Thank you so much for compiling everything relevant and important  - it makes me feel "heard" somehow...because I was writing about this years ago and ending up at same conclusions.
Sakura ´s confession was not a lie... it was misunderstood horribly and made worse by the anime piling up all these abusive comic relief moments and uglyfying Sakura inside-out. Even the animation of her scenes was mostly awful, while Hinata got the high budget treatment.... It´s been years and it still bothers me.... it feels like something that was supposed to happen did not - for ridiculous reasons.
I like both heroines - Hinata, as well as Sakura - ... but ultimately I think it would have been better for the story and characters to go the NaruSaku route. There was too many important statements and happenings tied to those two and their interaction and promises... and the ending just felt forced.
Karin missing completely from the story at some point is again  - a really good hint that Kishimoto planned a romantic role for her but in the end had to drop it. And the easiest way was to just make her dissappear from the plot. She was abused by Sasuke over and over...then almost offed by him...and then she was dropped like a fly - how aggravating treatment of your own character.
She had to dissappear Because her only  role possibly was to be Sasuke´s new loveinterest. Nothing else.. the story shows it. Once she lost that position, she literally lost her relevance to the plot as well - and instead of adressing her, Kishimoto made her depart someplace, only to resurface in ridiculous situation with Sakura chasing after Sasuke again, years after.

No matter if Naruhina was planned from the start. The story simply naturally moved forward in a way, where Naruto and Sakura´s relation became deeper and made most sense. Kishimoto never gave the characters a chance to address their feelings after the confession. If he would do it - he would have made narusaku happen, because both their feelings would have been officially mutual at such point and there would be no logical way out of it as a writer (without making it look dumb).
It ´s sad he gave up on Sakura and on Karin ... they deserved better, as did Hinata (she ended up looking like a sexualized trophy, instead of a girl with motivations and goals).

Honestly, studio Perriot is one of those studios were I refuse to watch any anime associated with it. They handled naruto so bad, i wasn’t really a narusaku shipper when I watched the anime, but once I read the manga, it’s crazy how narusaku wasn’t endgame, so much symbolism and chemistry all wasted, a lot of people still don’t like Sakura, and for such petty reasons as well. I love this video, thank you for making it!

They could never make me hate Sakura.

One of the saddest things for me was that Sakura never found out that it was Naruto who complimented her forehead and not Sasuke.  And that she almost kissed Naruto too, and not Sasuke.  If you then consider how many parallels Sakura has with Kushina.  And considering how significant the moment was for Kushina when Minato complimented her on her red hair.  So important that she continued to tell Naruto many years later that she would only tell her story to someone who complimented her hair.  After Naruto complimented her on her hair as well.  Sakura had inferiority complex about her forehead and was teased about it before, same as Kushina with her red hair.  If Sakura's moment between her and "Sasuke"/Naruto was as important as Kushina's moment with Minato, then Sakura sticks with Sasuke all along for something Naruto actually did.  But of course that's just speculation.

In the Naruto love triangle, it would never have failed because of Naruto's love for Sakura, or Sakura's love for Sasuke, or Hinata's love for Naruto.  The problem was always the counterpart.  Sakura was the only one who was shown in such a way that she could possibly turn her feelings to someone else (Naruto).

The way the ending played out not only caused Sakura to be demoted as a heroine, her entire character was destroyed.  Sakura was written in the end as if she had taken advantage of Naruto throughout the story.  And in turn, to bring Hinata together with Naruto, perhaps even worse things were done.  This whole Kaguya thing, thanks to the pairing with Hinata, NaruHina only works through Kaguya, and things related to that.

That was a very nice video, it's nice when you keep realizing that you're not the only one who notices all this.

The anime did immeasurable damage to Sakura's reputation and her ultimate portrayal in the end. It says a lot that most Naruhina fans will point to noncanon filler for why Hinata is so great or why NH was there from the beginning, and use anime specific negative changes to Sakura to show why she's bad. Comparing numerous scenes from the manga to the anime is a real eye opener for how much Hinata was forced in and how much Sakura was twisted to make her look worse.

As someone who was introduced to Naruto through the anime first I was shocked to find out just how exaggerated the gag of Sakura punching Naruto was and how much less it happened in the manga.

Congratulations to Sakura on being approved as Pure Good in the Heroes Wiki today

To be bullied into changing your heroine... Like, forget pierrot, your own editors trying to push their narrative? When they're supposed to keep your ideas in mind and help you make them better? Bullying him off having the heroine be a more independent-thinking person? And at the same time making her be less that with how she continued to act towards Sasuke, never letting her move on?

