Stray Thoughts: Narutoblogging - Pain's Assault Arc, 7
I'm always a sucker for getting to watch the Konoha 12 fight alongside their parents. We've already had focus on Inoichi and Choza (CHOZAAAA!) and now we've got Kiba's mum and Shino's dad, along with a few more Aburame relatives, all as effortlessly cool. :)
I think we're only missing Shikaku and Lord Hyuuga now, and I wouldn't be surprised if they turn up at some point. (Neji's father is gone, of course; Sakura's parents are civilians; Lee's parents... I've always kind of assumed are civilians, because I feel like if they were ninja, it would have given Lee an even greater complex about his lack of ninjutsu, and we'd have heard about that - and if they were ninja with only taijutsu, he wouldn't have had a complex in the first place; Sai was raised in a weapons lab; and Tenten's entire canon backstory is basically Big Scroll, so I don't have great hopes. Man, this show does Tenten dirty. That's not relevant right now, I just feel the need to say it periodically.)
I know Kakashi survives this arc (or gets revived), and it is a fucking good thing, because I don't think I could take the idea of Guy coming back to the village to find his beloved rival dead. Not if it were permanent. (I mean, that initial discovery probably is going to happen for the angst, but I can at least cling to the knowledge they both ultimately survive the series.)
Welp. Yeah, I guess if you make clones out of paper, and the ninja world has bombs made out of paper, you could rig your clones to explode. But damn.
Tsunade's confrontation with Pain is pretty great. He's still being the implacable god, but he deals with her like a fellow leader, one who might be talked around (unlike Jiraiya). And Tsunade does the same. Right now, she's not a person whose oldest friend was just murdered, and half her village destroyed, by the man in front of her; she's a kage, the voice of a community and of a lineage of leaders. And the sheer scorn with which she receives Pain's proposal is so good.
Man, I admire Tsunade's determination to hang onto the peace she and some of the other hokages did so much to establish, but it must feel like she's fighting that particular fight on every front at once, what with Pain/the Akatsuki, Orochimaru (until recently), and factions within her own village all driving the ninja world towards war.
The fact that one (just one) of the Pains can read minds - and yet all six of them have been ravaging the village and interrogating everyone they come across, simply murdering those who won't answer - really throws Pain's cruelty into stark relief. He could have left the interrogations to the mind reader version of himself and found Naruto without hurting more people than necessary. But why would he? Pain's interesting - he doesn't enjoy suffering, but he does think it's to make people know as much pain as possible.
When the Pains start to vanish and Kiba's mom gloats that she must have scared them off, Kiba thinks to himself, "Just like that time with dad." Is... is Kiba suggesting that his dad isn't around because his mom scared her away? What kind of domestic drama are we just seeing the edges of over in the Inuzuka household?
GOD, Shizune. I don't know if she's definitely dead - I was a little premature mourning Choza - but the way Ino, qualified medical ninja, is just bent over Shizune, weeping, instead of trying to save her is pretty telling. And Shizune's maybe-death is awful in how sudden and stark it is. One second, she and the others are strategising - then one of the Pains is just there amid them. And before we know it, he's pulled Naruto's location from Shizune's mind... and her soul from her body. Shizune's Tsunade's apprentice and a hell of a fighter in her own right, and she just gets taken. It's chilling.
It's almost a little lost in everything else going on, as Pain prepares to sacrifice a portion of his life to destroy the Hidden Leaf - but we do actually get confirmation of his identity here. Konan calls him "Nagato" for the first time when she asks him to reconsider, and he tells her, "I will never forget what Yahiko suffered." So I think we can assume the reanimated body we see is Yahiko, and the one controlling things from behind the scenes is Nagato.
The implications of Yahiko's body being that of a grown man are interesting, aren't they? The trio were still young teens when Jiraiya left. So despite Pain and Konan blaming Jiraiya - despite Jiraiya blaming himself for abandoning them - they made it a good few years on his teachings. I'm not suggesting Jiraiya doesn't bear some blame, because it must have been hell even before Yahiko's death. But it's also not like the three of them got stabbed the second Jiraiya walked away. He wasn't wrong that he had at least somewhat equipped them to defend themselves.
