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joltai-showa · 7 months ago

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Exhausting day, so let's yap about something fun.

I've seen a post floating around that went something like "imagine Naruto releasing now, Akatsuki gang would be called woke" and I wanna take this concept another step further and talk about how generally these S-rank criminals are surprisingly tolerating of each other.

(though side point nothing will ever help these men and Konan beat the fruity friend group allegations, like they are wearing matching coats that are TERRIBLY impractical when you are working as, you know, a fucking ASSASSIN. and the nail polish? can anybody explain how that idea came about? like, I guess it's not surprising that members like Konan and Deidara aka Ms. and Mr. Insane Make Up Game of the Terrorist World would paint their nails, but why is Nagato sitting Pain's bodies down for a manicure? The local 195 cm tall fishman agreeing to a pedicure? Why the fuck is Uchiha "killing readers with boredom that I evoke with my 13 hour long yapping about despair and hopelessness" Obito still doing his pedicure in KAGE SUMMIT ARC? BRO, LET GO OF THEM, YOUR BESTIES AREN'T COMING BACK, YOU SENT THEM ALL TO THEIR DEATHS, YOU PIECE OF SHIT, EVERYONE IS 15 SECONDS AWAY FROM MURDERING EACH OTHER, WHY ARE YOU PAINTING THE NAILS ON THE ARM YOU ARE ABOUT TO ATTACH??? omg🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄)

Because I am a lore nerd, I am completely fascinated by the sheer difference between the members. And I speak both of the age and the geographic differences, which, realistically, should create some absolutely wild scenarios between the members.

So let's start by separating the gang by age, because they've actually got three pretty definitive clusters in their group when we look at them from that particular parameter.

Kakuzu is in his own subgroup, being *checks notes* jesus christ 91. Kakuzu is actually older than the village system itself (Kishimoto can't count, so it was either founded 60 or 80 years before the events of Shippuden, and either way Kakuzu spawned in this world on hardcore difficulty way before the clans in Land of Fire decided to stop terrorizing each other and chose to terrorize everyone around them). Mind you, the characters from the major Hidden Villages that were constantly joked about as being these ancient fossils and those who have seen the dawn of fucking civilizations were people like Chiyo (73 years old in Shippuden) and Onoki (79 years old). And. Like. Shinobi generally don't live that long even in the villages where they can live in relative protection and have an opportunity for retirement. Kakuzu's out there collecting his retirement fund from any unlucky motherfucker who gets his face plastered into a Bingo book or something. And he was probably doing that even before becoming a member of Akatsuki. Which. Lmao.

And considering the fact that he was in some sort of fighting age whenever fucking Hashirama was still alive, Akatsuki's old man is likely actually written in the history books that they read in the hidden villages (do kids even learn how to read? I'm pretty sure the villages value kunai throwing more than reading huh). Or at least in the history books of nukenins. Wait, scratch that, he is probably one of the people who is the reason behind a lot of the operating procedures that the villages have whenever you got a deserter or a general terrorist running through you territory. What I'm saying is, the guys from the major villages (meaning Sasori, Deidara, Obito, Kisame and Itachi) have probably known of Kakuzu just off the stories they read in the Academy/heard from older shinobi. I'm not mentioning the guys from minor villages because I am not giving them enough benefit of the doubt to have something like a decent system of education or ninja living past 30😁. I imagine that must be quite the bizarre experience to abandon your village, become a nukenin and meet the OG guy. Like, as OG as they get.

And one last thing I wanted to point out before moving onto the next generation of our fruity terrorist is how weird it must have been for Deidara to meet Kakuzu for the first time? I don't mention the other two from Akatsuki's kids aka Hidan about whom we don't know much about and Itachi who's relationship with old men in his life can be summarized by "they exploit me, I try to get the best things out of this🙂", but Deidara, being Onoki's student, in canon is shown to constantly refer to him as "old man" in various degrees of insultingness (insert a meme about 18 year old Kurotsuchi's broke "maybe you should retire, old man" vs 10 year old Deidara's woke "KILL YOURSELF OLD MAN" *some bridge in Iwa fucking explodes*) and like. He's like 13. And gets to meet Kakuzu. Who is like 85 at the time. Just imagine the experience that Deidara got. He's been hating the old man as long as he remembers, and then gets to meet THAT. Local teenager meets an actual dinosaur moment.

So know we get to the second generational group and it's by far the biggest one in this pretty small organization, and I like to title them "the ones that were born some time around the Second Shinobi World War and got completely fucked over by the Third one😁". This group, obviously, includes Konan and Nagato (both 40 in Shippuden), Sasori (35), Kisame (32) and Obito (yeah yeah I remember that he's been stated to be like 31, but for timeline purposes I prefer to have him at around 30, because otherwise like twenty events get funky). The Second Shinobi World War can only be approximately estimated, but given what little is known of about the characters involved in it, Ame orphans' year of birth is a pretty good estimate of a starting point for shit starting to go down, while Konoha suddenly started having a lot of kids right around the time of Kakashi's generation, meaning that their parents suddenly started having a lot of time to procreate and did not have to run across the border to beat shit out of someone else🤭Either that, or Konoha got the money to pay the shinobi for every kid they manage to pop in the next five years lol.

Anyway, the Third war followed pretty soon (around 18 years after Ame trio's birth, actually), and we certainly know that Obito got pulled into it (because of the, you know, the successful pancake challenge) with Konan and Nagato too, but on Ame's side (the Third War would actually be the best and prime time for the original Akatsuki led by Yahiko to operate, as they would be both old enough to organize something and be strong enough to maneuver between Hanzo and the external enemies aka Konoha, Iwa and Suna). With Sasori it isn't exactly confirmed straight away, but considering that his nickname is "Scorpion of Red SANDS", and when you are a nukenin why would you stay in the desert where there's a lot of sand it's coarse and it gets everywhere in your puppets (c), so most likely Sasori would have gotten this nickname while he was still living in the village, and mind you he was 15 when he left the village with the dead Third Kazekage in tow, all of which would have taken place right around the middle of the Third War, so it isn't much of a stretch to assume that he got a good chunk of murder experience during it.

Kisame is a weird one, because we don't know anything about his life until he's like, adultish? At least that's the vibe I'm getting off his pre-death memories, which are obviously way past the Third Shinobi World War, however, thankfully, Kishimoto can't fucking count, so we have a pretty decent confirmation that this wonderful thing called the Blood Mist would already be in place come Kisame's childhood and youth (regardless of how much Kishimoto repeats the Blood Mist = Fourth Mizukage = the mysterious entity controlling Yagura = the one and only Uchiha Obito. unless, of course, there's a Kamui+ subscription that Obito had when he was younger that allowed him to teleport back in time too, exclusively to be a bigger fucking bitch to everyone). I can't remember the exact calcs, but it's actually thanks to Mei (the Fifth Mizukage) that has a mention that she had to take the wonderful murder exam as a genin, and based off Mei's and Kisame's ages it actually becomes clear that Kisame would have had to graduate from Academy right around the time of Mei's exam or they were literally taking the same exam, something like that. Point being, even if we don't know for sure that Kisame took part in the TSWW, but we do know that he has had to deal with all of that mess related to growing up in Blood Mist🙂🙂🙂🙂So I guess we can call this generation "were born during the SSWW, most got royally fucked over by TSWW, but some of them also got fucked over by Blood Mist".

So these guys, I would say, can be characterised by them having a certain period of peace and purpose in their lifes that they ultimately lost during the subsequent wars, oftentimes suddenly, leaving them with psychological traumas for the rest of their lives that they WOULD make everyone's problem, so what ends up happening is a generation of deluloids that are running around with their grand plans of fixing the world or finding the ideal form of themselves. Ironically, I would say that Nagato and Konan have the most... er... realistic ideas regarding the whole "fixing" thing that others in their generation seem to have. Yes, the guys who say they are a God and an Angel. Because selective nuclear annihilation is a surprisingly effective way to dissuade most people from starting shit with each other😇🙏

Then we have Obito and Kisame both of whom worked for the whole Eye of the Moon thing... I'm not even gonna go in detail about it, it's just so fucking stupid. You listen to it one time and it really becomes apparent that this shit was concocted by a crazy old man with his ex's face on his tiddy and his dead little brother's eyes in his eye sockets that was living in a dank cave for about 50 years all alone. I mean, Obito got brain damage from going on a field trip to Kannabi bridge, I'm not surprised he though that was a good idea, but Kisame has no excuses, yeah, I know you've lived a horrible life that you took as a norm and suddenly all those deaths that you witnessed and contributed to turned out to be completely meaningless, just like pretty much your entire life, but that's not an excuse to listen to this masked dude's yapping about making a PowerPoint Presentation of his Sharingan on the surface of the fucking moon and go "Woah...😳🤩"

And finally we have Sasori, who's less bothered by doing the whole changing the world thing and moreso got his own idea of what an absolute ideal form is supposed to be, and he is going full murder hobo achieving it in his immediate surrondings. And it all stems from that time when his parents died after meeting Hatake Sakumo. Ah, speaking of that.

So back to the original topic of this post as in Akatsuki members are surprisingly chill with each other, regardless of the circumstances of their previous lives? Well, there's a thing with these guys that Kakuzu wouldn't have - a sort of developed sense of loyalty to the village and animosity or coldness to people from the enemy villages. Again, Kakuzu is older than the village system itself, and he would have left pretty early on (considering the whole fiasco seemed to have stemmed from that attempt on Hashirama's life, and Hashirama couldn't have lived past 20-25 years after Konoha's foundation), so he doesn't care for any of that, a guy with a bouty on his head goes into the retirement fund regardless of what headband he's wearing. But for kids that grew up in this system I think it would be at times pretty jarring to suddenly sit on the work meetings with someone they would have considered their mortal enemy just some years ago.

We don't know much about with whom in particular Sasori and Kisame were fighting while in the villages, but taking a look at the geography... I mean, Suna might have been going at it with both Iwa and Konoha lol? Imagine Pain asking Sasori what does he know of Iwa ninja, Sasori goes on to list all the squads he murder and dismembered back in the good old Third War days and then the boss hits him with "Yeah, yeah, anyway, we are getting you a new partner. It's a child from Iwa. He's now yours. Raise him and don't let him kill himself before he turns 18."

Or just Kisame and Sasori generally dealing with the existence of Konoha lmao? Obito's obviously not piping up about his origins, but I like the idea of Itachi getting interrogated on what he knows about Kakashi in particular (who is the son of the guy who killed Sasori's parents. and granny Chiyo went for his throat on fucking sight. not to mention her mass murdering grandsonny).

"Itachi, do you know this Hatake guy?"

"Er, yes, we served in ANBU together?.."

"Good. Tell me where he lives, at what time does he go to bed, what he eats for breakfast and how is he with his Sharingan."

Or just chatting with Kisame and the topic of Kakashi pops up

"Oh, I would love to fight him one day. Is he really that bloodthirsty and insane as they say?"

"Er, no, what gives?"

"He has been in Kirigakure's Bingo Book for years! Oh, and there was this one time when he massacred an entire squad on his own, ripping guts and all. Come to think of it, that was also about the time when we lost one of our biju. What a weird coincidence, huh."

"Oh yeah, I think I know that one. That was about the time when one of his teammates died too. What a weird coincidence, huh."

(somewhere in the corner Obito is furiously chewing on the wall)

Because Kishimoto is such an incredible writer that gives only his best when it comes to Obito, especially when he needs to write the conflict and relationships for a 30 year old guy and comes up with nothing but shit that concerned him when he was 14😁😁😁😁😁so he's stuck with nothing interesting for his entire Akatsuki life period, but I still think it's pretty funny that of all the people Obito could have gotten partnered with it had to be the only guy from the village that freed him of the burden of having a right side of the body🙏

But I think by far the most interesting ones would be Konan and Nagato as people of Amegakure, a village, as you remember, that kept getting run over by the major powers surronding it, I believe that in Nagato's flashbacks we even get the confirmation of the conflicts that Nagato personally had with Konoha and Iwa ninja (one for his parents' murder and another whenever Yahiko got in trouble as a kid). To them as part of the original militia Akatsuki the shinobi of the major villages (Iwa, Konoha, Suna in particular) are invaders and pretty much just enemies. But then obviously "Madara" pulls up and starts Uchihasplaining them how the world is wrong (duh) and how they must fix it. Obviously, following the change in management of the organization, they had to recruit new members, and while the official materials don't really have anything regarding this process (no, the videogames/light novels/whatever other bullshit produced by people not called Kishimoto Masashi don't count), I believe it's reasonable to assume that Obito, Nagato and Konan would at least sit down and chat about who they are bringing on their world-fixing-terroristic tour. And like. It must have been quite the experience to just sit there with this guy (who's supposedly one of the founders of the entire system they are currently living in) and get a bunch of candidates that they are supposed to invite even if just some time ago they would have been their enemies lol.

(and to be fair out of all the people that they have from the above mentioned villages two of them (Itachi and Deidara) were like 5 and 3 years old at the time Yahiko got killed, not to mention the whole TSWW, so I guess it would have been more weird to watch "Madara" turn their organization into a daycare rather than watch their headbands. but Sasori absolutely could have been to Ame back in his Suna days during the Third War. though again the nickname suggest that he was likely fighting a defensive war)

And, finally, we got what I like to call the kids generation meaning Hidan, Itachi and Deidara, all three of whom were born during the Third Shinobi World War, and, well, let's just that the defining feature of this group is just mental illness. Like, yeah, everyone's not okay in Akatsuki, but these guys? Fucked over since, like, toddlerhood. At least based on what limited information we have on them, with Itachi's extensive biography throught the plot it's obvious, Deidara was taken in at about the same age as Itachi did and was already on his manic pixie boy yapping about art with a "resume" so long that people three times his age would have trouble competing with the bullshit this young teenager already did. Hidan's the only one of three who was taken in as an adult, but... yeah... the whole cult and mass murder thing probably says nothing good about his childhood.

And just imagine being this young nukenin, only starting to become infamous for your crimes, and then you get dragged to join the organization with some of the strongest terrorists in modern shinobi history. I like to imagine there was this tiny sense of giddiness at achieving something like that? Like whenever a kid gets to do adult things, and there these guys are, on the same level as big shots. Well, at least for Deidara and Hidan, Itachi's too depressed and thinking of his foolish little brother. He can at least be happy that he's got the chillest guy as his partner.

(and on the other hand you got the rest of Akatsuki members confused why the fuck did the Leader get two 13 year olds in quick succession. like. yeah they good at mass murder but do we really have to raise them? is having ninja zoomers on the staff that important for the world domination plan?)

