, any series that goes on for this long is bond to suck. You can't really hold that against it, can you?

Is there any long running manga/anime that has a satisfying ending?

...

Exactly!

Thing is, the currently popular long-runners don't have any endings. They're still going on. Detective Conan, Golgo 13, Naurto, bleach, One Piece, Sazae-san... None of them are over.

And Dragon Ball is over, admittedly, but that manga had a good ending in my opinion.

And as far as I'm concerned, the biggest problem with Masashi Kishimoto's writing is that he thinks the best way to create "deep" characters is to write a sone-dimensional character and create some point in the past where s/he was sad.

 

[sanquin]

I kind of don't expect anything else from such a long running manga. Same with bleach (Kubo planned to end it after Aizen, but his contract didn't allow for it), where it's very clear that he didn't think of the current plot in advance.

What I find more problematic with Naruto at the moment is that it has been non-stop war for...how many chapters now? I had the same problem with the Arrancar fights in Bleach. Basically, the story has been...uhm...let's see. Ah! Since chapter 515. So 145 friggin' chapters now since the war began. That's just under 1/4 of the entire manga! I don't like constant fighting and the drama of the characters that inevitably goes with it.

 

[Mangod]

He isn't a hack, its just that his series has been falling apart for years, after bloody years of it, its not a stretch to consider he could mess up and write himself into a wall. Its hard to keep a consistent decade old series to keep going flawlessly.

Most long running series slip up, Kishimoto just seems to have slipped up big time on this particular fight, at least he is being honest.

I'll give it to him, it takes a big man to admit he's screwed up, but I cannot understand how he managed to write himself into this corner in the first place. Was there nobody around who could tell him that "y'know, Masashi, if the goal of your story is for the hero to defeat the villain, maybe turning your villain into a Deity isn't such a good idea"?

Frankly, I'm stumped that Kishimoto, and Kubo as well, managed to end up in these situations. Yes, your villain needs to be a threat, but if you make him too powerful, then you end up in a situation where the only way for the heroes to win is if the bad guy deliberatly kills himself.

 

[EternallyBored]

He isn't a hack, its just that his series has been falling apart for years, after bloody years of it, its not a stretch to consider he could mess up and write himself into a wall. Its hard to keep a consistent decade old series to keep going flawlessly.

Most long running series slip up, Kishimoto just seems to have slipped up big time on this particular fight, at least he is being honest.

I'll give it to him, it takes a big man to admit he's screwed up, but I cannot understand how he managed to write himself into this corner in the first place. Was there nobody around who could tell him that "y'know, Masashi, if the goal of your story is for the hero to defeat the villain, maybe turning your villain into a Deity isn't such a good idea"?

Frankly, I'm stumped that Kishimoto, and Kubo as well, managed to end up in these situations. Yes, your villain needs to be a threat, but if you make him too powerful, then you end up in a situation where the only way for the heroes to win is if the bad guy deliberatly kills himself.

Probably, because he's not the only person working on the Naruto books, just the head writer, and what he does write is still under massive pressure from his bosses and their bosses, and so on up the chain. In Kubo's case, he specifically mentioned that the Aizen arc was both supposed to be the last arc in Bleach, as well as it was supposed to come much sooner. The popularity of the manga and the anime required both of them to stretch their stories out.

In cases like this, especially in manga targeted at boys, power creep becomes a major problem, the power levels intended for the final chapters and villains gets stretched out, because Japanese manga seems to be obsessed with constantly throwing higher and higher level villains at the protagonist, you eventually get up to planet destroying or god-like levels of ability, and then the writers get stuck trying to find a way for the protagonists to defeat the main villain.

Even more focused manga like One piece start to see power creep after awhile, although in One Piece's case mitigating that problem has its own set of issues that drag the story down. In the end, it comes down to planning and publisher or popularity fiat, Kishimoto can't plan too far ahead, because he doesn't know when his publisher is going to say he needs to stretch the series another 2-3 years. In Kubo's case this meant stringing Aizen out a lot longer than intended, and then writing arcs by the seat of his pants after Aizen went down. In Kishimoto's case, this was solved by him dragging the ninja war out as long as humanly possible, even before the ninja war, you could tell he was stretching things out just to stall the main story arcs for as long as possible.

 

[Mau95]

So make it a bad ending then. It could work out. Main character dies, bad guy wins.

