Fantastische Hure said:
During Sasuke vs Itachi arc, wasn't there anything relating to Naruto or Pain? Like not even quick cutaways to their plot-lines? Would seem weird other-wise. Other than that I guess you could just take out the middle bit with Sasuke & Itachi.
The most there was iirc was Naruto finding out about Jiraiya's death towards the end and leading directly into the Pain's Assault Arc. I'd say merging the arcs together wouldn't work when Itachi was clearly the main focus of it and the arc preceding Jiraiya's.
Why have arc lengths been declining? Minimum used to be like ~25 chapters. Nowadays you'd be lucky if the any of the new series would have an arc that hit 10 chapters.
I wouldn't say they've been outright declining, as a lot of older series still had pretty short arcs, even if mainly for their introductory stages and epilogues such as most of Hokuto no Ken prior to Rei's introduction, the pre-Chojin Olympics events of Kinnikuman, the finale of Sakigake!! Otokojuku, etc.
It does seem that most modern series do have a greater tendency to have shorter, slightly self-contained arcs that usually have little impact on the plot beyond introducing new characters though. This is likely due to how the attitude of the companies have changed and how "creators" monopolise on it. A series which you can just keep milking by keeping impact on the characters or the world as a whole minimal is far more beneficial for needlessly extending a series than having one with a clear objective or limits to make the endgame known and not completely out of sight. As an example, Hokuto no Ken made it apparent that Raoh was the final hurdle ever since his introduction and Kenshiro being able to stalemate him in their first battle set the precedent that the series couldn't be stretched on needlessly (until the timeskip, but we will not speak of that filth). Meanwhile, something such as My Hero Academia or Black Clover will just waste time extending the plot with repetitive mini-bosses even if they make the ultimate goal present early on.
In other words, to the modern mangaka, why bother having the main cast get closer to facing their Freeza when you can just have them face an endless recycling of Cuids, Dodorias and Zarbons?
