sideblog for my anime stuff || I only care for Sasuke

[fucktobirama]

Naruto’s Cultural and Mythological References

Someone asked me to put all the mythological references in Naruto in one post so they could easily find them. Most of these posts were written by me, but a couple were written by others. I’ll edit this to add more links later.

Sasuke

Amaterasu’s powers are a reference to Agni’s divine weapon.

The symbolism of rain and storms in Sasuke’s character are references to Indra the god of lightning, storms and rain.

Sasuke is Izanagi the god of creation and Itachi is Izanami the goddess of the dead.

Sasuke’s ocular powers, Kagutsuchi, Susanoo and Amateratsu are refrences to the three faces of Agni.

Sasuke stabbing Orochimaru with lighting is a reference to Indra killing the evil serpent Vritra with a thuderbolt.

The fight between Sasuke and Danzo over Itachi’s death mirrors the conflict between Susanoo and Izanagi over Izanami’s death.

Madara and Izuna

Infinite Tsukuyomi and Indra being a god of māyā.

Madara is a foil to Hoderi the god of the bountry of the sea and Konoha was named after Konohanasakuya-hime, the goddess of cherry bloosoms and the fragility of human life.

Madara and the God Tree are references to Indra and the Kalpavriksha, the wish-granting divine tree of life.

Madara was named after Madarakishin the demon god of dancing, entretainment, performance arts and outcasts. Izuna was named after Izunagongen the god of victory and controlling fox spirits to cause disasters.

Madarakishin the dream god.

Possible names for Madara and Izuna’s late siblings and why Izuna is the third son.

Hashirama and Tobirama

Hashirama is a foil to Hoori the god of grains and harvests. Tobirama plays the same role as Hosuseri and is a central or buffer point for opposing forces.

Tobirama and the Edo Tensei are references to Izanagi’s descent to the underworld.

Tobirama is named after the door’s tree, which is used as a talisman to stop evils spirits from getting inside the house.

Itachi

(The post is tagged with the pro and anti Itachi tags because he has both positive and negative mythological references.)

Amaterasu’s capabilities are a reference to Agni’s Astra and Izanami to Manu’s Astra.

Sasuke is Izanagi the god of creation and Itachi is Izanami the goddess of the dead.

The Land of the Rice Fields is named after Inadahime, the goddess Susanoo saved from Yamata no Orochi.

The fight between Sasuke and Danzo over Itachi’s death mirrors the conflict between Susanoo and Izanagi over Izanami’s death.

Neji

The symbolism of Neji’s sauwastika and how he represents the Taoist phiolosophy of living in harmony with the natural order of the universe.

[owochimuwu]

If you saw me recreationally vaccinating homeschooled children with blow darts then you should be thanking me, no? Relax a little. Blow darts are cool

[owochimuwu]

You are just jealous of my ethical human safari

[phantomrose96]

Extremely generic, typical isekai anime where the main character is a high school boy who's so good at video games in his day-to-day life, but people don't respect gamers :( so he's a loser :( ...until he ends up isekai'd into a fantasy world that RUNS on video game logic.

Except this main character is a speed runner.

World record holding speed runner.

Elf-woman in the introductory episode shares the long, sad history of her realm at odds with the Demon Lord and his reign. She looks up just as she's about to describe the moment the Demon Lord killed her husband, and main character is... gone.

Several many fields away.

Naked as the day god made him because equipping the intro clothes takes 3 seconds between menu opening and character re-rendering.

The Wall of the Unfathomable, which has sealed these villagers within their own walls for generations unknown, sees its first breach in a millennium as Main Character scales it ass-backwards clipping and ragdolling up its scaffolding by abusing the collision detection logic and its impact on speed reversal.

NPCs launch into speeches which bewilder and confuse even them because they should NOT be saying anything about the deep sacred mana that can defeat the Dark Demon Lord but the fucker standing in front of him in tighty-whiteys with a level 99 helmet and the Hero Sceptor (which he should NOT have yet but) is compelling the NPC for reasons they cannot begin to comprehend.

