#shonen protagonist

[katharsisboy101]

Eren is the Ultimate Shonen Protagonist Subversion

VIDEO VERSION HERE: https://youtu.be/LUBx5Wrtscg?si=LwHjKe-8po_ddsd0

So, to expand on the idea of my last AOT analysis, I wanted to talk about how Eren (and AOT as a whole) is the ultimate shonen subversion. Be warned that I will discuss Bleach, MHA and Naruto in this post too, but just brief mentions and nothing really major.

To start, we have to take a look at Eren, who fills all the generic Shonen protagonist boxes and yet subverts them through realism.

HE HAS A DREAM

Shonen protagonists have dreams (or motivations that drive their character). For Goku, it's to become stronger (just because). For Naruto, it's to become Hokage (to make up for the lack of attention he received in childhood, but doesn’t that sound unhealthy?). For Deku, it’s to become a hero (both to help others but also to make up for being born quirkless, and the last part goes completely unacknowledged by the narrative). 

Eren’s search for freedom manifests in the two dreams he has in the series, which are both also subverted and shown to be extremely dangerous. 

His first dream is the wish to wipe out every titan.

Of course, we later know this is subverted both by revealing that the titans are also human, and thus, greatly messing with the black and white shonen protagonist-esque logic Eren exhibits, and by the fact that even after fulfilling his dream, Eren is completely empty, because not only they weren't the simple enemy he thought them to be, but he still has to fight the outside world regardless if he wants to truly be free. 

This serves both as a subversion of the shonen protagonist who has to face black and white enemies, and of the genre as a whole, by adding a huge layer of moral complexity to the conflict in the series.

And because of it, now his second dream is to wipe out all of humanity, and I think I really don't need to point out why this dream is a complete subversion of everything a shonen protagonist represents, right? The shonen protagonist, which usually fights for his friends, ends up getting many of them killed, wiping out 80% of humanity, all because he followed his dream without giving up. 

The takeaway is that following dreams blindly and without any sort of reflection is stupid and can have horrible consequences for both yourself and others, especially if said dreams have a subtext of trauma and generational abuse like many shonen protagonists (and Eren) share.

And that leads me to my next point.

HE NEVER GIVES UP

Shonen protagonists have their eyes set on a goal, and they follow it singlemindedly, no matter the consequences. They always fulfill their dream by virtue of never giving it up, and that allows them to reach recognition and happiness.

Eren also never gives up, and that gets everyone around him killed many times. Hell, if he didn’t have the Attack Titan, he would have died in episode 3 because he just didn’t know when to retreat. Eren doesn’t listen to other people, and never gives up his dream of being free and seeing an outside world “levelled”, and the result is mass genocide. Even though he should have compromised like adults do for the sake of everyone’s happiness, he was a stubborn child that wouldn’t let go of his dream and not giving up resulted in the biggest massacre in history.

Eren's iconic catchphrase, "I will keep moving forward", implies not looking back, not thinking about the consequences or the implications of what you're doing—how many people will suffer because of it, or how to break the cycle of hatred at all. It's a phrase that encapsulates never giving up, at the cost of others, and that's awful. Attack on Titan itself has a message about how giving up is the right choice sometimes, Erwin’s whole thing is “Give up on your dreams and die”, and that allows the scouts to win in Shiganshina and discover the basement. Armin and Mikasa also give up on Eren, and that allows for the remaining survivors to find happiness, and yet Eren just had to be the man, Eren just had to never give up and look where it got him.

HE FIGHTS FOR HIS FRIENDS

Shonen protagonists are unnaturally selfless, and they always go out of their way to save others.

Eren tries to be selfless, hell, he uses his friends as a facade to explain why he did the Rumbling, but it’s all a lie. Because Attack on Titan is realistic, and human beings just don’t have it in them to live for the sake of others.

Shonen protagonists are all about how they do what they do for their friends, but if the story goes a little deeper, it isn’t really about them, is it? Does Deku want to save others because he’s selfless, or because he wants to make up for his percieved inability to be a hero by overcompensating and saving everyone? Does Naruto save his villains because he’s the kindest being who will empathize with any mass murderer, or because he wants to save himself deep down, and his villains share many aspects of himself?

