I’m not a shipper of any of the problematic four. I analyze canon and enjoy some crack-ships. Shipper to none.
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Naruto re-read
#posts - if this doesn't work, try searching the hashtag that follows: #naruto re read (spaces necessary)
Feminism
About feminism and my female characters critiques.
Inclusivity: The woke fandom's drug.
Female empowerment in the Naruto fandom and Feminism without feminists (a companion piece).
Fictional works vs. real historical events. Is it ok to use parallels?
The infinite “who’s strongest Kunoichi” debate and the sexist erasure/degradation of female characters. And a response to it.
Contradictory traits in a character = Bad writing?
Political review
Revolution! Is Internal Reform possible for the Shinobi System? Or is too corrupt to be changed from within?
The Curse of Hatred - or a poorly constructed theory based on bias.
The Chunin Exams -and their actual purpose
Naruhina/Hinata Hyuuga
Hinata’s suicide or why her intention to fight Pain wasn’t to save Naruto.
Hinata endorses slavery. A quick explanation of why.
NaruHina A full analysis of their relationship. Plus, could The Last have worked if it didn't reduce Naruto's character?
NejiHina or the possibilities of the pairing.
The Hyuga clan. And the Caged Bird Seal.
Sorry, no, Hinata never hit Pain.
SasuSaku/Sakura Haruno
Debunking the idea that Sakura was born into a “clanless” family.
SasuSaku a full analysis of their relationship, part one.
Sakura isn’t stronger than most characters. And a small addition.
Sakura and Ino, an analysis of their relationship.
Sakura and Naruto, an analysis of their relationship. Part 1
Sakura as Orochimaru's apprentice and Sasuke as a Medic AU.
Sakura's personality. A defense of Kishimoto's writing. Additionally
Other pairings
ShikaIno. Why this ship has problems.
My opinion about the idea that Kishimoto "planned SNS".
Uchiha clan
How the Uchiha are perceived, a short exploration through Kishimoto's writing.
Were the Uchiha truly oppressed?
Minorities using violence, is it ok?
Sasuke Uchiha
Sasuke and Kakashi’s relationship. What went wrong?
How Sasuke and Obito surpassed their role in the manga (meta).
Sasuke as a Medic AU and Sakura as Orochimaru's aprentice.
Itachi Uchiha
About Itachi, his fandom, and moral standpoints.
Can Itachi's character be fixed? Spoiler alert: It's the fandom's perception of him that should change, not his character.
Debunking an Itachi stan
Madara Uchiha
Madara Uchiha and sexism.
Madara Uchiha’s characterization.
Obito Uchiha
Obito Uchiha. A character ruined by the fandom and his relationship with Minato.
Obito’s redeemers. A small debunk of their arguments.
Shisui Uchiha
Shisui Uchiha. A quick analysis of his participation in the manga.
Fugaku Uchiha
Fugaku Uchiha, the neglectful father.
Naruto Uzumaki/Naruto the series
The white boy, the hero. Parallelisms between Santiago Maratea and Naruto Uzumaki.
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.
To be clear, people claim Fugaku was neglectful as if we didn’t see him through Sasuke’s eyes during the time before the coup. He had to take care of negotiations with Konoha, his clan’s rebellion, do damage control of his eldest son’s behaviors, and investigate the accusations of treason towards Itachi from other Uchiha members; I understand he had almost no time for Sasuke but the moment his son asks him to watch him perform a jutsu he goes along with him and doesn’t push him away.
He kneeled in front of Itachi because he refused to fight and gave his life willingly under the condition that he’ll protect Sasuke –the context in which we see Fugaku has a lot to do with the way he’s perceived by the fandom, realistically he wouldn’t have time to give to Sasuke with everything that’s going on during that specific time, even Mikoto states that the reason Fugaku is so busy and pays so much attention to Itachi it’s because they’re busy (she said it was because Itachi was an Anbu, hinting at the coup).
I understand putting these characters under our own standards when it comes to paternity skills (or well, everything), but none of them abide by our rules as the context in which they move around and grow is completely opposite from ours; being a "good parent" meant to raise your child competent enough for them not to die during childhood, everything else, including giving them emotional support, wasn't even considered even after Konoha's foundation.