#naruto #jolt showa's ramblings #akatsuki #deidara #sasori #uchiha itachi #hoshigaki kisame #kakuzu #hidan #uchiha obito

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joltai-showa · 8 days ago

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the last post made me remember of the absolute mess that Naruto's political system is

who the fuck is in charge in the end. is that the daimiyo? doesn't seem that way, considering how many important decisions are completely out of their control, particularly concerning military matters and overall defenses of the countries. is that the kage? but they are strongly assosiated with their respective villages - which are not even the capitals of the countries, as far as I remember - and I am not even sure if they are responsible for the military of the country overall. did they just yoink all military men in the country for the fourth shinobi world war. is Naruto world living under a fucking Kage militaristic dictatorship everywhere and Uzumaki "I'm gonna be a Hokage dattebayo" Naruto somehow missed that moment. why do they even need daimyo in that case. what is this horseshit political system.

also how the fuck did we get here from the founders era. which were. you know. just enemy clans living in the vicinity of each other. there is no mention of states forming around that era - only shinobi villages. did the daimyo just employ those murderous bozos and allowed them to fight it all out on their lands until one day Hashirama and Madara got the bright idea to make out make amends and build one village for all murderous bozos nearby. and fire daimyo just looked at those meteor-throwing and land-exploding mfs and just sighed because what really can he do against them.

and why the fuck does Gato exist. you know the billioner from the Land of Waves arc. the one that is stated to control several small countries cuz he's so rich. how the fuck does he fit into this Kage-daimyo system. how the fuck does capitalism work in that world. where are the goddamn horses to carry the products around.

anyway petiton to remake Kakuzu into a Gato-esque asshole who is old and rich as fuck and throws hands at 91 years old cuz he's just bored and secretly wants to support the younger generation of terrorists. David Rockefeller Sr. but funny. We even got the absurd number of heart transplants already.

#naruto #jolt showa's ramblings #uzumaki naruto #naruto uzumaki #hashirama senju #uchiha madara #madara uchiha #kakuzu

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joltai-showa · 1 month ago

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also as a somewhat continuation to my Deidara's and Kurotsuchi's relationship post and how it's actually canon that Deidara is Onoki's student, but there's another thing that is so so fucking hilarious to me

taking my previous assumption that the intention behind what was shown of Onoki's, Deidara's, Kurotsuchi's and Akatsuchi's relationship is "they were a team of students under Onoki", you realize that Onoki would have been well into his 50s-60s when he would have been making the decision to add the training students thing to his Kage duties, he had been leading the village for a good 20-30 years, and went through 3 World Wars (presumably 2 as the leader of the village). The man had seen and gone through some shit.

Why is this important? Well, I think the choice to pick a team of students in that moment was not a coincidence. The Third Shinobi World War had recently come to an end, and off what little information we do have on it, Iwa got fucked up good by Konoha (though to be fair Iwa domino effected Konoha getting obliterated off the face of earth. twice. and numerous state-wide genocides in Kiri. so mission failed successfully. somehow) - they needed fresh blood in their ranks, and strong one at that, after all the human weapons race is not stopping at any point. But more importantly, off the information we do know, it would seem that Iwagakure lost the Third Shinobi World War, and that would have been a pretty unpleasant wake up call for Onoki. He is not infalliable, and he is not eternal.

He needed to start training someone who would eventually replace him as the Tsuchikage, because if he does not get to this now, in the little breather that they got between the end of the Third Shinobi World War and whenever the following one would come, then Iwagakure would be at a gigantic disadvantage as their best bet would literally be an aging shinobi with all the health troubles that come with it and who might die of natural causes anyway.

And off what we see in canon - yeah, he did do that! Kurotsuchi, being his student (and granddaughter, because if there is one thing that Iwa is beating Konoha at, it's the nepotism), would go on to become the next Tsuchikage and lead Iwa in the post Fourth Shinobi World War era.

However, there's just one little thing that is bugging me about things proceeding this way. You see, Naruto world has this weird thing that the Kage needs to be the strongest shinobi in the village - not the smartest one, or someone with some actual governing experience, no. Shonen rules, Naruto needs to somehow become the Hokage cuz sure as fucking hell he is not passing the intelligence test, yada yada, don't think about it, or the plot will start making less and less sense. Now, why is this relevant?

Because Kurotsuchi, for all her strengths and coolness, is, unfortunately, in no way, shape or form is the strongest one among Onoki's students. Off the abilities presented in Shippuden, she simply can not compare to a certain someone, and off the limited lore the same can be said about her childhood before certain events took place.

What I'm trying to say is that for some number of years Onoki unironically consider Deidara to be his likely successor and the future Fourth Tsuchikage.

Which is. Holy fucking shit. My sides??

And it makes sense to me: we don't see anyone as absurdly powerful as Deidara among his generation in Iwa, and there's only so many shinobi in the village's entire history who can be considered stronger than him; Deidara was born during the Third Shinobi World War, so he matches the age requirement; he is canonically Onoki's student (hi nepotism) which would make him an automatic potential candidate according to the world's politics; Deidara was called a genius even before leaving the village, meaning he was already built different before stealing the kinjutsu and creating his explosive art, and he was like 11 at that point (I've got a separate post detailing my thoughts on Deidara's age outline); he worked in a specialized forces within the village as a kid with just Bakuton, for fuck's sake.

I truly believe Onoki might have been considering Deidara to be his replacement in the future while training him before. well. you know. the puberty hit Deidara, and all of this little kid's latent mental illnesses exploded out of him and he left the village to become a terrorist without a cause. which is when the switch for Kurotsuchi would have happened, as Deidara was no longer an option.

But god is it fun to imagine an alternative world where Onoki didn't fumble as hard as he did, and Deidara somehow ended up with a brown hat with a big 土 on his pretty head. Would have been a good Kage? Don't think so, but at least he would have been a funnier one. Unlike Onoki, Deidara would have had the balls to declare war on Konoha cuz Uchiha's smug mugs piss him off so much.

P.S. also I am telling you that Iwa had at least one veteran of both the Second and Third Shinobi World Wars, PTSD-ridden, depressed and alcohol-addicted, and when they heard that the next Kage was going to be either a girl or a literal femboy, they absolutely ranted for hours how Iwagakure had gone woke

#naruto #jolt showa's ramblings #iwagakure #deidara #onoki #kurotsuchi

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joltai-showa · 2 months ago

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I'm sorry if I am going to come off as rude in the follow-up to this post, but this is the single stupidest thing I have had to read on the matter.

(I also do not care for Kaguya either, but her disappearance from the story will not improve this plot point significantly)

Kishimoto's absolutely shit writing post chapter 600 is the reason why this is divisive and discussed to this day. The story points and lore he had already created over the course of the narrative clashed and exploded in his face when he started to drag the plot into the direction he was simply not ready to tackle, and that is Obito's "redemption arc". I put into quotes because that's one of the most insulting things Naruto series ever tried to sell, sacrificing characters, their motivations, their brainpower and the grander lore to try to make Obito into a poow liwwle baby who just wanted the best for everyone🥺🥺🥺🥺 - which is exactly the thing you, OP, bought into as he was framed this way.

First of all, there are many ways that "creating an ideal world to put the real people into and lessen the suffering and pain of reality" idea can be explored to see if the villain has a point or not. There are GOOD ways of incorporating this concept, one of my favorite games does this very well (aka the third semester in Persona 5 Royal), and I am truly engaged in how the plot is going to unfold and what answers both parties are going to come to.

(It also really fucking helps that the antagonist has not been previously build up to be an absolute murderous psychopath and is a truly likeable guy that you believe actually cares about the well-being of people around him, but that's a point for later)

And the very first problem that Naruto crashes into is that Eye of the Moon is a shit way of incorporating this idea, because thinking about it for more than 5 seconds and you come to the answer that this is the stupidest bullshit you ever heard, period. It does not solve anything. This is an illusion of solution. The reality does not change in any way - the dead are still dead, the ruins are still there, etc etc. The system of shinobi does get destroyed, yes, but it is because of the people being trapped into their own fantasies of what they would have liked to happen, and each fantasy is separate, so each person is at all times isolated from anyone else except the illusionary version of others. And besides destroying the system of shinobi (which Kishimoto is pushing so hard in the narrative just so that the readers would forget about anything else), it also destroys any civilian relationships, any societies built by sentient forms of life like summons - everything ends up being destroyed.

It is, essentially, a plan to save the humanity and other living beings by destroying it.

(ah yes and all of this hinges on assumption that every single being trapped into Eternal Tsukuyomi is the same as Madara and Obito, meaning that they are unable to move past their losses and would rather live in an illusion forever. because if someone were to realize that they are trapped in an illusion of happiness and were unable to escape... yikes)

It is also very convinient how Kishimoto starts retroactively changing the rules regarding genjutsu as this plan gets closer to completion, because the readers might start questioning the villain's plans, as Tsukuyomi (by the previous lore) would only affect people's minds - their bodies would be left motionless in reality, still with all of their needs and necessities. If there were no magical tree that started conveniently sprouting from the ground to capture people and supposedly supplying them with nutrients, then Uchiha "the good guy" Obito would have subjected everyone to a pretty slow death after three or so days as their bodies would start to collapse and they would be unable to do anything about it (funny to note that he himself would not get this issue, being half Zetsu and all). So the narrative just narrowly passed "the villains are actually going to kill the humanity with the stupid plan" and drove into "oh, thank god, the villains are just going to destroy the humanity😁humans will live! in a sense..."

There's also the moment that, as the events unfold and we are deep in chapters 600s, we suddenly learn that the caster of the genjutsu IS NOT going to be affected by it, portraying it as some shitty form of sacrifice for everyone's happiness, meanwhile Obito's motivation to join Madara's plan is to... return to a world where Rin is alive and everything is right? But he would end up with millions of comatose people for all eternity, keeping up Tsukuyomi? Where the fuck is he completing his goal that he wasted 16 years and countless lives for? In Kakashi's or someone else's fantasy which he would be unable to see anyway? Honestly, fuck it, it is a smaller issue in the grander scheme of Obito's motivations being shit and dragged all over the place by Kishimoto's redemption arc imposed on him.

So, absolutely no to your claim of "protagonists denied the humanity their happiness". The only ones getting their happiness denied are those who think similarly to 13 year old depressed nihilistic assholes without any real connection to another human being and without the desire to connect with anyone in any meaningful way. Oh, wait, that's the wonder duo of Obito and Madara. Damn...

(and this is not to say that such an outlook on life can not exist or can not be explored in fiction. it can be fascinating when done right, but instead we get a load of Kishimoto's usual "gaslight the reader")

This is how the first sacrifice of logic in the plot is made to accomodate this lovely and totally sensible plan, and, as soon as it is introduced into the narrative, another gigantic sacrifice is made for the sake of making the villains look like they might have a point: no one in the plot even as much as dares to say what a stupid plan this is. The good guys are going to meander for hours about power of friendship, allies etc etc, but never come around to the point that this plan is NOT going to change anything, it is simply world peace at a cost of humanity's existence - I mean, yes the wars are sure going to fucking stop if everyone is lobotomized into sleeping forever, but did this "solution" have to come at the cost of hundreds of thousands lives? Naaaaah, we are going to ignore it, let the Kage mention it for 0.5 second during the summit and then ignore this for the rest of the manga. Kishimoto will be dragging away the focus from the actual issues as hard as he can, because the plot will fall apart if he does not and readers realize something is up.

Anyway, this is the rant done about Obito's methods and why there is simply no discussion if they are right or wrong, because the answer is obvious it's borderline painful. Let's get to the funniest bit of your post - "Obito is only seen as the villain because the series portrayed him this way"

Please tell me you are joking. I am begging you, please do not be serious. This must be some sort of post-irony, I refuse to believe this is true.

The only reason you would ever say this is BECAUSE THE NARRATIVE POST CHAPTER 600 BUILT BY KISHIMOTO IS SHOVING THE SENTIMENT "Obito is a poow baby boi and he might have had a point🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺" SO DAMN HARD DOWN YOUR THROAT. Otherwise the readers HAVE NO REASON to buy into the shitty "redemption arc" that takes place around chapters 650s. The plot is laser focused on making Obito seem sympathetic AND GOD FORBID ANYONE REMEMBERS WHAT THE LORE TOLD US ABOUT THE 16 YEARS HE SPENT PURSUING THIS LOVELY PLAN, HERE, HAVE A SCENE OF KAKASHI TELLING "hey Obito you might have had a point, I might have done the same thing, Naruto might have done the same thing, teeheehee"

So, let's do a quick rundown of things this "unjustly slandered by the evil plot awesome guy" did (as confirmed by the manga) and keep in mind your "all he ever wanted and worked for was world peace", shall we?

1) Attacked Konoha with Kurama, killing hundreds of innocents in the process (including Iruka's parents). Brutally killed Kushina with his actions and seemed very excited about ripping Kurama out of her and setting him free on the village (I seriously recommend checking those chapters to see the expressions on both terrified Kushina who had just gone through giving birth and the little maniac "working for world peace"). Booby trapped a five minute old Naruto with fucking bombs. Murdered his classmate's mother while sneaking to booby trap Naruto (yes, Hiruzen's wife in the scene IS Asuma's mother). Fought with Minato and ultimately caused his death. This attack would also serve as one of the major causes for Konoha's and Uchiha's falling out. Ah, yes, and remember Rin who sacrificed herself just so that the village would not be destroyed by Isobu rampage? Welp, about a year later this "world peace fighter" destroyed it with Kurama (will there ever be consequences for this? of course not, Rin is not a character, but a consolation price for Obito at the end of that shit called his redeption arc)

So how this action would have helped Obito's goal to reach world peace through Eye of the Moon? The answer is: no, it fucking wouldn't😁

Because from the very beginning we KNOW that Obito only has Gedo Mazo after Madara kicked the bucket (and Kishimoto conviniently rewrote it so Obito and Madara could magically contol it when originally it was only Nagato aka the owner of the Rinnegan - and the fact that this retcon exist is the only reason I am not ripping this plot point apart completely, otherwise Obito literally has nothing to gain from here) - Yahiko is still alive by that point, and the Rinnegan is not on Obito's side yet; Obito DOES NOT HAVE Akatsuki in any fucking capacity at that point, as they are still Amegakure's militia group; so even if we sniff a mouthful of copium and say Obito was doing it to seal Kurama after this into Gedo Mazo, he WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO DO THIS, as NOTHING WAS READY FOR THAT PART OF THE PLAN: NO RINNEGAN, NO PEOPLE TO SEAL IT WITH, NOTHING! Yes, Kishimoto, retcons it into "well, you don't need this many people to seal a Tailed Beast🤓☝️see Obito and Madara doing it solo🤓☝️" but this completely compromises the entire fucking purpose of Akatsuki. What did Obito collect them for, to be his cheer squad?

And setting Kurama on the village is even farther removed from his supposed goal of reaching world peace - it's literally an act of terrorism for the sake of terrorism (and, theoretically, setting Obito's favorite "dEsPAir" into the hearts of Konoha people, but that's the best fucking motivation I can think of given Obito's track record and without opting for "he likes people murdered and dead😃"), and it just gets people killed while Obito is giving Konoha time to recapture the Beast and foil his plans.

So, in the end, does the narrative ever address what the hell was Obito thinking in that moment? Nope, because Kishimoto always conveniently cuts the flashback off at the very moment his "poow babi boi" narrative starts falling apart, so the plot is going to just ignore and hope the readers forget Kushina's flashbacks on the matter

2) Manipulates Akatsuki into doing his bidding

I have no fucking clue how did you even come to "well, you could argue it's the protagonists' fault for killing so many members of Akatsuki considering their goal as organization - bringing world into constant state of safety (Pain's plan being the outlier". Have you ever read the manga. Have you watched the anime adaptation. What even are you talking about.

