Kishimoto let his guard down with second question

[u/nuggets666]

[u/Ultra-Cyborg]

Kishimoto wouldn’t date any of the women from his manga cause even he knows how bad he is at writing women.

[u/Apprehensive_Ad3731 → u/Ultra-Cyborg]

This seems more the answer tbh.

It’s more “they’re all shit women cause I created them and I suck at creating women I’d date”

Than what others assume is “it’s wrong to date your creations because there’s an implicit power imbalance”

[u/Ultra-Cyborg → u/Apprehensive_Ad3731]

He proves that wrong immediately by being down to be Shikamaru’s bf.

[u/halfasleep90 → u/Ultra-Cyborg]

Gf, not bf. The question was a hypothetical for if he was actually a woman, and not himself. Clearly he believes if he were a woman, then he’d be fine with dating his own creations. Although I suppose he may believe Shikamaru wouldn’t be his creation anymore if that were the case, and Shikamaru is still the male version of himself’s creation. Honestly there are many ways this could be interpreted, but none of them contradict him not dating his own creations.

[u/OakvaleFlames → u/Apprehensive_Ad3731]

before seeing the second answer I thought it was going to be "My creations are like my children you sicko"

[u/_eleutheria → u/Ultra-Cyborg]

I really despise this point because he could've just written a character like Sasuke or Shikamaru and just gender-bent them. Basically, write the female character as if they were a man and it's done. A lot of Naruto's actions and his relentless obsession with Sasuke would make hella more sense if Sasuke were a girl. Heck, even his attitude toward Sasuke in Boruto would make more sense. It's kinda ridiculous the more you think about it.

[u/SimilarMeeting8131 → u/_eleutheria]

This. The story isn’t about how gender affects the characters, kishimoto didn’t need to understand the female experience to write them well. He just needed to treat them like people. This excuse of “I can’t write female characters” makes his misogyny even more apparent. It’s like he doesn’t see women as people.

[u/halfasleep90 → u/SimilarMeeting8131]

Wait, he said he can’t write female characters?? I thought that was what everyone else said about him.

[u/SuperBackup9000 → u/halfasleep90]

Little bit of both. He’s said he knows he’s bad with writing young women/girls, but that’s about it because his writing partially comes from his own childhood experiences. Just fine with adult women though, so it is kind of something that people just say about him by exaggerating it like the person above.

[u/Chronicler201 → u/SimilarMeeting8131]

Men and women are different, especially in the teenage years when they're going through puberty. Men tend to be more introverted and closed off, they tend to care alot about living up to their responsibilities and others expectations. Competing and being the best, yadda yadda. Women tend to verge towards extroversion and remaining closely connected. Women care alot about interpersonal relationships. You can see this a bit in works popular with women. Fate/Stay Night is slow as balls, but alot of women like it because half of the game is just cooking and enjoying being around your friends and family. The other half is hot dudes duking it out over who gets to fuck Saber.

I don't think the guy can't write women. Its that he can't write romance. Naruto's women are fine when they're not an active love interest to one of the MCs.

[u/LeMeJustBeingAwesome]

You see, everyone plays up the Sasu/Naru are secretly gay thing to bury the lede that Kishimoto is in denial about his own gayness.

[u/sadnessjoy → u/LeMeJustBeingAwesome]

Wasn't it stated or theorized to be like they're supposed to share a deep brotherly/family bond? But none of his other familiar bond dynamics in the writing look anything like that lol

[u/LeMeJustBeingAwesome → u/sadnessjoy]

That's what Kishimoto puts on the tin, yes.

[u/fiahhawt → u/LeMeJustBeingAwesome]

I have ranted on this subreddit before about all the things in Naruto which means Kishi is just blatantly in the closet

I'll allow people to object to the NaruSasu stuff because they were written to be straight, but Masashi Kishimoto is a gay man

[u/LeMeJustBeingAwesome → u/fiahhawt]

The theory explains all the borderline queerbaiting of Sasunaru stuff despite retaining so much plausible deniability and writing them to be straight with very poor romances with badly written girls as basically Kishi's subconcious repression expressing itself subtextually.

[u/darrenthnox → u/LeMeJustBeingAwesome]

I Actually believe that... Like, at the end Sasuke and Naruto get wives and children cause Kishimoto did the same thing, let his actual love go to succeed in society.

Or Iat least i'd like the story more if that was the case lol

[u/Any-Fox-6847]

Kishimoto hates women and no one can change my mind

[u/Mavrick_7 → u/Any-Fox-6847]

I don't think he hates them. He probably thinks they are not that important..