Sakumo isn't accused of being neglectful even though he committed suicide and left his body to rot in a space that guaranteed Kakashi would find him (why didn't he throw himself off a cliff if he wanted to spare his child from having to find his body?); Minato isn't called neglectful despite him choosing death over raising his own son (sealing an atomic bomb inside him in the process); Rasa isn't neglectful despite him sealing a tailed beast in his newborn, pushing him to solitude and trying to kill him afterward when he wasn’t up to par to his jinchuuriki standards; Haku's own father isn't even brought up despite killing his wife and trying to kill his child when he learned they had a kekkei genkai, forcing him to kill him and wander the world alone. Hashirama never mentions his child, Tsunade's parent, and even states that he will kill them should they threaten Konoha; Hiruzen and Asuma had a very complicated relationship that never mended during Sarutobi's lifetime; Shikaku forcefully dragged his child through the (metaphorical) mud to “tough him up” for the next mission while he was having a mental breakdown because Chöji and Neji where agonizing a few feet away after their failed mission. I can't even think of a slightly competent parent inside this manga, starting over the simple notion that they all give their children willingly to the military machinery; yet it's always Fugaku's role as a parent the one always being specifically questioned, and I blame the anti-Uchiha portion of the fandom that successfully turned the discussion towards negative portraying Fugaku as an individual and not the reasons he had to rise against Konoha (and the reasons why he couldn't give Sasuke the attention he needed).
All in all, it's unfair to label Fugaku as "neglectful" (or for some, the neglectful parent of Naruto manga) when his standards as a parent differ from our own, more so considering we met Fugaku as a parent during a specific period of time in which tension was in an all-time high that culminated in the Uchiha Massacre.
Do you think people in the fandom would be more forgiving towards Sasuke character as a whole if we got the show from his perspective or if not that then if his thoughts are more shown?
I find myself drawn to his character because, in many ways, I see reflections of my own inclinations, albeit magnified. The tumultuous events that unfolded within his clan and the devastating actions of his brother, wiping out everyone, add a layer of complexity to his character. It's kind of intrigued me to consider that, under similar circumstances, I might make similar choices, perhaps even worse. The Narutoverse, with its deeply rooted issues like child soldiers, clan annihilation, and internal slavery within the Hyuga branch, presents a grim reality. While some characters, and even elements of the fandom, criticize and reject his actions, arguing that trauma should not be an excuse, it's hard to ignore the systemic problems within the Narutoverse itself. The pervasive cycle of suffering, with clans being wiped out and individuals enslaved, points to a broken system that breeds villains and antagonists seeking change.
In contrast to the complacency and cooperation displayed by many characters, those who rebel against the established order and strive for something different, flawed as their execution may be, at least attempt to address the root issues. The fact that they are trying to break free from the oppressive system suggests a level of agency and resistance, even if I may not fully agree with their methods. That's why I'm more forgiving towards the antagantis like Pain, Madara and especially in Sasuke case.
Reflecting on Naruto's journey and his current achievements the fundamental issues persist unchanged.
Also, sorry if this got long I ramble a lot when discussing lol. I hope you have a good day.
Hello, this took long to reply, and for that, I apologize.
I don’t think the issue is “not having Sasuke’s thoughts on display” for him to get sympathy, as we get to see firsthand the reasoning behind his actions, his background, and connections; we also get to see the atrocities committed by the system on multiple characters including those that the fandom takes as “less controversial” and which are considered victims of a bigger scale than Sasuke. I put more blame on the naturalization of state-sanctioned violence and the oppression of minority groups who are then blamed for their village’s actions as they are “savage-coded,” which turns the government’s oppression into a response to their behavior rather than an action born from their own bias. Their ultimate argument always boils down to “fighting violence with violence is not the way,” yet they fail to understand that a government built with brutality as its primary basis and as its primary tool leaves no room for negotiations, as it also implies that those oppressed continue to be oppressed until a “solution” is reached through time. They blame those discriminated against and later on massacred for their demise and not those in power who decided that committing genocide was a plausible solution to their dispute.
The main issue with the idea that “their hearts are in the right place, but I don’t agree with the antagonist methods” also derives from this same perspective, where the discriminated must take all the consequences of the persecution they suffered and choose the “moral high ground” still to keep being “victims” and not become “victimizers.” Their categorization as innocents/savages is always based upon their response to the mass killing of their kin, minimizing the actions of those in power and diminishing the value of their critics to the system in place.
Yet, while the naturalization of state-sanctioned violence plays a part in Sasuke’s status as a “villain” by many of his detractors, it’s not the only one, as many feel Naruto has a similar (perhaps harder) experience with the system in place as he was ostracized, yet he chose to follow Konoha’s WoF –many fans are closer to experience something similar to Naruto (an unpopular kid that was often shunned by comrades), so they feel more inclined to stand behind a character that reflects a personal experience of them, and not behind the boy who suffered genocide, a thing not many can see themselves in nor can build sympathy for as they (again) naturalized such occurrence.