Eren tries to act like he’s doing everything for others, at first to have revenge for his mother when the titans are the enemy and later for the sake of his friends when the world is his enemy. But he’s never doing it for them. He’s doing everything for himself.

Eren feels insecure and powerless because his mother died in front of him, and he puts himself and everyone else at risk by trying to compensate for that fact. He’s not after justice as much as he is after placating his guilt. And do I need to mention how his actions through the Rumbling resulted in Sasha and Hange dying? Does that look like protecting his friends to you?

He literally killed his mom.

Eren is doing all of this because he didn’t grow up, because he wasn’t mature enough to compromise and realize that maybe, just maybe, committing mass genocide isn’t helping anybody, not even himself.

HE HAS THE MORAL HIGH GROUND

Shonen protagonists have the moral high ground, and no matter if the villain they’re faced with is making good points, they maintain their black and white ideals and continue to perpetuate the status quo that is responsible for the conflict of the story (Just look at Bleach and its corrupt Soul Society that never really changes for the better, and that Ichigo still fights for until the end, or Deku and hero society, or Naruto and-)

Sure, they attempt to change a few things, and they give peace to the villains affected by systemic issues in messiah-like ways, but they don’t attempt to question the roots of the issues (Bleach) or they only make slight modifications and everything works out (MHA and Naruto).

Eren also starts as a victim of systemic issues, feeling like he has all the right to wipe out all titans and unabashedly committing himself to that goal without morality really coming into the picture until way later. And when it does, it shows just how dangerous Eren’s black and white morality really is. 

The worst part is that when he talks to Reiner, you can notice that he actually realizes the nuance, but he chooses to ignore it for the sake of “moving forward”, a phrase that once again, doesn’t really have much meaning beyond "not giving up" and that makes Eren and everyone around him suffer immensely. 

Eren swears that he has the moral high ground at the start of the story, and even when he realizes he doesn’t, that he’s the same as Reiner, he still friggin does what he does, because in his mind, he’s still being a hero this way, he’s still trying to save Paradis and his friends…

But he’s just lying to himself. Eren is no hero.

HE’S RECKLESS AND LOUD

I mean, this one is pretty simple. While Shonen protagonists are rewarded for their recklessness and loudness (Deku saving Bakugo), Eren is so incredibly reckless that it puts everyone around him in danger.

The main example of this is when he tries to save Armin and ends up in the belly of a titan as a result. He didn't have the strength nor the intelligence to plan what he was doing, and it got him killed—if it weren't for the Attack Titan, his story would have ended there.

I’ve explained why in the previous points, so there’s no really a reason to repeat myself, but it’s this same recklessness and frankly stupidness and lack of preparation that ends up with a boy that has too much power and uses it in the most stupid way possible.

HE GETS POWER UPS

Shonen protagonists get power ups for the convienience of the plot, in order to timely defeat their enemies. Whether they’re justified or not, it brings ocmplicated power scaling questions in to play, until the protagonists’s strength and the rest of the world’s is so far apart that he becomes a godly being with enough strength to protect everyone he cares about and defeat any enemy.

Instead of that though, Eren’s power ups are a curse, that end up slowly corrupting his mind and do more harm than good in the long run—creating a teenager with too much power in his hands, an amount of power that Eren himself says is too much for one person to handle.

The Attack Titan is often uncontrollable and the casualties Eren brings throughout his path at the start aren’t small, and part of his character hints that it’s his way of fulfilling his destructive tendencies.

And I don’t need to mention how adding the Founding Titan to the mix messes up Eren’s conception of his free will and overwhelms him with the ability to destroy the world and see every possible future.

Yes, this powers give the scouts the edge to finally fight back and Eren is often referred as “humanity’s last hope”, but every coin has two sides, and it’s this same power that dooms 80% of humanity.

