#tenten canon

[tentenarchive]

In Defense of Tenten - the Chunin Exams' Written Test and Her Mirrors

A common joke made about Tenten is how obvious her mirror and line contraption, used to share answers with Rock Lee during the written exam, is. In this post, I'll show how her solution is perfectly reasonable and why she wasn't disqualified by the ninja proctors.

Firstly, we have to stablish what the objective of this written test is: to cheat. The written test was designed to be too difficult for ninjas of their level to be able to answer, forcing them to cheat from each other. Such is stated by Ibiki in the end of the First Phase chapters:

Next, the proctors are all higher level shinobi, better prepared and used to seeing various tricks and jutsu. It's not an stretch to suppose they're aware of EVERY cheating attempt made by those Genin, but were responsible for judging if their technique is too sloppy, obvious or ineffective.

My theory is supported by this scene, where Izumo eliminates one of the ninjas doing the test, claiming he took "five strikes".

It implies the competitors are allowed five errors before being disqualified, and one of the eliminated Genin makes it clear to the reader the "five strikes" are five times being caught cheating.

Naruto is also implied to be caught almost cheating when Hinata offers him her test answers (it can be interpreted either as Naruto being closely watched or Naruto's nerves making him think like that, half the proctors' job is to scare the Genin) and even then he is not automatically removed.

Tenten's technique may be obvious for us, as readers who have been shown by the author himself how she did it, but it's a single and successful attempt, and it's not commentated by any other characters, meaning no one caught on her besides the proctors, and they would only disqualify her if she did it more than once (which wasn't needed, she found the mole with all the answers!).

A pettier criticism i've "how isn't anyone seeing the lines?" to which the answer is very simple: manga is a visual media and the author needed the audience to understand how she was manipulating the mirror. If you take in consideration Tenten's fight with Temari in the anime - which is filler, btw, and it's up to you reading this to decide if it's a fair assessment on their abilities or not - she's shown using invisible lines to manipulate her weapons after throwing them. The lines are, conveniently, only visible when the animation needs us to understand how the weapons are moving backwards. Any other frame they're invisible.

You can see in the panel how the lines fade out towards the bottom and only show where they're attached to the mirror.

Finally: that's exactly what Ibiki expected the genin to do. There have been a few posts, specially on twitter, asking "how are you supposed to pass if you don't have a kekken genkai??". Like Tenten. That's how.

Kankuro and Tenten are the only characters which Kishimoto showed us cheating that didn't use an exclusive DNA super power. Kankuro and Tenten both use hidden threads, one uses chakra lines for puppetry and the last manipulates mirrors. They also pass their answers to their teammates, Temari and Lee.

(Sakura is the only confirmed character to do the entire test without cheating. Congrats Sakura!! You could argue Hinata used her byakuugan to cheat like Neji, but if you think she did it by herself, I will give you the pleasure of congratulating Hinata too. Congrats Hinata!)

Tenten's method was practical, and used her specific skill set: summoning and kunai work (where do you think the mirrors came from? a scroll, that's for sure). It was probably set up before the test started, during the commotion Team 7 created with their arrival. We're not shown it because Tenten is a tertiary character and Kishimoto wouldn't invest 2-3 panels of set up for a 3 panel sequence pay-off that works by itself very well. She is smart, did great and made sure her teammate was not left behind.

Tenten is not even the most absurd method used in this exam, so, as a treat, i will show you, in order, the most obvious cheats shown in the manga from least to most!

Sasuke's Sharingan If you're a ninja from the Leaf Village, you know who Sasuke Uchiha is and what a Sharingan is capable of. Unfortunally for him, the Exam is being held at the Leaf Village and all the jounin and chuunin there are from the Village. Any proctor looking at his direction in a position in front of him could see clearly his eyes and know exactly what he was doing.

Neji's Byukuugan Like the Sharigan, you can physhically see when it's activated, with the downgrade of being noticible by people sitting at up to 95º from him, as the veins are visible on the sides of his face too. A fair trade for the ability to see better than the Sharingan, even if you're not able to copy, in my personal opinion.

