Board Thread:Episode Discussions/@comment-25319479-20150514144219/@comment-28861328-20150518161107

Kishimoto is rarely involved in filler. The most the anime company does is ask him for concept arts or clarification on certain matters and even then they can entirely ignore them and just do their own thing if they want. He doesn't endorse any arc, in fact, if I'm not mistaken, he's been quoted saying he doesn't really pay much attention to the anime. Could be wrong there, though, so don't quote me.

To me, none of the filler arcs really explained anything. They're nonsense. Ridiculous events meant to fill the gap so that the manga can get ahead or, in this case, so that the anime team can milk their profits for as long as possible. Let's be honest, if they wanted, they could run the series to the end now with no filler at all. The manga is over. But they don't want to. Money demands otherwise of them. Obviously, you watch the anime more than the manga, so you're opinion is going to differ.

As to the fan fiction remark: Corporation or fan-made, it really doesn't matter. In one scenario, someone is getting paid for writing their "what-if's" into an established series and in the other case they're doing it for shits and giggles. Not really much of a difference to me. The content quality is about the same either way you look at it.