What do you think Tsunadeās relationship with Kakashi is(as a subordinate and maybe a potential past friendās son)? Weāve seen her deal with death of a subordinate like Asuma which, while distraught, she didnāt hit a pillar to its demise as she did for Kakashi. (For Shizune and Jiraiya she understandably showed more emotion)
Thank you for your insight
Hi anon! Thank you for asking! š§”
I had a blast thinking about this all day, and decided to separate this response into two sections, the first of which is where I'll try to be canon-based, and the second will just be a few headcanons you can pry out of my cold dead hands.
Firstly, I think that while it's clear they mutually value each other, they have surprisingly divergent story arcs.
For all that she's a Senju princess, and maybe acts a bit entitled sometimes as a result, the Tsunade we see in canon carries a very heavy personal backpack loaded with a hell of a lot of trauma, and she's wearing the straps of that metaphorical backpack over a very sensitive and caring heart. She mourns Nawaki and Dan for years, never really gets over either death, and develops a debilitating fear of blood, despite being one of the top medics around. We know just how much trauma Kakashi's Team 7 and Minato's Team 7 go through, but we don't actually see that much of Hiruzen's Team 7 in the mud. But I think it's pretty heavily implied that they were going through it. What she saw firsthand in the Second (and Third?) Shinobi Wars really left a mark on her ability to trust others, her sense that the world was a good place and could be safe to live in, and her desire to commit herself to higher goals like Village peace.
This mirrors Kakashi's development in a lot of ways. As a child and young person, Kakashi was a genius who we know could act entitled, but deep down, he was suffering from loss and grief and trauma in the same way that grizzled old veterans were who were 50-60+ years older than him. He mourns Obito and Rin's deaths for years (I think it's very poignant that his final thoughts before dying in the Pein invasion arc are "Obito... Rin..." rather than "Naruto...Sakura..." or something else like "Pakkun" or "Minato" or "Dad"). Never quite gets over them. He has the same self-imposed isolation arc that Tsunade does, only his takes place within the Village itself, during his ANBU years. He develops a possibly-OCD related recurring hallucination about having blood on his hands, and while he has a few trusted associates, he tends to operate as a lone wolf (until Team 7) and seems to prefer not to depend on others, socially, or become overly entangled in their lives.
Okay, so far, very parallel. The big point of difference between them is that Kakashi stays to work within while Tsunade (for most of her post-2nd-war pre-Hokage years) leaves in an effort to nurse her wounds in private.
The gambling addiction, the anger and tantrums, the youthful-appearance jutsu, the way she holds onto that "cursed" hokage necklace for years on end, all of it speaks to the way that Tsunade carries her pain and trauma with her every day of her life outside the Village. It's classic avoidance strategies. She's a really great and well-delineated character because we get to see all of these "flaws" up close and first-hand, and it really does take a lot out of our hero to finally convince her to come back. She doesn't hold her positions lightly, and it takes a lot for her to say I was wrong.
Clearly, something went very wrong between the Three Sannin sometime around the close of the Second War. Something splintered them off into separate paths, ones of mutual mistrust rather than the teamwork for which later Team 7s were so famous.
Or maybe it was just the overall horrors of war:
[Or just the way that orochimaru always smelled like a wet cat for hours after a battle, well, at least that's what it looks like to me]
But anyway, unlike Kakashi, who stayed in the Village his whole life, something in Tsunade's life convinced her to give up on cooperation and teamwork (if she ever believed in it in the first place).
To me it's pretty clear that if pre-Hokage Tsunade had been in Kakashi's place in the 4th War, she would have killed Obito without a second thought, or if she'd been in Naruto's/Sakura's place, she'd have tried to kill Sasuke, rather than deal with the heartbreak of attempting to redeem them. Pre-Godaime Tsunade just strikes me as someone who is very, very, very selective about who she trusts (Dan, Shizune, Hiruzen?, Hashirama/Tobirama?, and Jiraiya and Orochimaru, but only to an extent) and cynical about people in general, which is not a character flaw so much as it is the way she innately sees the world + a long history of personal trauma.
BUT, and here's where we get back to the original point of the post, which is Tsunade and Kakashi's relationship, but Tsunade does not stay mistrusting and isolated. She changes. She opens up. She leans on other people and their judgment more and more as the story progresses, without losing a shred of her own authority and power and independence along the way. That's pretty damn cool and to my mind, it starts with that first initial big disagreement between her and Kakashi, about her choice to send 5 genin to go collect Sasuke.