Let's break down it bit by bit:

- Nagato was manipulated into collecting the Tailed Beast for the Pain plan after Yahiko's death. it can be debated if Obito can be blamed for what happened to Yahiko and the original Akatsuki (I know the anime slapped filler scenes showing him explicitly meddling in those affairs to bring Nagato under his control, but manga remains vague about it), but he is certainly very opportunistic about everything that happened. at least this time I can see this furthering his goals, so this one is going to "awesome guy doing bad things for world peace" category. Nagato had no fucking clue about Eye of the Moon and the whole affair regarding the Tailed Beasts, he was doing it for the "everyone must know pain to stop the wars" plan and the Beasts were going to be used as both a threat and a weapon of mass destruction. if Nagato knew of Eye of the Moon, he would not be so passionately rambling about his plan on the death bed

- Konan was manipulated into collecting the Tailed Beasts. She is very similar to Nagato in her backstory and motivations (shaped by Yahiko's ideology), but also got brutally murdered by Obito for daring to stop him on his grave robbing quest ("awesome guy doing bad things for world peace"). I remember watching her fight as it was in the anime, and I am 100% sure they added a line from Obito about "I thought you agreed with MY plan" which literally does not exist in the manga because that breaks fucking everything about the finale of Pain's attack on Konoha arc. Konan had no fucking clue that they were collecting the Beasts for Eye of the Moon or Ten-Tails, she was doing it for the Pain plan

- Sasori was manipulated into collecting the Tailed Beasts. At no fucking point in the narrative does he show he is aware of any plan related to Ten-Tails, before death or after it. Yes, it can be argued that his trauma regarding his parents and overall appreciation of the eternal would make him consider working for Eye of the Moon, but he. does. not. know. of. its. existence. He also happens to be a sadistic mass murderer who kills people for their abilities and turns them into puppets as his art (so much for world peace). He was doing it for the Pain plan as it was introduced during Akatsuki's meeting as they were sealing Two-Tails and Three-Tails (after Hidan had asked wtf they were all doing here. considering no other member raised any objections during Pain's speech, they seemed to be aware of what was being told as it is, so Sasori would have been given the same talk before death)

- Deidara was manipulated into collecting the Tailed Beasts. Psychotic bomber that takes pleasure in blowing things and people to pieces as his art. Yep, that's an advocate for world peace👍Everything about Eye of the Moon - the eternity, the fucking Sharingan being projected on the moon, being trapped in genjustu - goes SO STRONGLY against everything Deidara stands for, the moment Obito ever opened his mouth about its mere possibility, Deidara would have kicked him in the nuts and packed his bags to come back to Iwagakure. Deidara was doing this for Pain's plan

- Hidan was manipulated into collecting the Tailed Beasts. Cultists excited to kill people for his murder god. Why the fuck would he ever go along with Eye of the Moon, he loves the bloody reality as it is. Hidan was doing it for Pain's plan

- Kakuzu was manipulated into collecting the Tailed Beasts. Bounty hunter that has found his place in this world. Why the fuck would he abandon the real world with the real fucking cash for some nihilistic asshole's fantasy dreamland that he would get trapped in. Kakuzu was doing it for Pain's plan

- Itachi was blackmailed into collecting the Tailed Beasts. Sort of. He is also a fighter for world peace, but more "unchanging status quo" type. He wouldn't let either Pain nor Obito's plan come to fruition anyway - both of them are shit in his opinion

- Kisame was actually not manipulated into collecting the Tailed Beasts!🥳🥳🥳🥳After so fucking long, we've finally found someone who is actually fighting for Obito's plan! He was introduced into the plan during the Blood Mist times (which is a separate topic) at the peak of his depression and loneliness. Huh. Seems like a pattern among those thinking Eye of the Moon is a good thing. Still got lied to by Obito for about a decade while he was in Akatsuki, because Obito kept his "Madara" identity hidden until like half the organization was dead

- Zetsu was also not manipulated into collecting the Tailed Beasts!🥳🥳🥳🥳 Because they are Obito's damn tools left by Madara

So, after all of that, how the hell did you come to "well, you could argue it's the protagonists' fault for killing so many members of Akatsuki considering their goal as organization - bringing world into constant state of safety (Pain's plan being the outlier)" again? Because no, Pain's plan is literally the main plan everyone is following! It's the main fucking thing! It's Obito's plan that is the outlier! He did not tell anyone shit, most of them died for reasons they had no fucking idea about, would never followed in the first place and, after Obito gets talked-no-justud TWICE, their deaths are rendered ABSOLUTELY MEANINGLESS, and Obito shows zero fucking remorse for it, because that would mean Kishimoto would have to give Obito's characterisation something beyond "boohoo Rin boohoo Kakashi boohoo Minato".

And, excuse me, but how are the protagonists the bad guys for killing the Akatsuki members? The ones that show no hesitation in murdering the innocents? The ones that attack on sight if they think it would serve their personal goals (not the grander plan)? The ones taking pleasure in murder, like shown with Sasori, Deidara, Kakuzu and Hidan?

I myself love Akatsuki to bits, but they are MOTHERFUCKING TERRORISTS. THEY ARE NOT ONLY A THREAT TO THE STRONG AMONG THE SHINOBI, BUT TO THE WEAK AND INNOCENTS TOO. YES, THE PROTAGONISTS ARE VERY MUCH JUSTIFIED IN TAKING THEM DOWN.

You truly have a bizarre understanding of what Akatsuki were fighting for if you unironically believe that even half of them might have had a point or they were the lesser evil compared to the protagonists.

3) Because we are still not done discussing Obito's crimes! 😃😃😃😃god did he do so much more than destroying Konoha and manipulate members of Akatsuki before shitting all over their deaths

So how does the work Akatsuki did beyond the Tailed Beast hunt correlate to the "reaching world peace" thing? Akatsuki under Obito's control have been stated NUMEROUS TIMES to be mercenaries who would do any job for a small price. ANY JOB. Murder, assassinations, mass destruction of cities and entire countries, you name it - Akatsuki are stated to do it all, as long as they are PAID MONEY... that Eye of the Moon does not fucking need. Obito had Akatsuki for 16 fucking years under his control, and 15 of those they spent fuck ass nothing besides murdering people for... what exactly? Because the members need something to do? Nagato doesn't need the money, Obito doesn't need the money. Then what the fuck Akatsuki are sending people in troves to the beyond for? Not for the sake of world peace, that's for sure.

Does the narrative ever address this? Of course fucking not, because that would break the whole "poow babi boi had a point" thing

4) The Blood Mist. Everything about the Blood fucking Mist.

Regardless of how much of anachronistic mess that particular side of Naruto lore is, Kishimoto directly states that all of it was connected to the Fourth Mizukage Yagura, who, in turn, as we learn from Kisame's flashbacks, was mind-controlled by none other than "Obito the awesome guy fighting for world peace and only world peace"

So, what do we know about Obito's stunt as an actual Kage? Did he fix the shinobi system on the local scale? Did he put an end to the violence and brought about the world peace he is supposedly reaching for? Oh wait...

Right, the murders of Academy kids. Why was this a thing under Obito's rule? To the point it was called an institutionalized tradition? Why did Obito have little Kiri kids aged 5-13 killing each other? How does this help Eye of the Moon? How does this allow the world peace and happiness to come to humanity? And does the narrarive ever touches upon Obito's motivations for this?

Of course fucking not, because Kishimoto has a "poow liwwle boi suffered and has a point" thing to sell to the readers. We can't remember the heinous shit Obito did, otherwise everyone will see how undeserving of this "redemption arc" this fighter for world peace is.

The Academy exam in Blood Mist could have been somewhat improved if Obito was the one to suddenly come to his fucking senses and be shown to stop it, but alas it is Zabuza going on a 100 people kill streak that made the leadership of the village reconsider if such a ceremony was needed, and Obito remains an absolutely blood-thirsty war criminal who did it for some unknown fucking reason because little children being dead before becoming genins does not help the Tailed Beast hunt nor even Obito members for Akatsuki (the entire stunt brought JUST KISAME into the organization, when Obito had an entire fucking village at his disposal👍)

Ah, speaking of Zabuza, there was also something about Haku, yes, something very unfortunate during the history of Blood Mist... yes, the fucking massacres of those possessing kekkei genkais. Huh. Now that's fun. It would be quite strange if Obito were to be unaware of those as the Mizukage, considering how kekkei genkais are important to the military power of the shinobi. So did he kind of let it all happen and innocents to die? Or, worse yet, was it some sort of state-sponsored campaign? Does the narrarive ever address this?

Of course fucking not, Kishimoto memoryholes everything relating to that part of Obito's life, because it would instantly reveal what a vile piece of shit he is that absolutely does not have a point about anything and should be the last person to talk about anything relating to world peace.

But coming back to Obito's goals and how he reaches them: so, what ultimately did Obito gain from being the Fourth Mizukage? Kirigakure had two fucking Tailed Beasts, surely Akatsuki looted them for all they were worth and dippe--

Oh, right. After all the mass murders on Obito's watch, the only thing he got was Kisame. Six-Tails is just sorta in Akatsuki's possession, so we can't even say conclusively that Obito did anything in his "awesome guy does bad things for world peace" thing. And Three-Tails is the single most insulting thing ever, because Obito HAD YAGURA, THE JINCHURIKI OF ISOBU, UNDER HIS CONTROL FOR LIKE A DECADE, LITERALLY IN HIS PALM AND WHAT DOES HAPPEN? THAT'S FUCKING RIGHT, IN SHIPPUDEN YAGURA IS DEAD, ISOBU IS SWIMMING IN SOME RANDOM LAKE, AND IT'S DEIDARA OF ALL PEOPLE WHO HAS TO CARRY THE THING BACK TO ORGANIZATION WHILE OBITO SITS ON HIS ASS AND WHISTLES UNDER HIS NOSE.

I guess your fighter for world peace "unjustly framed by the narrative" must have forgotten about his goal for a good decade, because nothing in that time period suggest he was doing something other than maxing out the casualties in Kirigakure.

5) The Uchiha massacre, because if Itachi can be partially excused for being literally 13, being tied down by the circumstances and fearing an actual threat of a civil war erupting should Uchiha proceed with the revolt, then Obito has absolutely zero fucking excuses.

He is explicitly opportunistic about everything in that situation - getting Itachi into Akatsuki (I guess "awesome guy does bad things for world peace"? if only there were 27382728 Uchihas who would be willing to betray Konoha for their goals... oh, well let's get Itachi after murdering everyone else, I guess) and getting the eyeballs from the fresh corpses of his family. Why? I guess for Izanagi bullshit, but why would you even consider needing this when you've got fucking Kamui built within you. If you die with Kamui, you deserve to get your ass yeeted into the Pure Lands for being an idiot. Why an entire fucking wall of them? Who fucking knows, I guess plucking out the eyes of your murdered relatives is fun and someone went overboard, because no fucking way you are spamming this many Izanagis in your entire life. Does the narrative ever address the gargantuan guilt that must come from such act?

Of course fucking not. You know the answer. Kishimoto can not have the readers thinking about disgusting things Obito did in the past and how they need to be recontextualized if "awesome guy doing bad things for world peace" ever got a redemption arc.

Honestly, it is absolutely hilarious how the narrative paints Danzo as "the darkness of shinobi world" when he does a genocide for opportunistic reasons and gets away with it, and then we have Obito being portrayed as "w-well, you might have had a point on your path for world peace🥺🥺🥺🥺" when he did the same fucking thing for the same fucking reasons (being harvesting the Sharingans), but with the added kick of the victims being his family, and THEN ON TOP OF IT has one or two more genocides confirmed for his Blood Mist stunt, depending on how you interpret the events we know of, and there are NO REASONS WHY HE DID THIS. NONE. LITERALLY DEAD KIDS FOR THE SAKE OF DEAD KIDS.

What fucking "all he ever wanted was world peace" are you talking about?

6) The Fourth Shinobi World War, which is not even a war because it is a glorified fight for survival for the Alliance and the result of Obito making stupid mistakes that allowed his enemies to unite and now he has to throw random bullshit at them while he is trying to complete the plan.

I don't even wanna linger on this bullshit for too long, because it is Kishimoto's favorite excuse not to focus on THE ACTUAL STUFF THAT OBITO NEEDS TO EXPLAIN HIMSELF FOR and rather give us another meandering shit about "nooooo Obito war is baaaaaad" "yeeeaahh war is baaaaaad but i neeeeed it for my plaaaaaaan yoooouuu willl be saaaaaved soooooon". A war that was completely avoidable if Obito wasn't a complete muppet and just took the fucking Beasts by himself rather than endlessly stalling for no reason.

Again, this is not even a proper war, so Kishimoto completely misses with the message about why wars are being fought (the actual proper wars like First, Second and Third Shinobi ones), and yet 40k people on the alliance side still end up being dead. Also unknown number of people sacrificed for Edo Tensei summons. But hey, all of them were NPCs, Neji totally died not in the most insulting way possible, so the readers are chill with the shit redemption arc and "but he might have had a point!" talks from the main characters!

I think that's about it for the recap on the things Obito did. So let me ask you again: how the hell did you come to the conclusion that Obito is perceived as the villain only because of the narrative and the fact that we see the story from the protagonist's perspective?

Obito is such a mass murdering war criminal it is not even funny. He is SO MUCH WORSE than anyone else on the side of the shinobi system that it is absurd for characters to even consider his perspective and solution on ANYTHING.

When others have killed or are responsible for deaths of many, you can at least argue they were trying to protect themselves, their close ones, their village or their country. The blood on their hands comes from trying to rise above others in this cynical system and bring something for themselves or those they consider important to themselves.

But Obito is an element OUTSIDE of this system. He is not chained by its limitations, he is free to pursue his stupid plan, he has no physical needs, just go go go to your illusionary solution, he has no connections that might make him reconsider his actions, JUST DO YOUR DAMN PLAN AS FAST AS YOU CAN. And yet he is shown to be repeatedly choosing to stall to get the kill count on his side higher. And higher. And higher, higher, higher, until you start questioning yourself if it is the system at fault, or a certain asshole pulling the strings behind everyone's backs and for what? To make everyone suffer more? The path to your ridiculous verison of salvation is RIGHT THERE, and yet Obito makes the decisions that end up with people lying in piles upon piles of corpses, regardless of how much they know of Eye of the Moon. And Kishimoto never answers any of these questions, because he is perfectly aware: no fucking way anyone would buy this piece of dogshit redemption arc if he were to properly tackle who Obito really is - a mass murderer, because these 16 years Obito is the at the top of chain of responisibility for what his side did. Madara died before the attack on Konoha, and Obito was answering to no one but himself. And again, and again, he was fine with more innocents dead for no reason as it did not serve his goals.

Yes, Madara's plan certainly could not avoid sacrificies. But they were not making bold changes to society - they were outright destroying it and putting everyone into comatose dream of what they think the reality should be. And the deaths that came about as a result of Obito's actions? About a million or so more than OBJECTIVELY should have taken place.

Obito is not perceived by the fandom as villain because the narrative frames him so. He is something so much worse than what the plot is making him out to be, because Kishimoto would rather do the easy thing and ignore THE ACTUAL EVILS done by this guy than to give it context and make everyone else around Obito aware for what a piece of shit he is. From the very first decision Obito made in his pursuit of Eye of the Moon, he had already lost any justification of being the savior, or an awesome dude fighting for world peace, or whatever the fuck Kishimoto would peddle past chapter 600.

