#and abandons all his previous goals of immortality and learning all jutsus

[comikadraws]

Would you have wanted orochimaru to die or just be punished for his evil deeds in a way that doesn't involve him necessarily dying?

Yesn't.

Don't get me wrong. I certainly wouldn't have minded Orochimaru's death. And I agree that some people are, for the sake of humanity, better off dead. That's all your Voldemorts, Palpatines, and Saurons - The cliché "dark lords". The problem is that Kishimoto treated Orochimaru with far too much kindness to begin with.

Orochimaru doesn't really fit the "personification of pure evil" caricature, and is characterized as a person instead. On top of that, unlike the aforementioned villains, Orochimaru didn't pose an active threat to the world which then hits us with an ethical question:

Do humans have the right to decide who lives or dies?

And what justifies killing? Survival? Improval? Feelings? Can we trust humans to determine these parameters?

And now add to that that I grew up on ATLA as a child and generally do not believe in death sentences...

The problem is, in real life, people like Orochimaru don't change and don't redeem themselves. There is no "I killed 59 newborns for funsies but now I'm a loving and responsible parent".

I think the better question to ask here is whether Kishimoto should've given Orochimaru a redemption or not. Because if Orochimaru had never been redeemed, he would've remained as a danger to the world, and killing him would have been the obvious choice. But Kishi instead redeemed him, leaving us with this moral dilemma.

[hirazuki]

I read on your latest art post that you see parallels between Orochimaru and Sakura. That's interesting; usually he's linked to Sasuke. Please elaborate on your thoughts. Also, fantastic art! You are a gift to the world! Thanks for sharing!

Aaah anon, you are so sweet!! Thank you so much, I’m glad you liked the art! 💜 And sure! I’m sticking it under a cut because, well, I can never be brief :D

So, I’ve always felt like, even though Sakura has obvious parallels with Tsunade (her temper, super strength, etc.), a lot of those are only surface level. And a bunch of them, in my opinion, were actually instilled by Tsunade herself (the super strength, for instance; if Sakura had trained under someone else, she wouldn’t necessarily have developed that ability. It’s not necessarily an innate quality of hers, though to have taken to it so wholeheartedly, the potential was obviously there). If you look a bit deeper into her circumstances and how she responds to adversity, she’s actually a lot more similar to Orochimaru:

Both were the ones left behind by their teammates: The timeline is a little unclear as usual XD as to the order of things during the Second War, but generally speaking Jiraiya left his team and Konoha for 3 years to teach the Ame orphans, and it’s strongly implied that he only ever stayed at the village for brief stints after that; primarily, he’s shown to be busy travelling, establishing his spy network and searching for the child of prophecy. Likewise, ever since meeting Jiraiya during the Chunin Exams, Naruto was mostly out of the village training and travelling with him, even before he officially left on his long three year absence. Tsunade left Konoha permanently after Dan’s death; and I’m fairly certain the only reasons she wasn’t branded a missing nin were Hiruzen being the Hokage at the time and her lineage, because she essentially walked out and vanished. It’s either stated or strongly implied, I believe by the village elders, that they repeatedly sent out people to track her down and failed? I’d have to go back and double check, but I’m pretty sure something like this is mentioned when Homura and Koharu talk to Jiraiya about becoming Hokage, right after Orochimaru’s attempt to destroy the village. Likewise, Sasuke left Konoha permanently for training with Orochimaru, and also had people repeatedly trying to track him down. Meanwhile, Orochimaru was left behind still working for the village -- training Anko, working as ANBU/Root, working with Danzo who, despite what anyone thinks of him, still counts as village leadership. Everything Orochi did while in Konoha was actually endorsed by the government (regardless of whether it also lined up with his personal interests or not), whether directly by Danzo’s orders or indirectly through Hiruzen refusal to acknowledge or examine anything Danzo was doing. Sakura was left behind, also still working for the village; in her case, this took the form of pursuing her own training, developing new skills, joining up with other teams to run missions, etc.

