#sannin era

[driedlillies]

“When Hiruzen decided to retire, Orochimaru applied to replace him as Fourth Hokage. He was declined for the position, as Hiruzen felt that Orochimaru lacked understanding of what it means to be a ninja of Konoha” bitch weren’t you the one who was supposed to teach him that

[uh-oh-its-bird]

Fuck ok, gather 'round it's time for another fic idea spinning off of a crumb from my last post ab time traveling team Ro into founders era:

Summary:

Fact 1; Kakashi is now 3 weeks the last living Hatake.

Fact 2; Tobirama Senju, according to dusty old scrolls Kakashi finds in his father's study, was apparently half Hatake himself.

Lonley and hurting, Kakashi grabs on to this fact with both hands and squeezes it so tight to his aching heart that his hands bleed.

Or, still processing his father's suicide, Konoha's favorite baby genius finds out he's distantly related to history's favorite baby genius and immediatly starts projecting to cope.

Digging through old journals, history books, Kakashi begins to try his own hand at the man's favorite past time; creating jutsu's. It's the both the hardest thing he's ever done and the most satisfying to date.

Ft.

1) Weirdly chill scene with Danzo (fuck that guy but hear me out) where he kinda looks at Kakashi and sees the hint of the shadow of the man who taught him. Not quite there yet, not fully, but crumbs of it. Enough to make him nostalgic, and enough to hand over an old journal that used to belong to Tobirama.

A calculated risk, he tells himself.

An unspoken challenge, both Danzo and Kakashi understand.

He wants to see how far Kakashi can go, finds himself almost eager to see how close he can come to the shadow of the man he seems so determined to chase.

(and if this side project temporarily distracts him for long enough that Orochimaru slips through his fingers, well, it's not like he knows it was this event specifically that caused that plan to fall through)

2) The fact that, both due to time and the Hatake clan's less than stellar reputation during the warring states era, Tobirama's Hatake ancestry got buried. Kakashi finding him on a dusty old family tree has ✨️political implications✨️ for Kakashi specifically. Ones he isn't all too interested in — unless it means he might be able to access things he otherwise wouldn't've.

Also just general fun surprised Pikachu faces from some people as an added bonus.

3) Kakashi becoming even more terrifying than he rightfully should be at that age !! Danzo pretty much handed him a missile and went "lmao good luck" with that journal! He should not have that! He's learning things! He is experimenting! Someone take the missile away from the baby before he learns how to make his own— oh fuck it's too late hes somehow made a nuke instead

4) Orochimaru poking Kakashi with a stick and vice versa. They are making baby genius <--> baby genius eye contact it's mildly concerning, Minato is concerned. Obito is jealous, he wishes the Snake Sannin would poke HIM with a stick

5) Kakashi bites someone. That's it that's the bullet point I just think he should get to bite someone is all.

And more !!! Im ngl I think I like Tobirama just existing in the fic as as an ever present shadow, super influential in just every single chapter but never actually present. But I won't lie if I'm giggling over the thought of Kakashi finding Edo Tensei and going ".... ok but what better way to figure out this new jutsu / seal than to ask the source directly."

Orochimaru would so help he's having too much fun with this to bother experimenting on children for Danzo. Don't talk to him rn he's having fun with corpses!! No not the corpses you asked him to have fun with, the other ones!

[pewpewpew]

Sannin piece I did for @narutocookbook zine, one of my favorite pieces I have ever painted! Collab with fic and recipe which are both So. Good! Cookbook is currently in leftover sales, don't miss it it's a really great zine with loads of very cool items!! 💕🍥🍶

[sannin-three]

The difference in expressions here is really interesting to me. The first could be a range of emotions, up to and including Hiruzen's suggestion that Orochimaru might be glad to finally kill him, possibly with some small bit of nostalgia mixed in.

But the original manga panel? There's a lot of emotion there as well, but happiness is nowhere to be found.

[thetoaddaddy]

"If you wake up haunted, it's not my fault."

Jiraiya blows a raspberry. He faces the old falling down shack of a house. “Please. You asked me to explore this house so I’m going to explore it.”

In reality Orochimaru asked him to do no such thing. He just made up a problem to do so he could do something to prove to his team he isn’t afraid of anything, supernatural or not.

[ikkakusenkin]

❛  don't you think you've already done enough damage for one day?  ❜

An overheating quarrel tightening the space between the slug and the toad came to a halt with the rise of the serpent. They had counted yet another night with eyes wide open, discovering the tunnels of a cave that seemed to have no route leading to the clear skies, their brains gradually giving in to the lack of oxygen.

