As a post-viewing subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- The purpose of the exercise in the Academy. If the village were to be attacked or some other disaster, the teachers would know better how to handle the situation with the students. Ex. How to group the kids with each other or the best relative to take care of the child.
- The scene where Naruto offers Hinata a cup of ramen at his place actually explains quite well why there is no progress in Naruto and Hinata's relationship after the Fourth Shinobi World War. Kakashi Hiden, which takes place a year before the events of this movie, implies that Naruto and Hinata have already been hanging out alone together after the War Arc, and Shikamaru Hiden, which takes place a few months before the events of this movie, confirms that they have been hanging out a lot together lately. However, there is still no Relationship Upgrade between them by the time this movie takes place. Naruto, being an Idiot Hero doesn't really know how to approach Hinata correctly. Whenever he tries to become more friendly with her, he says something too bold or Innocently Insensitive which causes her to either become overly embarrassed or emotionally hurt. Hinata reacts by becoming flustered and getting more withdrawn, which comes out as extremely confusing to him. Really, it's no wonder he thinks that Hinata's love confession in Chapter 437 was a case of "I love you and everyone else". He's been getting mixed signals from her all this time!
- The choice of the rescue party makes a lot of sense from a tactical perspective: Naruto and Hinata are sensory scouts, Sai can track the enemy from the air, Sakura is a medic, Naruto can use Shadow Clones to cover more ground in case of diversions or traps, and Shikamaru has experience commanding a retrieval unit. Unlike the Sasuke Retrieval arc, Konoha was able to send their best-suited personnel on this mission, not simply whoever was available.
- In addition, Naruto, Sakura and Sai, an established three-man squad, are a part of the rescue team and the team itself is assembled by Kakashi who has lead the trio before and knows how effective they are together.
- Note that Hinata was not originally meant to be a part of the rescue team, leaving Naruto and Sai as the only trackers. Considering the four people who were assigned, Naruto's Senjutsu combined with Sai's air support would be all they really need. Kakashi accepted her request to join the team both to add another tracker to the team, who even specializes in that area, and because she would also know anything Hanabi would have dropped on the way as a means to follow the trail—such as her kunai.
- This excellent short essay
explains that Naruto confusing romantic love with love for ramen is not as shallow as it sounds. For Naruto, ramen is not just a food. It's something that uniquely brings him joy and happiness. And he likes to share it with others, because that's his way of sharing those feelings with them. He also bonded with people such as Iruka over ramen. At one point during his and Hinata's merged memories, it cuts back to the early scene of Naruto telling Sakura and Ino that he "loves" ramen a lot. Then that scene plays again, only now he tells them that he "loves" Hinata a lot. This means that he is already associating those very same feelings of joy and happiness with her. Consequently, this movie is not about Naruto falling in love with Hinata, but rather falling into the love he already had for her.- Teuchi's chapter in Konoha Hiden confirms this: Teuchi was the first adult who treated a very young Naruto (4-6 years old) with kindness by inviting him to his store and treating him to a steaming bowl of ramen. As a result, his young mind connected ramen with being treated as a human being instead of a thing. It's no wonder that, in time, "ramen" became equal to "love".
- Why did it take being in a genjutsu to make Naruto realize he's in love with Hinata? Because Kakashi stated in Chapter 314 that Naruto is a kinesthetic learner—I.E., a direct learner, someone who learns with his body or by doing, just like his father Minato. To elaborate, Naruto doesn't understand some things well if they are verbally explained to him; he learns better with his body. It's also due to the fact that his years as the village pariah did a considerable number on his view of romantic love to the point that it's not easily healed in a flash, even with his growing popularity. When Hinata told Naruto she loved him in Chapter 437, he thought she meant she loved him like he loved ramen. Having to personally witness Hinata's memories and physically walk through them, when they merged with his own memories, made him finally understand what romantic love was.