I truly like Obito as a concept, and I think he could have been a great villain with a great character arc. But Kishimoto's shitty writing dragged him all over the place, and as a result nothing about him makes sense: his motivations, his actions, his relationships, the way other characters perceive him. He is three different character slapped together, and all of them fall apart under the slightest scrutiny. And, off what is known in canon: yes, regardless if we were to see the story from his perspective, he would still be a villain, because vile actions done by a POV character still remain vile actions.

P.S. I have always found the persepctive of those who thought that Eye of the Moon was a solution to anything fascinating. So entertain me here: what exactly would change for Obito and Madara if they were to put each other under genjustu in their shared cave of misery? Don't bring up anything related to "well, the other people in reality would still be trapped there" - with how many people these guys killed for their plan and how they continiously brushed off anyone's opinions but their own for years, I do not believe for a second they care about other people's perspectives or lives. They want their ideal world, and they want the people in their dream saved. Putting each other in a mini Eternal Tsukuyomi would make them believe they saved everyone anyway, and it would save them a lot of effort and a lot of people would stay alive in reality. What is the justification for running around catching giant Pokemons from their perspective, except to make their ego feel good, if the result for them would remain the same?

Obito rant:

(I'm discarding Kaguya from my analysis because she came out of left field.)

I genuinely think Obito is only seen as a villain because the series framed him that way. All he ever worked towards and wanted was world peace. If anything, you could argue that Naruto and his allies were in the wrong for taking down so many members of the Akatsuki--considering their goal as an organization was for the whole world to be in a constant state of fulfillment/safety (Pain's plan for world pain being an obvious outlier).

I have to give Kishi credit—this was a brilliant example of how storytelling can shape public perception. It really shows how effective narrative framing is in getting people to support characters who, while seen as heroes, have caused a lot of long-term harm (like the protagonists would've done by denying happiness to the world--again, if Kaguya hadn't existed). I genuinely love Naruto and the rest of the protagonists and understand their motivations, but I also think it’s important to acknowledge what the Akatsuki were really fighting for.

Yes, Madara's plan necessitated casualties, as do all massive, bold fights for change in society. That's why we have wars, which are pretty normal IRL (the civil war, the French war, BOTH world wars, etc).

The very fact that this is a fringe opinion proves Kishi was very convincing. Like Hope Mikaelson from Legacies said, the villains are often just whoever's telling the story.

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

#naruto #jolt showa's ramblings #uchiha obito #obito uchiha

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joltai-showa · 2 months ago

Note

What do you think the relationship is between Deidara and Kurotsuchi? I’m not sure what to make of the nii suffix she uses to refer to him

Hi, thank you for the ask!

It's actually quite the curious topic, and I have a lot of thoughts about it!

From the language stand point, the suffix "<name>-nii" can be translated to "big brother <name>". This would be the most accurate and direct translation of this term, however it does not always mean that the the one adressing the character name is their blood related sibling.

To give a few examples, there are situations where this "nii" is used as its own word and as way of addressing your older brother.

(chapter 220)

Sasuke addresses Itachi as "nii-san" which is, really, the most common way to address your older brother. Now, this makes sense, because both Itachi and Sasuke are blood-related brothers, Sasuke should be calling him that because that's the objective truth.

However, here we also have

(chapter 245)

Konohamaru addresses Naruto as "Naruto-niichan". "-chan" is there as a show of endearment, and in this particular scenario basically shows that the person adores the other (like a little child, which is what Konohamaru is when he coins this way of addressing Naruto). But, obviously, Naruto and Konohamaru are not related to each other as family members, this is just a show of respect from Konohamaru.

And, finally, we've got a kind of a mixed case here

With Hinata addressing Neji as "Neji-niisan". They are related to each other, but they are not siblings, they are cousins. Still, it shows that Hinata respects Neji as her older (if not full-blooded) brother.

So, overall: just because someone calls the other "-nii" (and the other honorfics are added to specify how the character views the other, with respect or adoration, their age, etc etc, so "-niisan" and "niichan" can be translated to the same thing) DOES NOT mean they are actually siblings. It means that the character using this VIEWS the other person as something of a brother, even if they are not related by blood.

Now, let's come back to the original topic of Kurotsuchi

(chapter 513)

Kurotsuchi's "Deidara-nii" is the exact same "-nii" as in previous examples.

(and to make a little point - she is always addressing him with only "-nii", regardless if Deidara is present in the scene or not, so no other honorfics attached)

Now, this lack of honorfic is the main and distinct difference with what can be previously seen, which kind of makes it hard to gauge if this is a term of endearment or respect or something else. But, in my experience, it is much more common for "-nii" to be a way of addressing someone when they are not your relative, as, usually, that one gets paired with "-san" or "-chan". It just kinda feels closer that way.

So, conclusion: in my opinion, Kurotsuchi is not actually Deidara's younger sister. She does, however, view him as someone she respects like a big brother.

Which is fucking wild when you remember their societal positions - a terrorist who betrayed the village and current Tsuchikage's granddaughter who is going to become the next Tsuchikage. Now, it's not uncommon for Kages to have less than savory friends or family members, but, to my memory, none of them get treated with "YOOOOOOO BIG BROOOOOOO!" after almost a decade of their absence in the village (and Deidara is never excused for his crimes by the narrative, he remains "the bad guy" all the way to the end, so it can't even be a case of Kishimoto memory holing things to peddle his message), so this particular case deserves a deeper dive into other things to analyse it

1) Their appearances

A bit of a basic thing, but an important one nonetheless. Kishimoto, generally, attempts to at least make the siblings look alike.

And, obviously, Deidara and Kurotsuchi look nothing alike lol. Deidara in general is a giant outlier when it comes to looks for people in Iwagakure. I'm pretty sure there's like one other Iwa character (Mahiru from Kakashi Gaiden, the first guy team Minato encounters) who has blond hair, and blue eyes are even rarer, with Deidara being the only blue-eyed Iwa shinobi to make an appearance (the rest either have dark eyes or green, if I am not mistaken about Gari).

I have my own thoughts regarding this subject, but it is unrelated to the post, so I will keep them to myself.

Though the fact that Kishimoto's thought process when creating new Iwa characters for the Kage summit arc seemed to be "okay, so I've got only one other major character from this village who is a femboy guy. huh. that's it! I'm gonna make a tomboy girl, because confusing readers with this village's characters' gender is fun!" will never stop making me laugh.

2) Deidara's reputation in the village

Another possible explanation for "Deidara-nii" thing might be due to his reputation among his peers, even many years of him abandoning the village, and that's a bit of a plausible angle. Onoki and Kurotsuchi are very obviously displeased with the fact that Deidara got killed by Sasuke (even if it was technically a suicide) - which again, fucking crazy considering who they are and how nukenin are generally treated if their name does not start with "S" and ends with "asuke" - but they got numerous other issues, so they don't focus too much on it. But it does show that for whatever reason these guys perceive Deidara as their own. A traitor to the village, very much crazy about his art, but nonetheless their own, especially in regard to his battle perfomance.

Another thing of note is something we learn during Raikage's accusations throwing round during the summit - Iwagakure actually used Akatsuki's services for their goals. Iwagakure is confirmed to have cordial relationship with Akatsuki, at least before the hunt for the Tailed Beasts began and they lost two of their own. Now, in my opinion, this does indicate one curious possibility - Deidara might have continued interacting with his village even beyond his defection, doing the missions for Iwagakure not as their shinobi, but one of the mercenaries in Akatsuki (I remember reading someone else's analysis regarding this matter, and they noted something absolutely hilarious: if this is what really happened, then Onoki is the single smartest Kage among them all, because keeping Deidara in the village is detrimental to both his growing mania and psychosis and to village's building's stability, while letting him stay over at Akatsuki's satisfies literally everyone, both Akatsuki which want his abilities and Iwagakure which wants to continue being a ninja village and not become a ruin of one. What issues would they have in this scenario? Paying a bit more for Deidara to use his abilities on the missions that they give him, now that Akatsuki also want a cut? They'd be saving a lot more on rebuilding costs now that Deidara is Kakuzu's bane of existence, lmao).

All of this creates a possibility that Deidara might have had a much warmer relationship with his peers back at the village than a normal nukenin does. They might have continued looking up at him, even if he was a crazed terrorist, at least for his strength and being acknowledged as someone equal to people like Sasori, Kakuzu (famous criminals by the time Deidara joins Akatsuki), Kisame (a Swordsman of the Mist) and Itachi (an Uchiha and the guy who killed them all), which would have been the reason for his peers to call him their big bro.

(now, regardless of what I am going to be discussing next, I firmly believe in my headcanon that there were fireworks banging over Iwa for a week straight after Deidara almost nuked Suna into nothingness. Iwagakure is nothing if not professional haters. one of their main opps almost got sent into past tense? oh, Onoki is so working with a bottle of champagne for a while)

However, this theory, while nice and dandy, unfortunately does crash into a direct contradiction: no one from Iwagakure, except for Kurotsuchi, refers to Deidara by "-nii".

There is not many examples to be taken due to the lack of Iwa characters (thanks Kishimoto) and due to their positioning in comparison to Deidara (Onoki or Kitsuchi would not be calling him that, obviously). Akatsuchi is by far the strongest example of this, being both Deidara's peer (Akatsuchi is 20 at the time of Shippuden, while Deidara is 19) and not being hostile to him (off Akatsuchi's reaction when meeting Deidara over the Turtle Island - he does seem truly happy to believe Deidara was alive all along) - Akatsuchi never refers to Deidara by any honorfic, only his name. Other than that, I think there was just one Iwa guy in Kankuro's team during the beginning of the Fourth Shinobi World War, but that one seemed scared of Deidara and also addressed him just by his name.

So, what the hell is Kurotsuchi's deal and why does she call Deidara "big bro"? Well, I think the answer is actually hidden in a bit of a lost media, if it can be called that.

3) Things that got lost in time

So, before I start showing anything, let me give a short explanation regarding how Naruto was originally released (or any manga under Shonen Jump, really)

Naruto was published in Weekly Shonen Jump, and (almost) each week the magazine would have a new chapter of the manga. Now, a singular week for about 15 pages of manga is a really short time, and even with a team of assistants Kishimoto could not make everything perfectly - the deadlines are too fucking tight for that - so numerous mistakes pass through in the weekly version. The weekly versions also have one distinct feature that will be important for us later.

Now, after some time these chapters are published in a volume, and these are not really the same chapters people would see in the magazine. Better backgrounds, fixed inking mistakes, sometimes even entire new pages and spreads, fixed dialogue issues (if they realize something is very wrong with it) - overall, just a cleaner experience. However, some things go missing in these volume versions, and the thing that interests me at the moment is exactly that.

I'm gonna show examples from chapter 512-513 before showing the important thing from 514.

(English fan translation on the left, Japanese volume on the right)

This is the opening illustration to chapter 512. They are not always there for each chapter, but they are pretty cool additions by Kishimoto. And on the left, along the edge, you have this thing called the editor's note. As you can see, these things get removed in the volume version. Usually this is not a big deal, because the editor's note generally contain no important information (mostly hyping up the events in a given chapter or something along these lines), but here we actually ended up with a case where something important went missing.

(side note, but I think the editor's note on illustrations are actually pretty fun, sort of musings on the character portrayed there, so it sucks that they get removed by the end)

But the illustrations' editor's notes are the ideal versions, generally they look like this

(chapter 512, the dramatic note in the first frame is gone)

(chapter 513, again, the note is removed)

These ones are pretty short and just spelling out the obvious, and are either at the beginning of the chapter, the end or both.

Now we get to chapter 514, and this is the important bit of information can only be seen in the weekly version.

(chapter 514)

(sidenote: you can actually see here the most common inking mistake throughout the entire Fourth Shinobi World War - Edo Tensei characters pretty often lost their black sclera, which is why everyone constantly laughed that "the plot twist was so crazy <character> came back to life for this page")

So, yeah, the editor's note here is "He lets loose... on his former pupil!!" Which can only refer to Onoki and Deidara, as the one letting loose is only Onoki, while the people he is fighting with are Kabuto and Deidara, and Kabuto is out of the frame and really only spied on Iwa for Konoha at some point in his life, meaning...

"Deidara is Onoki's student" is not an AU, is not a headcanon, but an irrefutable fact presented by canon.

Now, the problem with this fact is that it literally only exists on this editor's note that gets removed in the volume regardless of its contents. The databooks do not mention this; the rest of the manga does not mention this; Viz was not doing parallel translations when Naruto was releasing, so the official English translation is already based on Japanese volume version (and off my experience with BNHA, English version of weekly chapters does not keep the editor's note for some reason, because the Spanish version does, so I guess Shuesha's policies on that are a fucking mess). Essentially, this bit of Naruto lore had been preserved exclusively in the fan translations at the time, because searching for a scan of Shonen Jump from somewhere around 2009-2010 to look for the original is equivalent to death sentence. But the important thing is: the fan translations are all consistent about this note referring to Deidara as Onoki's student.

(sidenote, but I am pretty sure that Naruto Wiki originally had it that Deidara was Onoki's student, but years later they rewrote it to be "well, I guess they learned of each other's battle tactics at some point before Deidara ran away" on certain pages, because they could not find the source for the student thing, but forgot about other pages, so the wiki ends up being very inconsistent on this point lol)

And, honestly, this does put into perspective the interactions between Onoki and Deidara in that scene, because Onoki saying "I hope you hadn't forgot how terrifying I can be in rage😡"? Deidara going "oh fuck old man snapped *sweats* OH FUCK HE'S PULLING JINTON😳 I'M OUTTA HERE😳"? Complaining about how Onoki still doesn't respect his art? Oh yeah, they are a teacher and a student, that makes sense, also kind of starting to see where Deidara's self-esteem issues are stemming from.

(also. why the fuck Onoki reminds Deidara about his angry side while pulling out the fucking Jinton. and Edo Deidara booking it like his life depends on it. this seems like an instinctual response.)

(did. did Onoki pull the fucking Jinton on misbehaving baby Deidara while he was teaching him. did Deidara had to run laps away from that)

(Deidara was like 11 when he left the village. grandpa did you really pull Dust fucking Release on an 8 year old.)

(jesus fucking christ no wonder the kid was not alright at all when Akatsuki came for him, if that's the punishment methods he got back at the village. but also makes sense how he at 19 was so good at running away from Konoha while low on chakra, clay and arms, if he as a preschooler had to run away from neutron bombs being thrown at him)

(coughing baby vs hydrogen bomb ass village. but instead of you've got nuclear baby vs hydrogen bomb)

but coming back to the original topic of the post: how does the information that Onoki taught Deidara change how we can perceive Deidara's and Kurotsuchi's relationship?

(from this point onwards are my own speculations that do not have definitive confirmation in canon, just overall presentation of these characters and my assumptions not contradicting with the canon)

So, here's what we have: Kurotsuchi, Akatsuchi and Deidara are very close in age, and, overall, seem to be on decent terms with each other (far surprising considering that Deidara had been a nukenin for like half of his life). Onoki, for some reason, did not choose any of the experienced jonins in Iwa to go with him to the Kage Summit, he picked Kurotsuchi and Akatsuchi for this (both of them are jonins, but that does not change the fact that they are barely 20 at best, and Onoki's age is catching up to him), meaning he trusts them quite a bit. The trio of Deidara, Akatsuchi and Kurotsuchi follow a certain pattern that is quite widespread in the shinobi society, and now we know for a fact Onoki was Deidara's teacher.