Here's a link to @panharmonium's fantastic gifset + commentary about this scene.
I'm going to pull just a few things to comment on:
"Well, what else could I do?" This Sasuke-goes-rogue problem is the first big judgment call that Tsunade has had to make on her own as Hokage, and as pan points out, she was new to the situation and had nowhere near enough unbiased background information about it to come to a good decision. This question she asks in response to Kakashi's visible shock, dismay, and disappointment is (imo) her asking him a legitimate question, though in the guise of an angry accusation. What else could I do? What was I supposed to have done? How would you have handled this situation, if you were in my chair? That's the subtext here, and it sets up a recurring Kakashi/Tsunade dynamic that shows up intermittently for years afterwards.
(i just have to say i absolutely love the way that kakashi responds by *hanging his head* *sagging on the desk* *almost falling over* *his thoughts are like: i would have done anything except what you just did, but he also clearly understands why she did it, and so isn't about to say that to her, to her face, and put them into an adversarial relationship, (this is also why i think they might have had a relationship pre-dating their canon scenes together, one where she's his Auntie and he's her 'all-adults-are-stupid-except-for-you' little genius nephew, but i digress)
"Anyway, I have a contingency plan in place." -> Kakashi leaves, walks right out the door, rather than listening. Whatever it is she's offering, to him, it's not a solution. Why? Because he knows the next thing she's about to do is pawn off an S-rank on him, one that surely needs doing and is (in her eyes) going to be better for the village as a whole, and is likely something only an elite jounin like Kakashi can do, and why would such a highly ranked and powerful shinobi even bother with sentimentality, she's thinking. Why would someone like Kakashi, who has devoted his life to the good of the Village, throw all of that aside, risk being disgraced and court-martialed and dishonourably dismissed from his duties, just like his father, why would he risk his standing and the Village priorities and his relationship with a brand new Hokage for Sasuke, and Naruto.
Let's not forget that the narrative actively pushes us to see things iteratively: for Tsunade, this is not just some rebellious pre-teens. The question Kakashi's behavior evokes is deeper than that. Why would you, Kakashi, risk everything for a disrespectful punkass like Orochimaru Sasuke, and a naive idealist like Jiraiya Naruto? Why would anyone prioritize their teammates over everything else? That's what Kakashi's actions symbolize to her in that moment, and it just sits there on her mind, gnawing at her, until whenever it is that Kakashi returns, with a kid on his back and a heavier heart than can be described.
Okay, so that's where I think Tsunade hits a big internal turning point. To her, becoming Hokage was something she resisted for years on end because it meant prioritizing the good of the many over the good of the few. Because it meant war, and carnage, and battle, and because it meant that at some point, you end up in a situation where you can't save everyone you want to save, and the horror of that fact is something you just have to try to swallow and live with for the rest of your life.
To me, it says volumes about Tsunade that she still agrees to take the job. Naruto persuades her that it's worth doing, but nothing in what Naruto says or shows her lessens the cost of doing the job. It doesn't take one single grain away from the fact that this job has a cost, and maintaining peace in Konoha has a cost, and the shinobi worldview has a cost, and the missions that are required to keep all of that operating smoothly on the surface has a very steep cost. And Tsunade accepts both the role and the costs, because to her, that's what it means to be a Hokage.
But that's not what it means to Kakashi.
"What would you do?" -> big sigh of visible dissapointment -> "I gotta go run an errand." -> JESUS CHIRST, KAkashi šššš you're so sexy in this scenešššš in this one momentšššššš
What would Kakashi do? It's clear within the next 5 seconds: he would say fuck the rules, fuck the mission, fuck the fact that we're shortstaffed and the Village might suffer, I have to put my team first.
That's a very big deal! It means she has someone, at least one other person, in this godforsaken Village, who follows his heart rather than his mission assignment, and will understand her reasoning, should she choose to do the same. It's like Kakashi's actions here pop open an umbrella for her, where she no longer has to be the hardass, the strict and unbending Hokage who puts the Village above all else. Yes she cares about the Village. Yes she cares about missions, and respect for authority, and saving as many lives as possible. But when this same situation reappears three and some years later, with Team Ten sneaking out against express orders to go avenge Asuma's death, this time, she's there at the gate to send them safely on their way, and this time she's providing appropriate back-up (which just so happens to once again be in the form of Hatake Kakashi).