The war has affected the sannin in various means, yet they have not been cornered enough to turn on one another until this very moment. Given realisation fuelled the words truthfully spoken by the man who had remained silent until the argument of the other two escalated to the higher stage, and for once the woman found her breath still.

Forcing her glare to meet the ground, she gathered the temper that had been lost, refusing to proceed with the matter so absurd. ❛ Let's just keep going ❜ softened the previous blow aimed at the man before her, ❛ there's no point in arguing over what's been done. ❜ echo addressed the company whilst the edges of her frame vanished in the shade.

@sagemom

[watermelonsloth]

I wouldn’t normally have more than one poll up at a time, but the one I currently have up (about your least favorite part of Naruto) has mostly stagnated and the results are pretty much decided unless something major changes.

[marlscherrylipstick]

tsunade had an emo phase where she dyed her hair black, wore many rings and piercings and had a big, dark eyeliner

she would also steal jiraiya's rock and heavy metal band shirts

[evilkitten3]

joke's on you i can go bonkers over any era

Okay what's your Naruto character/era primary focus like some people are more into the Akatsuki, some into the Konoha 12, some into Team Minato era, the Founders, Sannin, etc, like where do YOU generally gravitate

[futurefind]

//if i had a nickel for every time i had rea haunt a loved one’s narrative i would have. so many nickels dsghsdghhdsg (even wrt the specific subsection of ‘dies permanently/indefinitely but still gets better!’)

[showamagicalgirls]

I love the legwarmers trio from Nanako SOS (ななこSOS), episode 8. I wish they had used this kind of outfit for Charming Figures of the Magical Girl Trio (艶姿魔法の三人娘) in 1986.

[driedlillies]

Yeah Orochimaru’s commitment of more and more unethical experimentation was definitely influenced by his increasing distrust and isolation from the rest of the village and any community which tsunade and jiraiya both contributed to but. There was one more person who was abandoned by the latter. Minato Namikaze. Would have happened if Orochimaru latched onto this small child who in the middle of war lost his teacher because he decided to train some random kids he found on the battlefield (and will later abandon just like him)? Like we know Minato likes experimenting too, he both created and improved some pretty impressive jutsus, how would Orochimaru influence him? How would Orochimaru BE influenced by him? At this point, where he is not yet completely isolated, he did not join Danzo, — who, that’s another matter, definitely encouraged the human experimentation part — and didn’t start to stray on the dark path?

Anyway sensei Orochimaru and student Minato who save each other from their canon fates

[halfamask]

Based on my last post, a List of Things Kishimoto Did Right in Naruto

After Sasuke left Orochimaru, having him find another team of powerful losers to hang out with

Making the Sannin super Great and Powerful and Legendary but also like an awful gambling addict, a porn writer, and a creepy mad scientist who later becomes a Boruto era milf

Ino-Shika-Cho and showing their dads do the same types of combos together

Making Kakashi a cool, capable jonin who’s also a pathetic loser who can’t keep his children in check and reads erotica in public

Itachi loving sweets and Sasuke hating them

Every goddamn thing about Killer Bee

Flashback to the Sage and the baby little tailed beasts

The Naruto-Kurama friendship and Kurama calling him a brat (endearing)

Kisame shark boy character design (and also the super unique character designs for all the different Akatsuki members)

Nagato-Yahiko-Konan froggy costumes and Naruto’s froggy wallet

Reverse harem jutsu on Kaguya

Kakashi sweet talking Yamato to get him to take over his responsibilities

That’s all for now feel free to add others

Edit to add: Kakashi’s ninja dogs (pakkun is so cutie)

[sannin-three]

I think they're beautiful!

guys be honest do u think orochimaru is beautiful or am i delusional

[joltai-showa]

naruto chapter 4 omg omg

say sike now

what do you mean the snake toad slug combo appears on the cover page of CHAPTER 4

kishi are u kidding me

i mean it's not as much of a shock content as the one in chapter 16 (Kishi put a literal jumpscare on that cover page there lmao)

based ngl

but anyway, Kakashi, just run. these three are about to make your life so much more eventful. and you know you don't want to live an eventful life.

also again why are we entrusting children to jonins who really should be in therapy instead of stopping ten year olds from running head first into an iron fence. like, Tobirama 50 years ago made the foundation of shinobi education system and nobody (read Hiruzen because Minato simply didn't have enough time for such reforms THANK YOU OBITO) bothered to update it. BRO PLEASE TRAIN SOME PROPER EDUCATIONAL SPECIALISTS FOR YOUR GENINS, I SWEAR IT WON'T NEGATIVELY AFFECT KONOHA'S PRODUCTION OF GENIUSES.

oh, another funny thing I remembered. let's talk about the at what age senseis get their kids and have to essentially raise them. thank you, past me, for making the timeline to be able to keep track of this stuff, because shit gets wild, in particular when it comes to the nepotistic line of Hokages.