The Demon Lord is alerted by holographic message from his most trusted underling that some disturbance has just rippled through from Elf Realm and that some portal may have just opened from the human world, which warrants some caution as the prophesied hero is said to--cut off by the MC catapulting past all 18 floors of Demon Tower security using the infinite speed jump glitch and one-shotting the Demon Lord with a single rag-doll spastic thrust through his heart which launches the Demon Lord along with MC into a 500mph spiral into the stratosphere... And somewhere, the end credits play.

[recoiloperated]

....I'm not an anime guy, but I'd watch that

[robin-hood-for-freedom]

And fitting with the theme, it should be one episode long

[alamuts-lair-of-madness]

Good news everyone!

There are already TWO stories like that!

A slightly serious one, where the MC uses his knowledge as shortcuts called:

Hell Mode: Yarikomi Suki No Gamer Wa Hai Settei No Isekai De Musou Suru (Hellmode ~Gamer Who Likes to Speedrun Becomes Peerless in a Parallel World with Obsolete Setting)

And one insane comedy, where the MC indeed kills the Demon Lord in under an hour (with a stick and practically butt naked) and has then live with the consequences of breaking the natural laws of the isekai world called

Rta Sousha Wa Game Sekai Kara Kaerenai (Speedrunner Cannot Return from the Game World)

[i-clandestine]

With the whole power/denji sibling or partner debate that's been going on bc ppl cant read the manga I think I should try and explain my interpretation of it all.

Part 1 is mainly about Denji's exploration of what it means to love something, how that feels and how that manifests action wise in both the recipient and the provider of said love.

He starts with the idea that love is sexual. we see this in his interactions with makima early in the part. all that he knows about love is that it is something that is expressed mainly- or at least most powerfully, through sex. His first real goal other than "live a normal life" is to touch boobs, and he achieves this with power, and he realizes that it sucks. he didn't feel anything "love-y" about it, it did nothing for him. Makima explains that yes love is expressed sexually, but it only feels right when its with someone that you feel deeply about. she shows this through letting denji feel her boobs, since she knows how he feels about her.

Power and Aki mainly exist narratively to prove this idea wrong, and to show Denji that love is much more than that. Because his only framework of love is through a sexual lens, of course, a lot of his interactions with power are going to be sexual, or at least mimic sexual acts. But importantly he doesn't feel anything from this, when power lets Denji get on top of her and suck her blood he notes that it doesn't do anything for him, he doesn't really care about it. the point of this interaction was to be a final nail in the coffin of Denji's idea that love is something that only exists sexually and that sexual expressions of love are the only valuable thing.

He does *love* power but he doesn't love her in a way that his initial framework allowed for. he loves her platonically, but he literally doesn't know how to express that love so the only interactions where it manifests fully is during an attempted sex act. but we are shown that that platonic love still has value, potentially more so than the romantic/sexual love he had experienced as it was only as a result of that love and that final manifestation of it that he was able to defeat Makima, the representation of his sexual love.

[redstonedust]

it bothers me when someone brings up misogyny in shounen anime and people shrug it off with "its designed for teenage boys, what can you expect." like well. idk i think its actually pretty important that shows for teenage boys are normal about women. i mean i think all media should be normal about women but teenagers are impressionable i think we could put a little bit of feminism in the teenage boy shows. it might do some good. you never know.

[winsoongi]

It’s funny out of context but I am so fucking sad over this

He can’t feel the blanket he’s holding or the cold and he’s too big for his bed and he can’t fall asleep but he’s trying to do all those things anyway because he’s 10 years old and he’s just had his entire life and childhood ripped away from him in every way possible and all he can do is hold onto the tiniest pieces of normalcy because that is literally all he has left

[jade-lop]

[daylighteclipsed]

This is kind of funny out of context too, but no !!!This is my favorite picture in the world, OK? Because Al doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t need the bed or the blanket, but I guarantee you Ed insisted Al share it with him. He wasn’t going to let Al lay on the floor or sit against a wall by himself all night. I can’t see Al just taking the blanket, not when Ed needs it more, so Ed must’ve tucked the blanket around him during the night, the way a good big brother does. He never treats Al any differently than he would if Al had a flesh and blood body. He always tries to preserve that normalcy, to make Al feel as human as possible.