I think the most logical conclusion of everything above is that Deidara, Kurotsuchi and Akatsuchi were intended to be a team with Onoki as their sensei.

This, I believe, is the version that is supported the most by the evidence in canon, without devolving too hard into headcanons. This is why the four of them seem to be so familiar to each other - with how early Deidara had left Iwa, the kids would have been like 7-9 years old to start studying under Onoki, because Deidara also had the time to work at Explosion Corps - so they have known each other for most of their lives. This is why Kurotsuchi calls Deidara, her teammate who had been named a genius in Iwa, "big bro", because she likely greatly respected his abilities and probably strived to be as good as him (after all, both of them are studying under her grandfather, and she can't just be second or third best as Tsuchikage's granddaughter). The relationship down the line did not sour as much as other villages' with their nukenins, so she kept the "-nii" suffix even after Deidara had been a member of Akatsuki for years.

(I have a bunch of my own smaller headcanons on the matter + an entire goddamn backstory to address this matter for my AU, but all of it is very weakly supported by what is officially given, so I will not divulge into that)

So! That's pretty much it for this question! Thank you for the ask, once again, it was a lot of fun preparing it!

P.S. I generally prefer not to mention the anime, especially fillers, as I am pretty much unfamiliar with it, but that one with Edo Deidara and Kurotsuchi? The funniest fucking shit.

I am a giant sucker for "Deidara and Kurotsuchi siblings" AU, and that one was just peak siblingism for me. From Kurotsuchi starting everything off with "Hey, Deidara-nii, you alive there?" and Deidara replying angrily that of course not, he's fucking dead, after all. And then Kurotsuchi instantly clocking in on the fact that you can distract Deidara from his terrorist ways by dangling a dark-haired strong depressed man with a history of mental issues who can cause him endless amounts of misery (if you are wondering if I am talking about Sasuke, Itachi or Obito, the answer is yes.) in front of him. You can just fucking see how Kurotsuchi wants to shove it in his cringe ass's face that now the entire shinobi alliance knows what a gayass he is. Big bro you are gonna be remembered for being the fruitiest creature on this side of the continent, not for your art.

#naruto #jolt showa's ramblings #deidara #kurotsuchi #onoki #iwagakure

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joltai-showa · 2 months ago

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to reblog below

actually yeah, let's stop the cap - no fucking way adult Obito is getting recognized by anyone (especially Gai of all people). not after growing up from a little 13 year old twerp into a grown ass man (who is like 30 cm taller than the last version everyone knew) who also got splattered by 5 tons of rocks, got injected with nanomachines, son Hashirama cell's twenty times over and overall looks like someone chewed on him for a good while. like, even people who had not gone through as severe physical changes as him barely resemble themselves from 20 years ago as young teens. I'd even go ahead and say the heavy lifting in 30 year old Obito's resemblance to his younger version does the haircut.

which reminds me but what the fuck was Kishimoto doing with everyone's favorite asshole's haircut throughout the 298616382824 bajillion flashbacks he was involved in

- the original buzzcut that baby Obito seems to have for the entire life before the involunterary kiss with the rocks, ends at about 13 years old

- the depressed dumpster critter one aka the long-haired one after he spent a few months in Madara's cave of divorce and misery. yes, it was months because the timeline does not allow even like a god damn year, which raises the question as to how the fuck does his hair grow this fast. and the explanation is either Konoha's hairdressers lived off entirely from this little orphan's funds or Hashirama cells are actually very good for your hair growth.

also in general why did Obito not get his hair cut in that period. I get that he personally was probably too paralyzed to do this, Madara was too busy sleeping on the life support, but you've got like a thousand Zetsus roaming around, give the scissors to one of them. You've already told them your name, your friends' names, their home adresses and ninja registration numbers, your taxpayer number, the code to Uchiha family safe and the password to your Ipad, at this point Guruguru armed with a pair of scissors is the least of your troubles

- then for some fucking reason Obito cuts his hair specifically for the Konoha attack. which wasn't even supposed to happen, the plot just landed him an opportunity to start shit with Konoha (because this was absolutely not for the sake of the capture Tailed Beasts thing, nothing was fucking prepared for that one yet).

- then we are back to the depressed dumpster look in Kisame's flashback with Obito speedrunning the worst Kage rule category. which is. well, at least I see some point in the uncut hair, he was probably too busy minmaxing how many people he could kill in Kirigakure. nothing conclusive as to what exact age we are seeing him in that point, but it's somewhere between the Konoha attack and the next major flashback

- still rocking the depressed dumpster look as he meets Itachi and massacres the entire clan👍and least now we're being consisent

- but then immediatelly we are in Tobi era and the buzzcut is back. for some reason. I guess to fuck with Kisame and Itachi or smth. "mwahahahaha they'll NEVER guess who I am". which worked on Kisame, sure, but anyone who is not a depressed (blue) himbo would probably connect the only orange-masked one-eyed black-haired dude in the vicinity to the murderhobo introducing himself as Madara

#naruto #jolt showa's ramblings #uchiha obito #obito uchiha

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joltai-showa · 1 month ago

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in different fandoms there's always different tiers of headcanons depending on how widely it's accepted by the fandom. some are shared by a very specific group of certain character/ship enjoyers, some are pretty much shared by the larger community.

and while I was scrolling through tumblr (trying not to cram for my exam lol) I realized that one of the things Obito as a character desperately needs is that sweet sweet bisexual headcanon. it's like a crutch he needs to be enjoyable for me.

otherwise dear god he's stuck as a straight man and I think I've had enough of that in canon. canon that makes chewing on concrete seem like a more pleasant activity.

#naruto #jolt showa's ramblings #uchiha obito #obito uchiha

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joltai-showa · 6 months ago

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This post is a reply to these two posts, so if you wanna see me go insane over how Kishimoto completely managed to fail at writing Obito aka the villain that was the main threat for the majority of Naruto and Rin, do check them out first.

So PSA before continuing reading this: I will be replying to both posts consequetevely, which means that there's likely gonna be a bunch of stuff repeated. I don't like to sound like a broken record, but so many of my issues with Obito, Rin and Obirin crash into certain stuff that it's important to bring it up whenever it is needed.

And yes, I really dislike Obirin. On a good day for me this ship brings me as much excitement as drinking plain room-temperature water and chewing on some stale soggy white bread. It's a ship of the worst variety to me - it's simply boring, a good awkward boy and a good nice girl who's entire life seems to revolve about being emotional support pillow for said boy. And that's on a good day, because the manga aka canon generally isn't having a good day when it comes to the writing of these two, so these characters and their ship as it stands in canon requires the reader to switch between ignoring approximately 90% of what Obito does and approximately 50% of Rin does to get to the perception of cutesy doomed love that Kishimoto desperately wants to peddle. If the reader does not follow what Kishimoto wants to tell them (but isn't capable of showing at all), then what actually ends up happening is two psychotic bipolar little maniacs blabbering about some senseless bullshit that results in about a hundreds of thousands of people dead for ABSOLUTELY no reason.

(and yes if you have never come across my posts previously, I am prone to swearing, it is not some sort of agression against you or anything, this is simply how I am used to writing my own analysis posts)

so let's start with @innovativestruggles points:

I have always been an avid obirin shipper, and as a feminist, people may question the contradictory nature of this.

I'll be completely honest with you, the fact that you were attempting to defend anything female character related in Naruto is already brave enough, considering that Kishimoto can not write a female character for his life. Almost all of them end up being entirely depended on male character's goals and desires, almost all of them end up following in the "designated important male character's" steps, they pretty much have no interests or goals of their own, just their guy. Rin is even worse than that, because she is not even a proper character, again, on a good day she is just a placeholder thing for a female character, and in general in the manga she is nothing more than a plot device, a function that takes actual characters like Obito and Kakashi and produces some sort of results with them while she acts as the supposed reason for their actions. I specifically say supposed, because Kishimoto wouldn't be himself if he did not write Obito in such a horrible manner that all three of Obito's bullshit mantras that he is producing after his reveal did not clash with his MANY MANY horrific actions.

Obito is in an incredibly complex character and alas, there is a reason why I absolutely love him. He is my favourite, has always been and will always be (also, he’s a villain and he’s hot). Though there are parallels between Obito and Naruto, it’s important to distinguish the nuances. Both characters had no family growing up (I am not going to count Obito’s grandma as she is an anime only character and not technically canon), had it tough at the Academy, disliked by a lot of people and technically an outlier.

Obito as a concept desperately wants to be a complex character, but Kishimoto needed him to go through a shitty redemption arc real quick, thus Obito ended up being reduced to a 1.5 dimensional character that has exactly three types of arguments:

endless boring yapping about Rin (which feels like 80% of what he speaks about. ever.) about 5 of same frames shoved into the reader's throat every time this happens. real fascinating stuff, especially when this is what happens for 30 chapters straight (I am not kidding, I reread Naruto from 599 to about 660s, my eye is twitching)

woah look the world is such a hell (*insert three pages of nihilistic bullshit*). seems to be a critique of the shinobi world, but when you look into it - no, this is just this 30 year old man throwing a temper tantrum against not the system itself, but something like "friends dying", "friends betraying", "just death in general". Nothing of actual value that would make him the supposed destroyer of the system and savior of humanity, no, he is acting like an absolutely delusional child. the fact that this particular character does this is riduculous and a fucking insult to the reader's intelligence, because this guy has NO FUCKING reason to be this swallow and, I would even say, idiotic. this man has commited way too many war crimes and is responsible for far too many deaths, directly or indirecly, to ever have the fucking right to have the same stupid rhethoric that Naruto has. I can only say FUCK YOU to Kishimoto whenever he pulls this thing out of his ass in an attempt to make any of Obito's actions seem justified. Obito literally never manages to pinpoint anything correct of the system's faults (AND GOD IS THE SYSTEM FAULTY)

actual abuser ramblings. I feel like I am about to become Joker whener this shit happens. Obito kills someone, or someone who worked under Obito kills someone de-facto on Obito's orders, something happens as a result of Obito's actions - AND OBITO, GRABBING RANDOM SHINOBI #1314146 LIKE AN ABUSIVE HUSBAND WOULD GRAB HIS WIFE, STARTS SCREAMING INTO THEIR FACES, ALL SATISFIED AND HAPPY "LOOK! LOOK! SEE WHAT A TERRIBLE THING HAPPENED! ARE YOU FEELING DESPAIR OF THIS WORLD? GOSH THIS WORLD IS TERRIBLE! BUT DON'T WORRY, I'LL FIX THIS. JUST STOP RESISTING ME AND ALL WILL BE FINE." and NO ONE in the manga EVER bothers calling out this bullshit, because that would make Kishimoto admit that Obito is not a poow liwwle baby boi🥺🥺🥺🥺that just lost hiw way🥺🥺🥺🥺and aktually onli wanted to be with his fwiends and become the Hokawe🥺🥺🥺🥺but an absolutely batshit insane piece of shit that has no hill to die on

And you think I am being overly dramatic with the whole "abuser talk", here's some lovely stuff from chapter 646

For context, Obito activates the Divine Tree that kills a bunch of shinobi after instantly sucking away their chakra. And then he has the audacity to say that shit while everyone's watching how Mr. Genocide turns their comrades into husks. And if you think that, well, this is just some randos, they are here to raise the stakes of this endless battle, but no, Shikamaru also almost gets sent into the afterlife while Obito is preaching "if you stop fighting, I won't kill you". Just what an awesome guy.

But I got off track, back to the reply. Post 599 Kishimoto goes fucking ham on the parallels between Naruto and Obito... especially the ones that weren't even there. Because he is perfectly aware that even with the whole delulu savior shit that Naruto gets by using talk-no-jutsu, if things are left as they were pre-599 (which pretty much includes only Kakashi Gaiden aka 239-244), Naruto HAS ZERO REASON not to cave Obito's skull in and drop this asshole's corpse somewhere in the nearest ditch. Kishimoto, starting with Obito's reveal, adds more and more shit for Naruto to latch on, because otherwise what we have is a protagonist who pretty much doesn't have any companions who didn't get their lives completely fucked over by Obito, not too mention that 99% of Naruto's suffering comes DIRECTLY from Obito's actions.

So let's look at these GREAT parallels, which, thankfully, Kishimoto decided to put out in one monologue of Naruto's in chapter 653

neither knew their parents

correct, but a very simple a short question from me🥰so who is the reason for Naruto never knowing who his parents were? Who was such a meanie to take away Naruto's family? Who put fucking bombs on him 5 minutes after his birth?

(chapter 501)

Oh, right. The poow liwwle baby boi who only had Rin as his light and just dreamed about becoming Hokage.

I will go off track again, because the manga itself brings it up, but it's another important thing that Kishimoto wishes his readers to lobotomize themselves about: the timeline

The murder of Kushina, the resulting death of Minato and the destruction of Konohagakure all happened 16 years before the events of Shippuden. For the sake of simplicity, Shippuden will be set in year 80 (after Konoha's foundation), so the attack took place in year 64.

Obito is 30 (I have seen that he is sometimes supposed to be 31, but 30 is easier on the shaky lore of Naruto) in Shippuden. The Kannabi bridge mission was supposed to be around the same age that team 7 had in OG Naruto - 12-13. So Kannabi happened in year 62-63. Meaning, that IN BEST CASE SCENARIO between Obito waking up at Madara's and

1) murder of his teacher's wife 2) battle to death with his teacher 3) murder of his classmate's mother (the woman that Obito kills before taking Naruto? Sarutobi Biwako, Hiruzen's wife. And Hiruzen is Asuma's father) 4) large-scale destruction of the village he, supposedly, wanted to become a Hokage of

is at best A YEAR, if not just a few months. Because, again, Obito was recovering for some time, then the whole Rin's death scene, and then Madara trained him and explained him the plan. According to Obito's flashback in 600s, Madara kills himself by plugging himself off the Hashirama life support, and only after that Obito starts the whole grooming Nagato for the plan and attacks Konoha.

I point this out because I have seen numerous times how the defenders of poow liwwle boi Obito try to deflect the blame for Obito's actions by claiming that Madara made him do this. Madara WAS DEAD during all of this shitshow. Moreover, as you will see later in this post, Obito repeatedly does things that are NOT aligned with the whole ideal world creation and salvation for everyone, moreover, they oftentimes CONFLICT with this plan, and just outright scream I AM A PSYCHO WHO WANTS TO COMMIT MASS MURDER FOR SHITS AND GIGGLES

First of all, yes, let's admire how righteous and totally not maniacal Obito looks at the moment. "Do you know how long I have waited for this" MY ASS SHUT UP you're a cringe 14 year old. Secondly, let's hear out his wonderful plan, which is "gonna extract Nine-Tails, gotta crush Konoha". And while the first point does correlate with Eye of the Moon - they need the Tailed Beasts, after all - but then in Obito's flashbacks we learn THAT NAGATO WAS NOT ON HIS SIDE YET. THE GUY WHO CAN CONTROL GEDO MAZO AND STORE THE TAILED BEASTS IS STILL NOT WORKING WITH THEM. WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU ATTEMPTING TO STEAL NINE-TAILS THEN?? WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO PUT HIM??? Oh, maybe Obito kept a close eye on Kushina and realized that she was soon gonna give birth, which would be the primary opportunity to yoink Kurama? WRONG. OBITO BY SOME SHEER COINCIDENCE OVERHEARS KAKASHI TALKING ABOUT THIS OVER RIN'S GRAVE. HE THEN PROCEEDED TO KNOCK OVER THE FLOWERS ON HER GRAVE AND THEN ATTACKS KONOHA. HOW THE FUCK IS IT HELPING WITH THE PLAN???? YOU'RE JUST GIVING THEM 29847238 OPPORTUNITIES TO RECAPTURE THE THING????? YOU'RE ATTRACTING THE WORLD'S ATTENTION TO THE FACT THAT SOMEONE'S OUT THERE TRYING TO GET THEIR HANDS ON THE TAILED BEASTS??????

