Trivia / Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru

• Author's Saving Throw:
  • Masashi Kishimoto had allegedly been planning the story since 2016, which could be so that he could avoid making the same mistake with Naruto by writing it as he went along, which led to him having a hard time figuring out a believable way to dispose of Madara and consequently the infamous creation of Kaguya.
  • It's generally agreed upon that establishing the Samurai Leader, the strongest samurai in the setting, as a woman in the first pages of the work was an attempt by Kishimoto to avoid the criticisms from his previous work that the female shinobi were overshadowed by their male counterparts. What is up for debate is how well this saving throw works.
  • One of the sticking points of Naruto was how the boy-girl relationships and potential romance was handled, with Kishimoto himself admitting his weakness and aversion to writing these issues; Samurai 8 on the other hand establishes early on that the relationship and interpersonal development between Hachimaru and Ann will be crucial to the story.
• Box Office Bomb: The series had very poor sales of published volumes in Japan^note between 10,000 and 12,000 copies per volume on launch weeks, which is normally decent for a new series but underwhelming considering the author’s name and the heavy editorial push early on, which led it to be cancelled after just ten months of publication.