Obviously, we can't exactly calculate this stuff for Hashirama, Tobirama and Hiruzen, because the first two don't even have canonic ages and Hiruzen was born about 20 years before the foundation of ninja Academy in Konoha, so we can only start off with Hiruzen and sannins

Hiruzen was 24 when Tsunade, Orochimaru and Jiraya graduated (all of them were 6 at the time)

Jiraya was also 24 when Minato became genin (who was 10 at the time)

(I am omitting a certain someone for the funny at the end)

Kakashi was 27 when Team 7 became genins (who were 12-13 at the time)

Okay, so everything seems mostly fine (giving Hiruzen a bunch of 6 year olds to teach is certainly... interesting. no wonder all of them grew up messed up in some capacity), only people in mid-twenties were given students which, considering that the average lifespan of a shinobi in pre-villages era was like 30 years, seems reasonable.

But then we remember about Team Minato. Oh Team Minato.

Now it's a bit of a weird case here, because we can't certainly say at what point Minato was given his first genins as Kakashi graduated at 5, while Rin and Obito at 9. I've seen some absurd ranges for Kakashi's age in OG Naruto/Shippuden and people trying to somehow move his birth date to accomodate for a lot of things (because Kishi likes parallels and never considers if events he is showing make sense when compared to what he has already given in the manga/databooks), but for the sake of me not going insane I'm making my calculations with assumption that all three kids from Team Minato were born on the same year. Now, we have two possibilities:

Minato became a teacher when Kakashi graduated (year 55 after Konoha's foundation)

Minato became a teacher when Rin and Obito graduated (year 59)

And I'm inclined to believe in the second option, because a) genin teams in Konoha operate on three-men basis, so it's really weird for this rule to be broken and this 5 year old kid to be given to a really young jonin (even if both of them are GeNiuSeS) b) Hatake Sakumo aka Kakashi's dad lived until year 58 and was one of the best jonins in the village, even compared to Sannins, so it seems reasonable to me to assume that through years 55 to 58 it was Sakumo who was teaching Kakashi and the year following his death Kakashi got assigned his team and a proper sensei c) I am choosing to believe in Konoha's educational system and them NOT giving children to a literal teenager

Of course, all of the above is valid if we ignore Kakashi's chunin promotion age. Which is 6 years old (Konoha what the fuck are you doing giving the officer rank to 6 YEARS OLD????). If we still work under assumption that all kids were born on the same year, then Kakashi should never have been on the same team as Obito and Rin simply because he became chunin way before they even graduated the Academy. If we choose to believe that Kakashi was younger than Obito and Rin AND graduated the Academy on the same year as them, then he really should have been like a full head lower than Obito during the Kannabi bridge mission lmao, that's a 13 year old beefing with a 9 year old (upd I checked the wiki and while databooks have no info on Kakashi's height during Gaiden, Studio Pierrot did the sheets for his design and he is 148 to Obito's 154, so yeah, no way they are that far apart in age in Gaiden). Anyway, there's really no way to take all of the facts that Kishi dropped over the years and force them to make sense on a single timeline, so some stuff has to be ignored, because other important events will simply never take place because they contradict things from the databooks/other scenes.

Anyway, back to the topic of Minato. Now that we've decided that he got his team on the year 59 with Rin and Obito graduating, let's look at how old he was at the time... oh dear.

So fun fact, Minato is older than his students by whole wooping 10 years (yes, Obito's got a bigger age gap with his senpai than his sensei), meaning that at latest Minato started teaching his kids when he was 19. Oh, and another fun fact: the Third Shinobi World War had been ongoing for a full year at that point.

:)

:)))))))

Honestly, props to Minato. It only took 4 years for someone on the team to die. If I was given a bunch of 9 year olds (one of whom was already severly traumatised by his father's suicide and the other two formed the messiest love triangle since Hashirama/Madara/Uchiha's mossy rock with weird inscriptions) when I was 19 and a war was raging on right outside the village, someone would've been dead in, like, a month max.

