the unfortunate reality is that sns just isn’t that good.
sure, it could have been good if this or if that or the other thing, but the fact of the matter is that it’s not, and the main reason it isn’t is actually touted by a lot of sns fans as one of the central pillars of the relationship.
when kishimoto retconned naruto and sasuke’s relationship to state that they always understood each other, he undermined an entire series where the central conflict was about the two of them not understanding each other. to read from the beginning with this interpretation requires you to cast a ridiculous, needlessly complicated filter over all their interactions, giving them the character of a pair of chessmasters, rather than young boys. naruto and sasuke, if you throw out the retcon, read as a perfectly comprehensible narrative about two children who (realistically!) can’t see past the intricacies of their sociopolitical situations to understand that they have a lot in common. over time, their emotional maturity grows, allowing them to begin to realise this.
this is why the “i’ll bear the burden of your hatred and die with you” scene is so weighty; naruto is acknowledging that it is the realities of their circumstances that keep them apart, and he wants to meet again in another life where none of that exists. this scene is the canary in the coal mine, letting us know this relationship is going to end in tragedy; they’ve chosen separate ways, paths which are inevitably fated to cross, and the only way for them to meet again as friends is in death. he’s finally come to understand, but it’s too late. when faced with the choice of sasuke or konoha, naruto chose the village. that’s a huge choice that should, realistically, come with a consequence. even if this ends, somehow, with the both of them alive, the memory of that choice, and the circumstances that created it, remains. because naruto (the manga) is an immature narrative, however, there are no realistic, interesting consequences. sasuke is made to give up and magically let go of his grudge against an institution which murdered his family and destroyed his life, of his pursuit of justice, which, from the very start, defined him as a character, so naruto can have both his friend and the admiration of said institution. the end of the series is the death of sasuke’s character, and i could go into an in-depth analysis of chapter 699 and how i think kishimoto knows this on some level, hence why sasuke never truly returned to konoha (ergo, to naruto, since, in becoming hokage, naruto becomes synonymous with konoha). sns is depressing. i see the tongue-in-cheek posts about the sns affair, the sns divorce arc, and all i can think of is how bleak an ending this is for sasuke, and how out of character it is. what i wouldn’t have given for him to hear “i know your heart, and you mine” and lash out with a resounding “no you don’t”.
but the late series, and shippuden as a whole, more and more as it drags on, is synonymous with predetermination superseding free will. i don’t think it’s a coincidence that i don’t see many sns fans talking about the first part of the series, where naruto and sasuke are actually forging this relationship. sns would be nothing without the story pre-timeskip, but people tend to focus on shippuden-era sns, which, to some extent, i understand. this is the era most fraught with emotional tension (and where naruto spends the entire time with a thought bubble that says “sasuke”, because he lost all of his depth as a character from part 1 in favour of that, but i digress), but when it comes to looking for the core of their bond, to the actual raison d’être, the entirety of part 1 gets far less press than the scenes of them as young children in the academy – scenes which were introduced extremely late in the series as brief flashbacks. kishimoto’s fixation with destiny invalidates the themes of part 1 on all levels, and the sns relationship is in no way exempt.
so could sns have been good? yes, as a tragic relationship, disregarding the retcon. except, from what i see, people who like sns seem to really, really like it. they take the overly-complex retcon interpretation and use it in support of a “naruto and sasuke always loved one another” or “naruto and sasuke had their positive feelings for each other twisted by their martial society” reading. it’s not even that these are inherently bad takes, in a literary sense, it’s simply that they don’t hold up to the rest of the manga. asserting in the very late series that these two characters have been watching each other for some time doesn’t hold up with the reality of the story, which begins on naruto and sasuke having no thoughts or opinions of one another beyond their surface-level feelings towards a classmate they don’t particularly like or understand. the growth of this into their genuine bond is much more meaningful, because it occurs textually. it is a true show of increasing mental and emotional maturity, rather than a frustrating wait for the characters to stop dancing around the conclusion of their emotional journey, which they already know, for some reason, from the beginning. that’s the core of it, really: the retcon puts the end at the beginning, making the entire story a pointless exercise in futility. destiny is wholeheartedly embraced as romantic and self-evident, rather than the death of narrative and interpersonal complexity, and the fundamental truth that love is a choice – the continual, conscious decision to choose each other, day after day – and we already know what naruto’s choice was.
(you might say, well, I think X or Y should have changed; naruto should have learned about the destruction of uzushiogakure and understood he and sasuke came from a very similar situation, – which, itself, rests on another late-series destiny boner retcon – naruto should never have become loyal to the village after the way he was treated, naruto should have joined with sasuke to tear down konoha – but that’s not the way it was written, and if this is your justification, you admit it is a relationship as flawed in its narrative as the ones it is so often purported to be so much better than.)
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