Ino's Mind Transfer Jutsu The jutsu's hand signal is simple and can be missed, but it's still obvious for any Konoha ninja watching, it is a very recognizable ability. There's also the higher chance of Ino being caught since she needs to do it three times (once for getting Sakura's answers, twice to pass them to Chouji and Shikamaru). Besides, the "dropping dead on the table" thing can be disruptive in a mostly silent classroom.

Akamaru and Kiba's communication Akamaru is barking all the way through the exam, and while the balloon used for the text is the one for thoughts, it's also the same used for whispered conversations up to this point in the manga. The anime makes the barks happen in the real world, and not in their thoughts, and as far as i could find, Kiba can understand dog language but there's no psychic talk between them. By the noise alone he could be caught. I think he wasn't expelled just because a full conversation between dog and human is a novel enough ability to not be considered by most ninjas unaware of the Inuzuka clan's special abilities.

The Most absurd one: Kakuro and his Puppet He put an entire guy no one knows and has never been seen in a room where all the authorities are from the same village and have, at least, a vague knowledge of each other's existence. To increase the absurdity, somehow everyone let Kankuro use his own puppet to guide himself to the bathroom. I cannot express enough how unlikely it is that, in a real info gathering mission inside a single room where all the higher rank ninjas are exclusively from the same village, Kakuro's plan could work. Most decent sensors could also catch the chakra line's signature.

I'll give it to him, making the puppet talk helps with the disguise, but it only fools his fellow attendees, not the proctors. He's too confident that he didn't raise any alarms.

But Ibiki goes as far as insinuating he knows (and has known from the start) about the puppet's existence when Kankuro comes back from the bathroom.

If Kankuro was able to finish the test and not get disqualified, even if he had what I consider the most obvious cheating attempt from the named characters shown, it's fair game for Tenten and all the other important cheaters. Besides, it's a single attempt at cheating, even if it required an entire prep work for it, so it doesn't matter if all the high level ninja's are aware, that's not enough to kick him out.

I cannot leave out the meta reasons why these characters weren't removed from the class: they're important to varying degrees to the story and they need to advance through the first phase to keep readers engaged.

Regardless of how absurd I think Kiba's and Kankuro's methods are, they need to go all the way to the fight tournament after the Forest of Death, where they have important roles to fill: Sasuke and Naruto are main characters and are prioritized by the narrative; Ino and Sakura will have an important character developments and flashbacks during their fight; Neji has an entire arc that only concludes all the way in his fight against Naruto; Kiba is the rival for Naruto in the surprise fighting tournament and he is one of the few characters able to match Naruto's silliness so he can win in a silly way; Kankuro and Tenten are both part of the two strongest cells present in the event, the Sand Siblings and Team Gai, both introduced as real threats to Team 7, and having anyone from these cells lose would undermine the narrative created around then. All of them would get through anyway.

Tenten losing against Temari in future parts of the Chuunin Exam has narrative importance too, a fight I will cover in the next In Defense of Tenten, but in short Tenten was introduced as a threat alongside Neji and Lee, her abilities and experience surpassing Team 7's. Having her lose against one the Sand Shinobi serves to show how big their gap in power is: if someone more experienced and well trained than them can't win against them, Team 7 has no chance. It's part of the build up for the future Naruto and Gaara fight, and the suspense about their real strength (since the fight doesn't exist in the manga, only the result is shown).

Conclusion: people are overly critical of Tenten because she's seen as a "lolcow" in the Naruto fandom, in part by the bad adaptation of her fight with Temari to the anime, which poisoned any feat of hers before and after it; but also because Naruto and Boruto don't give satisfying ends to any of the original female cast besides Hinata (she marries the man she loves and becomes a housewife away from the battlefield, an honorable decision i will never shit on, she never wanted to be a ninja and is a kind mother and wife, good for her!) so all female characters are seem as weak and useless when compared to their male peers. Naruto is a work riddled with undercover misogyny, never out right stated but always preventing the girls to achieve any meaningful resolution or permanent development.

That added to the ever expanding powerscalling abilities and fights make characters with simpler and down to earth abilities and feats outdated by its own universe. Knowing how big the Naruto fights and jutsu get in the future make people look down on crafty solutions like sealing scrolls, kunai and mirrors, when that is a perfectly respectable solution within the series and matches the powerlevel presented this early in the story.

