なお本物の岸本英語インタビュー

SJ: Was Naruto and Hinata getting married decided early on, or did you consider Naruto ending up with Sakura?

Kishimoto Sensei: When I introduced Sakura, I only considered her as another character. I didn’t do it to bring her in as a special female character. She was at the same level as characters like Kiba or Shikamaru, so there was nothing set in my mind at all about Sakura and Naruto being a couple.

Obviously, they’d be friends and teammates. For Hinata, I decided pretty early on that they’d be together. Then I figured it’d be more interesting if Sakura would be in the middle, creating a messy love triangle. But to be honest, there wasn’t much space and time to include stuff like that.

Naruto’s a battle manga, not a romance story. You have to decide what to focus on, what you think the readers want to see. So l never thought about making them a couple, but I did throw in some nuggets to make the readers think that. It was all about Naruto and Hinata getting married from an early stage.