Ofc, Kishi is not blameless for going along with it, but at the same who knows what pressure he was under. When people that are supposed to help you are making do things you don't want, it'd get tiring fighting them, hence the "I don't care about it anymore."

The fake confession scene really read to me like "it's fake for now, but later they will revisit it and this time the confession is true".
So yeah, I really do think there's something messed up behind the scenes. There's something that just doesn't make sense and contradictory.
People need to understand that being a successful mangaka doesn't mean they call the shots. They're still beholden to their editors.
Especially because a lot of Japanese people are genuinely so humble that that they feel indebted to the publisher/editors for making them successful, and don't dare to fight back.
Some people are strong-willed enough to have the guts to fight back, but not all of them are like that. A lot of people, not just Japanese, feel the pressure to not antagonise anyone.

I was also a Sakura hater at the beginning, but after learning more about her and paying more attention to her character I began to change my views and even learned to appreciate her, it's really sad that Sasuke, the one who tried to kill her multiple times, got her.

Studio Pierrot even went as far as removing the curves Kishimoto gave her in the manga. It’s ridiculous.

Great exploration into what happened with Naruto's ending. I was personally a casual fan who didn't really care about the ships... until the ending happened and I was SHOCKED that NaruSaku didn't happen in favor of Naruhina and Sasusaku. It was just so obvious from the perspective of someone who reads a lot and is generally into romance that the romantic development and arc was pointing towards Narusaku and then it swerved away hard, doing the ship so dirty and leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth. I can't say for certain that Kishimoto gave into pressure from editors and fans, but it's likely. Honestly preferable to him genuinely deciding to make Narusaku a red herring and make Naruhina canon with NO real development - of all the surprises and plot twists in a story, the endgame couples should NEVER be one of them. That's just bad writing. If audiences can't see the endgame couples coming, you've done something wrong. And when you need to make a movie that is "canon" but not part of the manga to justify your endgame couple, you've DEFINITELY done something wrong.

I can understand how kishimoto feel  they forced him so much that he didn't care anymore it's actually sad that he have ignore what his heart wants and have to going on with other people's needs

I always thought that trying to say that Naruto never really loves Sakura was the biggest bonehead thing you could ever say. All of the things that he does for her purely out of a self sacrifical love is staggering. It really felt like the story was aiming to go towards Sakura growing as a character and realising the feelings she had for Sasuke, while not completely invalid or wrong, were the feelings of a young girl with a crush.  And instead realizing that Naruto was the one who was always there for her even if she sometimes treated him poorly. Instead we get the build up for for them ending up together only for Naruto to not know what love is and no one growing at all and everything feeling very pointless. I'm not even the biggest Naruto fan but as someone who loves stories and romace plots specifically, the entire thing just ended in a massive train wreck.

I remember being incredibly disappointed by Naruto's ending and how the characters were ultimately treated, but the final nail in the coffin for me, personally, was the blatant lies and manipulation that came after, from SP and Kishimoto. I realize it was nothing more than damage control, but it made me give up this franchise and anything associated with it. Though, keeping in mind the "I don't care anymore" comment of his, I guess he gave up as well. That being said, I'm glad you made this video that showcases the truth of what happened. This fandom may be averse to the truth, but it needs to be said regardless, so thank you!

What's honestly the most jarring about the Sakura hate is that those people are effectively insulting Kishimoto's wife, who Kishi himself acknowledged as the person Sakura was based on.

It still hurts my heart, even to this day

I been doing a lot of digging the past week. I've been reading your NaruSaku symbolism series (which is fantastic btw), finding NaruSaku websites that have posts dating back to 2006, and just trying to wrap my head around this whole thing. I have watched this video at least 5 times at this point because you are the only person who seems to want to delve deeper than the words on the page and I appreciate that. I know I'm very late to the party for this subject but maybe some people will be glad that someone who's recently become a fan of the series see's things their way

When Kishimoto talks about the lack of popularity of Sakura amongst the female audience...

When I was a teen, I used to go to many anime conventions, and there were plenty of Sakura fans among girls, but not many Hinata fans. So, I'm surprised by what Kishimoto says, that Hinata was more popular, because, from my perspective, it's the opposite. I used to see so many girls cosplaying Sakura or using Sakura inspired t-shirts or accessories at those conventions. From my experience, Sakura was way more popular than the other female characters.
The ones I mostly saw calling Sakura useless and annoying, or choosing Hinata over Sakura were always guys, not girls. So, what Kishimoto says surprises me.

