#except itachi DOESN'T want to kill kakashi. that's established.

[panharmonium]

i am not usually interested in dramatically canon-divergent scenarios because the canon story is what compels me, but i've been obsessed with this moment ever since i re-heard it during my second viewing. from the perspective of someone who already finished the story once and now knows the truth - this was wild.

WHAT IF?

[theheirofthesharingan]

If you care, do you have any thoughts on Obito? Like him? Dislike him? Neutral? Any character analysis?

I don't really feel anything strongly about Obito. I like to write him in my fics, but only his Madara personality because it's so badass. The rest, I wish I cared about him enough. It's also because his whole story unravels in the war arc which happens after Itachi's second death. And at that time, I'd lost interest in the anime (and then manga altogether). I genuinely can't remember most of the things that aren't about Sasuke or Itachi. I would have cared about him more if the story focused a bit on him and Sasuke. That doesn't happen at all.

My opinions (ranging from indifference to criticism) come from the fandom's perception of him, where people en masse tend to either overlook or justify the horrible, unforgivable things he did, while also piling hate on Itachi. I've seen plenty of people here on Tumblr with the opinions "I love all Uchiha except for Itachi." or "All the Uchiha are hot, except for that Konoha bootlicker."

So this response will be a rant for all that I've seen.

I'm very much aware of his trauma which founded the base of all the things he would go on to do in the future. He was a good kid, who had a lot of kindness in his heart. But he didn't want to be the Hokage because he was good and wanted to change the world. But to prove himself to Rin. Not a bad motivation, considering he was just a kid, but nothing heroic about it too. Although, Madara took advantage of his love, innocence, and goodness to turn him into the bad guy whom we met in the story.

The problem with Obito is that he thinks he's the first person to acknowledge the world is a messed up place, and he needs to change it. In the process, he ends up making it much, much worse than it was before he pulled the things he does in canon.

This moment reeks of something more than the acquaintance both the men shared. Were they working together? Were they co-conspirators? There was something more going on with Danzo and Obito, and I have a theory that kind of works. Kushina's pregnancy was supposed to be a secret. It's likely Obito learned it from Danzo. But it is also likely Zetsu helped him.

Either way, there's more to his and Danzo's relationship than what we think.

The Akatsuki were founded to establish peace and end the conflict. But Obito, who wants to actually change the world, had Akatsuki's founding members manipulated too.

He also controlled the Mizukage, becoming the de facto leader of Kirigakure.

So, the man had the authority, the powers, the strategy, and all the resources, but he still uses his pain to make the things worst, just because he went through it.

He also knew the reason that Kakashi was not responsible for Rin's death. His anger is understandable, because the person he loved the most died at the hands of the other person he cared about the most. But he rationalises his actions and thinks he's doing the things for the betterment of the world where he and everyone can live happily.

Meanwhile the things he does are:

He's the reason Minato and Kushina died. Naruto becomes orphan and Jinchuriki because of him.

He was planning a war on Konoha, unprovoked. Conspiracy with Danzo is very much a possibility.

Itachi's entire life was destroyed because of him. Sasuke's entire life was destroyed because of him. Naruto's entire childhood was made miserable because of him.

Nine tails attack was totally unnecessary and killed a lot of people.

Fourth World War which killed thousands of people.

Akatsuki is said to have destroyed a lot of villages. All at his orders?

He also slaughtered the Uchiha clan along with Itachi.

Have I missed something? Let me know, please.

He was basically, I suffered so much. Why not make everyone else go through the same pain as I did?

I give Naruto characters a lot of benefit of doubt. A lot. But it doesn't work for Obito in my head. Madara and Pain becoming villains had a strong reason, but Obito, nope. You can't always let your childhood trauma drive you and make decisions for you, especially when you're an adult, but Obito did. He continued to justify himself until the very, very end.

Nearly all the evil things Danzo does have an unequivocal involvement of Obito too. In fact, while their goals might differ, their reasonings are the same. Danzo spent all his life manipulating and using vulnerable kids. Obito does the exact same thing. I'm going to sound like I'm high, but the evil things we see Danzo do were, in fact, a response to Obito's evil.

It's just Danzo had no reason to do the things he did and Obito was manipulated. But, like I said, you have to grow up at one point in your life, which he never does.

Many people consider him a good villain, but I find Pain better. That's just my preference to him as a character though.