- This Tumblr post explaining how Hinata knew Naruto meant it when he confessed his love to her. One of the most significant aspects of Naruto and Hinata's relationship is the fact they can communicate with their eyes. In Chapter 559, Hinata could tell Naruto was the real one and not a Zetsu clone just by his eyes (without using her Byakugan). When Naruto confesses his love to Hinata, he looks her straight in the eyes (the novelization even states it). Like before, she could tell by his eyes that he meant what he said, which is why her face changes to a look of pleasantly surprised shock after hearing it.
- On the other hand, it also makes her fake rejection more heartbreaking from her perspective. In addition to the shift from a cold glare to sadness when she walks into Toneri's embrace, Hinata never makes eye contact with Naruto for the rest of the scene as she knows that if she did, he would see right through her, hence why she reluctantly shuts her eyes when he asks if it's a lie that she and Toneri are getting married. You can see the guilt and horror in her eyes as she watches Naruto fall to earth as she loses consciousness.
- Despite Sakura saying that Naruto's crush on her in the past was more about his rivalry with Sasuke than any actual romantic feelings—which was implied back in Chapter 3—knowing Naruto, it's likely that there's more to it than that. Sasuke, being Naruto's rival who was superior to him in practically every aspect, was a complete Chick Magnet with ladies seemingly of all ages attracted to him, leaving guys like Naruto single and lonely. Naruto's rivalry with Sasuke may also have been a key part in his search for his own soulmate, thinking that if he can show that he could be Sasuke's equal, and by extension like him, maybe he'll stand a better chance of finding his One True Love, which he somehow thought would be Sakura, since he grew to believe that girls would only notice and care for him if he was more like Sasuke in a sense, or the very least get enough of their attention to stand a chance. What he didn't realize, until this movie, is that there was already a girl who always loved him simply because he's Naruto—Hinata Hyuga.
- Also, not only does Naruto know that Sakura would never love him like she always loved Sasuke (he confirmed this in Chapter 474), it turns out that he actually supports Sasuke and Sakura's relationship, which was implied on-and-off throughout the manga ever since Chapter 172 until it was finally confirmed in Chapter 699 and then reaffirmed in Naruto Gaiden. Deep down, it's possible that he see them as inspiration, a source of hope that he too could one day have something like they could have, more or less. Given that they're both a part of his Family of Choice, this makes sense to some degree.
- Besides her genuine efforts to try to bring Naruto and Hinata together, it's possible that Sakura helped out the two of them not only because of all that Naruto did for her, but also to make up for the hell that she put him through, including 1) her begging him to bring back Sasuke for her, a promise which Sai pointed out was causing Naruto a lot of emotional pain, and 2) her infamous fake love confession to him in Chapter 469, which she decided to do after Sai's words filled her with guilt, and which was really an attempted manipulation of his one-sided shallow crush on her.
- Why isn't Sasuke present in any of the pictures in Naruto and Hinata's wedding?. Sakura's warm happy smile in the end right before the group shot implies that he is the one who is actually holding the camera (or the wedding is seen from his Point of View).
- This theory is actually Jossed in Konoha Hiden, not that it stops fanfic writers from trying to find a way it could actually happen.
- This theory is actually Jossed in Konoha Hiden, not that it stops fanfic writers from trying to find a way it could actually happen
- At the end of the wedding when Naruto and Hinata share their first kiss as a married couple, if you look carefully, you will notice that the kiss is much bolder than The Big Damn Kiss at the end of the Moon Mission: Hinata's hands are on Naruto's chest, his hands are on her waist, and their mouths are visibly open. In the time between the Moon Mission and their wedding, Naruto and Hinata have grown much more comfortable and open with each other.
- Naruto is her sun, Hinata's warm light in a cold world. Hinata is the Moon/lily, his cool guiding light in the vast suffocating darkness of the world. They both keep each other going no matter what. Even during the times where they are at their weakest, most vulnerable state, they find hope in each other that they both make it somehow.
