Is Yahoo Japan covering up the negative impact of The Last: Naruto the Movie? That’s the question on everyone’s minds after a certain incident happened.
After the premiere of the supposed most-awaited movie in the series’ franchise, The Last: Naruto the movie fails to positively impact its audience.
After feeling betrayed, robbed and mislead by the false advertisement done by Studio Pierrot together with Masashi Kishimoto, Japanese audience decided to pay back the creators of the movie – which supposedly, as promised, will resolve all bonds, with their honest and realistic opinions about the movie and the expectations they had based on the done advertisement.
Given the betrayal the majority of the fans felt, the movie had mostly 1 star reviews, the following one having up to 200 kudos prior to its sudden disappearance from the most-rated comments on The Last: Naruto the Movie’s Yahoo Japan.
When posting the comment, the first thing the poster addressed was “I know this is going to be deleted to I’m going to take a screenshot”, leaving us thus know how things seem to be working behind the scenes at Yahoo Japan and how for this weird reason The Last: Naruto the movie needs to look good on plate, despite its fans being overall highly negative about it that Naruto, the hero of the series, at the end of 15 years of serialization has gotten to be called by Japanese fandom “the worst scumbag”.
The negative impact the movie had over the fandom can be felt in the results the movie is getting given that whereas yesterday the movie was rating at 2.93, today it seems to be dropping even more, at 2.84 and seems to be continuously dropping.
Fans also seem to suspect a high surge of fake accounts being created to counter-balance the negative review The Last: Naruto the movie gets, given how a majority of the “good reviews” are rather robotic, as observed by fans @ 2ch, given that they are consecutively added and the wording of the statements being nothing more than suggestions on buying more promotional products related to The Last: Naruto the movie:
If you watched the movie you should buy and read the novel too!
Another thing that has prompted fans to notice these seemingly manipulative reviews besides the fact that the positive reviews are consecutively added and the wording is the way it is, it’s the fact that whereas the bad reviews the fans make gain kudos in seconds, the good ones seem to have their 0,2,3,4,7 kudos, prompting fans to think these come probably for the same people that posted the other positive ones.
For a good majority of photos regarding fan’s reviews, go here and here. The said events were also confirmed by another Japanese fan herself on Tumblr:
This is absolutely true. I saw the movie on Saturday and while I’m still trying to deal with my disappointment I went on 2ch forums and saw the very well written yahoo reviews last night. Today when I go to read it again they are gone and people on 2ch are in an uproar about it. The 5 star reviews written to balance out the 1 star reviews from REAL people do not have any valid reason to offer about what was good about the movie just that they really loved it or 感動しました deeply moved. But all the negative reviews have very detailed analysis of just exactly where in the movie and what was so bad about it especially the parts which contradict the original manga. I agree with all of the points made by the negative reviews because a lot of the points are also things I saw wrong with the movie. But I was just so overwhelmingly disappointed I can’t bring myself to blog about it yet. Nonetheless I am just so sickened by the marketing ploys and the way Naruto has ended like this. People are entitled to not like the movie ESPECIALLY if they gave very good reasons as to why instead of blatantly just saying they hated it with no reason. There is absolutely NO NEED to delete negative reviews and counter return with a flood of fake 5 star reviews to balance out the average rating. Even if you enjoy the movie there is NO WAY the Last deserves 5 stars. At best if you can look past all the inconsistencies maybe you can give it a 3 or 4 but 5 is WAY too much. Such blatant false marketing cover-ups I have never seen! Really really disappointing… But yeah definately spread the word!
Probably will get anonymous hate but it doesn’t matter anymore because I feel much better knowing that I wasn’t the ONLY fan disappointed in the movie. I would love to translate it all for everyone but the truth is it doesn’t matter how many or even who translates it, it’s all very negative. And I have to add it is NOT NaruSaku fans complaining. People are writing valid reasons like Naruto should not be able to use Kagebunshin when he is still in the academy and Kakashi who is a strategist will never rely on just 勘 his 6th sense when making important decisions and if Sai is trapped in a genjutsu dreaming of his brother there is no way that all Naruto can have memories of is Hinata, what about Iruka? etc. etc. There’s hardly any complaints about lack of NaruSaku! It’s about what makes SENSE and this movie and the script hardly matches what happened in the manga NOR do the characters feel IC. THAT is what people are complaining about! Trust me when I say it barely has ANYTHING to do with shipping and EVERYTHING about how bad and consistent this The Last movie is! Oh the movie ranking no. 1 this week? Of course people are going to watch it if you market it as THE LAST Naruto movie ever. It will gather old and new fans and also people like me who can’t get a refund from the pre-sale tickets have to see it twice. So do you think I count as part of the pool of money they gathered from opening week? It’s not like I have a choice! I don’t doubt the movie will do well in terms of sales but satisfaction after actually seeing the movie for themselves? Well that’s exactly what those reviews and comments on Japanese forums are for and even now certain comments are being deleted! I don’t even have the energy to be mad anymore only sadness disappointment and emptyness. I hope the studio staff and Kishi-sensei are happy with the way they trampled on fans feelings, those who have supported this manga for the last 15 years. The more you care or remember about the manga the more you cannot bring yourself to like this movie cause you start thinking ‘but what about when s/he did that in the manga??’ etc. etc. This is a movie where you will enjoy it more if you do not remember anything about the characters, who they were, what they stood for, and what they achieved in the entire span of the manga.
Another Tumblr user, a Japanese fan herself also tells us that the general impact of the movie over its fans wasn’t quite that good:
Most of them are not happy. My friend sat next to some Japanese boys who were around our age (20) and she said she heard them say “doushite?” throughout the whole movie. They were asking “why?” some things happened. It mostly happened at the times Hinata was doing nothing but being the damsel in distress. Or when she took the ruined scarf with her on her mission to save Hanabi, who in their right mind would do that? So I think the real Naruto fans were greatly disappointed.
A few people even left the theater early! Now it is rare for Japanese people to act like this, because they will stand out from the crowd to much. Japan is not an individualistic, but collectivistic society. They mostly do what the group does, so it was sort of a shock to see 8 people leave early. But I guess even the Japanese have their limits.