your chunin exam study guide

hey, my name's mel and i'm doing a running commentary of naruto from the beginning please don't spoil

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OH COME ON

three things:

naruto, why would you open the door when you don't actually know whether it's jiraiya or not? you live in a world of trained killers and apparently trained killers knock

jiraiya has the absolute worst taste in hotels because the doors don't even have peepholes.

DON'T LOOK HIM IN THE EYE, NARUTO

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from boredom, probably

or maybe it's something ~sinister~

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i love how sasuke's first reaction isn't 'kill itachi'

it's 'protect naruto'

awwww you do care

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you know

you'd think ninjas would be better at keeping secrets and reading the room

and knowing you don't bring up itachi within a five mile radius of sasuke

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you see your sensei in bed in the middle of the day

surrounded by jounin

and you ask "why's he asleep"

man, i'd be asking if he's dead

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i've been wondering about my bae

at least this time he's not in bed while wearing his vest and headband

i am disappointed that no one put him in jammies

or took off the mask

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every male in this show is an irredeemable pervert

all of you need jesus

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guaranteed way to make a kid feel shitty:

compare them to another kid

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punch him in the dick, girl

cuz i'm sure his balls haven't descended yet

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baby jiraiya confirmed for 500% dweeb

young sarutobi confirmed for 500% done

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absolute shitlord and baby shitlord bond over their common trait: shitiness

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i love how the bell thing has been retconned as A Thing

instead of kakashi being like "i don't want to teach, so i'm going to create a ridiculous test that exploits the academy's incompetence. yeah."

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this child is using shadow clones to mess with the bells

i'm stuck between what a loser and i feel ya, kid

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i just want someone to sit this kid down

preferably on a squishy couch with a pot of tea on the coffee table

and tell him

look

i know you've got a thing about being helpless and about needing to be strong

i know your childhood trauma is enough to destroy most people

but sometimes you can't help being helpless!!! it sucks but it's true!!! it doesn't mean you're weak!!!

that's why, if you've got someone willing to step in and take up the slack, you let them do it!!! and you don't get all angry that you had to rely on them later, because that's what loser heroes like naruto are for

and hey, at least no one you knew died this time!!!

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this is an interesting assumption on sakura's part

i mean, it's a sort of accumulation of her being out of the loop. she was unconscious for the entire naruto vs gaara confrontation, and obviously no one thought it was important to clue her in before this point.

she also doesn't have as much of a sense of naruto's true power, unlike sasuke. that goes back to the naruto/haku/sasuke conflict way back in wave country. i'm pretty sure sasuke has a sense that naruto was the one to break the ice mirrors. that coupled with the display naruto put on in the forest of death before having his seal messed with by orochi confirms that naruto's got some mojo.

sakura can't comprehend the idea that naruto might be better equipped than sasuke to take down some enemies.

she saw how spent sasuke was before she got owned by gaara, and yet she still thinks sasuke was to one to defeat him.

not only that but this line serves to underline to sasuke that he's ~not strong enough~ and ~the dropout might be stronger than him~ and, god, these kids need to communicate

someone needs to set up mandatory team dinners that are group therapy sessions in disguise

like, how is that not a thing

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this child is a disaster

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"i mean, seriously, have you looked in the mirror lately, kid

how has no one else noticed this shit"