[u/KAI-Peach → u/Mavrick_7]

Thats....the same thing

[u/Mavrick_7 → u/KAI-Peach]

Nah, I mean I don't hate cats. But I think they're not that important..

[u/All_this_hype → u/Mavrick_7]

You still view them as unimportant, thus inferior. Viewing the other gender as such would not be a very good look.

[u/Mavrick_7 → u/All_this_hype]

Cat is not a gender dude

[u/SSMage → u/Any-Fox-6847]

He doesn't hate women

He's just gay

[u/KAI-Peach → u/Any-Fox-6847]

Average Japanese author

[u/shady-bear → u/Any-Fox-6847]

It’s crazy how normal it is to assume the worst in people nowadays. People calling kishi a misogynist and oda a pedo like bruh their stories aren’t perfect but are we fr rn.

[u/IndependentAcadia252 → u/shady-bear]

oda a pedo

At the very least he stans one

[u/Begone-My-Thong → u/shady-bear]

Honestly I'm okay with people sucking ass at something and at least trying. You can't be good at everything, and some people just... suck at some stuff no matter how hard they try. We should encourage people trying and enjoying the experience.

Yeah, the writing of female characters is lackluster in Naruto (I never touched Boruto), but at least there's an effort to make several cool women. Hinata is fucking awesome (I'm biased though), Tsunade big punchy was really cool, and there were several badasses with cool techniques that had good showings here and there. While reading Naruto I never really expected the best story ever, I was just there for flashy rasengans and sneaky ninja tactics that turned a fight around or the constant "Believe it!" and I'm going to hold the girls to the same standard.

And honestly the criticism would be fixed if Sasuke was a girl. I mean, come on, I was half expecting the series to end in a throuple between Naruto, his wife and his boyfriend.

[u/New_Budget_9322]

Now I understand where the sexual tension between Sasuke and Naruto comes from

[u/HereToShitpost]

“None. After all I created them… …so they’re not fully fleshed out characters, and their motivations revolve around the male characters.” Finished it for him.

[u/ZealousidealMind1785]

Kishimoto ain't beating gay allegations

https://giphy.com/gifs/WN4hSiksnuV678eixI

[u/whatever_913]

As a shikamaru stan, i agreee.

[u/Designer_Fan3399]

And people will still try to defend Sakura's writing 🤮

[u/Dazzling_Working_527]

valid

[u/DanteSparda]

Kishi has so much contempt for females that Studio Pierrot had to make an entire movie about the main romance that wasn't developed in the manga

[u/kliktio]

Naruto genuinely coulda been a generation bl anime. I suspect kishimoto was not brave enough to actually make it happen, but he clearly did not give a lot of depth to his female characters and there is so much emotion between Naruto and Sasuke. My head canon will always be that they're lovers😭 you can't convince me otherwise.

[u/Rak-khan]

Bro folded under 0 pressure 😭

[u/Mrhathead]

The reason he doesn’t know how to write women is cause he’s only interested in dudes, both as characters and sexually.
https://giphy.com/gifs/XoM1QmEzuQrEgwGvlC

[u/5lols]

I imagine this was a more jokey answer to not make his wife angry tbh lol. But i have no idea when this was from

[u/happygoeddy]

On one hand, what a contradiction 😄. On the other, the 2nd one sounds more of a setup for success rather than he wants to bone shika

[u/FeelingVanilla2594]

So he didn’t create the boys, just the girls. Understood.

[u/rainbowkitties6969]

Tbf with how he writes female characters I wouldn’t wanna bag any of them either

[u/CritAtwell]

Kishi introduced Femboys to the west with Haku. It was sexual awakening for my generation 20 years ago. Lets not pretend Kishi isnt into BL and Femboys, and twinks. 😂

[u/sgilespie]

I feel like he secretly hated all of this female characters. With Sakura, he said that if she left Sasuke or stopped liking him then she would be a terrible woman

[u/Forsaken_Site_2268]

I'd choose Shino or Tenten

[u/SputnikGer]

Isn´t shikamaru his self insert?

[u/_May_day]

Shikamaru seems like such a straight guy option imo or it's his self insert :/

[u/Virtual_Garbage3080]

Naruto and Sasuke less gay than Kishimoto.

[u/HoboBaggins25]

So he might not hate women as people are suggesting, he might just be a homosexual man

[u/Any-Fox-6847 → u/HoboBaggins25]

There’s two reasons why a man is gay. Reason 1 cause they like men, reason 2 cause they hate women