Fuck ME, but Pain's jutsu is one of the worst things I've seen in Naruto. In a show frequently filled with artistic blood and gore, there's something so much worse about the village just being almost cleanly blown apart, parting like a wave, with the land in the middle being scoured bare as if nothing has ever existed there. *shudders*
It's somehow even worse when we see Sakura emerge. She's unhurt - but a second ago she was in the hospital, surrounded by dozens of wounded, and now it's just... rubble. And she can't even get out more than a few, halting words as she stares in numb horror, not even noticing as the tears start to stream down her face.
Side note: the name of Pain's jutsu apparently literally translates as "Heavenly Subjugation of the Omnipresent God" (per Narutopedia), but the dub calls it "Almighty Push". And like, sure, I get the double meaning ("The Almighty" being a term for capital-G God as well as just meaning "big" in this context). But they still basically decided to call Pain's jaw-droppingly devastating jutsu "big shove".
Okay, I fucking punched the air at Naruto's appearance - in full sage mode, atop Gamakichi, who in turn is atop Gamabunta and flanked by two massive toad warriors. Hell yeah!
That said, it breaks my heart watching Naruto's face as he realises that the bomb crater around him is his home. He looks broken.
Naturally, in true Naruto fashion, no one actually seems to be dead. :D Except Shizune (actual RIP) and Kakashi (and we know that fucker's coming back). In-universe, this is because Tsunade triggered her regeneration for a power-up, sacrificing some of her own lifespan in turn - just as Pain sacrificed some of his - to oppose him and protect her people. Because Tsuande is the GOAT.
Choji weeping over Kakashi's body, and telling him that Choji fulfilled his last orders, really gets to me even though I know Kakashi's going to make it. Choji's lost two senseis in less than a year, which is brutal. also Kakashi was a better sensei to him than Asuma who said that?
It's subtle, but Hinata gets a nice moment of coming into her own when she's talking to another Hyuuga shinobi. He asks if she's okay, saying that he'd get in trouble if she gets hurt while her parents are out of town; she says she's fine, but then gently rebukes him when she realises he's hurt, and tells him that actually, if one of the clan got injured in her father's absence, Hinata herself would get the blame. She's quietly asserting that she's grown from a child who needs to be shielded, to an heir who has a responsibility to the clan.
I LOVE the moment when Tsunade faces Pain on the battlefield, telling him she's going to settle this right now, as hokage - and then, just as he did when he was twelve, Naruto puts himself between her and danger. But this time, instead of getting a kunai through the hand from a single rogue ninja, he takes down one of Pain's bodies in a single blow. And softly, without turning to Tsunade, says, "It's not necessary for the hokage to concern herself with this. Let me handle it." I have always loved the bond between these two, and the fact that Naruto's now got the power to back up the protective instinct he's always had is cool to watch.
We don't know much about the new giant toad warrior, but they dual-wield katanas, which is honestly enough for me to get onboard. :)
Tsunade gives Naruto the tiniest imaginable version of Katsuyu and it is adorable.
Pain can be a manipulative bastard. Which I suppose you'd have to be to take over a village and get everyone thinking of you as a god - it can't all be rinnegan stuff; some of it's got to be old-fashioned politicking. But watching him try to play on Naruto's feelings by telling him they're martial siblings, and talking about how Pain just wants peace... just the way our sensei wanted... damn, that's cold.
Oh, GOD. Naruto telling Tsunade that he can sense chakra now... and then adding quietly, "Is... Kakashi-sensei on a mission away from the village...?" And then there's a long moment where she can't bring herself to say anything, and he realises. *sobbing*
Today's featurette has Shikamaru, Choji, and Naruto enjoying a civilised cup of tea and a snack, while reminiscing about how, when they were little, they dreamed of mastering wind-style ninjutsu. In a flashback, tiny!Choji shows off his "wind-style" jutsu of putting a line of crisps down and then hoovering them up from a distance, which pisses off tiny!Naruto, who retaliates with a "wind-style" fart - which somehow summons Sakura out of the ether to call him an idiot and punch him into next week. :D It's cute, but I feel like every time we get another of these memories of little Naruto just hanging out with his friends, it chips away a bit more at the narrative where Naruto was completely ostracised by everyone his age before Team 7. It's starting to feel a lot more like "was occasionally bullied but also had friends who happily spent time with him" and like. Choji had it worse than that. SAKURA arguably had it as bad as that.