I'm mostly indifferent towards him, until some Uchiha fanboy/fangirl on Tumblr (I'm active on Tumblr only) sprouts the "Obito wanted to change the system" and "Itachi was a Konoha bootlicker" bullshit. Then, I am going to come up with these opinions, because no, Obito was THE man responsible for Itachi becoming who he was.

Obito was a villain for a reason. His sob story personally does nothing to me because of the reasons I mentioned earlier, and also because it's "my crush died and it's the end of the world for me", when we also had Sasuke (who had stronger reasons to be worse than Obito) or Itachi, whose pain could have turned him into someone entirely a different person, but he not only had a self-awareness, but also lacked the tendency to prioritize his pain.

And then, this, this is the way his story concludes?

Well, imagine all of the lives he willingly took, all of the lives he deliberately destroyed, all of the pain he caused, only to have been forgiven for all the horrible things and have this kind of ending? And then also be a beloved character most of the fandom views as a "broken hero."

Not everyone is as lucky as him, you know?

Anyway. Like I said, I don't hate or like him. This is just the critique based on what Manga says. I haven't included anything from the novels, in which he's much more sinister. If one has anything to say, I'd like to hear it, but insults won't be tolerated.

[justice4sasuke]

Character Roundups Round 1: Sasuke Uchiha

So, now that we are done with Sasuke's story, what I would like to do is talk about the characters relevant to Sasuke's story on the whole. Specifically (because it's always about framing around here) the message I got from Kishimoto when reading the series and how I think the characters would have been more effectively written and/or framed. For main characters with a lot more going on I'll talk mostly about their relationship to Sasuke rather than their entire character. First up is of course the boy himself, Sasuke Uchiha.

How Sasuke is written and framed by Kishimoto: Sasuke was conceptualized as a rival to Naruto, the cool, smart and popular kid to Naruto's failing, attention-starved outcast. There were hints that there was something more going on with him, but who's to say if it was always as in-depth as it ended up being. Sasuke's story outgrew just being a foil to Naruto so much it basically ate Naruto's character and turned his motivation into being completely about Sasuke for the first part of Shippuden. And Kishimoto decided to fix that by forcing Sasuke's character which, once again, had outgrown Naruto to be about being a foil to Naruto again.

Sasuke's is emphasized as the cool, popular kid, the de facto leader of Team 7 when Kakashi isn't around, with hints of a dark and traumatic past. Of course when it comes time to learn about Sasuke's past, what starts being emphasized is that Sasuke was not the genius that his brother was and that he was vying for the attention of his father because Kishimoto can only conceptualize characters being relatable if they aren't "the smart one" for some reason.

After his retraumatizing by Itachi, Kishimoto frames Sasuke's change as a change to the "dark side". Kishimoto had set up the Curse Mark from Orochimaru as the threat for Sasuke "turning" but it truly has more impact on Sasuke's physical well being than mentally or emotionally until the meeting with Itachi happens. After that, he is shown as arrogant and the instigator in his squabbles with Naruto. He gets a talking to multiple times by Kakashi while Naruto gets none despite gladly taking part in their fight. Kishimoto downplays Sasuke's trauma by having Kakashi insinuate he has felt the same pain as Sasuke and therefore Sasuke should not be having any problems and his flashing out is not valid. Sasuke is portrayed very explicitly as villainous for the first part of the Valley of the End fight. Kishimoto gives Sasuke a little more sympathy after his backstory is fully explored, but ultimately Sasuke is framed as someone who is "misguided" and not as someone with full knowledge of what they are doing.

Early Shippuden Sasuke is very much just a shiny object the characters are fighting over until he finally appears again and even so the Sasuke we get leading up to the Itachi fight doesn't seem to have many thoughts or feelings about anything that isn't his goal. It is notable though that Kishimoto makes a point to tell us not to view Sasuke as "evil" since he doesn't kill anyone he spars with and doesn't plan on killing anyone except Orochimaru and Itachi.

After killing Itachi and being confronted with the fact that his family was actually killed by a government sanctioned genocide, we get one nice scene of Sasuke crying followed by Kishimoto doing everything in his power to make us view Sasuke as "evil" and that he has finally fallen from working with established bad guys the Akatsuki to basically every character telling us Sasuke is being evil.

The reunion with Itachi and their fight with Kabuto feels like it should be Sasuke's character self-actualizing and while there are some good moments of Sasuke confronting Itachi and asserting himself, the comments Itachi makes about Sasuke being malleable to outside influence and the fact that it ends with Sasuke going on a knowldge quest makes me feel like Kishimoto wants us to think Sasuke has a whole worldview to sort out rather than him mostly knowing what he wants at this point.

