Neji Hyuga’s death in NarutoShinobi’s Fourth Shinobi World War was a shock to longtime readers, but his departure was also controversial after manga author Masashi Kishimoto gave an interview to explain his reasons. me. In it, he revealed his reason for writing about the death of his favorite fan. Unfortunately, the explanation he gave was unsatisfactory and only made Neji’s death seem arbitrary.
The plot in question sees the character, who begins the manga, resenting his cousin Hinata, sacrificing himself to protect her against the villain Pain. The entire scene, though tragic, also feels dramatic in the wrong ways, fueled more by emotion than rational action. In a 2014 interview with FujiTV, Kishimoto’s response only seemed to confirm readers’ fears that drama was indeed the driving force behind death. That and the romance.
Neji died to create Naruto and Hinata’s romance
In the 2014 interview, Kishimoto talked about his decision to kill Neji, explaining that it was to strengthen the future relationship between Naruto and Hinata. After deciding the latter would be his main love, he wanted a scene in which Naruto would “consciously realize that she’s by his side and thank her for it.” So he used Neji as his last word to impress Naruto that he needed to protect himself, as he was now responsible for many others, including Hinata. Therefore, Kishimoto described Neji as the couple’s “god of love”, making the two understand each other even better.
In reality, however, this decision feels like the sacrifice of a beloved – and very powerful – character to advance a romantic plot, which is why his explanation Kishimoto’s take on Neji can be frustrating to hear. The choreography of this scene itself is also cliché, using the old “take the bullet” move. It doesn’t help that a popular thought experiment for fans is “Why can’t this character use any special techniques to block projectiles?” But in the end, Kishimoto chose to maximize drama over the character’s skill, which could be seen as a violation of Naruto’s intrinsic logic.
Naruto and Hinata’s romance itself isn’t bad and it has enough supporters who like Hinata herself or the romantic couple. What’s useful is that it became the subject of an entire movie theatrical: The Last: Naruto the Movie. Unfortunately, to have such a big scene of Naruto literally fighting for his love only makes Neji’s death all the more unnecessary, retroactively, if the franchise intended to dedicate the entire film to this subplot. In the end, Kishimoto comforted Naruto fans made a mistake in killing off Neji, by choosing to make it a matter of love rather than war.