And they’re sleeping back-to-back. Al’s body is cold and hard. He could’ve gotten up or Ed could’ve moved away, but no. They’re snuggled against each other. If you’ve ever slept back-to-back with someone before you know there’s something comforting about feeling the other person’s body heat, knowing they’re right there. Al doesn’t have body heat and he can’t feel Ed’s, but they still take comfort in each other’s presence, in knowing the other’s close beside them. They’re laying beside each other like nothing’s strange about it. Ed’s body is actually angled so that he’s pressed against Al as he sleeps. He wants to be there.

It’s kind of the antithesis of the above picture. In that one, Al’s alone with a blanket that’s too small for him, looking (and probably feeling) very out of place. Here, the blanket’s big enough to wrap him in a comfy burrito, and he’s not alone. He’s got Ed, and he looks (and probably feels) much more in place.

[charlesoberonn]

Anime creators will design so many cool and appealing girls and then make the main character a copy-paste skinny guy with black or brown hair.

[charlesoberonn]

I see a meme with a cute anime girl. I check out the anime she's from. The main character looks like this

[roving-rover]

[c00bie]

[kirindensetsu]

Wish people could see this in its context as an expression of fascism instead of in its shallowest interpretation as haha gender funny. Most Japanese men *exist* in uniform. If you are an adult man in public not in uniform, you are broadcasting that you are outside of society and will be treated differently and less well. You can't wear a fun tie or a colored dress shirt or shoes other than black. It extends to your body. You can't have long hair. You can't have dyed hair. You can't have a waist size over 85cm. You can't be too tan.

On the flipside, if you are a woman and dress plainly with no makeup or accessories, you are treated differently and less well. Go into any station shopping arcade, any mall, any craft fair, and it's like infinite permutations of Claire's For Grown-Ass Adult Women. ESPECIALLY if you're unmarried and of ~marriageable age~, you HAVE to try to be fancy or you're like. Mentally-ill by society's standard.

Please take the intensity of the patriarchy here seriously. People joke about it being the year Showa 100 and not Reiwa 7: we're living like it's 1926 and it sucks :,)

[fucktobirama]

How would have Sasuke's revolution changed things??

Honestly, it depends, because his idea of what "revolution" means evolves across the series, adapting to new information. At first he just wanted to kill the Elders responsible, but after fighting with Danzo he understood that the Elders were a byproduct of the system, so the system had to go.

Personally, I think Sasuke's revolution would have truly changed things if the Kaguya ass-pull hadn't happened. At that point, he understood that Hashirama and Madara had good intentions when they created the village, it just backfired and caused wars to become bigger and bloodier. Ibstead of burning everything to the ground, he wanted to become Hokage and reestructure the system, stop something like the Uchiha Massacre from ever happening again.

Then the Sage of Six Paths rolls up and basically tells him "sorry Sasuke but you're destined to lose no matter what, because you're the reincarnation of a dude that died a thousand years ago. Also, the only way to stop Kaguya is for you and Naruto to get divine powers. All these people putting aside their differences to try to save the world? They don't matter at all lol. Gods are above humans."

So Sasuke loses faith on regular people and stops thinking that he can rely on others to help him change the system. Only him and Naruto matter. But how is he going to achieve peace? Well, Kaguya managed to unify the world agianst her, so he'll just replace her. But Naruto doesn't want him to do that, and Sasuke is destined to always lose against Naruto. The only way to escape fate is to win.

Sasuke's philosophy doesn't actually change after he loses. He still doesn't believe in the power of people, he just thinks Naruto is more qualified to replace Kaguya than he is. And if he doesn't like how Naruto runs the world there's nothing he can do about it. The End.

[demilypyro]

I really really like the chainsaw man ending I need to get my thoughts about it in order a bit better though

[demilypyro]

Okay okay okay. So in my eyes, there's three major themes here: the value of an imperfect world, the freedom of not being the protagonist, and the lasting benefit of forming bonds.

As long as the Chainsaw Devil existed, Denji was never going to have peace. Time and time again, devils were going to come for him, to take Chainsaw's power for themselves and create their perfect world. The constant escalation resulted in Yoru's deathless world, where everyone would suffer forever. So in this new timeline, the Chainsaw Devil doesn't exist. Here, you can't simply remove everything you don't like. You have to accept that there are good movies AND bad movies.

