I think you underestimate quite how disliked S8 ended up by Japan.
That's kinda the most damning thing about Kishimoto's work for S8. For all the talk about his inspirations, he did nothing but make surface level transplanting without care. He drew from Star Wars liberally while forgetting that the original trilogy is so acclaimed because of its simplicity. He cited Seven Samurai, a work with a very cynical view of samurai, as a source of influence yet portrays samurai as gallant heroes. And now he admits that the main inspiration was a single two minute scene from AKIRA divorced from narrative and thematic context that's connection amounts to "cool existentialism". Literally everything is just him trying to replicate what he felt was cool in movies without any deeper thought.
Honestly, it's really hard for me to feel any sympathy for Kishimoto as this point. So much of S8's failure can be chalked up to him having zero forethought, even thinking readers would stick through the "boring parts" because of his name (and infamously comparing it to chewing squid). If there's anything S8 will be remembered as in comparison to the pictures, it's Heaven's Gate, and not in a good way.
www.iza.ne.jp