Attack on Titan subverts the idea that power is unequivocally good, and it poses the dilemma (that characters that Levi also properly express) that being the strongest doesn’t mean that you can control everything and exercise freedom. The actually strong characters understand that the world is too big for one person to handle and don’t let their defeats and failures define their life and their subsequent goals in it. Life is cruel, and also beautiful, and Eren couldn’t accept the first part and used his power ups to define the plot when in truth all he was doing was throwing a childish tantrum.

Besides, Eren’s seemingly “out of nowhere” asspull power-ups are always properly foreshadowed and even if, at the time, they seem unexpected and unpredictable, later it becomes obvious that they were always intended as a vital part of the story rather than a way of bending the plot to make the protagonist win. 

HE’S AVERAGE… wait, huh?

Eren is what happens when you throw a Shonen protagonist into the real world. All the lofty facades fall off. He’s not powerful. He fails at almost every single instance. He is a burden to his allies most of the time, and there’s a hundred people other than him that could use his powers better than him. Throughout the start of the series, Eren constantly tries to prove the idea that he’s average wrong, and even when he comes to accept that he has to take a step aside and serve as a tool for humanity’s survival, it’s treated as a step forward rather than a bad choice.

Eren both matures and doesn’t mature, he stops seeing things in black and white and yet continues to act self-servingly regardless—he loses his fiery passion and replaces it with pragmatism and manipulation in service of his goals.

He becomes a person, a proper tridimensional protagonist for a story as complex as AOT, and all he had to do is face the world. Of course, the fact thet he loses his simplicity isn’t a positive development in and of itself, because no matter how much he grew externally, his wishes and motivations remained the same, except Eren becomes someone so nuanced that it’s impossible for him to keep pretending like things are as simple as he once thought he was, losing himself in the cruelty and complexity of the world instead of keeping his spirit regardless, like Armin does.

Shonen Protagonists are both Good and Bad

Eren first loses the "bad" aspects of Shonen protagonists, but he also loses the good ones as the story progresses, and retains some others… he becomes a complete person, nuanced, who makes good but primarily bad choices, who is swept up by his ego, by the narrative of a protagonist he built for himself—and he destroys the world as he tries to fulfill it.

Eren loses the optimism, the courage, the camaraderie, and continues with the most toxic aspects of the shonen protagonist—the need to do it alone, the need to fulfill his dream no matter what and move forward, without questioning himself in the process.

Eren fails because he wants to be a Shonen protagonist, but Shonen protagonists are not human beings. No one always wins, we should strive to be like them and at the same time avoid losing the nuance that is so vital in such a cruel and beautiful world like this. The reason why we like Shonen protagonists is because they inspire us, they are role models, simple and ideal, but if you don’t separate the character from reality, you forget that every strength comes with a downside, and you end up following a misleading narrative in which you lose sight of what truly matters.

At first, his wish didn't align with the death of others... but later on, it did. It's as simple as that. He had done too much harm to have any sort of morality at that point. He was corrupted by his experiences, and he lost the idealism necessary to find a satisfying result in which he and his friends live, while at the same time keeping the toxic idealism that wouldn’t let him give up on his dreams. 

Eren wasn’t a Shonen protagonist, and that was both for the best and for the worst, because humans shouldn’t dream and wish for impossible outcomes, but most importantly, they should never lose the hope for a better world, and for their own happiness.

[dexjarxenoengage]

There is a saying within the old days of DBZ where Goku tells Vegeta that the low class can surpass the elite if one sets their mind to it. Vegeta counters by telling Goku that he will show Goku a wall that “hard work” alone can never overcome. And while Goku by all accounts, failed to defeat Vegeta alone, he did break Vegeta’s pride.

The fight with Goku and Vegeta set a precedent for the Shonen anime for their protagonist to rise to eventually overcome the strongest of foes. How? Through the hard work and determination, and a few friends and allies to facilitate that growth. It’s common, now cliche, but it works.

