what’s your interpretation of rin’s personality? i love your comics about her and it sucks that in canon she’s just Nice Girl
that's a great question, anon! and the one i've been asking myself for several years now.
first thing first: root!rin theory is an invention of @ahkaraii, and it’s the most important thing in naruto fandom.
i may be overthinking but i always thought there was something off about rin - she is not just nice girl™, she is creepily nice girl, and she is way too convenient for one certain uchiha nice girl. as i see it, writing a stereotypical love interest is not a complicated issue for a shounen author - there are a bunch of cliches and tropes that you have to combine to get such character right. rin? she is...not quite this. rin rather looks like someone who tries to be that ideal love interest (or, honestly, to be just a normal shinobi/human) but tries too hard and it spoils the impression.
if we look at rin's databook profile, we can see the formula - «kind, intellectual, devoted», and it's almost absurd that something like this is used as personality description.
what do we know from her canon appearances?
1) well, she does come off as sweet and kind, and i want to believe she was.
2) rin is quiet and reserved most of the time, and when she does speak out it's only generalized and mostly positive stuff. in childhood filler (unfortunately, it’s the only one i remember well) she also pauses before speaking or reacting in general.
3) rin often sounds way too mature for her age (plus, she must be an experienced ninja or at least well educated - in gaiden she comments on enemy's strategy and then on kakashi's usage of chakra). sometimes (mostly with obito but he totally buys it) she says things that seem kinda fake- almost like if she was taught to tell it.
i could say it’s just kishimoto’s writing but there are heroines who got little to no character development and yet still felt like, you know, human beings. rin at times seems like a completely ephemeral creature. to me, at least.
4) rin is obsessed with obito (despite narrator and then obito suggesting she was in love with kakashi). she is overwhelmingly caring - she seems to know constantly where obito is, most time she is around him (even when obito is unaware of that - i’m not sure if it was in the manga but anime has several moments like this), she is in charge of things i wouldn't consider quite normal for a childhood friend to be (like? bringing obito's documents? finding him and leading to a meeting point?). honestly, i can’t read this as simply display of friendship and affection, and i don’t see the same pattern in other relationships in the franchise. there is also an extra emphasis on the fact that rin liked kakashi both in gaiden and in war arc (as well as implementations that kakashi might have liked her back), so it’s not like kishimoto forgot about who was rin’s crush.
if i recall correctly, there is no information on how rin and obito originally meet and what was the foundation of their friendship outside of obito's aspiration to become hokage. therefore the reasoning behind rin’s obsession is unknown.
5) rin emulates obito's reactions, it's shown several times and, i would say, highlighted:
6) rin's reaction to obito's «death» seems much more reserved than kakashi's, and she quickly cuts off any visible display of her distress once obito asks to transplant his eye.
7) rin is clearly not afraid of fighting. she normally doesn’t engage in combat (i assume, the end of third war must have been the time of endorsing tsunade’s iryo-nin reform, thereby rin must have belonged to the generation of medics that followed hime’s rules to the core + rin is stopped from getting into combat by kakashi), however, both time rin was cornered by an enemy, she showed full readiness to fight.
now this is not about her personality, but:
8) rin is placed on future hokage's team, alongside the genius son of one of the strongest ninjas and the uchiha (who could actually keep up with the said genius and, as we see later, surprisingly well adjusted to hashirama cells implanted into him).
9) speaking of her abilities, rin's got a solid 4 in intelligence (among shinobi her age i can recall only shikamaru and sakura scoring 4 or higher), 3.5 in ninjutsu (shino with the same score was about to be put in the root; similar score was obtained by sasuke and neji) and 4 in hand seals, whatever that could mean. overall she's got 21 (while most of konoha11 got less than 20). impressive for a ninja coming from «a very ordinary household» [fourth databook].
10) rin is good as iryo-nin, but like...not outstandingly good, like sakura or tsunade or shizune. she carries a large rucksack (and is the only one who does that out of her team, so it's not part of common equipment) - she probably has to use more civilian methods. however, rin is able to transplant an eye with sharingan and keep its functions without any tools besides maybe her kunai; considering ophthalmology is a way too narrow specialty for a field medic and uchihas tend to keep their secrets secure, this seems pretty damn cool (and gaiden was written before eye swapping became a common thing and iryo-ninjutsu could easily heal any injury). if i don’t say suspicious. plus - rin instantly agrees to perform surgery, no second thought, no hesitation, as if she was trained to do it.
it’s also interesting that kakashi gaiden is the only part where rin is shown not from her teammates' perspective- and in gaiden she is a quiet and determined soldier who can put her duty above her feelings. when we see rin later on, mainly from obito's memories and therefore from his perspective, she is depicted as that constantly smiling and good-hearted girl most folks remember her as. it goes to the point where in the second databook rin is described as serious and capable medic-nin, while in the fourth the main focus is moved to her relationships with kakashi and obito.
i don’t want to try and get any conclusions about her personality from the circumstances of her death- i don’t believe in her voluntary death for the village, not after madara told obito about the seal.
so, what do we get from this? as i said, i've tried to sum these traits up: for a long time i pictured rin as a civilian-background girl with fascination for the shinobi world despite not quite fitting in it (which results in her overly perfected but distant behaviour). but this can’t explain her skills or her obsession with obito, and this is where the root theory comes to rescue: she then becomes a root operative, chosen by danzo for her friendship with obito + civilian background, but with personality not completely ruined by lord shimura (she probably wasn’t seen as useful enough outside the whole obito thing). the original aim of her mission was probably to keep safe and then awaken obito’s sharingan (loving the irony), not to actually steal it. rin did like obito even before the recruitment, as well as she grows to like kakashi later on, but her real, untouched by shimura and his orders personality must have remained mostly a mystery to them both.