Without Chainsaw, Makima can't pursue her perfect world, thus she's replaced with the more innocent and childish Nayuta. Without the possibility of a perfect world, she might accept that good movies and bad movies both exist. Here, she has the potential to grow up happy.

In the original timeline, Denji would've died in the Zombie fight if it wasn't for Pochita. But here he's instead rescued by Power. Power, who wasn't there in the original timeline. Power, who immediately takes Denji under her wing, though she initially hated humans. Because Power remembers, if only subconsciously, the bond they shared in the other world. And that bond is quickly rekindled, signified by Denji calling her the nickname, Powy. Despite not remembering him, Power and Nayuta still sense affection towards him. That bond wasn't wasted. It has value beyond death.

Finally, Denji and Asa. In this new timeline, neither of them are devils. They are both perfectly average people. They are both freed from their roles as protagonists. This of course means that their lives are forfeit. They will die some day, in some devil attack, as if it's nothing. Like so many other nameless background characters. Because everyone's lives are forfeit in a world where death exists. But we saw Yoru's deathless world, and it was endless suffering. So here they have the freedom to be unexceptional, and to die one day. An imperfect world, where death, and good and bad movies, all exist, forever.

[faglaios]

there really is something so beautiful about this page. dropping the chainsaw to grab Asa and this save her from her decline… the chainsaw being left in the dark via the shade behind him… fujimoto I never doubted you for a second

[nohara-rin-dot-mp3]

everyone knows that naruto takes shortcuts to characterization through copy-pasting the team 7 dynamic onto other 3-man groups. this is naruto analysis 101. it's a handy symbolic tool that allows the narrative to establish a character's role in relation to the people close to them while also giving them purpose in naruto's story by connecting them to him. but what happens when this shortcut fails?

team gai is meant to fall in the same categories that team 7 is, perhaps even more directly than any other team. neji is sasuke, lee is naruto, and... and tenten should be sakura. there is very little connecting them, however. tenten's role in her team is completely different from the one that sakura and sakura-foils play due to her general lack of interest in neji and lee.

i find this non-foil relationship sakura and tenten share interesting, because i believe that tenten was originally set up to be someone sakura would look up to. however, because of the way tenten was set up as being "better" than sakura and the direction that kishimoto wanted to take sakura's character arc, tenten's characterization lead to her becoming an unobtainable goal, and therefore disconnected from the typical echo of team 7.

tenten's first appearance is in chapter 36: sakura's depression. this is a chapter focusing on sakura's choice to either attend or not attend the chunin exams- an explicitly sakura-focussed chapter. tenten is introduced alongside the rest of team gai at the beginning of the chapter to establish them as rivals and foils for team 7.

within this introduction, tenten is the focus. she is the only member of her team actively training, and she is obviously skilled. this sets her up as a kind of ideal sakura: one who is strong, and an equal member of her team.

however, there is another aspect of tenten's character that sakura is meant to emulate. just as neji was meant to be a sasuke who was stopped before he could meaningfully challenge his systematic oppression follow a path of darkness and lee was meant to be a naruto who put in the hard work to become someone strong despite his circumstances of birth, tenten was meant to be a sakura who was free from what the narrative believes is her most problematic, most annoying trait:

her crush.

tenten's relationship with romance has been discussed on this blog before. she is unique in naruto in that her complete lack of interest in a relationship has been a consistent marker of her characterization, even into the boruto era, and that this lack of interest has been acknowledged and explicitly approved of, likely because of her "replacement interest" in weapons. tenten cares about being a shinobi in a way that no other character is capable of, and is therefore allowed to not participate in the institution of heterosexual marriage and romance.

by posing tenten as a sakura-foil, the narrative established a goal for sakura: to let go of her emotional connection to sasuke and naruto. become less "annoying," become more like tenten, who is strong and equal to her teammates.

this did not work. sakura, as a character, is defined by her relationship with sasuke and naruto. this is not to say that this could not have worked- if naruto was a different, less misogynistic story, sakura could have had a character arc outside of sasuke and naruto. but naruto is what it is, and within the confines of the story, sakura was required to be feminine, and to surrender to the confines of a traditional heterosexual attraction and eventually marriage. she cannot be tenten. she is not allowed to not be in love.

this meant that tenten had to stop being a sakura-foil. this happens extremely early on: during the chunin exams, naruto's connection to lee and sasuke's connection to neji are emphasized. sakura's connection to tenten is discarded very early on, however, and she is given a new foil in the form of ino- one focused on romance.

failing to act as sakura's foil further frees tenten from the conventions of the narrative. tenten is she has no assigned role in her team. she has no role to be confined by. for this and prior discussed reasons, tenten is startlingly unaffected by the structural hatred the narrative holds for women.

