17 pages

[RasenDori]

for what seems to be about a year now, kishimoto has only been putting out 17 pages of naruto instead of the standard 19. it was speculated that he was working on an art book, but that should have been printed long ago by now. what do you guys think the reason for this is?

[Stoopider]

He must be working on th tv series then. :p

[Winged Dancer]

I'm not sure why, but it can be related to the amount of assistants he has right now... the less the assistants, the more the work, right?

Some comics, like HxH, have bad art but a lot of pages. Perhaps Kishimoto decided to sacrifice pages instead of art quality.

[nests]

It all depends on shonen jump but Kishi is one of the more powerfull mangakas out here right now and unlike Tite the Bleach creator Kishimoto has a lot of imput in the anime and video game art

[RasenDori]

are you sure thats true? the filler characters from bleach seem to possess kubos art style. but the filler characters in naruto dont seem to have been designed by kishimoto

[nests]

Its true, other wise the Naruto fillers would have mess with the original story unlike like bleach where they just raped the whole thing.
I also remeber reading that he surperviced certain fights scenes that changed from the manga, like the Oro vs Sasuke Lee vs Kimi and Naruto vs Sasuke. Of course I read this a long time ago so I dont have any proof but I sure maybe someone else also looked at it.

[Kagemane_no_Jutsu]

considering those were some of the best fights I wouldn't doubt it

[RasenDori]

ive read somewhere that kubo does the character designs for the animem but i cant remember where, so i guess it hardly counts as proof. besides, i dont think the bleach filler has had any impact on the original story. theyve already set it up that ishida will lose his power again. once that happens pretty much everything can be done right.

[nests]

Yeah they all do characters desings for the anime but I think he does mention something about it in one of the interviews in the manga.
As for Ishida losing his powers, no one was supposed to find out but his dad. There is a lot more of them but I wont mention them since there might be people here who dont read the Bleach manga

[Carnage]

ive read somewhere that kubo does the character designs for the animem but i cant remember where, so i guess it hardly counts as proof.

It was said during a Shonen Jump interview with kubo. He said unlike other mangaka, he has alot to do with the anime design.

[LobsterMagnet]

Can't help but wonder why there's no chapter this week? Seriously, as long as the fillers continue I'd think that it'd be kishi's unspoken duty to continually produce more chapters, but who knows maybe he got sick or something.

[RasenDori]

its was said that he was gathering materials. probally reference for new sceneries. every good artist knows the importance of reference.

[sangai]

if i had to guess, id think he is trying to tie up some loose ends in the series.

and really the pages being shorter could of been a request from shonen weekly , to try and include another manga in there weekly release. if a few where to give up a page or two , they could squeeze in another smaller manga that was really good.

[RasenDori]

that makes sense, but it slows down the pacing of naruto dramatically

[mr3vi1m0nk3y]

that makes sense, but it slows down the pacing of naruto dramatically

I would rather have a slower pacing with a more thought out story then a faster mess. As it is right now hes got a lot of loose ends and plot hole to explain so it might take a while.

[RasenDori]

the pacing is already slow. 17 pages is nice for the informative chapters, but the fights chapters are over quick and fights themselves go on forever.