listen i get where people are coming from when they say that nobody should have expected a radical overhaul of the shinobi system considering the series very squarely set up its main theme as not abandoning friends. that certainly was the setup. but i also think it would be inaccurate to say that the story as it evolved affirmed that refusing to abandon one's friends was the be-all and end-all fix for everything. i cannot emphasize this enough: it's not as though the prior generations we saw lacked devotion to their teammates. the problem was that the larger sociopolitical circumstances obstructed their ability to connect in one way or another. even naruto acknowledges at the land of iron that his and sasuke's positions made it impossible for them to reconcile. so for the series to do a 180 and assert that actually friendship was the solution all along (even though there have been no meaningful systemic changes, even though the source of these intergenerational conflicts has not been addressed) rings hollow. it's especially glaring that being violently beaten in a fight makes sasuke desert his quest for justice without any reservation -- therefore no ideological or political separation was bridged, sasuke was just made to forget what motivated him for the entire series' run. naruto and team 7 succeeding where their predecessors failed was not a function of anything they did differently, but mere narrative convenience.