So, obviously, there is zero rationale for Nine-Tails' attack from the plan perspective. Well, maybe it alings with Obito's ideals, whatever the fuck they are? Obviously, glasses Obito would never do anything like WIPING OFF HIS AND HIS FRIENDS' HOMES OFF THE MAP and kill his dear sensei's FAMILY. MOREOVER, Rin fucking DIES trying to prevent Isobu from being unleashed on Konoha and decimating it, so what does our poow liwwle lover boi does? That's right, he pulls out Kurama and decimates the village only a some months after Rin died trying to protect it from the very same thing happening. Oh, wait, Kishi, so did she see that while in Pure Lands or not? Or does she have selective vision?

And mask Obito can be rationalized to do this by saying "oh, he's just showing the people the DeSpAIr", but again, this contradicts the manga with Obito saying "I don't care about this world yada yada", there is nobody who exactly would become targets for this campaign (Obito's endless speeches in 599 onwards are aimed at Kakashi/Naruto/etc) because we just see Obito interacting with Minato and Kushina, which would become despaired off the simple fact that Kushina is getting murdered by someone extracting the Tailed Beast, the village being crushed is just something on top that literally endangers his little precious plan more than it achieves anything. Is Obito ever shown to regret this as a stupid stunt or as act of terrorism against the village he supposedly love? NAHHHH WE CAN THROW IN OUR 20TH RIN FLASHBACK

Oh, and the timeline thing is important for another reason: poow liwwle boi defenders like to say that Obito went through so much and had witnessed the DarKneSS of the shinobi system, which is the reasoning for him going crazy and attacking Konoha. Obviously, this is bullshit, because the poow liwwle baby boi had no time to see anything about the grander shinobi system, he had been with Madara for several months with Madara being mildly ominous in the background and saying the most vague evil shit imaginable (before Obito runs off for Rin and Kakashi, he is still believer in the power of friendship and such, and the manga shows them having a whole wooping 1 conversation), then he witnessed Rin die, instantly became evil and commited a massacre (so much for cutie patootie liwwle boi), and then goes off to learn the plan from Madara and train to become as powerful as he is during Obito vs Minato. Even if I ignore the shitty writing that is supposed to suggest that Obito HAS ALL OF THESE IMPORTANT REALIZATIONS outside of the main plot, the timeline simply affords no place for him to comprehend the evils of the shinobi system. So yes, Obito is literally going off his anger over Rin dying and something something Minato being on another mission something something Kakashi (because there is two versions of the things Kakashi did that Obito is supposed to see, but Kishimoto conviniently shoves that little problem under the rug, god forbid we have any actual emotional interaction from Obito's character that doesn't involve the whole lazy Rin bullshit).

So, we are just on our first simularity between Obito and Naruto, and we already see that Obito's poow traumatized baby boi narrative falls apart when we decide not to go for the lobotomy Kishimoto wants, but instead realize that a) Naruto should punch Obito's skull open for ever mentioning his parents b) Obito is a mass murdering maniac with zero excuses and zero remorse

so let's continue with the parallels, shall we?

had it tough at the Academy

Now you're simply projecting Naruto's issues onto Obito. We have exactly two pages of Obito in the Academy years, and they are from chapter 599

And the thing that you are claiming as "him having it tough in the Academy" is.... him arriving late at the entrace ceremony in the Academy, Kakashi sighing at him, others kids just going back home, and Rin bringing him his entrance papers. Sorry, who is giving him a tough time here? Kakashi sighing? Kids who likely meet him for the first time not interacting with him? The Academy not waiting with finishing the ceremony because one kid is late?

Yes, this scene does show Rin being nice to him, but nothing more than that. I am not sure how old exactly the kids are in this scene, but considering Kakashi would graduate at 5, I would say that it's about 4 years old? Obito would go on to graduate at 9. A five whole wooping years that are completely not covered by this first scene.

(chapter 1)

And coming back to Naruto's issues at the Academy - Naruto was a delinquent that drew poop on the Hokages' faces AND he failed the graduation exam two times already, meaning that by 12 years old he got held back quiet a bit. He also has this little problem called being a jinchuriki, of which most parents are aware, and explicitly tell their children to stay away from him.

Obito graduates at normal time (9 years), similarly to Rin, Kurenai and Asuma. The only outliers would be Kakashi and Gai, both of whom would become two of the strongest ninja in their entire generation. Obito didn't cause trouble, in fact, it's repeatedly said that he helped the elderly around (and according to his own words even KNEW all of old people in Konoha when he meets Madara). Nobody in the village is ever stated to have anything against Obito, he's just an orphan from the Uchiha clan.

Literally nothing suggests that Obito had it tough in the Academy

disliked by a lot of people

Again, there is little confirmation of that in the manga.

Does his clan hate him? If so, why? There is no confirmation of this, moreover, Kishimoto keeps Obito's plot line and Uchiha's so apart it's actually absurd, but nothing in the story suggests that they should hate him or even simply not care for him. This is again in contrast to Naruto's own parents, because his Namikaze lineage was hidden (regardless if there were even relatives who could have taken care of him) and Uzumaki clan was decimated some time during the Third Shinobi World War, scattering the small amount of remaining members across the globe.

Do the villagers hate him? If so, why? There's also no evidence of that, on contrary, he was very friendly and helpful to the elderly around the village, so it would not be strange if a few of them were looking out for Obito. Obito has an annoying habit of coming late and being a bit of crybaby, but that wouldn't be enough to make the villagers dislike him. Unlike Naruto who is the vessel of the nuke that ravaged the village just 12 years before he learned of the reasons behind his mistreatment by the village.

Do his classmates hate him? Again, nothing is known about his Academy years except for one singular scene where he just meets them, but 599 also shows us some more interactions between him and the other kids in his generation... during the chunin exam

Do I even need to comment on how this is not anyone disliking him? This is just how competition goes.

Oh, and there's also a bunch of other minor things in this chapter, but I think it's a good time as any to introduce them😇

This. scene. right. here. It pisses me off to no end. You wanna know why?

Because this is the FIRST time we get Obito's Hokage's bullshit.

That's right, you aren't mistaken. The original Obito introduced to us in Kakashi Gaiden (239-244) NEVER EVER states that he dreams about becoming Hokage. He says stuff about how shinobi should act, he says how he's gonna become strong and tough once he awakens his Sharingan, he says how he is gonna protect Rin and others, he says how he is gonna see the future with the eye he gave Kakashi, etc etc. BUT NOT A SINGULAR MENTION OF HOKAGE BULLSHIT.

Kishimoto, for some mysterious reason, never introduced this CORE part of Obito's character (to the point Naruto literally yaps about JUST IT when he enters Obito's inner world thanks to the power of plot) when writing the original Obito, but the moment he needed to do the whole reveal thing and the shitty redemption arc in 30 or so chapters for a guy who's been our main villain for almost 300 chapters - oh hell yeah in 599 Obito gets the same fucking dream as Naruto, because otherwise Naruto has 0.0000001 reasons not to beat up this piece of shit. So, again, FUCK YOU, Kishimoto.

Right, what I was on about? Ah, Obito's classmates. So there's a bunch of other scene where Obito - HOLY FUCKING SHIT - is seen with someone other than Rin, Kakashi and Minato (very deep character, am I right)

And it's literally Obito being focused on Rin cheering Kakashi on (you know, THEIR TEAMMATE), so no interaction between the gang and him, and then later when we see them all planning gifts for Kakashi (who became a jonin at 13, A BIG FUCKING THING) while Obito is flustered because he was planning on confessing to Rin at that moment.

So, literally, the only person amongst his classmates who openly disliked him was Kakashi, who had a damn stick up his ass and wasn't really friendly to anyone (which we can see with how pretty cold to Rin and Gai he was at the time). And, of course, because we are dealing with Kishimoto, 239-244 Kakashi is a much bigger asshole than kid Kakashi in flashbacks post 599. Like, the OG Kakashi actually bullied Obito for his weakness, while the later one was mildly irritated at Obito's habits and carefree attitude.

So, in total: nothing suggests Obito was disliked by his family, by his village or by his classmates, except for Kakashi, who was just an asshole at the time, and his assholery varies depending on what Kishimoto needs for the plot to be.

Oh, and since we are on the topic of classmates: another magical lobotomy that Kishimoto expects the readers to have is for everyone to magically assume that never ever in his entire life Obito had friends EXCEPT for Rin. And I guess Kakashi for those 2 minutes before Kakko dropped that cave on their heads. Which, again, HAS NO BASIS in what Kishimoto actually shows us. Yes, Rin was the first person to support him, but he has known other classmates for almost 10 years before Kannabi happened, yet the plot acts like there were 0 interactions between him and others, which is... not how children fucking work? I can understand Obito feeling lonely because his parents are gone, yes, but then Kishimoto slam dunks on the readers' heads that UHM AKTUALLY NO ONE FROM HIS EXTENDED FAMILY CARED FOR HIM AND UHM AKTUALLY HE HAD NO FRIENDS EXCEPT FOR THOSE IN HIS GOVERNMENT ASSIGNED TEAM AND NO ONE FROM THE VILLAGE LOVED HIM which is a lot of stuff to shove down people's throats without giving a proper reason for this. People knew that Naruto was a jinchuriki, so they stayed away from him, Sasuke was extremely traumatized by the Uchiha massacre, yet we are magically supposed to believe that Obito falls into the same category????

(also let's also mention who is responsible for Naruto's and Sasuke's loneliness... ah right, Nine-Tails crush and the Uchiha massacre, both of which were fully or partially Obito's doing🥰)

Which is why this

(chapter 616)

scene is SO fucking funny even without the whole "Obito goes full angwy babyman and starts stomping his feet and screaming YEAH LOOK AT ME LOOOOOK I AM MAD AND ANGRY AND DEPRESSED BECAUSE I HAD FRIENDS SO YOU SHOULD BE MAD ANGRY AND DEPRESSED TOO while the rest of the Alliance is scrambling to survive and grandpa Madara is chilling in the background" because no you had NO connections??? Kishimoto is desperate to peddle us that bullshit about "Rin was the only person in Obito's life (for reasons I will not be explaining because I NEED this shitty redeption arc to kick off)" and regularly manages to forget that "Connections" imply number more than one, and Obito as he is given in canon at best has TWO, 1 for Rin who is a plot device and 0.5 for Kakashi and Minato respectively. And he is insistent on "Rin was my only light yada yada"... until Kishimoto suddenly no longer needs it

(chapter 651)

As a writer I am honestly amazed at sheer bullshitery and audacity of this scene. Kishimoto literally makes the plot gaslight Obito into "Hokage comrades Konoha good Hokage comrades Konoha good Hokage comrades Konoha good". Mind you, the Hokage thing was introduced literally during the masked man reveal, Obito had NO connections to speak of with his classmates because Kishimoto was SHOVING the idea of Rin being super special to him THAT HARD, he didn't give shit about any of these people for 16 FUCKING YEARS (!), Asuma is DEAD because of the merry band of terrorist that OBITO CONTROLLED (and that's after murdering his mother), Kurenai is raising Asuma's child ALONE, and IRUKA LITERALLY DOESN'T EVEN FUCKING BELONG IN THE SAME GENERATION AS THEM???? HE BECOMES GENIN IN THE SAME YEAR NINE-TAILS ATTACKS KONOHA???? OH YEAH, OBITO ALSO MURDER IRUKA'S PARENTS WITH THE NINE-TAILS INCIDENT????? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK KISHIMOTO? WHAT IS IRUKA DOING HERE IN THIS BASTARD'S BULLSHIT FANTASY??????? ALSO IRUKA GETS THE SCAR DURING THE NINE-TAILS INCIDENT???????????? WHAT THE FUCK???????????????

Okay, I am taking deep breaths because I am feeling like I am about to lose my damn mind. But hopefully my argument about "Obito very much wants to be a complex character, but the plot has him be 1.5 dimensional one by ignoring 90% of what Obito did and does in the manga" becomes clearer. Obito's connections come and go as Kishimoto wants them, not because they organically come from the plot, and lack of said connections is never explained, which is why I honestly don't blame people for calling Obito obsessed with Rin, because Kishimoto does desperately tells us that no, Obito didn't pull these 16 years of mass murders because of Rin, there was a higher cause... but then fails to show us anything coherent outside of endless repetition of Rin, Rin, Rin

technically an outlier

And I fully agree with this, because at least that is directly stated in the manga

(chapter 240)

The only thing I think I might add to this is, I believe, during Sasuke's first flashbacks to his family, he and Itachi actually discussed the age of awakening the Sharingan, and I think they mention that 8 is about the time most people should have it? Which would indeed place Obito quite behind as he awakens it at 13, but considering the fact that it requries the user to get traumatized, is it really a bad thing? Lmao, I guess it's just teenage boys' dreams that I don't get

However, Obito never had an older mentor growing up, whereas Naruto did (that would be Iruka)

That really depends on what you consider "growing up". I can't say with exact certanty at what point Iruka became actively invested in Naruto's life (because Kishimoto kept rewriting things + this stuff is pretty vague at where I am looking for it, meaning chapter 1, Iruka is interested in Naruto's fate because both of them are orphans, so no exact indication when did it start. but. huh. I wonder who's fault for the two of them being orphans is that), but we do know that Obito graduated from the Academy at 9, meaning about 4 years he had a mentor in Minato, so his early teenage years are covered. Nothing exactly certain about the period before that, but yeah, sure, let's agree that implicitly the plot suggest a lack of mentor for Obito's childhood.

But another thing that, I believe, should be brought up, is the start of the Third Shinobi World War. I don't wanna repeat the lecture about establishing this date, but basically the beginning of it would be right around when Obito was 8, so yes, the general political situation had significantly worsened, and Obito would have probably started feeling the effects of the war enveloping the world, but Obito soon gains an older guiding figure.

Because neither of them had their families, Naruto was lucky that he had Iruka. Iruka provided that big brother figure, the mentor and in some ways a caring environment for Naruto, despite the hardships. Obito, however, did not receive any of this.

Naruto still lived alone in the state-provided flat with mountains of trash and ate ramen with expired milk, something to this extent. This is not to mention the villagers actively shunning him for being the vessel for Nine-Tails. Obito, meanwhile, is not confirmed to have these hardships in the plot, moreover, as I have explained, a lot of the things you mentioned are assumptions that clash with what is seen in canon. Unless, of course, we are putting Obito's perspective above all, and Rin and the others cheering Kakashi and Gai fighting while ignoring Obito is literally the worst thing ever, but this is straight up offensive to Naruto's experiences.

And also while we are on this topic let's return to Naruto's talk-no-jutsu here, yeah, the same one he had after the plot magically had Naruto learn Obito's memories, specifically the ones pre-Nagato grooming, pre-Konoha destruction, pre-Kushina murder, pre-overtaking Akatsuki, pre-overtaking Kirigakure, pre-Uchiha massacre, pre-Akatsuki jinchuriki hunt, pre-Sasuke grooming, pre-Konan's murder. Which. Wow. How convenient, Kishimoto.

