One thing that really pisses me off about the trajectory of the Naruto narrative is that it presents huge, glaring problems with the shinobi system, culture, and society, has the main characters notice and acknowledge these problems, but never has them solve these problems.
For example, at the beginning of the series in the Land of Waves arc, the real antagonist is not Zabuza, but Gato, a ruthless billionaire, capitalist that hires shinobi to help him monopolize businesses in small lands until he controls all of their wealth at the expense of their people. He does this in the Land of Waves, but Tazuna is building a bridge that will open up commerce and sap some of his control and profit, so he hires Zabuza to kill him. Before that, he publicly executed Inari’s dad for organizing the people in the Land of Waves against him.
After Team 7 fights Zabuza and Haku, and Haku sacrifices himself to save Zabuza from Kakashi, Gato shows up with some manpower with the goal to kill Tazuna AND Zabuza because he doesn’t want to pay Zabuza for the job. Mad at Haku for disrespecting him before, he kicks his dead body. Naruto gets upset by this and confronts Zabuza about his lack of anger re: how Haku’s body is being treated. This is when Zabuza states that shinobi are simply tools to be used and that he only used Haku for his skills and we get Naruto’s “he cared about you [...] to die as a tool is just too sad” speech.
Naruto is upset by the fact that shinobis’ are only viewed as valuable if they can provide their labor for a service that enables someone else to profit. Outside of that, in this capitalist system, their humanity and lives aren’t viewed as valuable or worthwhile. He’s afraid that he will end up thinking that way, too, the longer he is a ninja, hence him asking “is that how you get when your powers are as strong as yours?”, i.e., heartless/only viewing people as valuable based on what you can get from them.
Unfortunately, the shinobi system operates in a capitalist society and ingrains an ideology into it’s children (LITERALLY CHILD SOLDIERS THAT PERFORM LABOR SO THE VILLAGE CAN PROFIT) that teaches them that their lives ARE only valuable if they work to serve the world’s countries’ leaders (daimyo) (and the wealthy) because that is literally how the shinobi villages get paid: by taking jobs, even assassinations, from these wealthy, powerful people. They’re literally tools of a violent, capitalist system!
Naruto’s whole character is based in the fact that he rejects this idea of what being a ninja means and that he wants to be a different type of ninja who operates in a different kind of system, one where people’s lives are valued not just for what they can produce for the wealthy and powerful. This is why the ending sucks so badly and why Naruto seemingly betrays everything he is with that epilogue. Why the shitty ending and the retconning of Naruto’s character? I think there are a few reasons:
1. Kishimoto sucks at writing, 2. he caved to the pressure his editor’s put on him when it came to changing the story too often, 3. he lives in a capitlist country and even though he can see the problems capitalism creates (war is bad! valuing people based on what they can produce through their labor for the wealthy and powerful is bad! oppressing people is bad!) he can’t admit that capitalism is the problem because the cognitive dissonance is just too much. Kishimoto has a bad case of the liberal-like idea that even though xyz oppression or harmful acts is bad, we need to be nice and peaceful and patient and polite when asking for justice—eventually they’ll give it to us (hence the demonization of Sasuke’s character and his attempts to fix the injustices of the system by the other characters in Naruto. He wants change and he’s not afraid to call out the fact that the system sucks and that those who maintain the status quo are responsible for it continuing to suck. He feels no cognitive dissonance about it).
Justice for Naruto and justice for Sasuke tbh. They deserved a world where the system was dismantled, where shinobi villages stopped working for the wealthy and powerful for their own interests, where shinobi could produce their own resources and maybe do some meaningful shit in the world, like provide mutual aid, instead of being forced into violence to line someone else's pockets.
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