#oh no the third hokage never noticed what danzo was doing

[spacealligator]

it's not like I ship Hiruzen and Danzo, I'm just saying the plot makes a lot more sense if we just assume they were banging

[childotkw]

I straight up gasped when I saw you updated!! The new chapter was as great as always, the third is is straight up Naruto’s version of Dumbledore which is absolutely awful. I know it’s kinda silly but I’m so concerned about Naruto’s education lol. I’m like, is anyone going to teach this poor girl how to read and write?? Anyways, thanks for the update, it was a fantastic read :)

Personal opinion inbound.

Oh I have major issues with Sarutobi and his whole handling of everything. I mentioned it in the bottom note on GD5, but when you think about the logistics of Konoha and how it operates, there are so many issues.

Minato was their new hope. He was going to bring Konoha into a post-war era. He was supposed to revolutionise the way they lived and trained. Under Minato, there would have been no ROOT. Under Minato, their children would have been children, not just weapons. The way they trained their new ninja would have been better, would have focussed on their mental and emotional health as well as their physical. And Konoha would have prospered, because their ninja would have been stronger, healthier, would have had the support they needed to recover and lead good lives both on and off the battlefield. No more traumatised children. No more untrained, small bodies thrown under the wheel.

But instead they lost him in the Kyuubi attack, and had to reinstate Sarutobi, who was from a bygone era, a man who has never known peace, and didn’t know what to do with it when it came around. So he reverted to what he knew. He forged ahead with the military mindset, he gave Danzo more room then he should have, because they needed ninja, they needed power and he wilfully ignored the cost of that. He ignored the kidnapped children. He ignored the brutal conditions they were put through. He pushed his remaining ninja to the brink, disregarding the fact that he was burning them out, because Konoha must, above all else, appear strong. 

Sarutobi never lost the idea that children were tools for Konoha. He never stopped to think of the ramifications of his desperate desire to keep his village in a state of power. Which is why Kakashi’s generation of ninja are so fucking broken and weird. They are the ones that endured over a decade of constant strain. They are the ones that the duty fell to. They were the children of war, and then just when they thought they had peace, they lost their guiding light and were placed under the leadership of a man that saw them more as numbers on a sheet then individuals. And then once things finally began to calm down - when Sarutobi was old enough to maybe realise how mistaken he had been in pushing - it was too late.

Because in that time, he had mishandled so many things, Naruto in particular. 

Sarutobi saw Naruto as another weapon, could never overlook Naruto’s significance when it came to politics. So he did everything he could to keep Naruto in a malleable state. Abused, alone, desperate for attention. So that whenever he bothered to remember the small child he so carelessly stuffed in an apartment with no supervision, Naruto was in awe. 

It was both a flawless manipulation, and one of the laziest things I’ve ever seen. He kept Naruto desperate, then fed ideas of Hokage and respect into this young child and actively encouraged the dream because if Naruto was so focussed on becoming Hokage, then he would be loyal.

This military mentality is also why I think Team 7 failed so spectacularly. Kakashi was fresh off of anbu when he got saddled with them. He was forced to interact with his beloved sensei’s child who reminded him of three of his closest relationships - all of whom he lost tragically and within a few years of each other. 

He was forced to care for a girl that reminded him too much of his teammate, the one he had murdered with his own hands - but who was also lacking in so many areas. 

And then he had Sasuke, who was Itachi’s younger brother, Itachi who Kakashi had personally trained while in anbu, only for him to turn around and use those skills to massacre his family. Hello Trauma. 

Kakashi is an exceptional shinobi, but he is a soldier and his understanding of ‘normal development’ and just children in general is heavily skewed. He was never normal, and he grew up fast. Hard. He was a broken man, an efficient killer, and he was given three children to train, children that hadn’t lived through the horrors he had and that didn’t understand. He didn’t know how to handle them, didn’t know how to make these three fit together smoothly, so he didn’t really try. 

And they broke apart as a result.

In terms of Naruto’s education in GD, it will be a rough ride. It takes a long time for anyone to really notice that she can’t read or write. 

But I am excited to get to the Team 7 aspect of GD, because all the stuff I previously mentioned with the miscommunication and the misunderstanding between Kakashi, and Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura will be very fascinating to address and overcome. I want to really build up Team 7. I want them to be a team. I want their relationships to be strong and their respect for each other to be real. That way, their fights will have more meaning. When they argue, it’ll actually hurt. When they disagree and clash, it’ll break readers’ hearts. 