I bring this up mainly because Rex is mocked for being this Shonen protagonist, even when he proves in game that he is a lot more perceptive than people think. In fact, Rex himself comes to learn the importance of having power to make the impossible possible. Rex’s goal is to reach Elysium so that he can save the world.

But in order to do that, Rex needs power, and more than that, he needs power allies to achieve this goal. Rex’s earliest party members includes Nia and Dromarch and Tora and Poppi. And their first opponent in their journey, as they escape Torigoth base is Mòrag and Brighid.

Unbeknownst to anyone involved, Mòrag would later become one of Rex’s allies. But as it stands here, Mòrag is Rex’s enemy because she is trying to take Pyra (for noble reasons, but still). Mòrag serves as the first opponent to show Rex that he needs to level up big time if he wants to achieve his goal. And also, for him to realize that there is more to his Blade/soon to be love interest Pyra than meets the eye.

Despite this, Rex chooses to believe in Pyra and does his best to fight him. Mòrag proves to be too strong for Rex and the others to handle. No matter how strong the Aegis is, Rex’s inexperience holds him back and his blade Waifu back. And thus, Rex and Co. have to “defeat” Mòrag via technicality by using the Water tower to expose Mòrag Fire Blade Brighid to water and weaken her. Thus buying everyone time to escape.

Now remember back to when Vegeta countered to Goku that there are some walls that can’t be crossed with hard work alone? Rex gets hit with this a lot, especially early in the game. It helped him realize that he needs allies and friends to push him to better and stronger every passing day.

To that end, Rex needs someone to help teach him about the world and the importance of Driver and Blade dynamics. This is where Vandham comes in. Goku himself is someone who took after many, many mentors, but none are more important than Master Roshi. Perverse attitude aside, he taught Goku the basics of Martial Artist and became a fundamental part of what makes Goku the person that he is today.

Unfortunately, Vandham dies and there are no Dragon Balls to bring him back. It’s thanks to the training Vandham offers him, as well as the power of Mythra that Rex becomes a stronger fighter. To the point where when Mòrag encounters Rex again, he is able to match her blow for blow.

It’s important to consider that Rex’s wins, as coined by a lot of people wasn’t exactly earned because of a power that he didn’t necessarily earned. Well, it was earned in a different sense, Rex earned Pyra’s trust, and by extension Mythra’s (in her own way). It’s by virtue of who Rex is as a person that is his most important strength. Hence why Mòrag and Zeke (another person on Mòrag’s level, and someone Rex fights more) would eventually count themselves as Rex’s supporters.

This comes to head once Rex has to fight Jin in earnest. And Mythra, who knows Jin all too well, knows that he is the only blade that match her in raw power. And thanks to his Flesh Eater abilities, this is even more true. As had it not been for his weaknesses in his body, he would have slaughtered Rex and Co sooner. Which he does in chapter six.

- Jin: You have power, boy. But words do little. If you know what you desire, you will have to show it...not with words, but with your own strength!

Jin proceeds to wipe Rex and his friends out, and Pyra has to sacrifice herself to save them. This leaves Rex a depressed wreck to the point of him wanting to quit his journey, give up his dream, and give up the Pyra bag. Remember what I said about how Rex’s strength is about what makes him who he is? Rex’s friends from Nia, down to Poppi, have to remind Rex it is about who Rex is to Pyra and Mythra to convince him to not give up.

In order to stand up to a wall that hard work alone can’t overcome, Rex and Co. look in the depths of the Spirit Crucible Elpys in order to find the sword that would bring out Pyra and Mythra’s true power. Rex and the others have to fight in a difficult atmosphere where they can’t use their blades properly (Tora and Poppi excluded).

The final trial needed to be overcome is to face phantom versions of Addam (the original Aegis Driver). Makes sense, Rex feels a little inferior to the man, considering that he was the OG Aegis Driver. But thanks to Nia, everyone fights long enough for Addam to consider the Trial passed.

Addam then offers Rex important advice to help Pyra and Mythra control their power: to accept the fear she carries. That fear being their power destroying more people and ruining Rex’s life. Pyra and Mythra’s goal to reach Elysium was to end their own lives. But Rex, having finally understanding what Pyra and Mythra needed helps give them the strength to accept their lives and love for Rex.