(and no I don't care if Kishi repeats "OMG HE'S SUCH A GENIUS" twenty times when referring to Minato, being a genius at shinobi stuff and being a genius at teaching the shinobi stuff is, in fact, two completely different set of skills)

Oh, and one more thing. If I was given a penny every time a 19 year old man with blue eyes and blond hair had to mentor Uchiha Obito, I would have had two pennies, which is not a lot, but really weird that it happened two times.

But back to the chapter

I'm honestly crying at how random and on the nose names in Naruto are lol, like, Hatake Kakashi literally means "scarecrow in the farmlands", Haruno Sakura is "sakura in spring", I'm just so used to Horikoshi's carefully constructed names and hero alias that Naruto feels like such a whiplash

also those ideas for Kakashi's name

you just know that there exists an alternative universe where Kakashi's name means "hoe" and the insults to the guy in fanfiction are just out of this world LMAO

back to the panel and I'm loving his answer, he's any interrogator's worst nightmare

"you on the right" BROTHER THAT'S YOUR TEACHER'S KID

dude chill i'm about to get cut from how edgy you are

(tbf given his backstory this speech really is tragic, but out of context god that's the most 13 year old thing I've read all day)

girlie please he just said he wants to murk someone, chill out

Naruto😭😭😭😭😭

(I mean... eventually? lol)

I just know that Kakashi's looking at all of this and thinking to himself that there's no way in hell he, Obito and Rin could have been this bad🤣🤣🤣🤣

I mean... if Naruto was written by someone capable of doing justice to a female character not once in their lifetime, this wouldn't have been the case, but alas (and this conversation deserves to be done on case by case basis)

"i'm fine"

oh look it's the first honorary "coming late" to Obito😃😃😃😃

dude, please, MAKE A NEW FUCKING TEST

that's the same test that HIRUZEN GAVE TO HIS STUDENTS LITERALLY 45 YEARS AGO, omg Konoha's educational system is hopeless.........

(I get that it's supposed to be a cute reference to teacher-student relationship, but fucking hell, it's the same thing from Hiruzen to Jiraya to Minato to Kakashi, no wonder your villages is still running on the same systems that Tobirama established)

Kakashi you're 27 and you're promising to bully 13 year olds. do you really have nothing better to do. like therapy.

girlie, just yesterday your crush was being edgier than a knife and declaring how he's gonna kill someone, NOW you're worried about things getting dangerous?

Is finding your students in Naruto universe like choosing the flying thingie in the Avatar movies? "How will I know it's the one?" "Oh, it'll try to kill you"

that certainly explains the amount of murder that students seem to try to excercise against their teachers (Orochimaru and Hiruzen, Jiraya and Nagato & Konan, Orochimaru and Sasuke, Minato and Obito, Kakashi and Sasuke, Onoki and Deidara)

[evilkitten3]

do you think another reason the chuunin exams were created (besides filtering out the "untalented" nin & introducing them to the life of a shinobi) was to create a trauma-bond between the teammates that survived/passed it? it's no secret that kid's lives or their innocence were never really valued in Konoha (or anywhere else for that matter), so I wouldn't be too surprised to find out this was done to strengthen the bond between teammates & better their teamwork/spirit

also, do you think the chuunin exams were especially traumatic during the sannin era, especially bc they were 6 (or a few years older but defo younger than naruto's gen) ??? and even if it wasn't the chuunin exams goal to create a traumabond, it certainly did for the sannin?

honestly, no. it's possible that i'm just the sort of person who tends to assume the best of people, especially fictional ones, but it's also true that i just tend to find fucked up shit more interesting when it was done with good intentions. i'm only into cartoonishly heinous motivations when they're applied to individuals rather than systems, i guess.

the thing you need to keep in mind concerning my view of the naruto universe is that literally every single character is deeply traumatized, whether they're aware of that or not. for starters, the vast majority of characters were raised to be child soldiers in a world where that's considered normal. our modern view of the 18-21 age group as the youngest adults doesn't apply there - legally, these people are becoming adults at ages as young as twelve (and that's the improved version - a lot of the older cast members have been shinobi since as young as five or six).

even the characters who never became ninja have all been through some pretty serious trauma. ayame and teuchi lived through the kyuubi attack, tazuna and his family had to deal with the whole gatou situation, and so on. no one in this world is remotely okay by our standards. but what that means is that being a neurotic mess is the norm. for the whole. entire. world.