[realitachifacts]

hi! ooc question (for the mod!), what do you think about itachis role/story in the show/manga? 💞💞

oh thank you so much!!! i love answering questions like this aaaaaaa

TL;DR: a ton of missed potential ):

okay so i’m gonna take this in a slightly different direction and also write about how i would have written itachi’s narrative alongside my analysis/opinion of it. this is DEFINITELY going to be long so it’s under the cut.

it’s pretty evident that the characters given the most focus in the show are naruto and sasuke. this is pretty much indisputable, with naruto as protagonist and sasuke fitting into the more complex role of antagonist-protagonist-antihero (which wasn’t given fair treatment by the narrative itself but again that’s another story). regardless, sasuke’s arc has a strong dependency on itachi, all the way back from the character’s introduction. and thus, this makes itachi one of the most important characters in the story, despite somewhat limited appearances. all of this can be pretty easily gleaned, but still, i think it’s worth repetition in an analysis like this.

while sasuke’s arc has strong dependence on itachi, itachi’s arc has an equally strong dependence on sasuke; at his point of introduction, kishimoto literally had planned no backstory for him, only that he wanted to “attribute to itachi some violent action that would have sasuke wanting to kill him”. though, later on, “when itachi was introduced, kishimoto had the idea to make itachi konoha’s secret agent who killed his clan under their orders” (which accounts for all of his character’s inconsistency throughout the series, and i personally have a hard time believing the decision to change was made at the moment of his introduction). itachi was introduced as a source of sasuke’s ambition and trauma, giving his character a driving arc. which, i mean, is fine. for a shonen story it’s a pretty average/decent goal and fits well within the universe and plot. as a character itachi’s design is solid, especially for playing the role of villain. his powers are cool. he’s interesting. 

and i think the biggest problem is that his story was over-complicated and just not thought out from the beginning; arguably, there was some foreshadowing early on to his position as an actual good guy. sasuke mentions in the forest of death that itachi is likely pushing him because he feels bad for what he’s done, and wants someone to kill him as justice. but… there was no weight for that and it seemed like a pretty baseless accusation on sasuke’s part, who appeared to harbor nothing but hatred for itachi and nothing even remotely resembling any form of sympathy or willingness to understand his older brother (i actually totally believe that sasuke could have guessed at itachi’s true motives, but the concept was pretty much immediately dropped after that statement- which, again, annoying lack of consistency). i love the relationship him and sasuke have as children, as i’m sure i’ve stated before. older brother as a villain to overcome/turned evil is interesting, turning out to be good all along even more so; but the second half is handled poorly, what i mean by missed potential. plus, itachi more or less needed to have hidden motives to push sasuke’s story in the direction it went in after the pein arc- sasuke wouldn’t really have anywhere to go after that and would probably struggle with a lot of internal conflict. and again, as i’ve talked about in a previous ask… the small amount of reconciliation provided wasn’t enough for either of them (especially sasuke).

so, here’s what i would have done.

in terms of canon adherence, there are pretty much only three options: 

1.) have him die a villain (admittedly killing his clan to test his abilities wasn’t the most believable goal, but eh, he’s an anime bad guy so whatever). as much as i don’t like this (i’m sort of a sucker for character redemption, but they pulled it off very badly), it would have made more sense within the storyline. it would’ve been nice if they pressed what sasuke believed on “he felt bad so he wanted sasuke to kill him” to the point where he was sympathetic but not good or redeemable. their final battle could’ve ended the same, with the forehead poke and all that, and just flashback scenes of things we haven’t seen in canon (that sasuke will never see) that prove his assumption was correct, and itachi did want to be martyred. it would keep him a pretty bad person but it would make both his and sasuke’s arcs feel more… conclusive, i guess. i personally believe the primary antagonists should have been the akatsuki and after pein’s death, the series should have wrapped up. was sasuke a little too messed up emotionally to just go back to the village at that point? …yeah. but him returning to the village voluntarily would’ve been more satisfying, and i’m honestly sure that, if the story was put in the hands of someone with plot-writing capabilities, it could have been done. this is supposed to focus on itachi so i’m not going to hypothesize on a hypothetical canon “story ends after pein arc” ending.