So Naruto here explicitly says that OMG U R JUST LIKE ME FR when it comes to the Hokage dream (that Obito gains upon the masked man reveal as far as the narrative is concerned)... only he is literally pulling this out of his ass, because, again, if Naruto was not introduced to some new memories the readers didn't see, there is nothing suggesting Naruto's claim. This entire thing hinges on readers taking the lobotomy pill and ignoring the giant extended family Obito had + the elderly in the village and not asking for an explanation as to why Obito would feel this extreme loneliness that would require latching onto Rin that strongly. I can agree with "lonely because parents gone", but beyond that this is just Naruto using the power of plot to fix Obito's worldviews.

What Obito did have, was Rin. The two have been childhood friends for a very long time. Rin gave Obito that sense of security and attachment, despite them being the same age.

This is all very lovely and dandy, but you would need to find me a scene showing them being childhood friends. For this post I have reread all chapters starting from 599 and to about 660(?) where I gave up because the conversation between defeated Obito, Kakashi and Minato was causing me to overdose on cringe. And during this entire period the only memory that anyone had of the two of them being children is that Academy arrival scene. THAT'S IT.

Then we have the team Minato introduction scene, but it's obviously after they become genins, so 9 years old. There's also this scene:

But if you check the earlier screenshots, you will actually realize that Rin is wearing the kimono that she has during the chunin exam + she has Konoha's headband, so they are already about 10 years old (at 9 they graduated the Academy, at 11 they became chunins, but Obito didn't pass this particular exam). So the kids you are claiming to be such good childhood friends with Rin being the sole pillar of emotional support for Obito have a giant 5 YEAR LONG GAP, and with Rin only living to 14 THAT IS A LOT OF TIME MISSING.

And in the other scenes Rin is already wearing her chunin get-up, so they are both 11+ years by that point. Meaning that as far as canon shows, Rin was nice to him that one time during the Academy entrance ceremony when they were, like, 4, then we HAVE NOTHING until they become team Minato, and then we have an array of very similar scenes where Obito speaks about how he's gonna become Hokage and Rin looks pretty and nods along (an incredible show of personality, Kishimoto). And then we get to Kannabi where Rin seems as about as upset as Kakashi is, even if Obito, her supposedly best friend, GOT CRUSHED ALIVE and is begging her to get his eye out of his eye socket and shove it into Kakashi's still untreated wound. And Kakashi, as we know, didn't get along really well with Obito until like 15 minutes ago.

But then Rin does the single most psychotic thing imaginable: Obito gets finally crushed, her supposed best friend's body turns into tomato paste that they can't even pick up and will have to leave him behind on the enemy territory, and as Kakashi explains how Obito loved Rin and died for her, the girl opens her MOUTH AND STARTS CONFESSING TO KAKASHI.

DARLING CAN YOU WAIT LITERALLY LIKE 5 MINUTES BEFORE ANNOUNCING THAT? ZETSUS DRAGGING AWAY OBITO'S HALF-DEAD BODY CAN PROBABLY HEAR YOU THROUGH THE ROCKS. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, HE JUST DIED!

And, I understand, in Kishimoto's mind this is all probably very romantic and tragic, but to me this is just another example of Rin's character flipfloping between the cutesy innocent girl in team Minato and the single biggest psychopath known to Konoha in her generation and this is only because Obito's turn to dark side happened outside of Konoha.

So, in total: one interaction as children, numerous interactions in team Minato, but it's literally the same one with them doing the same things, and then the Kannabi bridge. I am sorry, but this is one of the worst executions of childhood friends I have ever seen, if they are supposed to be that way. And on THIS + Rin's flipfloping character that gains and loses cutesy girl characteristics depending on Kishimoto's mood is on what Obito's entire fucking arc hinges. Obito who would be by far the most prolific war criminal in the last 20 or so years of shinobi history😁

One final thing before moving on: it's actually the pictures that you mention later in your post

I don't really care if Obito is here trying to kiss a picture, he's a young boy, he does silly things. What I wanna point out is the pictures that Obito has, because to me they are VERY telling.

Kishimoto shows us 0 photos of Rin and Obito together, you know, the supposed childhood friends. The picture that he is trying to kiss is the one that they took as team Minato at 9 years old. He has a picture of his parents (thank god for Obito's mama cuz dad is giving 0 pretty genes lol), and then he has a bunch of Rin pictures, but the angle on them all is just off, like he is sneaking photos of her from far away, or when she doesn't expect that, or as if he is sitting in the bushes. All of them indicate very little closeness, like they haven't been, you know, childhood friends for years and did things together. Kishimoto gives them practically no mementos that would indicate that degree of closeness that the whole "RIN WAS MY SOLE LIGHT" thing is trying to convey, but god does he not save up on the scenes of Rin putting bandages on Obito.

Obito’s love for Rin transcended romance. Of course the romance was the overt part, but his love for her was his sense of security. She was his safe space. When a child grows up without love or care from a parenting figure or a mentor, they will find ways to cope and latch onto the closest thing they can find safety and comfort in. Rin took on this role. So when Rin was killed before him, naturally there would be a sense of deep despair and anger.

I will not be adressing the first half of this, because I believe I have made it very clear that Obito's attachement issues are very overblown with what is given within canon (unless, of course, we go into the whole Uchiha love/hate/curse bullshit, but to me it's Kishimoto's favorite crutch to fall on whenever the plot demands to know why the fuck is everyone tolerating Uchiha #13 yapping and doesn't call them out on their bullshit) and his friendship with Rin is shown very weakly, to the point I would say most of it is left to readers' imagination. That's wonderful that you found a ship that has this sort of transcended love vibe, but what I see is two characters literally strung together by the author for no other reason because mangaka needs that drama, one of these characters barely qualifies for a character and is moreso a plot device, while the other one COMMITS SO many crimes the whole "she was my light" bitching and moaning can go into the trash pile along with the man saying these things, because hundreds of thousands are dead for the delusions of this one guy.

What I do wanna talk about is Rin's death, because GOD this shit drives me mad for numerous reasons.

Firstly, let's insert Kakashi into the conversation, because Kishimoto twists himself into a pretzel just to somehow both justify Obito's turn to the dark side and Kakashi not being an utter piece of shit that kills his friends for the mission (because Kakashi is a fan favorite I guess and making him fully responsible for that murder is a step too far). This pretzel is so lovely that it actually creates TWO versions of events in Obito as a witness and Kishimoto... does absolutely nothing with the change in Obito's perspective. Which is absolute insanity.

So, we turn off our omnipotence as readers, and sit inside Obito's mind as he sets off for Kakashi and Rin surrounded by Kirigakure shinobi in 603 (this is the only information he has). The Zetsus later mention some experiment of Kiri, Minato being on a different mission, etc, etc. Obito doesn't understand the full context, cuz he's running for his life, and at that point he does witness Rin's last moments through Kakashi's eye

(chapter 604)

Huh, what an interesting expression Kishimoto chooses. Something in between betrayal, confusion and fear. Well, it wiil certainly correspond to what is actually going on, right? Right?

So Obito finally runs into the clearing and sees

Rin, standing still, looking scared and betrayed, while Kakashi pierces her heart, crying.

And so, Kishimoto in chapter 604 creates a pretty clear narrative: Kakashi and Rin were surrounded on a mission with Minato away, and, instead of protecting Rin like he promised Obito, Kakashi chose to put the mission above his teammate and killed Rin.

By chapter 605 Obito is already commiting the massacre of Kiri ninjas, who scream something about the importance of Rin's corpse, but ultimately no further context is given, so nothing much changes in Obito had witnessed on that day.

Wow, what a terrible thing to happen! Of course Obito would break and realize how terrible the system and by extention the world is, with Rin being killed for... oh wait, there's more?

And almost 25 FUCKING CHAPTER LATER we suddenly discover THAT THIS IS NOT AT ALL WHAT HAPPENED. And is it Kakashi who tells us his side of story? NO, OF FUCKING COURSE NOT, IT'S OBITO WHO DOES THIS. OBITO WHO'S ENTIRE FUCKING CHARACTER HINGES ON THIS ONE SCENE.

Rin did WHAT and was WHAT?

(I will not go into detail how Isobu being sealed in Rin COMPLETELY fucks over Blood Mist's timeline, that's a whole other separate rant)

So, A MASSIVE CHANGE OF PERSPECTIVE FOR OBITO: Rin chose this fate, Kakashi was doing everything in his power to prevent this, Rin somehow managed to gain enough speed and agility to overcome Kakashi's reflexes and THE FUCKING SHARINGAN to throw herself onto Kakashi's arm (yes, the very same girl who got abducted TWICE. I did mention her abilities flipflop depending on Kishimoto's mood), and Rin's death had a very certain meaning - to protect Konoha from being destroyed by a Tailed Beast.

(I also really love how Rin in 629 absolutely can not end up in the same pose she did in 604, thank you Kishimoto for your cheap manipulations)

So... this is a massive thing to happen. So how does Obito react to this upon learning? When does he learn this? How does this happen?

LOL. LMAO. FUCK YOU READER. (c) Kishimoto

Because it's just randomly shoved into the plot and ignored for the rest of the series, regardless of how it completely flips the relationships between team Minato, particularly with Kakashi no longer being an unfeeling traitor but rather someone who ended up in utterly terrible circumstances that he could not prevent and Rin... continuing her psychotic streak of "oh, Obito died? better confess Kakashi right above his still warm body" with "huh, I can't end myself, and I pose a danger to the village... well, I will certainly not entertain the possibility of finding my sensei's wife who knows all the most powerful sealing jutsu to keep the thing inside me in control, so suicide it is, and of course I won't go for any of the armed Kiri guys following us, I will do it using Kakashi, the boy I love. I am sure he will enjoy the image of me bleeding out on his arm for the rest of his life, especially with that promise that he gave to Obito". Another important thing that we learn that Rin REALLY loved her village, to the point of being ready to die for it.

And I will say what I think about this - you can not try to push the "cute innocent baby girl" narrative with SUCH a heavy decision done. This requires a lot a mental fortitude of someone much older and competent than the pure innocent light that Kishimoto tries to later portray her as.

But coming to the second point I wished to discuss and it is how Obito's entire interaction with the whole shinobi system completely crumbles with the change in these events, because the first version does show how messed up it is - Kakashi choosing the mission over a comrade, Rin's life being just a simple burden to the system, etc etc. But the second version of events OFFERS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in regards to Obito's understanding of how wrong the system they are living is (contrary to LITERALLY any other antagonist in the series). Because Rin's death in the second version is a terrorist attack that Rin herself decides to prevent. You can have the most wonderful and humane system imaginable, with free healthcare, children being allowed to be children until growing into adutls, elections etc etc, and it would still not guarantee that people with nasty intentions from using power to inflict pain on innocents. And anybody could have ended up in Rin's place, if we are under assumption that Kiri simply wants to demolish Konoha with Isobu. The worst that could be extracted from this version of events is that Kakashi and Rin had to end up in this situation at all without adult supervision (which is moreso to Kakashi's part, because Rin in this scenario is just a bystander who got abducted to be used as a living bomb, and anyone from a cat to a granny could have been in her place), and Rin at 14 being able to make the decision to end her life for the sake of the village, but again this is also motivated by the actual danger she presents to the people around her.

All of the above is probably a good explanation as for why throught the entirety of 599 to 660s Obito can not formulate A SINGULAR good argument for the Eye of the Moon that would show the horror of the shinobi system except for "PEOPLE DIE - SAD", "PEOPLE BETRAY ALWAYS - ANGRY" and last but not least "YOU WILL BE JUST LIKE ME, GIVE ME A SECOND TO MURDER ANOTHER DOZEN OF YOUR COMRADES". I shit you not, the guy who was the one behind Blood Mist, witnessed the fate of Amegakure, was part of the Uchiha massacre, collected and personally knew members of Akatsuki, had been this amazing strategist and manipulator for the last 16 years CAN NOT say anything that wouldn't be about him being mad about Rin dying and how everyone's gonna be just like him fr.

The closest he ever gets to this is soon after Neji's death, remembering this wonderful thing called the cursed seal that the main branch of Hyuga would place on its cadet branch members regardless of their age whenever the current heir of the clan would turn 3, and this seal can also be used to inflict pain on the bearers by the people of the main branch. So essentially Konoha has a literal enslaving practices. Wonderful job, Hashirama. Well, what will our Savior and awesome guy will tell us about this practice?

Ah, he completely missed the point of why enslaving your relatives is bad. AND he is using it as a shitty Twitter-level gotcha that would sound like "LITERALLY 1984!!!1!" without ever bothering to read the book. God canon Obito you're such a loser.

Which is why I really can just barely chuckle whenever I remember that as the apocalypse is unfolding, hundreds of thousands are dead, and Obito gives up on the plan of his life after Naruto talks-no-jutsus him twice, Madara dunks on this entire comedy opera and reveals that HEY IT WAS ACTUALLY ME BEHIND RIN'S DEATH! and most of Obito's post reveal yapping goes completely null because it wasn't the system's evil (the faults of which he is never shown to understand), it wasn't this world's evil, it was Madara's evil that killed Rin😁

And that's overall a good commentary on the final state of the affairs in Fourth Shinobi World War - the majority of people aren't suffering because the system, the majority of people are dying because there's two Uchiha assholes with their convoluted bullshit that are killing people en-masse for their delusions, one of which was dead for the last 16 years, so yeah, Obito ain't running away from the things he commited with "boo hoo Rin was my sole light" which is immediatelly followed by this

WHICH IS THE ONLY ACKNOWLEDGEMENT HE GIVES OF 16 YEARS THAT INVOLVED DEMOLISHING KONOHA THAT KILLED HUNDREDS, THE ENTIRE AKATSUKI THING THAT ENDED UP WITH ALL MEMBERS DEAD AND LIKELY THOUSANDS OF SHINOBI AND CIVILIANS MURDERED WHILE THE ORGANIZATION WAS ACTIVE, THE BLOOD FUCKING MIST THAT HAD KIDDIE MURDER EXAMS, DEATH SQUADS AND EVEN MASSACRES OF WIELDERS OF KEKKAI GENKAI, THE MASS MURDER OF HIS OWN CLAN, AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST THIS ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD WAR WHERE HALF OF THE ALLIANCE IS ALREADY DEAD, SO WE ARE SPEAKING ABOUT 50K CASUALTIES AT LEAST

buuuuuuuuut Riiiiiiiiiin waaaaaaas myyyyyyyy soleeeeeee liiiiight😭😭😭

(also I suppose this is how Kishimoto deals with the whole "so hey at what point does Obito actually see the problems of shinobi system" thing, which is. hilarious. a tiny panel with a moon on the background.)

Okay, rambling over, let's return to the original post

A lot of people would say: “but he had Minato,” “he had Kakashi,” “he had Kushina.”

I find it a bit weird that you chose to exclude Obito's grandmother for being a filler and an anime-original character, but included Kushina here, because I do not remember a single instance of her interacting with Team Minato that happened in the manga and not in anime/video games

but they only came into his life for a short period of time. Their interactions were not on an intense level as it was with he and Rin.