 

[Ishal]

Well, in defence, any series that goes on for this long is bond to suck. You can't really hold that against it, can you?

Is there any long running manga/anime that has a satisfying ending?

...

Exactly!

Isn't that the point of most anime, though? Especially Shonen anime? It's made to sell toys and market the manga comics. It's the stuff that makes it over seas to Toonami and garners a juicy western audience. Attack on Titan will likely go a similar route, even if it isn't as long.

 

[SUPA FRANKY]

So now we can all transition to a better series, like Toriko? Also, hopefully Hunter X Hunter when it inevitably returns?

 

[Kaimax]

The Japanese Manga industry is kinda toxic in it's own way for more of the popular series. They will try to milk it as long as it can, and what happened to Naruto is that they've milked it dry and the cashcow (kishimoto) will also get affected negatively by this.

He's also bound by a contract so he can't really do anything much but just continue as long as he can.
Just for perspective sake, Mangas that "end on their own" is rare, and most series that ended was cancelled due to slumping ratings.

 

[ForumSafari]

And as far as I'm concerned, the biggest problem with Masashi Kishimoto's writing is that he thinks the best way to create "deep" characters is to write a sone-dimensional character and create some point in the past where s/he was sad.

that's a very common problem with characterisation in nearly every medium. I do agree but I'd go further than saying it's a quirk of his.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Isn't that the point of most anime, though? Especially Shonen anime? It's made to sell toys and market the manga comics. It's the stuff that makes it over seas to Toonami and garners a juicy western audience. Attack on Titan will likely go a similar route, even if it isn't as long.

Yep.

Which is why the best anime series generally have 26 episodes.

 

[Lieju]

He's written himself into a corner, made his beloved Uchiha God Mode Sue too powerful, and now he's realised what every other person on the planet has: the main character can't win.

I thought it was steadily going towards the conclusion.
All he needs to do is write that friendship defeats Madara, all the Ninja uniting against him or something.

The big problem he has is with Sasuke.
That has been a mess for a long time, how can you bring it to a conclusion in at least somewhat satisfying way?

He will probably write that Sasuke leaves to do whatever, have him help and then go on a journey to search for the truth or to become the Pirate King or whatever...

Madara isn't the problem.

He can be defeated, and that's the end to the bloody past of the Ninja world, then they can start building anew.


Sasuke's character-arc is a mess, and he is too popular a character to kill off (which would be an easy solution.)

 

[Two-A]

So now we can all transition to a better series, like Toriko? Also, hopefully Hunter X Hunter when it inevitably returns?

I thought the author for HxH was sick?

Oh well, at this point, I'm only reading to see how it ends. Any real interest in the series I had was burned out long ago.

 

[Someone Depressing]

This is why The Simpson, Family Guy, Ranma1/2, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and any other long runner with at least partially non-episodic events will have/do have really bad endings that are simply not satisfying.

Daria is currently the only exception I can think of. And in a way, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is to a certain extent, even if the ending simply came out of nowhere.

Any long runner is bound to have a bad ending.

Take Naruto. They milked the shit out of that, until it became commonplace on Cartoon Network, or any other western children's station, until it became unnecesary to label it as "Japanese media". It's known worldwide, in one way or another.

Because it was good. Then they milked it dry. Then it sucked.

 

[gigantor21]

I see Naruto and Bleach going to shit as the result of Jump's desperation more than anything.

The magazine never really recovered from the loss of Dragon Ball, and has declined sharply in readership since it's heyday in the 90's. Thus they have to cling desperately to whatever hits they can, long after they've hit their sell-by date. Indeed, even DBZ wasn't immune to this problem, as Toriyama NEVER planned for the series to last as long as it did. That dragged down the series for me in a big way after Namek--especially during the Buu saga, which was a total fucking mess IMO.

As amazing as One Piece and Beelzebub are, I expect those to be pulled through the ringer to the point that they stink up the place in the same way. The publishers can't afford to let those go gracefully, as Naruto and Bleach ending will leave huge ass holes in their lineup. Same with Kuroko and Toriko, although I don't read those.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

And I'm suddenly reminded about this which might be a tad NSFW

Spoiler

<youtube=BTlH_riQDN8>

Yeah, long running anything will jump the shark, or run into problems now and again. Having some time to get one's self out of a slump, or getting writing help from others might be worthwhile. Then again, I used to write alot, and fell out of it hard, and for years. I can't really talk about how to get out of writer's block.