- There is a reason why Naruto and Hinata's relationship didn't get as fleshed out as many people wanted in between the Fourth Shinobi World War Arc and this movie, particularly in the first two novels of Naruto Hiden and especially after Kishimoto stated in a post-series interview that Neji's death brought the two of them closer together after the War. In the epilogue of Kakashi Hiden, it's implied that Naruto and Hinata have already been hanging out alone together, because after Kakashi hits Naruto for spreading a rumor about him and Kahyo, Hinata openly goes over to Naruto and lends out her hand to help him stand up—which demonstrates that she has become comfortable enough around him to do that without stuttering or blushing—and then she actually scolds Kakashi for hitting himnote . Then, in Chapter 1-Section 7 of Shikamaru Hiden, Sakura confirms that Naruto and Hinata have been hanging out a lot together lately, and she wonders why Naruto isn't going to Hinata and having her properly listen to his concerns about Shikamaru. It should be noted that Kakashi Hiden takes place one year after the War, and Shikamaru Hiden takes place two years after the War, just a few months before the events of this movie. So while Naruto and Hinata did develop a closer friendship after the War, it was illustrated to the audience through a bad mixture of very minimal Show, Don't Tell (Kakashi Hiden) and then explicit Tell, Don't Show (Shikamaru Hiden). Admittedly, it would have been nice to have had some kind of Canon material that was fully or even just partially dedicated to actually showing the audience how exactly Neji's death brought Naruto and Hinata closer together after the War, how they started hanging out alone together, and what they did when they hung out—because a good rule of thumb for writing is that simply telling the audience that "such and such happened off-screen" is guaranteed to not be satisfactory at all. It also would have been nice to see more interaction between them in the two aforementioned Light Novels, even though they weren't the main protagonists in either novel.
However, think about it this way: Naruto and Hinata were given privacy to develop their relationship during the two years of peace, before the events of this movie. Naruto is now recognized as Konoha's hero and the savior of the world, and Hinata is the closest Konoha has to a princess, because, even though she lost the title of heiress to the Hyuga clan to Hanabi when they were younger, she's still part of that clan, which is one of the four noble clans in Konoha and is arguably its strongest clan. Therefore, any relationship that develops between The Hero and the Princess of Konoha will be closely watched by their Badass Teachers, the Konoha 11, and the villagers, no matter what (this was confirmed in this movie's novelization and Chapter 1-Section 1 of Sakura Hiden). It's pretty much none of our business to know what exactly Naruto and Hinata did when they were hanging out alone together. Given that they didn't get their Relationship Upgrade until this movie, it's safe to assume that, during the two-year peacetime, their private interactions were so innocent and banal that it wasn't worth elaborating on in further detail. Even if they started to develop their relationship by visiting Neji's grave together, sparring, and eating ramen together at Ichiraku's (all of which are popular plotlines in Naruto/Hinata fanfiction, given Kishimoto's aforementioned statement for the former, and then both the ramen-eating contest omake from Shippuden episode 95 and their Ship Tease moment in Shippuden ending 34 for the latter—not to mention that all of these plotlines did happen in the various sidequests of Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4), those are still private moments between just the two of them, and thus none of our business to know more about.- This is even extended to their relationship after the events of this movie, when they finally became an Official Couple. Naruto and Hinata are engaged in Sakura Hiden and the two manga-omake, After The Last and The Beast that was Shot by Love!!, and then they get married in Konoha Hiden. However, even in these two novels and the second omake, we don't see a lot of interaction between them. It's not just because they're not the main protagonists in either novel or the second omake. Once again, Naruto and Hinata were given privacy to be together, only now as a pair of lovers. Which means that, even more so than before, it is very much none of our business to know what exactly they do when they're alone together.
Fridge Horror
- Hanabi's personality change is striking. In the novelization, Hinata notes that Hanabi changed after Neji's death. While she could simply be going through a teenage phase or the death could have spurned her to change her life around, it could be something more psychologically serious. Alas There Are No Therapists in Naruto anyway, or at least no one visits any...