This results in Rex unlocking Pyra and Mythra’s true power and form: Pneuma. And two of them proceed to best Jin. Rex eventually earns Jin’s respect and would later sacrifice himself so that he can make it to Elysium.

Shonen anime is all about overcoming the obstacles and scaling the walls with hard work and determination and with the power of friendship. Forever a reason why people hate the trope, and hate Shonen anime. But as someone who into anime and JRPGs with Dragon Ball and Kingdom Hearts, these tropes are of great value to me. It’s one of the reasons why I love Rex so much.

And besides, it’s not like Shulk and Noah didn’t need the power of friendship themselves. In fact, I argue they needed the trope way more than Rex did. And had Jin accepted any other relationship that wasn’t just Lora, maybe he wouldn’t have ended up the way he did.

And while I don’t consider Goku to embody these tropes to the extent that other people that carry his legacy do, it’s thanks to his connections with others that Goku is able to accomplish much of the things he had in life. Krillin’s death is the reason Goku broke the Super Saiyan barrier after all.

And as for what Vegeta said before, there are challenges that can’t be resolved with hard work alone is also right in its own way. As stated before, Jin wasn’t an opponent Rex could beat without finding the Pneuma sword. But it’s by virtue of Rex being the person who can bring out Pyra and Mythra’s true potential that he succeeds in giving them a reason to live.

People need to stop overlooking Shonen anime and Xenoblade 2. I truly stand by them as the pillars of why I love what I love.

[missmagicalelf]

This boy is tugging at my heart strings so much it’s ridiculous I don’t understand why people dislike him💚💚

[emberandashes]

Casually responds to people criticizing me with telling them to fight me or hurt me to make me change.

[psychomurderz]

Do you agree that shonen protagonist should not married at all and never focus on romance ?

No. The protagonist in the shonen, be it a boy or a girl, is a character with whom the reader can and should associate. The character overcomes difficulties, makes friends and develops. He encounters, as a rule, such phenomena as “growing up”, confronting the notion of the “adult world”, the global problems and the personal problems of adults that the character encounters. And since relationships between people do not always end up only friendship for ages, the character must encounter the concept of romance, at least become familiar with this concept. It is a natural process of growing up. So I think the protagonist should at least think about something like that at the end, not necessarily a “wedding-children-second generation” at the end. Everything has to be consistent in the plot, not like “the author decided in the last chapter to do a timeskip and put together a couple of characters just because he wanted to, and it doesn't matter that the premise wasn't there. Just so it would be”.

Just to give you an example: Naruto and Hinata - there wasn't even a romantic interest in Hinata on Naruto's part, she was just a friend that he sympathized with, like all his friends. And wow! When she confessed to him, he thought for a while, and then ... and then marriage-wife-children. (Yes, we have a 10th movie, but ... that's not it).

Or take Ed and Winry: here they had a love line building throughout the plot. From childhood, through friendship, through loss, through trials, through growing up, through realizations. Very competently built this line of their relationship with a logical and complete end, no questions left at all. A perfect ending.

[dushman-e-jaan]

Uzumaki Naruto: A Naïve Fool or a Dangerous Fool?

When you read Naruto as a character, you can’t quite understand as to what he is or what he personifies, provided that you read it without a clear confirmation bias. There are only two questions that you might ask when you turn over the final page, a shot of Naruto’s back that bears Will of Fire flames: Is Naruto a naïve fool or a dangerous fool? The schism between the two lies in the fact that these questions can only be asked and answered by two different readers that approach the manga in a certain way. Not in one way. 

