#ofc this doesn’t matter bc shizuma’s main verse is w/ mizukage haku but. regardless. I rant.

[ironharvests]

suigetsu helps mitsuki, inojin, and shikadai defeat shizuma just because “i want that little brat shizuma to lose.” which on one hand is hilarious because, like, what the hell did shizuma do to you sis? he said you had no swag and get no ass so you want him to die??? how does he even know shizuma if shizuma is 17-18 and suigetsu is like 30+ and based in otogakure? huh????

but on the other hand..... it doesn’t make a ton of sense for suigetsu to be anti-shizuma, or invested in taking him down in general. shizuma’s goal isn’t just to bring back the bloody mist, but to institute a transparent government. his main complaint in boruto canon is that chojuro and mei are systematically assassinating any and all political detractors and denouncers, cutting down “anyone who got in their way.” while obviously shizuma is not a trustworthy person and isn’t someone we should take at face value, he’s also shown to believe in and keep his promises. he thinks he’s doing the right thing. that says a lot about him. and it raises confusing questions about suigetsu, too: has he turned his back on his old village? does he not care about what’s happening there? why is he so invested in stopping a revolution that would likely never make it off the ground in the first place? why is he so interested in squashing shizuma and protecting chojuro’s administration, one that even he thinks is too moderate and nothing special?

shizuma’s claims aren’t baseless or fiction, either. during his fight with the new seven, chojuro himself also admits to these assassinations and removing the names of the “unsavory dead” (people who cast a pall on kirigakure’s history, such as, apparently, all of the past seven swordsmen and the entire hoshigaki clan, potentially because of kisame’s involvement with obito.... which raises entirely new questions about why these seven teens/tweens know about that). chojuro confesses that he has done things that weren’t aboveboard, and that he did them for the betterment of his village. which makes sense, and reveals some of shizuma’s naivety: of course a ninja President will have detractors assassinated, it’s what they do. to expect anything less makes shizuma seem as childish as boruto, who vehemently denies that an”good guy” like chojuro would do that. both of them are too young or too ignorant to acknowledge that violence is the wheel upon which the shinobi system and its politics turns.

but still, the onus here is on chojuro. clearly these children are not discontent outliers, but representatives of an increasingly upset and betrayed population in kiri that feels ignored and abandoned by their government. this new kirigakure is built for tourists, not its people. poverty is still relatively high in the village and the surrounding territory, as kagura remarks that he is a shinobi because he is too poor not to be. he is literally in poverty and killing is the only thing that will pay a livable wage. if even kagura, chojuro’s reasonably sheltered preferred candidate for mizukage, is exposed to the harshness of the village’s economic state, then how good can things really be? it seems chojuro’s beautiful port village is a facade for tourists, other nations, and investors. the reality is that the denizens of kirigakure are still suffering and unhappy. and while shizuma’s revolution is pisspoor and childish, he seems to be the only person interested in engaging with kirigakure’s past in order to build its present, whereas the current government administration simply wants to sweep kirigakure’s past and its heritage — both the good and the bad — under the rug and pretend to be something it’s not. something sanitized and pretty and indistinguishable from konoha.