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Both of them reacted to loss by fixating on getting stronger and throwing themselves into their work: Orochimaru, after losing Jiraiya and Tsunade (and Dan and Nawaki, and seeing how their deaths broke Tsunade -- I think that was really the last straw for him), started pursuing his goal of learning all jutsu and attaining immortality with a single-mindedness that had not been there before. His fixation on these, at least to me, comes across as the simple desire to build himself up in such a way that he’ll never be affected by loss again. Similarly, after Naruto and Sasuke both left, Sakura approached Tsunade and essentially demanded of her to train her up. She also threw herself into learning and excelling in medical ninjutsu, building up her taijutsu skills and attaining incredible physical strength -- again, in an effort to ensure that she’d be strong enough to face whatever life threw at her next. Specifically in this case, she bears no similarity to Tsunade, whose reaction to loss was to cut ties and run, hiding indefinitely while giving in to her bad habits. (No judgement on Tsunade here, I totally understand and support her reacting to the events in her life like this, I’m just pointing out that she’s basically the opposite to Sakura in this regard). Both Orochi and Sakura reacted to loss by taking the strength equals survival mentality to heart, and being more driven than ever in terms of improving themselves. 

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Both have an interest in the human body: For Orochimaru, this interest manifests more in terms of genetics, biology, pushing the limits of what is possible, experimentation, etc. It is the darker side of science that, occasionally, intersects with what Tsunade practices. For Sakura, it’s the medical field, specifically with a mind towards healing. However, given what we saw of her behaviors, thought processes, and abilities during the arc with Sasori and Chiyo, I personally can see Sakura having the affinity to specialize in things like poisons. Had it not been Tsunade that was available to train under when Sakura was at her lowest and darkest point and it had been someone like, say, Kabuto? I definitely think Sakura could have easily gone down a darker path in medial ninjutsu; one that still incorporated healing, of course (Kabuto is still extremely adept at being a healer), but possessing a large repertoire of how to cause damage to the body as well. This is my own interpretation, obviously, but I do think that the benign nature of Sakura’s medical training has more to do with who her teacher was than with Sakura herself; I have no doubt that she has the capacity of being as devastating as Kabuto within the medical field, and that could have been quite easily nurtured back when she was freshly abandoned by her teammates and left to pull herself back together, determined to catch up to them. 

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Neither comes from a prestigious shinobi lineage: We have no clue who Orochimaru’s parents were. A popular fan theory is that they were ninja who were killed in the line of duty, but unless I’m forgetting something, we’re never actually given canon confirmation of that. All we know is that they died while he was very young, which is what started him on his path of questioning life, death, mortality, etc. Sakura’s parents, as we know, are civilians and, from all appearances, don’t really seem to have any clue as to what life as a ninja is about. Unlike Sasuke (an Uchiha and Indra’s incarnation), Tsunade (a Senju and granddaughter of the First Hokage), Naruto (the Kyuubi jinchuriki, son of the Fourth Hokage and the previous Kyuubi jinchuriki, an Uzumaki, and Ashura’s incarnation), Orochi and Sakura didn’t really have anything going for them in terms of bloodline. (We know nothing of Jiraiya’s parents other than the implication that they didn’t die while he was young, so he falls in this category too). That’s not to say that Sasuke, Tsunade, and Naruto didn’t also work their asses off to get to where they did; they absolutely did. But Orochimaru and Sakura (and Jiraiya) had less to work with, even if Orochi was naturally gifted with things like ninjutsu and hailed as a genius. Also, that kind of division -- between clan kids and non-clan kids -- isn’t really explored that much in the series, but it’s something that would definitely affect a shinobi’s mentality and outlook on things growing up. (Obviously, this last part doesn’t apply to Naruto -- he grew up a clan-less orphan, for all intents and purposes, but you get the idea).

That’s what I can think of off the top of my head for now! If anything else occurs to me, I’ll reblog this and add to it ^^ Hope that was a satisfactory answer!