Contrary to what people might state, Naruto’s an unusual protagonist. A very unusual one. He’s not kind, provided that you understand what kindness is. He’s not very perceptive. He’s not far-sighted in a sense that’d change things for the better. None of these traits are conventionally heroic, especially since the narrative itself compensates for his glaring short-comings by allowing other characters to take the falls instead of his fall: their falls are his rise. Perhaps that’s where the division exists: an unevenness that the narrative merely conceives for the character to the path that’d allow him to assume the heroic role indefinitely. Still, an odd choice, but it comes with many issues; and most of them spring from Naruto’s less-than-heroic character. He’s not the hero that your mind would invoke when you think of the word hero; but why’s that? And that’s the question that creates the division, doesn’t it?

Naruto, for the lack of the word, wants to be a hero; he isn’t one in the beginning; and even if you could convince yourself that the narrative’s “hero journey”, with all its sense of adventure, found the right culmination, then its lack of change for the world around him ought to challenge your view of this trope altogether. Why’s the hero himself unable to bring all else to a “heroic transition”? Isn’t that what heroes are ... supposed to embody, a character that saves the world? A simple conclusion, but one that never reaches to this conclusion in canon; however, we’re so used to seeing this after-effect that the theme’s correct course mostly turns into an after-thought for many: he’s a hero, so he’s in the right, not that he is right. There’s a difference between the two; it’s subtle, but it’s quite large.

The thing with Naruto is a little simple than most would let on: he actually lacks empathy altogether. Really, he doesn’t possess any empathy, especially cognitive empathy, a type of empathy that’s imperative for a broader understanding of the collective and individual within the collective. Think of it this way, all that he latches onto from others are the aspects he projects back onto them; anything beyond that not only doesn't concern him but he also bullishly beats the person into the ground till he doesn't become colored into his own colors. This just shows that his kindness is a manufactured superficiality that's simply intended as a reception of kindness, nothing more. To put it in very crude words, the dude's just a narcissistic attention-whore. That's it. This isn’t heroism as that’s rooted in understanding the perceptions of others and uplifting them the same way you’d do for yourself. Basically, heroism is about making the world rise above itself, not just the hero’s world; which is but one world, not the entire world. In this way, Naruto’s world is very limited, spatially, thematically, and, yes, heroically; but if his world’s heroically limited, then what’s the point? What’s Naruto’s point, as a manga, to have him as his hero? This, I’m afraid, is not easy to answer. 

Naruto’s character can be distilled down to few simple things, because he is a simple character. He was enamored with the idea of his people and their respect, not his people themselves. The same way as he was enamored with the idea of Sasuke, his rivalry and his salvation, not the person himself, to the point that he attempted to make himself a “personal messiah” for a boy who just wished to be left alone, without ever interacting with his circumstances or even trying to comprehend the 'why' behind Sasuke's hatred. It's savior complex dialed up to the nth degree. Look closely enough, and that's textbook sociopathy (no, really!). I can also call him a narcissist, and that's true enough— but I'd take it a step further. Hell, it's even there in his earlier “never give up!” attitude with his crush for Sakura. It mostly goes beyond narcissism, at least in my eyes. People who’re narcissists, clinical narcissists, always clamor for validation, endlessly; that’s their main defining trait as everything’s about them, not others; their suffering is greater; and so, the rewards should be, too; that’s one of the main reasons why Naruto likes being center-stage in every antagonist’s suffering, and he does that by making everything about himself. (Sakura, too, suffers from this, but her presence in the narrative is too tiny for it to matter.)

However, was this the intention? You can read Naruto as a common “Shonen Protagonist”. It's what sells. Perhaps Kishimoto didn’t allow himself to think about it too deeply, beyond a “common” Shonen Hero, because if you realize you’re writing a “madman” as your beloved protagonist in a work themed around forgiveness and idealism, you'd more likely than not lose the desire to write for it. Would you? It's possible he was aware, considering just how much time he gave the Uchiha and the counter-narrative through Sasuke, Pein, Obito, Madara, and the like; but probable? He wanted to write a work on forgiveness, but it kept lapsing back into common Shonen themes, at least whenever Naruto gets involved. (Itachi’s “unintentional” worship does make it seem that way.) I'd agree and disagree with this notion. 