The popularization of the action genre featuring first-world soldiers invading the global south, whose focus is more on the trauma that lingers in the invader for trying to bring peace than on the indiscriminate killing of minorities, also contributes to seeing those in power as more humane or deserving of redemption than those responding violently against the intruders, because those invaded should put their trust in the “good intentions” of those abiding by the system that destroyed them in the first place.
Sasuke defecting from Konoha was the correct choice and supported by the narrative. The sound four didn't manipulate him.
I find it kind of strange, Kishimoto took such an obtuse route in how he portrays Sasuke's cause in Shippuden. Purpose and ambition were essential themes in early Naruto. Gara pretty much sums it up here:
Sasuke also feels the same way. For what reason did itachi spare him? For what reason does he exist?
Kimimaro hammers home the existential philosophy Kishimoto was conveying, that purpose is what drives people, regardless of morality or mortality.
As Kimimaro states, "Everyone has something important to accomplish. The quest to discover what that is... Is the only freedom God has given us humans."
Ambition is portrayed as life affirming. That's why Kakashi's warning that revenge would leave Sasuke empty falls flat. Tayuya is correct in how she frames this so-called camaraderie; the alternative Kakashi provided amounts to idle wound licking.
Would Sasuke really be better off in Konoha, while the man who annihilated his kin roams freely? It isn't a coincidence that both Lee and Sasuke discover the resolve to pursue their ambitions in the same time frame.
Both Lee and Sasuke are at their lowest, and directionless when their respective sensei come to guide them. In contrast to Kakashi, Gai's advice to Lee is honest; Lee would suffer more if he lost his ambition. They both acknowledged that Lee's ambition is precious enough to risk dying for. Kakashi, however, doesn't acknowledge Sasuke's ambition at all. So yes, Kakashi was objectively wrong, and vapid in hindsight.
"Does the world expect us to be well-behaved victims while we're getting killed? For us to be slaughtered without making noise? We've tried peaceful resistance.
We decided to defend our people with whatever weapons we have."
something that I have never pointed out before and probably has to do with my naturalization of the dynamics as such: many of the shippers of the official couples of this fandom (and some unofficial couples but undoubtedly infinitely more popular as well) understand romantic relationships and, why not, even friendship as transactional relationships where they seek to reward the person who loves the most, or loved first, or performed actions in pursuit of helping the subject of their affection (and I use this term generously because they "help" the other based on what they think the other needs and does not necessarily take into account the desires and/or true needs of the other) with their romantic/affective reciprocity. this type of understanding of human relationships reflects a perception of social interactions within a capitalist framework, where the bonds established or to be established must generate (at least and minimally) some kind of "affective profit". in short, within this dynamic, the notion of creditor and debtor is generated, where a subject carries out an action (loving despite of, seeking the salvation of, etc) and puts the other, consequently, as a debtor of the one who claims to love them. once the debt is established, it's time to seek a payment, and this almost exclusively turns out to be their affective and/or romantical reciprocity, their complete devotion, or their absolute submission (let's not forget that many of these relationships are built with at least one of these premises or the conjunction of several). furthermore, the creditor always wants to be the creditor, and therefore seeks to generate debts that are impossible to pay, either by performing multiple actions that extend the commitment of the other or by carrying out an action that is established as so a important (again, love despite of, save from, giving birth to, etc) that the debtor can never stop being in debt, so they commit to life with the other in order to "repay their generosity". hell, they bring even the most fundamentally questioned roots of patriarchy (by feminism no less!) inside this vision (and yes of course patriarchy's basis are intrinsically tied to the capitalist system but that's for another post), as usually the women are the ones put in the "debtor" position through the economic dependency generated by the patriarchal family model; yet they change the "economic" part of the equation (and sometimes not even) and replace it with emotional or psychological dependency where one owes their life to the other (literally or figuratively), in this essay i will...
People on this website will praise a piece of media for being anti-war and the piece of media in question will have the radical anti-war messages of "war is bad because American soldiers get traumatized in it" and "war is just senseless violence where both sides are fighting for no reason and i don't know why it happens because no one benefits from it" and it will be about a real-life war fought by the U.S. to defend its imperial hegemony where the U.S. military killed 1 out of every 7 of the opposing country's population.
Fugaku LITERALLY spent the last moment of his life trying to grant his genocidal murderer of a son peace of mind like maybe there is perhaps more fucking depth to this man than "cold father neglects child"
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