[ikissyourmomwiththismouth]

Oh no.

Oh no.

So that’s why the Locust Devil was so fucking powerful.

A world where every bug, every rat and every vermin never dies is somehow even worse than the world Yoru wanted.

[elegantwoes]

The meta layering in chapter 96 of Operation: True Love is juicy. In this chapter, it’s clearly established how narratively intertwined Dohwa and Gray from Black Rose of Versailles are. The fact that Suae goes to Dohwa for advice on how to write her spin-off, particularly Gray, and that he can answer so naturally is because Dohwa is currently in the same predicament: pining on the sidelines, aching for a girl who is with someone else. It’s the story folding in on itself. Dohwa’s reality and Gray’s fictional longing blur until they’re indistinguishable. Yet there are still some people in the OTL fandom who claim Dohwa isn’t Gray.

[moonpie2405]

The longer I think about it, the more disgusting Alma's maternalization gets. Because Alma had been unconscious for nine years when the scientists implanted an Akuma "egg" in their body with literal markings over their stomach, while their mind was so closed off and unresponsive that even Wisely couldn't peek into it - Wisely, whose power lets him break minds like a nutcracker. Because when Alma was last conscious, they were eleven and had completely lost their will to live, tired of being exploited by the Order. Because everyone constantly referred to Alma as "the Womb" instead of a person.

The creation of Akuma has always drawn parallels to birth - not only is the whole process about resurrection, but the Earl is literally shown singing the eeriest Happy Birthday ever when an Akuma is created, and the mass of Dark Matter from which Akuma are created both resembles and is literally called an egg, and first ever Level Four is quite literally "born" from the caricature of a pregnant woman. But you know who also has been tied to the themes of birth from the start? The Seconds. It is no coincidence that when Yuu and Edgar discuss birth and love, both versions of Alma are also present in the room with them. When Edgar talks about how humans are born, when he ties the creation of life to love, he is also directly othering both Yuu and Alma from the conversation - humans are born from love, and the life humans give birth to is borne out of love. Because Yuu and Alma are Seconds, because they are subhuman "artificial" apostles, their "birth" is twisted, the purpose of their lives is twisted and later on, any life that rises from them (the Thirds that are born from Alma's cells) is also ultimately twisted.

But the truth is that Yuu and Alma had been humans all along, that they, by all means, should have been treated as humanely as anyone else. Everything they had been taught while growing up was a lie, and this whole time it was the scientists' acts that had been twisted. And nothing could drive this point better than Johnny asking why a kid has become the first womb.

[medievaljournalist]

unfortunately the awful little freak everyone hates has saved the world so now we all have to try to be nice

[lukavelim]

Nayuta

[shkataplah]

let's fucking talk about denji's peace sign making a comeback

- ONE it has been SUCH a long fucking time since we've last seen him do it let alone do it with happiness and joy like im p sure the last time we saw him do it was when he told yoshida he chooses two choices and that wasn't even really peace, which could mean nothing

- TWO of COURSE THIS FUCKING MEANS SOMETHING ARE YOU KIDDING ME WE'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CULMINATION OF PART 2'S THEMES OF DUALITY AND BINARY CHOICES AND DENJI JUST CASUALLY THROWS UP A 2 AND THEN FUCKING FUSES???? HE MERGES HIS TWO CHOICES - LIVE A NORMAL LIFE AS DENJI OR A SUPERHERO LIFE AS CHAINSAW MAN HE BECOMES AS THE CHAPTER NUMBERED TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY TWO IS TITLED "DENJI MAN" its just so fucking PEAKKKKKKK

- and you KNOW i could not miss the extra layer of meaning where he beats yoru, war, with peace. i mean come on. come the fuck on. he beats war in rock paper scissors with peace and then reaches actualization and merges his conflicts at once. nobody else is doing it like denji