Minato was in Obito's life for 4 years as we previously established, which is a pretty big thing for Obito's total 14 year old lifespan. And I am still not sure of what interactions that Rin and Obito shared that weren't "she held his hand, put a bandage over his cut and said with a serious tone that he shouldn't hide his wounds". Like, it would have been funny and cute if we were talking about 13 year old Obito, but with corpses pilied up, half of the world destroyed and 30 year old Obito? Please give me something better than a placeholder cutscene, I am begging you.

And again, very little indication of their interactions outside of team Minato, so question mark to the whole "long period of time"

Naruto however, had Iruka, who most likely taught him a lot of things about the importance of the village, the importance of camaraderie, friendship

But... Naruto is learning it over the time we witness him in the plot. And it happens while we watch him at 12. So I am not sure where the "Iruka taught him" argument is coming from.

And Obito was certainly aware of the importantce of the village considering HOW MUCH dialogue is spent on him declaring how he is gonna become a Hokage. If he missed that point while having that dream, I can't even say anything. Also, Obito from 8 to 13 was in a militaristic settlement that was in the middle of a World War, I'm pretty sure their education wasn focusing on working up that patriotism in the kids that would soon go to the trenches.

Naruto had his fair share of trauma but he had support that allowed for some resiliency.

Gosh golly I wonder who was responsible for all that trau-- I am sorry, I will stop, you get the point.

And also, no. Kakashi was in his depression arc and didn't interact with Naruto until becoming his sensei, Jiraya was out there somewhere shitfaced and probably collecting intelligence for Konoha, Hiruzen was just creepily watching him through his magic ball without Naruto's knowledge, and with Iruka it's unclear at what point did he start feeding Naruto and chatting with him outside of classroom, and even if that started as soon as supposedly Rin and Obito became friends, Naruto still was being shunned by the majority of village and starts having proper friends only during the plot, so 12 years old and onwards.

(and, again, there is no reason for Obito to be left stranded by the rest of the society, nothing written by Kishimoto ever indicates this)

Psychological intermeshment stems from traumatic upbringing in childhood (lack of nurturance from an adult caregiver, abandonment etc), and then again from losing their sense of security/safety (Rin in this case).

I like your point, and it is kind of something of a new thing to me, but again, the entire scenario of Obito's abandonment and latching onto Rin is hinging on the reader making the decision to remove that part of brain that considers these characters somewhere other than the vacuum. It is plain and simple bad writing. I really wish I could agree with your point, but it would mean ignoring almost everything that Kishimoto showed (and I am sure that he was desperate to tell us something along your lines, but he utterly failed in that regard).

So he did what he could to get that sense of security back, even if what he did was questionable.

EXCUSE ME? QUESTIONABLE? QUESTIONABLE???

Several months after Rin's death, Obito kills hundreds in his own village for no apparent reason because the action brings his plan no benefit. Does that mean getting back the security? Obito also kills the mother of his own classmate, never showing regret for it, before proceeding to put a kunai against a newborns throat and booby trapping him. Was he getting back the security this way? Obito also manipulates the leaders of original Akatsuki into doing his bidding and when the plan doesn't work, gosh golly one of them dies in an internal strife, which seems just so terribly convenient for him. Is being a manipulative and lying bastard part of his security blanket? He then also proceeds to put the Fourth Mizukage under his genjutsu and what followed was one the most brutal regimes shinobi world ever knew. Did he felt safe and happy becoming the reason for an entire village's and likely country's suffering? Said regime also included mandatory battles between children of Academy age, so 8-10 years old, and death squads that would kill anyone attempting to desert said regime, and the only profit that Obito got for his plan from this entire affair was Kisame joining Akatsuki. Well, surely, that seems like a mildly questionable thing to get his sense of security back, hm?

I am not even gonna bothering continuing, but I can make this paragraph twice as large without much trouble. Obito was not simply doing questionable things, he was an absolute genocidal maniac, and very much had a tendency for opportunistic murder, and a lot of the things he did have no explained or apparent reason.

Then you have the complexity of the curse of hatred that intertwines the storyline, which make things even more complicated. But this curse was what pushed the storyline and placed Obito as an antagonist.

As I have already stated, a cheap copout from Kishimoto to not bother himself with writing anything more complicated than a story for first graders

He did not start a war because of a girl. He started a war because he was angry with the way the world functioned. How the countless wars kept ending lives and taking loved ones away from people. He did not want people to go through what he went through.

LMAO. So, obviously, yes, the favorite argument provided with Kishimoto's own heavy-handed writing: "I did not start a war over a girl. I will only mention her fifty times. And think of only her whevener something major will happen to me. Fuck those people that I met over the last 16 years and who ended up dead because of my actions or my plan. They don't matter, only the people I spoke with when I was 13 do. And I will not be able to provide anything of substance whenever an opportunity to talk about the faults of the system will arise. Just general throwing hands in the air and dramatic mumbling about despair."

And rereading the manga, it is actually apparent that he can't produce anything about the shinobi system (because Kishimoto never ended up giving him a moment to understand this, duh), so he consistenly attacks the world for things like people dying in general, which, if you ask me, is the point where any and all discussion with Obito should have ended, because he is clearly absolutely delusional and, similarly to the war that HE started, it is a conflict between the humanity as it is surviving or this guy's delusions entrapping everyone.

How the countless wars kept ending lives and taking loved ones away from people. He did not want people to go through what he went through.

Damn, nothing says "I hate wars" like creating and controlling an international terrorist organization that specializes on taking the war business and spends YEARS doing random side-quests for money when your own plan has zero need for money, so you pretty much allow these bloodthirsty assholes to run amock. Nothing says "I hate wars" like sending said assholes into highly-populated areas to catch the jinchuriki when you are shown repeatedly to have the abilities to do so quickly and effiently, but nope, let's nuke Sunagakure, because "I hate wars". "I do not want people to go through what I went through", so I am going to have 8 year old children battle each other to death in the village where I took control, and if anyone tries to run away from that, I will have a death squad ready. Wow, I was so lonely as I child, but don't worry, little Uchiha, I am going to stab you and your family tonight, because I do not want you to go through what I went through. Oh, Sasuke-kun, hope you enjoy your new spacious home!

In essence, this mindset has villain written all over it, but it also compels a strong backstory for Obito because of his complex childhood upbringing and the trauma he experienced.

Trauma? Yes. Complex childhood upbringing? Maybe in some fanfiction, the canon is lackluster and has all the complexity of a third grader's math problem.

But people need to remember that he had a father who provided that nurturing environment for him. Even if his father died in tragic circumstances, Kakashi, though traumatised, was able to bounce back and push forward with the support of his friends and village.

These are not simply tragic circumstances, that's an 8 year old walking into his home and finding his father after he commited suicide. Your point about adult figures is a bit more appropriate this time with Kakashi, in my opinion, because Sakumo would kill himself when Kakashi was 8, and team Minato wouldn't become a team until Obito's and Rin's graduation when they were 9, so Kakashi ended up kind of being passed down from Sakumo and Minato. It still doesn't mean that it somehow alleviated Kakashi's condition, because we still see him holding onto these rigorous anti-Sakumo ideals during Kannabi bridge, all of which culminated in Obito's "death", so I am not exactly sure at what point the "bounce back" happens, because things get only worse for him with Rin and Minato getting killed. I don't even think Kishimoto actually shows us Kakashi getting back to it, all of it is coming from external sources that aren't written by Kishimoto? Kakashi just kinda loses everything and then we see him still staying alive and not following the allure of his dad's path. Kakashi has a lot of generic talk about friendship and comraderie, but I can't remember what exactly brought him back from losing everything that was related to his team? So he's a weird example to compare Obito against.

It all comes back to childhood upbringing and the presence of an adult caregiver/mentor.

And in example with Kakashi the adult mentor is also killed the second time and Kakashi loses everything. Again being saved by off-screen camraderie and power of friendship, and also general desire to continue spreading Obito's ideals. So, still a weird example.

That, and then again, the presence of the curse of hatred (which was why Sasuke was pretty fucked up despite coming from a loving family).

Curse of hatred is lazy bullshit and Sasuke was not fucking fine because one wonderful evening he stumbled upon his entire family massacred, then got tortured by his beloved brother after witnessing him kill their parents, and then he had to alive alone in the very same compound where his entire family was killed, and then his brother returned and tortured him again, now sending him into a coma. That's just some of the few things that come to mind when it comes to Sasuke being fucked up.

This is the reason why I do not ship Obito x Kakashi. To me there was no love, care and nurturing between those two. Obito “died” not long after being friendly with Kakashi, so that wouldn’t warrant a ship between those two. Whereas with Rin, it is a different story.

I don't particularly enjoy Obikaka either, but I can understand why people would ship it (unlike canon Obirin canon Obikaka at least has two characters interacting), however again this comes from a lot of stretching of canon to the limit. You have correctly stated that there was no proper friendship shared between the two of them (which I see Obikaka shippers debating), Kakashi is practically bullying him during Kannabi bridge mission, and when they finally did see eye to eye (BADUMS) it was like 5 minutes before Kakko dropped the cave on their heads. But what is fascinating between the two is what they symbolize to each other (and no, regardless of what Kishimoto is peddaling, I don't believe in any deep friendship and understanding between them during Fourth Shinobi World War, they are grown ass men who have lived with their plans and ideals for far too long + they haven't spoken to each other in 17 years), because Kakashi changes his entire life to accomodate Obito's habits (being later and such), Kakashi, in a sense, attempts to live out the life that Obito never got to live. And Obito... well, Obito's writing all over the place, so really this guy's interpretation is in the eye of the beholder and how much they are willing to ignore canon.

And like I said, just because of all this crap Obito’s been through, it does not excuse what he did or make what he did right (he was a villain after all).

One, it literally doesn't provide him with enough motivation for half of the deaths he had caused. Two, yes, the plot absolutely excuses him in the most ridiculous of ways, because poow baby boi upset that Rin dead. Don't mind poow baby boi using about a 100 opportunities to kill people when it went against his supposed morals and there was absolutely no profit to be made for Eye of the Moon, Naruto saw 30 year old poow baby boi being sad and dreaming of becoming Hokage when he was 10, he certainly deserves redemption arc.

And thank you for reminding that that post-Obito death scene exists, my night is absolutely ruined because now I remembered this "How to never write a female character" scene, with Rin finally rejecting her premise as a character and embracing her role as a plot function, and in this scene she fulfills a role that all male character dream of - a consolation prize for Obito who sent countless people to their deaths, brought about the apocalypse and got around to fixing it about two seconds away from midnight on the doomsday clock. But hey, at least he tried his best doing all of that!

now onto @makimahinalno points

What these two had was very unique and rare, and I cannot explain how much it irks me when people degrade and simplify it as "obsessive" when it isn't.

The uniqueness and rarity of these two stems from the fact of how absolutely half-baked their relationship is, how Rin's charactertics and worldview (which we don't get at all until that flashback when they are chunins and Rin says flat out that she wants the war to stop, which I guess indicates something common between the two, but also shows her not being a particular death enjoyer?) keep changing whenever Kishimoto needs them to ("I watched everything and you did your best" says she to a guy who demolished a village that she died to protect. Actually, two times, if we include the Pain attack. Oh, and the boy she loved aka Kakashi also got killed during that attack) and how Obito's 16 years of life post Rin's death had so much opportunistic murder that can not be excused or even motivated by any of his endless meanderings about hopelessness and such. I am sure that Kishimoto intended for this to be some sort of higher form of love, but with what he ended up writing Obito being responsible for, Kishimoto's own inability to properly handle the horrific nature of Obito's acts and, frankly, Rin's character remaining somewhere at placeholder female character level, every single time he mentions or has a flashback to her (and that happens A LOT) that really makes one realizes that either the character or the managaka are completely insane. But probably both. Which is where "obsessive" comes from, because Obito conveniently does not acquire any other significant relationships for half of his life, leaving him sounding like a broken record about Rin.

When Obito remembers Rin, when we see her face, we are supposed to think about innocence itself.

That's awesome, but making an executive decision to kill yourself using your crush's fist to prevent the village from being sent into past tense is not innocence. Being capable of taking out a dying boy's eye and transplanting into a wound of another boy while standing in the middle of some half-destroyed cave with no tools specifically prepared for that and neither of the boys dying is not innocence. If Kishimoto wished her character to be about innocence, he should have not made her an experienced shinobi (at times, of course whenever he needs her Rin becomes as incompenent as a child).

She is the symbol of it, she represents all kids in the world who deserve to play on a playground, be well fed and not have to worry whether they are going to survive to see the next morning or not.

Damn, and Obito really internalizes those ideals, doesn't he? Or does he become the head of regime that had exams for Academy students that required them to kill each other? The exam that got cancelled because little Zabuza has found a cheat code and killed a 100 children of that graduation class? The regime that had a specialized ANBU department that was solely responsible for people escaping this regime, likely including the very children that didn't want to kill their fellow little friends and not worry if the are going to see the next morning? The regime that had massacres of people possessing Kekkei Genkai that it did nothing about? And after Obito was done with that regime, surely Akatsuki did not recruit a 13 year old and a 12 year old almost consequitevely? He surely gave them warm homes, carefree education and uneventful lives? He surely did not pair them with fellow mentally ill nukenins and send them to complete missions for his terroristic band, with their faces plastered in all bingo books with a handsome reward next to them?

Again, I would love to believe into this idea of "innocence" that Obito so cherished and Rin seemed to possess, but unfortunately the only thing I get is three same scenes of Rin and Obito doing the same thing again and again + Obito's vague and meaningless meandering + none of Obito's actual messed-up shit being ever adressed in favor of the things above. I am sure Kishimoto oh so wanted this deep transcendent love and innocence incarnate, but you can't get rid of 600 chapters worth of questions by replacing all answers with "SHE WAS HIS SOLE LIGHT😭😭😭😭😭😭😭" Kishimoto created a character far too heavy that he could and wanted to manage, so Obito falls flat with Rin as the anchor that drowns him in his own lore.

I... won't be adressing the rest of your post🤣🤣🤣🤣you should write poetry, I love your flowery descriptions. I think I've made my case clear about how this particular interpretation of Obirin requires one to use their imagination instead of relying on canon material and preferably forgetting about the other big chunk

Anyway, that's about it. Thanks if you managed to read to this point, I am honestly surprised and congratulate you. I have been wanting to make a big post containing most of my issues with Obito's writing in canon, and these posts made me stay up throught two nights as I was rereading manga and writing this post itself.

And remember, kids, ship whoever your want, tag your stuff appropriately, and don't try to get into the depths of Naruto canon, or you'll end up in this wormhole just like I did. With Kishimoto at the helm, nobody is a winner.

Sending cheers to the authors of original posts!

(and yes if you are wondering why I stopped attaching pictures to the post past a certain point - I hit the limit on them and was far too lazy to separate them into several posts. I might make a separate post with other screenshots of the manga that I have where Kishimoto reaches absolutely insane levels of reader gaslighting, I was honestly torn apart by my desire to fall asleep while rereading this part of the manga and giggling like insane because some of the shit characters say is absolutelt comical in its absurdity. God I really have a love-hate relationship with Naruto's last 100 chapters, don't I. Anyway, I gotta crash, I have an exam in two days and I did not sleep for two days.)

#naruto #jolt showa's ramblings #uchiha obito #nohara rin #obito uchiha #rin nohara #sorry obirin fans but nothing good is said about this ship here

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