I absolutely despise The Last it’s so terrible and none sense it just proofs that NaruHina doesn’t make sense

First off I still remember your posts about NaruSaku on Tumblr back when I was on there so I'm glad to have found your channel here now! and second you managed to sum up and even enlightened me on a lot of things that occurred such as secret ballots/polls by Naruhina fans blindsiding NaruSaku fans, The editors leaning on Kishimoto that his original heroine and relationship idea wasn't to their liking which I always suspected as well and I do genuinely feel bad for Kishimoto being coerced to changed his own original character relationship ideas and i believe he genuinely wanted to do the best job he could with a character like Sakura but everyone around him being like it's not even worth don't even bother developing her character that makes me feel sad because it's like nobody has any faith in your ideas or intentions and so you decide to go with the flow and try to please all those people but end up with a compromised story that to this day has left a lot of people feeling unsatisfied with how it all went down.

But I think what really shocked me was when you demonstrated Sakura's reaction to seeing Naruto again and trying to be more considerate of his feelings and essentially try to start over with him versus how she was animated by Studio Pierrot to be sarcastic and inauthentic instead which probably did poison the impression she made to a lot of people and I felt that was so devious and underhanded of them to do so. Nowadays I think when a popular manga is adapted I feel fans would be quite vocal at a studio if they didn't faithfully adapt the character's motivations or expressions properly within a story because they're so crucial to how we're interpreting the story being shown to us. I know I'd be very upset if I was having a story that I wrote and drew adapted and changed something I meant to be depicted in a certain way in a wildly drastic direction from mine.

I'm the type of guy that believes within a shonen story that the first main girl character introduced to us the readers would most likely be the main love interest to a male protagonist and maybe that's simplistic thinking but for a lot of readers it could be as simple as that for stories of that nature and I think saying that was all a red herring is just nonsense. And I understand Kishimoto was probably under a lot of pressure but I believe it's a great disservice to tell us essentially you were lying about you meant for things to unfold here even though you clearly meant to have the story and relationship between these two in a certain way. One thing I liked about NaruSaku was that both of them were always working hard to change the first impressions everyone had around them but especially the first impressions they had with each other at first and wanted to show each they both were growing and improving as people and building a genuine level of care for one another over time and  we're immersed in that for most of the story. Maybe it is a fantasy that you're able to change that first impression someone has of you by working hard and showing potential they never realized before but I believe that's like a core essential theme in all of Naruto I certainly felt that was a core component of NaruSaku for me.

The way fans, editors and even studios treated Sakura made me develop my own internal story principle for when I'm writing my own stories that I call the "First Girl Principle" or perhaps it should be called "The Sakura Principle" that being if there's a shonen anime story centered around a male protagonist then his intended female love interest should be the first girl that the protagonist and us the readers meet for the first time in the story and that should be as simple and direct as that to avoid all of this confusion ad BS interfering in the author's intentions and I personally am trying to stick to that as best I can for my own characters and their stories with my core plans set in stone and immune to outside changes.

I was always a fan of NaruSaku and I still am, I like both Naruto and Sakura as characters and I like seeing them together they have an ideal chemistry to me that might be hard for me to succinctly describe but I just felt they complimented each other so well whenever they were happy in a scene together it was like a burst of sunshine haha. And this will probably sound very silly but I still remember being there at the height of NaruSaku-NaruHina-SasuSaku shipping wars across many battlefields and making my own NaruSaku fanart to contribute or even fight back, all the highs we felt when we saw new NaruSaku scenes in the manga and the depressing lows of when we realized  we were essentially fighting a losing battle for our ideals before it felt the entire series we believed in was gobbled up by all the Naruhina-Sasusaku forces at play so I honestly do feel like a veteran when I reflect on it all now haha. I personally dropped the entire Naruto series when the last chapter was published and especially after The Last movie and Boruto because I felt so burned out and betrayed that I wanted nothing to do with it anymore and I tried to move on from that bitter time by looking for new series and working on my own story ideas which I felt were more deserving of my time and energy and I've felt like that for over a decade now.

And finally my apologies for rambling for so long like in my old tumblr posts but after all this time I just wanted to say that whenever I see other veteran NaruSaku fans like you or "civilian" Naruto fans still championing for NaruSaku as an ideal shonen anime relationship we could've gotten that had a lot of potential when I discover old or even new NaruSaku fanart/fanfics it helps bring me a sense of peace and maybe not closure but I do feel a sense of pride that I stuck by with a ship that I truly believed it and went down with it as well something I've done many times since but that was one time I felt...it was just something I couldn't compromise on, I felt in my bones that was a key part of the story of Naruto and it was worth fighting for alongside all the other NaruSaku fans like who felt the same way even after all this time.