2.) have him be redeemed. this just… literally had to have been done from the beginning. unconditionally. in the previous ask i talked about how the characters are all displayed as wholly “good” or wholly “bad” and making a wholly bad character like itachi “good all along” just isn’t really possible with the way good characters are framed. it puts him in a middle ground that’s inconsistent with that categorization and fans are more or less forced into picking a side for him based on personal opinions. that alone could’ve been fixed by better characterization but again, off-topic. the torturing sasuke thing would have to go. sasuke could have returned to the compound either after itachi had left already (and was given some sort of clue or learned later that it was him) or itachi could’ve noticed him and left without speaking; very clearly not hurting him but he also just killed the rest of the clan so you can mark it as “okay, he’s a bad guy, but he spared sasuke entirely. why?” and there’s already suspicion he had an ulterior motive. sasuke could have decided on revenge on his own; made hateful through pain and loneliness along the lines of gaara or no-iruka naruto (it would make gaara’s communications with sasuke later around their battle/attack on konoha more chilling or get through to him more). i feel like it also would have made it easier to convince sasuke to return to konoha because naruto is pretty able to get through to people like that. in the hallway scene, itachi would still refuse to take on sasuke but eventually do so, and should have been clearly going out of his way not to hurt him; ending the battle by making him unconscious with the sharingan or something, i dunno. the indifference would (unintentionally, on itachi’s part) fuel sasuke’s choice to get revenge; which he would have made apparent that that’s what he desires (though of his own volition this time). itachi probably wouldn’t be expecting that, but as he’s dying later in life, he’d give in to a final battle with sasuke, both feeling himself being redeemed throughout it and giving sasuke the satisfaction of killing him. but if it was super clear he went out of his way to hurt sasuke at any cost, the “itachi was good all along” thing would make so much more sense. however…

3.) this is a subset of 2. for 2 to exist and itachi to be painted as a good guy, the reason the clan was killed would need to be different. so, canonically, it’s stated that the uchiha are oppressed, they want more rights, threaten a coup d’tat if they don’t get them, and so danzo the third hokage orders them to be killed by itachi. this is where we get into trouble. as i’ll repeat time and time over, the narrative frames people as being unconditionally good or bad. in the eyes of the average fan, the uchihas fighting back against the leaf village- konoha is always shown as good- for more rights is morally gray at the absolute best, and more likely to be seen as bad, as with most revenge/opposition to the system motives in fiction. which is another unfortunate product of the very morally polarized lens the characters are placed under. but, more in theory, it is very hard to make itachi and sasuke “good” at the same time. if you’re going down a fighting oppression arc in a story, you want the character fighting against it to be viewed positively (like katniss, right?). so, by extension, itachi or sasuke gets to be the bad guy, and it’s 100% reliant on what the uchiha clan’s motive was. frankly, a lot of the uchiha get painted as villains (with the curse of hatred, it makes partial sense)- madara, sasuke, itachi, obito, etc, so pretty much all the main ones are “bad” at some or all points of their story. what would’ve worked best in my opinion is to go back to madara’s time and the initial interactions between the uchihas and the hidden leaf village. basically just… make them bad/a threat from the beginning; no government oppression, they were always just villains/in the “bad box” (note that this is in terms of canon adherence and i’ll get to my own personal “if i wrote this” in a second because eh, i don’t like framing the hidden leaf village as good at all lmao). they were just bad and going to take over the village, so they were killed by itachi before they killed everyone else. after obito got to sasuke, he could have constructed an elaborate lie about what the village was “secretly” doing and made it convincing to anyone watching, as well. so you think itachi is bad again, and sasuke is justified in wanting revenge against the village, learn later that itachi was good, but then it’s also hard to fault sasuke, since he was only working with the information that he was given and had the right idea at heart. but basically with what we’re given it’s almost impossible to make everyone “good” so it’s probably not even worth it. i mean it’s: itachi, sasuke, hidden leaf, uchihas- pick two to make redeemable at most. i don’t think telling a thirteen year old to just kill his whole family is really ever justified and i’m super biased so i’m going with itachi and sasuke.

in terms of what i would have done if i had full control (and the massacre HAD to happen), here’s what i’d do:

1.) itachi explains to sasuke at the beginning what happened and basically tells him to grow stronger through friendship/bonds to prevent this from ever happening to someone he loves; sasuke’s narrative then revolves around revenge against the government instead of his brother, which would be a good parallel to naruto’s wanting to be hokage, since the two are so paralleled in general. they could both learn something from that. plus i would want the words of “grow stronger from love” (instead of from hatred) to impact him and he has a deeper desire to grow closer to people and make friends, i guess. (this is my most preferred outcome not gonna lie)

2.) i also wouldn’t be opposed to itachi just taking sasuke with him but that would usurp most of the actual story.

3.) the writing is good and itachi lives and gets more time to reconcile with sasuke. he returns to konoha and becomes hokage and takes care of his crows and chickens and spends time with his niece sarada and his nephew-in-law boruto and niece-in-law himawari who all adore him. admittedly this is INCREDIBLY self-indulgent but hey, i have control of the story now. and there’s no reason this and 1 can’t exist at the same time, haha. 

god that was so long i’m so sorry anon but i hope you like it!!!! i like… am not gonna read this over to edit it so sorry for typos. ): thank you again for asking!!! aaa if you read it and would like to please let me know what you think!!!