I can’t believe I missed out on posting about this poll for most of the week because I was gone on a trip, but I will make up for lost time. Truly, my interests in mythology and Naruto have crossfired here in the funniest and most deranged of ways.
Ultimately, I am voting for Might Gai here – but before I get into WHY I feel the need to address some claims about Achilles in his own propaganda as well. The claim here is that a child would have "fixed" Achilles, and that he would have been suited to parenthood – respectfully, on a textual level I would argue the exact opposite on both counts. You see, Achilles already HAD a child, and he essentially abandoned it because of the core driving motivating force of his character – the kind of thing so central to who he is that the Iliad as a text would not be the same without it. I am of course talking about his drive for the kind of undying glory that comes with death in battle, that obsession with the concept of "kleos" that he is not alone in fixating on when it comes to the war narrative that is the Iliad. Characters like Paris are notable in comparison for their lack of interest in this same idea that drives Achilles and countless other men to their early graves. Whatever child Achilles has is always going to be doomed to a life without him in it, because of these priorities he has – his child will never, ever come first to him. He will always choose to die young first, if it means he will earn that glory in death that he craves. It’s just who he is, it’s central to how he behaves – and it’s because of that he is always fated to make the choices that he does. He is never, ever going to choose to live a hypothetical long life raising his child – in fact, we even have this spelled out very plainly within the text that makes up the Iliad itself. I’ll be using Caroline Alexander’s translation throughout, since it’s what I happen to have at the moment at the ready.
For context, Achilles knows if he chooses to go to Troy he will die an early death – flat out, textually, this is something he knows will happen. And he is given a choice not to do this! His own mother laid out the two fates he could have to him quite clearly, as he himself says:
For my mother tells me, the goddess Thetis of the silver feet, that two fates carry me to death’s end; if I remain here to fight around the city of the Trojans, my return home is lost, but my glory will be undying; but if I go home to the beloved land of my father, outstanding glory will be lost to me, but my life will be long, nor will death’s end come on me swiftly.
He knows, quite clearly, that if he chooses to stay at Troy he will die young, and his child will never know him as a father. He knows this, and yet no matter what happens, he always chooses to stay at Troy. Child or no child, he is staying – when Briseis is taken from him and he withdraws from the war effort, he could have left entirely, but no, he chooses to stay at Troy. When Patroclus is killed on the battlefield, still yet he chooses to stay at Troy. No matter what happens, he chooses to stay, repeatedly, even when he threatens to leave verbally – because he knows, if he leaves, that undying glory his mother spoke of won’t be his! Sure, it will come with his death, but he made his choice. And he keeps, constantly, repeatedly, making this choice.
I think it’s very telling that the one time we see Achilles directly acknowledge his son by name – Neoptolemos – is when he’s grieving the death of Patroclus. And only to say in context, to put it frankly, that news of his own sons death (or his father's apparently) would not have hurt him the way that learning of Patroclus' death has:
For I could not suffer anything else more evil, not if I should learn of the dying of my father, who no doubt in Phthia now lets fall a soft tear bereft of such a son; while I the son in a foreign land am waging war with Trojans for the sake of Helen, at whom I shudder; not if I should learn of the death of my beloved son, raised at my behest on Skyros – if by chance he still lives – Neoptolemos the godlike in beauty.
Make of that what you will – Achilles actually goes on further to say that his hope was actually for Patroclus to take on matters concerning his son after his death as well:
Before this the heart within me had hoped that I alone would die far from the horse-grazed pastures of Argos, here at Troy, but that you would return to Phthia, and that in your swift black ship you might fetch my son away from Scyros and show him each and every thing I have, my property, my slaves, and high-roofed great house. I think Peleus is either already dead and altogether gone, or perhaps still barely alive he is worn down by grief in hateful old age, dreading always The baneful report of me, when he learns that I have died.”
Once again, zero plans to be in that child’s life, ever. That responsibility is always going to be placed on someone else if he can help it. He is just not built for parenthood in the way the propaganda here is making him out to be – parenthood is simply never going to BE a priority to him in the way that it thinks it will be. We already know what’s going to happen – we have a test baby to work with that already exists! I don’t think the baby popping out of Achilles specifically would change anything. Granted, Achilles popping out a baby would definitely have sold his disguise as a girl on Skyros better, and would have definitely led to Situations, so if you’re voting on that line of logic, then fine sure. If someone comes into this post though saying that if Patroclus was the father things would be different, again, no it wouldn’t. His plan will still be for Patroclus to live and raise the thing while he kicks it and dies in combat. In fact, Patroclus being the father would even solidify this further. And if Patroclus dies first? Well, there’s always someone else to shift the responsibility onto. That’ll be someone else’s problem now. The death of Patroclus clearly affects him more than the concept of the death of his own child so he’s going to go kill a bunch of people until he literally dies mad about it (slain in combat).
For me, personally speaking, most trajectories and paths you could take with this hypothetical child is already covered with the existence of Neoptolemos. If you, personally, are interested in seeing the fallout on a child’s psyche of your own father choosing to die young over ever knowing you as a person, Neoptolemos has it for you. I’m talking depictions on the crockery of that boy beating old man Priam with the body of Astyanax levels. Neoptolemos has it for you!!!