a world based on structures so fucked up is going to be full of thoughts that to us seem entirely contradictory - how can konoha say it cares for its citizens when of the five most famous genin-by-six, the most functional is jiraiya (kakashi is a mess, tsunade is drinking and gambling away her problems, orochimaru is out there inventing to moral event horizons to cross, and itachi murdered his whole family and tortured his little brother about it)? but - and this is something that is understandably hard for people to wrap their heads around - we're shown things from people like the sandaime's point of view. we know - for a fact - that hiruzen cares deeply about his village and its citizens, and that most of the people he was personally involved in fucking up are the ones he - genuinely - cared for the most.

the second thing you need to be aware of is that the rankings in the naruto world are based on real life ninja ranks - jounin, chuunin, and genin are all real world terms that were modified to fit the world of naruto. whether irl ninja could move up in the ranks or not is something i don't know, but given that naruto is a shounen, it makes sense for the protagonist to have a clearcut explanation of the steps he needs to take to achieve his goal (ninja president) laid out early on, and that he and his friends be given the opportunity to move through the ranks throughout the course of the story (although, as many people have pointed out, naruto stayed a genin pretty much the whole time)

from an irl perspective, the chuunin exams are a way to introduce other characters, give the main trio a chance to level up, and also have a tournament arc for funsies. in-universe, the purpose is for genin to get a chance (or six chances kabuto) to become chuunin, and to strengthen ties with other villages via a show of trust - we're showing you our next generation. this is incentive to maybe not go to war again pretty please heart emoji poop emoji.

the thing is, life and innocence are valued in konoha, and likely the other villages as well, though we don't see it as much. but it's such a twisted, foreign concept to us real world non child soldiers that it doesn't seem like it (more accurately, it's valued by the people but not the system, and the people in charge of the system ignore that bc unfortunately for the entire naruto universe sakura didn't get around to inventing mental health until after the fourth war ended)

danzou and hiruzen exemplify this perfectly imo. hiruzen is full of ideals and beliefs and trust, and bc of that isn't able to see the system for what it is and can never fully understand why all of his good intentions keep churning out shitshows. on the other end of the spectrum, danzou is very aware of the world he lives in, possibly more than almost any other character. but bc of that he views the nature of humans as a flaw for shinobi to overcome - ninja are tools for the good of the village, and can and will be discarded just as easily. from a brutally practical viewpoint, danzou and hiruzen were probably genuinely extremely effective at keeping konoha together. it's just that how that worked out and how they did it is morally abhorrent to the majority of people (including hiruzen himself)

lastly, the concept of trauma as we view it not only doesn't but honestly can't exist in the world of naruto. say someone has a jutsu that allows them to create a brain scan similar to something we can do irl. the effects of mental illness on an adult brain wouldn't register as anything abnormal bc that's what everyone's looks like. you aren't having a "panic attack" or a "trauma response" or a "flashback", you're just going through the same shit everyone else is. that's all par for the course, it's just what life is like. that's how the world of naruto sees it, at least.

so where we see "children going through horrific events together and bonding bc they have no choice", the residents of narutolandia see "tuesday". so no, i don't think the chuunin exams were formed with the intent of gluing people to each other via trauma - they don't need to be. that's what life is for.

concerning the sannin, i'm not sure they ever took the chuunin exams. i honestly don't even know if the chuunin exams would've been a thing yet - the earliest one we know of is the one kakashi and his team were at, which was konoha-only and thus already fairly different from the one naruto went through. the sannin lived through all of the first three ninja wars, and though they probably didn't fight in the first one, they likely became genin just as it ended (otherwise i'm not sure how sarutobi would've had time to teach them...?). orochimaru's parents were already dead by the time he became a genin, so it's not hard to imagine they died in the first war. the sannin are actually relatively lucky - the second world war didn't happen until they were in their 20s, so they got a good two decades of not being at war (this is the longest space of time between the wars, followed by the time between the third and fourth wars (~15 years) and then the time between the second and third wars (less than 1 year)).

actually, thinking about it now, i think it's possible that spend early pre-ninja childhood with their village at war, then spending the rest of their youths in (relative) peace, and then finally getting tossed right back into shitshow two electric boogaloo might've been why they ended up more fucked up than most. so i guess the solution really was the moon coma after all

tldr: madara was right. not where i thought i was going with this but it does seem to be where we ended up