Hello again! Don’t mind me over here catching up on my tumblr correspondence and agreeing with you on everything -
Omui - I LOVEEEE him! I loved all of the newly introduced Cloud characters, honestly (with the possible exception of the blonde woman on Omui’s team [Samui?], and that was just because she didn’t really have much personality other than, like, ”Hey, here’s a blonde lady with Cleavage!” But Omui, Karui, Killer Bee, the Raikage, Darui - I loved all of those characters and became invested in them very quickly, which is a testament to how well their introduction was handled and how naturally they fit into the developing story.
the “bootlicker” thing - lmao, this is so real. Sometimes I miss the days when I was totally ignorant of the fandom while I was watching and reading for the first time, because I didn’t have to be aware that this was a thing. Now that I’ve stopped hiding from spoilers and have occasionally been exposed to this kind of bizarre take, I can’t believe I’ve gone this long without typing up a vent post about how frustrating it is XD But it’s the kind of thing where ultimately I’m just like “look, whatever these people are taking away from their reading/viewing is so disconnected from the actual text that there isn’t any point getting worked up over it.” (And then I do get worked up about it, but just. Privately. Or to my sister when we can’t hold it in anymore and start complaining about the worst takes we’ve ever seen XD)
It’s like - I just kind of sigh and scroll past whenever I see posts that are like “Sasuke should have burned Konoha to the ground,” especially when people feel that Konoha NOT being burned to the ground (and the fact that the other “bootlicker” characters still choose to call it home) is reason to be disappointed with the story that was told. I think there are things we can reasonably critique the story for not doing (like not addressing the Uchiha massacre in the conclusion) because excluding something like that is deeply inconsistent with the rest of the story and with the themes that have been built up since day one. But criticizing it for something like “Konoha should have been destroyed and Sasuke shouldn’t have come back and the shinobi world should have been abolished” is just complaining that an author who chose to write a particular book should have chosen to write a completely different book instead. Naruto doesn’t ever mislead us - it’s very good about setting audience expectations and making it clear what this story is going to be about from the beginning. We KNOW it’s going to be about Sasuke finding his way home, no matter how long it takes. There is never any doubt in our minds, even at the very beginning of things, that eventually he’s going to return to his friends and be brought back into a community, because that’s what we’re prepared for in the first few episodes. The Bell Test sets the tone and the foundational themes for the rest of the story, which are that that a) taking care of your friends is more important than following the rules, and b) teamwork makes the dream work. Any Naruto conclusion that ended with Team 7 not reuniting would have been just as inconsistent with the previously established story as an ending where we never talk about the Uchiha massacre again.
And again, of course, there are legitimate reasons to be dissatisfied with the ending we got - I’ve written plenty about that myself - but I don’t think the fact that the story couldn’t stick its landing in the last few episodes invalidates or changes what it has always been about or what kind of people the characters have always been. Yes, there are elements of the conclusion that need to be tweaked to make the ending fully cohesive with what we were led to expect, but those elements are not things like “abolish the entire concept of shinobi/blow up the Leaf Village.” Obviously viewers/readers are allowed to want whatever they want, but when things like that are offered up as an earnest critique of the story, I can’t take it seriously. Expecting every character on the show to overthrow the government (and calling them “bootlickers” when they don’t, despite the fact that they canonically and repeatedly resist authority or break the law in many other ways) isn’t something I think we can reasonably critique the story for. We’re told to expect certain societal changes towards the end of things, yes - and I do think there are places where the story fulfills this promise well (the alliances/friendship-building between previously warring nations, the tailed beasts being liberated and respected) and other places where it should have done better (the Uchiha massacre...that desperately needed to be dealt with more clearly) - but complaints that the shinobi world wasn’t totally disassembled or that characters didn’t defect from the Leaf and form their own version of the Akatsuki just aren’t things I can engage with as serious critiques of canon. They might be fun for people to play with in AUs, but they’re not outcomes that fit naturally within the context of the story as it’s always been presented us.
tl;dr - I block on sight whenever I see the words “bootlicker” and “kakashi” in reblogs of my posts...people are entitled to their own (wrong) opinions, but I am not obligated to read about them 😆
“you ought to know that bonds can be powerful curses too” - YESSS. The way this ties into the whole “is it worth it to love people when loving people just means you get hurt” question, which characters like Sasuke and young!Kakashi answer by refusing to form bonds in the first place, but which ultimately is debunked as a viable life philosophy because guess what, being alone hurts even more than dealing with loss...
“winning over Kurama was the peak of Naruto’s development” - agreed. This scene is one of my top Naruto moments, when Kurama tries to convince Naruto that saving Sasuke from hatred is impossible and Naruto just responds by saying that he’s going to save Kurama, too - I loved it SO much. Talk no Jutsu is not a cop-out; it’s the foundation of who Naruto is! It’s his gift! It’s why we love him so much! And that’s why I prefer to see him in scenarios where his ability to make enemies into friends is what enables him to succeed, as opposed to him having All The Superpowers and All The Skills. I like my Naruto to be someone who’s not necessarily the best fighter or the smartest tactician, but whose empathy and connection and compassion compensate for his weaknesses and allow him to achieve things that people who are objectively more skilled in the ninja arts (eg, Sasuke) have trouble with. That’s one of the core messages of the show, isn’t it - Naruto succeeds because he builds a broad network of friends/family/comrades who support him and lend him strength when he stumbles; Sasuke “fails” at virtually everything he attempts because he does precisely the opposite. Where Naruto’s success is the result of a massive communal effort, Sasuke’s struggles are the result of him cutting off his connections with anyone who tries to help him.
re: danzo - I’d say more about this, but we haven’t rewatched the Sasuke + Danzo fight yet (it’s up next) so I’ll hold off for now. I will say that the other day I was listening to a piece of Naruto music on Youtube and happened to catch a glimpse of a commenter talking about Danzo who said something like “what a great death, he recognized his mistakes and atoned for them” which was so funny to me because 1) the only “mistake” Danzo thinks he made was in underestimating Sasuke’s ability to kill him, and 2) this man has never atoned for anything in his life (which is part of what makes him such a great character! When he says that Sasuke is “laying waste to the Uchiha clan’s sacrifice,” he really believes it!)
it really didn’t help that Sasuke walked off into the sunset at the end of the series, rather than getting properly reintegrated into his team and wider society - Oh yeah, I hear that. I think my biggest issue with that whole thing was what was left out prior to this happening. I love the idea of Sasuke going on a solo personal journey; it makes sense to me and feels like a natural progression for him. But I think it’s hard to jump straight from the end of the war to him leaving again without first showing some semblance of him coming home (and giving us at least a hint that the major personal and political issues driving him are in the process of being addressed). Like - I believe he would leave (TEMPORARILY - I’m not touching the whole Boruto-era “Sasuke never came home” nonsense), but I’m 100% in agreement that his departure at the end of Shippuden happened too fast. So much was left out or skipped over in the conclusion, to the point where it’s hard to enjoy the scenes we were given, because we’re too busy being like “BUT WHAT ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE?” Sasuke just didn’t really get a resolution at the end, which was very frustrating and also a huge surprise - I really wasn’t expecting things to go like that.