This is further evidenced by the fact that apparently hearing what the previous hokages had to say gets Sasuke to figure out his new worldview and we do a fake-out of Sasuke being "good" and wanting to be "hokage" just to make him look "evil" throughout the war and then rolling out his revolution plan when they win.

And let's be real the revolution plan is just "Sasuke has gone down the evil route and is being difficult so Naruto has to beat it out of him". Naruto himself explicitly says that and if you don't want to believe him then believe it based on the fact that there is no one in or out of universe saying that Naruto beating his "friend" into submission was wrong or a bad solution. As for Sasuke's plan, it no longer has anything to do with the Uchiha clan, they are no longer mentioned, apparently Sasuke didn't learn anything from his entire final interaction with Itachi, and now Sasuke wants to be hokage to the entire world and live forever. Of course, Sasuke is just a silly, hurt child and needs Naruto's love beaten into him until he realizes people cared about him so he shouldn't care about what happened in the past. Also Naruto is a really nice guy and all the villages that hate each other will get along now. So Sasuke may have to go on a redemption walk forever, but he'll marry Sakura and have a kid and be Naruto's best friend and isn't that a nice, happy ending.

How it should have gone: I actually think most characters in Naruto need very little changed. What actually needs to be changed is the framing. And that is true for Sasuke. He's pretty much set until the end.

If we are coming at the manga from Naruto's perspective, setting him up as the cool, popular kid is fine. But as soon as we learn about Sasuke as a character I don't think that should be the focus and Naruto should definitely have learned that being the cool, popular kid is not how Sasuke sees himself so he should stop talking about that whenever they meet if Sasuke is indeed his best friend. But more than that I think instead of focusing on Sasuke has someone ~seduced by the power Orochimaru offered~ or ~ungrateful for his friends~ it should have been framed as Sasuke being someone newly retraumatized, very hurt, and felt like he was out of options because no one was supporting him. That framing doesn't even necessarily have to come at the time things happen, but at least in retrospect someone could have realized they fucked up in how they were interacting with Sasuke.

The biggest thing for me though would be after Sasuke learns the truth, stop pretending like he's super evil and "in the darkness" and just say he's having a mental breakdown. That's what it looks like and the only thing that makes me know that's not Kishimoto's angle is because everyone keeps saying Sasuke is evil and we never reevaluate his behavior again after this. Hell, Kakashi and Naruto know what Sasuke knows and Naruto's still thinking they should probably just fight each other to the death to solve this and never have an updated opinion on that ever.

Lastly, I feel there are two possible options that would have made sense writing-wise, I think one is a good idea and one is bad, but I wouldn't have critiqued the story telling if either of these were used. But they weren't and instead we had Sasuke's character just stop making sense so we could have Sasuke be in the wrong and have a big end fight with Naruto. Option one (the bad option) is to have Sasuke, after hearing the hokages' stories, agree that his clan should have been wiped out for the good of Konoha and fight in the war, not having a fight with Naruto at the end because they are in agreement that ultimately sacrificing an entire clan for a village is the best decision. Option two (the good one) is Sasuke goes to fight in the war but once they deal with this Kaguya bullshit Sasuke once again wants his revolution. This time though Sasuke is upset about something that is congruous with what actually happened to him, his whole family being killed by his brother who was manipulated and threatened by village leaders, while also incorporating what he learned from the hokages. Maybe something about how people with power and money are the ones hiring ninjas leading to generations long animosity between clans and villages causing one to eventually stamp out the other for "the good of the village/our continued existence/whatever" (good time to call back to the time Suna wanted to destroy Konoha because their daimyo was using Konoha ninja because they were cheaper) and also maybe he's also just mad that the government killed his family and his brother was disgraced and no one knows about it. That means Kishimoto would have to just admit Konoha was wrong for that, and if there's a fight with him and Naruto then Naruto would look bad. But there doesn't even have to be a fight at all perhaps Kishimoto could actually give Naruto an arc instead and they team up to change the ninja world. Wild idea I know.

The main point I want to get across about Sasuke is what this whole blog has been about. Sasuke should have been treated sympathetically and someone who was very hurt, very troubled, and didn't always do the right thing but at least he wanted the right thing, not as someone bad or a "sulking friend who needed to be punched to snap him out of it".