Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-1926479-20140720152733/@comment-28861328-20140720221722

Honestly, its our fault as readers for not expecting Kaguya. It really is. You can blame a writer for a lot of things, for example, if you read a novel or a novel series and things aren't adding up. But we read Naruto as it was being written so reserve your judgements for the end. Kishi didn't mention Kaguya herself until what, 20 chapters ago? But we all knew something wasn't write with Obito's Eye of the Moon Plan.

It didn't all make sense. Then you have the Asura and Indra subplot. Naruto and Sasuke were the first hints that their rivalry was something much bigger. The fact that they fought under the statues of Hashirama and Madara should've been an indicator of that. In the first encounter with Sasuke in Part II, Kurama flat out said he had a chakra similar to Madara. We now know that is because they were both transmigrants of Indra. Naruto has always had powerful life energy and a strong affinity for people, playing right into the Hashirama/Asura mold.

Kaguya was merely the reason everything happened. She was the primordial evil, if you will, who set all this into motion through Black Zetsu for her eventual revival. Now, that isn't to say Kishi knew every single bit of information from the beginning, but as someone who writes fiction and hopes to be published one day, I can tell you for certain that he had an outline. He knew Kaguya was coming a long time ago and he probably had the premise of the Uchiha/Senju, Asura/Indra conflict mapped out around the time he conceived Naruto and Sasuke's rivalry.

As a writer, especially if you're writing a long term series, ideas come in scenes. You envision a scene you'd like to write, a story you'd like to tell, and you start connecting these ideas together into a plot; filling in the detailed pieces of information as you go, hence why Kishi will take breaks to research topics. Its not that he's run out of ideas. Its that he has had a concept written down and he just wants to delve more into it before implementing the idea into his story.

Honestly, I find him to be a brilliant writer. If Dragon Ball Z, which inspired Kishi, was recently declared a "pride of Japan the world over" in terms of literary success (some famous manga editor recently said that over in Japan), then Naruto is rising up to be just as popular, if not better. Kishi's writing, particularly his method of cliffhangers, has inspired me to certain degrees, so I definitely hate when people just write him off as some piss poor writer.

The dude isn't massively successful because he's some novice. He knows what he's doing. But that's my perspective.