I don't consider anything in writing to be an accident. It doesn't work that way. No matter how many times people try to discredit Kishimoto, it literally doesn’t work that way. Also, agree or disagree, Naruto's actually a fairly unique Shonen protagonist. He's very selfish, and that's been true from the start. All of his actions exist to invite attention. Yes, he was deprived of it, but he doesn't look at the world beyond seeking attention, and that, to the surprise of no one, becomes his only drive: he just wants to be acknowledged by everyone. It's kind of like that: I'm small, so if I'm bigger than everyone else, they'd have to see me! (The quest for the Hokage Seat is a not-so-subtle metaphor for that.)

In itself, this “mantra” doesn't seem that insidious, but given the fact that he's attached himself to a seat of power, a fascist power, it takes a very sinister turn. Here, his idealism is no longer right; it's just a power that overwhelms and practically demonstrates how "might is right" and "history, present, and future are written by the victors". None of this is anything deep (and I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense; it’s just that, it’s very easy to grasp all of that). All of his interactions reek of that: you’re either a receiver of the Will of Fire, or you’re meant to change—or die. Naruto’s world (Naruto as a character) is binary, but heroes are binary forces; yet the domain that they inhabit doesn’t crush the opposition the dogma itself created. 

He's also psychotically obsessive about Sasuke, but that's due to two things: one) the narrative springs from Sasuke, so naturally, all characters gravitate towards him; and two) it boils down to his constant need for validation; he wants better people to say that he's better, too. (It’d look good on him, you know?) It’s about how you'd interpret this, doesn’t it? How you read Naruto itself, because it can be read as a well-meaning kid who doesn't know what he's doing, which would be true to an extent; but you can also read this as an idealism that masks a dangerous dogma; and Kishimoto said as much as to how he thinks that Naruto's a fool and unrealistic. It just depends on whether you think a fool can be dangerous, and I think, he absolutely can be.

Maybe only the man knows the true answer: he is this manga’s creator, after all; but you can’t deny that, as a kid, you’d have absolutely adored the unending positivity and optimism and drive that he displays. He set his sights on the seat and he wanted it. Many kids are like that. In their desires lie innocence as they do represent the future, another beginning for the past; but in here is your problem. Maybe it just is forgiveness from a child that wasn’t wanted and who pursued Sasuke, a boy he loved (yes, I mean platonically), and wanted to do nothing but let him know that he’d forgiven him. Maybe it truly is as simple as that.

However, I do believe that Naruto as a Shonen protagonist does have depth, and that's the reason why he can be read in two ways: two Narutos for two different readers. That's a demonstration of good writing. As I said, it just depends upon how you see it: a well-meaning fool or a fool who's dangerous? The thing is, a fool that's got a finger on a nuke-detonation-device is dangerous, whether you see him as dangerous or not; and, frankly, there's nothing more dangerous than fools who sell imperialistic ideologies—nothing more dangerous—because that way, they're easily able to sell them because they're fools; and Naruto, as a narrative, can absolutely be read that way.

As for the forgiveness argument, then, yes, you can read it that way; however, I'd go as far as to suggest that a forgiveness that only works as a conditional transaction that makes it imperative for the detractors to embrace what the "forgiveness monger" is selling is not really forgiveness but subjugation with a deliberate "shine" of niceties. And that's exactly how Naruto's character is, he's the "shine" on Leaf's imperialism, a sales pitch that makes it palatable as an ideology.

Fools that serve dangerous ideologies are dangerous fools, no matter how you slice and dice it. The only thing up in the air is whether or not the writer intended for him to also read like a sociopath ... maybe it truly is a matter of how you read Naruto, a manga with two facets that are as stark as they’re fascinating. If it’s just a matter of which side you take, then maybe, just maybe, it’s the reader’s own dogma and its inevitable projection that truly counts, not anything else. After all, you only see what you want to see, not a dot more.

FIN

[kaphkas]

He…… he defeated the Minotaur with the power of friendship 🥺

[dukes-cassettetape]

Steven's shonen training//Diamond Steven vs Jasper

Steven Universe FUTURE (episode sixteen "fragments")