So in the end, my vote is going to end up going to Might Gai, and I’ll explain why. Based on the Achilles discussion, we know that Achilles will affect the trajectory of any hypothetical child’s life negatively with the yawning void that is his absence in it, and his choice of death over a life with them. Might Gai offers an alternative to this – he will affect his hypothetical child’s life by being all too present in it, and then choosing death because of them. And in fact, he may choose to enact this death right in front of them! We’ll get into the 'Might Die' of it all in a moment.
Granted, in both cases, we’re dealing with some pretty heavy Warrior Ideals influencing choices made regardless going on. The flavors are different, but they’re there. For Achilles, this vice hold that the warrior ideals present in the Iliad has over him, is what leads him to all the choices he makes that I discussed previously. It’s what leads him to choose death over his own child; for Might Gai in comparison, the warrior ideals that are present in Naruto are what leads him to the concept of constantly choosing death BECAUSE of the children under his care. It is, in its own way, his own brand of deranged suicidal behavior – enter the case of the literal suicide pact with the 13-year-old child soldier that also happens to be one of his students:
For context, Rock Lee, his student here, has been injured to such a point that only a high risk surgery (where he could die) would allow him to be an active duty soldier again. Might Gai cannot fathom a future for his student where he is not a soldier for the state, much like he cannot fathom such a future in himself. He would rather they both die young than ever allowing that boy to be a civilian – he cannot even imagine a future where his student might ever find fulfillment in the life of living as one! We’re back to Thetis and the two paths of fate offered in a way. Between dying young as a soldier in a war, or living a life never knowing battle, well, the choice is made. It’s just again, flavored differently.
IF this is the kind of behavior he exhibits around his own students already (and I’ve only skimmed the surface here), I cannot imagine what is going to happen with a child that pops out of him. Now you might say that we’re in danger of another Rock Lee rehash, much in the same way I believe any additional child of Achilles is going to mostly retread the same ground as Neoptolemos, and that’s fair. However, I’d point out that Might Gai does in fact have two other additional students with vastly different personalities he clearly has an effect on in different ways – and again, this is because he is very present in their lives! There is just more to work with interaction wise with a hypothetical future child, whereas with Achilles’ lack of absence, while interesting to discuss, I just feel leads to always retreading similar ground. A hypothetical additional Achilles child may have a different personality from Neoptolemos, sure, and react to the abandonment differently, but at the end of the day, we’re reacting to what’s essentially the same thing here – a big, obvious absence. With Might Gai, differences in personality offer more territory to bounce off of, because the parent is present to HAVE those interactions bounce off of. He interacts with his own students differently depending on who it is, and the journey leading to Might Gai’s eventual highly possible death just gives more to work with in this specific context, especially if what we want out of everything going on here is interactions between parent and child in the first place (regardless of how good for anyone any of these interactions are).
Because again, if Might Gai dies, it’s going to be for his child, rather than in spite of his child. A child, for Might Gai, is an excuse to die. I would argue the reasons as to why are integral to his character as well. During the war arc when Madara is at his most powerful, before we see Might Gai blow that guy’s back out, as depicted below:
We see exactly how his father died, with this same exact jutsu right in front of him. The one that he is using in the panel above to blow that man’s back out as mentioned before. This is something he is doing to quite literally, actively, kill himself in the hopes that doing so will kill that other guy too. Because his father really did install the ethos in him that there is no greater achievement in death than to enact in on behalf of not just someone you care for, but the concept of the young as the future they represent.
And his father teaches him this "taijutsu that will actually kill you" technique as well:
The "self rule" he gets into here, being the "reason to kill yourself" territory I discussed earlier:
That idea is clearly heavily present throughout this society outside of just Might Gai’s father too, which can only reinforce this kind of suicidal tendency further:
Now you might start saying “hey isn’t this the series with child soldiers as young as twelve years old dying in combat” and “hey isn’t this the series where those same twelve year olds are made to fight each other to the death to earn a promotion and rich people gamble on their bout matches” and I would say yes, yes there is a lot to unpack there, but if I get into the weeds of that then this post will become even more of an essay than it already is. Now of course regardless, this all leads to a similar outcome – we are dealing with a man that will actively, knowingly, choose his own early death in combat. I just think that the way Might Gai is always going to be more actively present in his childs life (he needs that child as a reason to die, remember this!) is just going to be more interesting to watch for a myriad of reasons. There’s also the wild card factor of what happens if he DOESN’T die, because despite me telling you that jutsu he used before is meant to kill you upon use he does not in fact die (it’s a long story). Instead he loses the use of his legs, effectively becoming disabled. A bit interesting, considered the suicide pact we discussed earlier – some clear differences in attitude are noticeable here after the fact:
So there is a slim chance maybe things will be mildly okay, but the psychological effects of all this shit happening is still going to affect everyone regardless. Kakashi ain’t helping either. Do you think Kakashi being the father will make anything better? No! Forget the suicidal ideation for a moment, this is the man that invented the “channel lightning into my fucking hands and use it to kill my friends oh no oh god oh fuck” jutsu and then taught it to a clearly troubled child before acting surprised when the kid used that jutsu to almost kill his friend, oh no, oh god, oh fuck. Between him and Might Gai “I’m going to teach this kid the Taijutsu that Kills You” (there are actually multiple different versions of the Taijutsu That Kills you that he tries to teach his students) surely nothing will go wrong here! Ever!
Actually we haven’t even begun to discuss the ramifications of Madara being the father of the child. Shit, he’d be into it:
Man. The battlefield does strange things to the minds of men, don’t it?