- As a fanfic writer pointed out, Hinata's black wedding dress is a bit too complicated to be applied by just one person. This means that Hinata couldn't have possibly put in on by herself while in her puppet state. Which means that, unless Toneri's puppets prepped her for marriage, Toneri was the one who undressed her and helped her put it on, which means that Toneri actually saw her naked, touched her naked body and who knows what else before moving on to the wedding. Remember that this is a guy who does not have any moral misgivings about mutilating innocent girls and kissing a woman while she is unable to give consent.
- What would happen to Hinata if Naruto wasn't there to save her in the climax: she would become Toneri's mind-controlled bride, and would be forced to spend the rest of her life as his servant/sex toy completely robbed of her free will, while the rest of the world was in a destroyed state and everyone she loved and cared about was dead. One can only hope she wasn't aware of what was happening around her while she was in this mind-controlled state.
- Granted, the chakra cannon would probably just warp the moon to another dimension before it crashed to earth. It doesn't make her situation any less horrifying.
- The fact that Hinata utters Naruto's name while she gets turned into a puppet means she is actually still conscious while the jutsu takes place. Which means that Hinata lies there in that portrait frame, thinking that the world is about to get destroyed because she failed in her mission, her sister will get killed in the process, and the man she loved all her life died thinking that she betrayed him and stopped loving him. And to make matters worse, she knows that Toneri is planning to make her his wife, kiss her, and do all sorts of things to her afterwards and that she won't have any other choice but to obey him. And I Must Scream indeed!
Fridge Logic
- When Naruto disrupts the kidnapping attempt by Toneri's puppets and Hinata falls off a tower, why is she trying to pull herself up with the scarf? She's a ninja; walking on walls is a basic technique that she more than likely learned when she became a genin.
- Then again, she was probably still too weakened from Toneri's move to wall on walls.
- Confirmed. Right before she starts falling, she explicitly states, in a weak and strained voice, that "My body is going numb," and she starts to say, "My strength is...", which implies that her strength wasn't fully back yet.
- If Hinata thought she had lost her chance to be with Naruto, then why did she keep knitting her red scarf for him? The answer is she didn't... at least not at first.
- As this Tumblr user pointed out, Hinata was worried about Hanabi's kidnapping, so she kept knitting the scarf as a coping mechanism. After receiving Hamura's vision, she came up with a plan to infiltrate Toneri's castle by pretending to accept his marriage proposal. However, because she's still deeply in love with Naruto, she wanted to give him her scarf as a token of her affection before she left.
- As this Tumblr user pointed out
- For some reason, Kiba and Shino, who not only are some of the best options for tracking someone down, but who are also Hinata's teammates, are completely absent from the mission to rescue Hanabi.
- Dogs and bugs can't be brought to the moon. To be more precise, Toneri's location makes it difficult for Shino and Kiba to be effective trackers.
- This also has to do with who sent them too. While sending all of Team 8 would probably be the best option, Kakashi felt that his former team would be needed, while having Shikamaru lead and Hinata join.
- Konoha Hiden explains exactly why they didn't go on the mission: as expert trackers they were needed in Konoha for civilian rescue operations. It's a valid reason and many lives were saved because of this, including Teuchi's, but boy was Kiba pissed that he didn't go.
- There is no way Hinata would have been able to be in a relationship, let alone marry, Naruto if she hadn't been passed over by her father to be the next heir of the Hyuga clan. As heiress of the clan, Hinata would have been forced into a marriage with one of the Hyuga branch families in order to keep the Byakugan of her offspring as pure, and therefore as powerful, as possible. This was a common practice among nobility in both the Eastern and Western nobles in the past, and given the setting of the Naruto world a very likely occurrence there as well.
- This seems more like Wild Mass Guessing, since there is no evidence that Hyuga members care about "purity"; they only care about keeping it within the village, and no evidence that they practice intermarriage.
- Alternatively, assuming if Hiashi has known about Naruto's heritage since his birth, it's likely he would've allowed them to get married as long as Naruto marries into the Hyūga clan.
- This seems more like Wild Mass Guessing, since there is no evidence that Hyuga members care about "purity"; they only care about keeping it within the village, and no evidence that they practice intermarriage.