So my whole point here in this post is not just that these two have a trusting relationship based on mutual respect, which is I think clear from any cursory glance at the way they operate in their scenes together. My point is, I think Kakashi's will and ability to push back against Tsunade's worldview, and her assumptions about what it means to be a shinobi, is a really underrated part of their relationship, and a big part of why she wants him and only him as her successor. As Hokage, she could have pushed a lot harder and cleared a path for someone she had personally trained, like Shizune or Sakura, but it says a lot that although she clearly trusted her kunoichi, she knew Kakashi was the right man for the job overall. He had demonstrated to her on day one that he wasn't afraid to stand up to authority when he knew there was something more important on the line.
I wanted to make another section to this post, detailing the events of the Pein invasion and Tsunade's reaction to Kakashi's death, but this post is already getting long, so I think it'll have to wait for later. But you're totally right that while she has some parallel things goin on with Asuma (who also had a big leave-and-return- arc) and Jiraiya, and her very interesting relationship (and lack thereof) with Orochimaru, I do think Kakashi is and was special to her. His actions and role-modelling helped her open up her heart again, and allowed her to trust others more fully, and become integrated into the Village, and to put on the mantle of authority that a Hokage must wear, all without losing the ability to walk that difficult middle path between the good of the Village and the needs of the team. Neither of them ever forgot their early traumas, but both of them did manage to find a way to carry their grief forward into the future and to use their lives to help others, rather than sink under the weight of that pain.
Kakashi and Tsunade had a nephew/aunt relationship before Sakumo's death. I know this one is popular in fandom in general, but I don't think we have any actual canon pointing to it as an established fact, but you know what, we should. we just should.
Tsunade and Kakashi develop and operate a mental health clinic together after the fourth war. I believe there is some canon that points to this, but I would love to know how far and in what ways the two of them were involved, and how the two of them with their shared and parallel histories must have worked very closely together to make this a reality.
This one is more of an open-ended question than a headcanon, but I'd really like to know just what the hell happened to rehabilitate Orochimaru into Konoha after the 4th War. Kakashi and Tsunade both must have played a major part in this, but afaik the narrative skipped right over it.
what the fuck. whose decision was this. how did we go from this:
...to Orochimaru strolling around Konoha like owns the place, i dont understand i have so many questions
It had to have been either Kakashi or Tsunade's decision, and most likely both of them in conference together, plus why in the living hell would all the other Kages go along with it without a damn good reason. I sort of digress, but my point is, Kakashi and Tsunade had to have had a hell of a long, difficult, painful conversation about forgiving a teammate who had done you (and the world at large) very wrong. Naruto, Sakura, Kakashi, and Tsunade were all in this Team 7 gets fucked over by the "Bad Guy" Teammate situation for the bulk of the narrative, and it really makes me so curious about what kind of conversations went down between them after all the Obito revelations and Sasuke-Orochimaru rehabilitation efforts at the end of canon.
And that's like, the whole theme of the entire show, forgiveness and second-chances and love that endures even the most severe and hurtful attacks, and h o w could they just brush past this for a joke, oh that's right,for a second there, i forgot what show we were watching :(((
Anyway, just a question. What happened. What the hell was this conversation. Did Sakura ever punch Orochimaru through a wall, because I hope so, but
Other headcanons: Kakashi and Tsunade and Sakura had training sessions together during the three-year gap. (Who else would spar with a warhorse like Tsunade???)
Kakashi spent hours kneeling at Tsunade's bedside when she was in her coma, after the Pein invasion. Searching for wisdom, hoping and praying she would wake up, afraid of how painful and terrifying his world would become if she didn't wake up, but not wanting to admit how afraid it made him feel even to himself. Wishing he could tell her about meeting Sakumo by the campfire.
Kakashi having occasion to tell her about that campfire chat later, since she did wake up :)
The two of them having many inside jokes and sharing drinks together late at night. During both the Godaime and the Rokudaime's regimes, there's one bar that's always open late where the two of them meet and drink and seek each other's insight and get lost in each other's conversation for an hour or two.
The two of them + Naruto being the ones in the Village who mourn Jiraiya the most. Everyone else knew him as a Legendary Sannin; they were the three who knew his foibles, and his flaws, and his silliness, and his endearing hopefulness, and who loved him in all his imperfection all the same. The whole Village memorializing him and venerating him, but just the three of them trading stories and drinking sake in his honor on his birthday / the day of his death.
(Also maybe since he gets a free pass for everything ever, maybe Orochimaru joins in on this later, but at the same time, why. why.)