Tenten is not weak, or bad, or useless. She's misrepresented by the most popular media consumed: the anime, and further misunderstood by the fans of said work. Large fandoms can be allergic to text interpretation and infighting is stimulated to the point fans of smaller characters are bullied off social media and forums (i.e. the forum where I got the list of all chapters Tenten is in is filled to the brim with comments about how OP should move the topic to "fan works" since no one would want to read about it in the canon work page, or how the mods shouldn't allow him to have a thread). I respect Tenten's feats, as well as other small characters', and refuse to be fed the same "uselessness" narrative this fandom always had, because i actually enjoy Naruto, even if i have many problems with it, and I take it seriously.

She did great.

[suja-janee]

My annual obligatory Nejiten post ahaa

[kvohru]

he wants that cookie so effing bad / halloween 2024

[thesauce8]

I can’t believe Kishimoto killed off half of the only other tolerable couple besides Shikatema lmao. I would’ve loved to see Neji and Tenten together in Boruto, but instead we get ships that need to mischaracterize the characters involved to work and the worst matchups.

[iveneveze]

[gloomymelody]

Thought I should share some kinda old Naruto fanart!

First up: sasuhina fanart lmao😭

Next up:

Gaara and Tenten!

The cuties!!

And finally... Deidara with my oc, Yulia!

I LOVE THEM SO MUCH

I love Yulia!! I kinda made changes to her (like her name used to be juni lol)

I STILL LOVE HER :(( I NEED TO WRITE A FANFİC FOR HEEER

[milk--trauma]

Crackshipping with Kotone

Other OCs belong to: Toukishi (c) stinkysenju.oc and Rini (c) rini_sasaki

[amzyspinkarch]

This is why you will NEVER convince me TenTen didn’t have potential. You mean to tell me that there’s someone who can scoop up the Pacific Ocean and put it in a tool, doesn’t have potential? Someone who used legendary weapons just like that, isn’t like that? I don’t care. I don’t care. TenTen had major potential and could’ve been explored more.

[martialartslover7]

This one, is for me. I always wanted to do this, and finally, I made it. See this story as a form of therapy session for myself, and many others, who love the hell out of Tenten, and feel so annoyed at her INSANE lack of screentime.

This meme isn't even a joke that is worth a laugh, the freaking swing that Naruto sat on, has more screentime than her entire character ever had in years.

May the games begin. This time, Temari won't be getting away. Sorry, Temari fam, just this once, there will be some payback. No bad blood, OK?

Basically, what I did here was turning Tenten into a techwiz and gadget inventor. Comparable to Tails and Coco Bandicoot. She is a weapon specialist, she gotta be working on her own toolsets and weapons in her spare time, no one can convince me otherwise. That shouldn't just be limited to weapons per se, gadgets, tools, anything to heave herself higher, considering that her chakra mass and nature are lacking.

There you go, I just gave her a true standalone purpose that doesn't involve her being too dependant on anyone. Becoming a full-on inventor of tools to assist those shinobi in need, that can have some serious mileage out of her inventions, should their chakra nature or their general chakra flow be too weak to sustain themselves. Have some additional AU fodder, Tenten fans. Thank me later.

Also, I was listening to this, while writing this entire story. It was the motivating kick for me. And once you read the lyrics, you will figure it out, eventually. I hereby refer to this as Team Gai's motivational anthem for Tenten.

Anyway, enjoy.

[artistaduchess]

Day 6: Promise 🥺👍✨

Neji le hizo una promesa a Tenten ~

No te déjate sola Tenten...

[sanjiafterhours]

It's hilarious how naruto has chemistry with almost every character in that show except hinata

[tentenarchive]

FUN FACT!

Gai sensei tried to teach the Primary Lotus to all of his team, but only Rock Lee was able to learn and use it! So, at some point, Tenten trained to execute this taijutsu move!

[sardonicfactory]

pining doodles

[kvohru]

mean it literally - nejiten week '24

day 4 - يقبرني (ya'aburnee; arabic) a way to declare your hope that your loved one will outlive you, as it would be unbearable to live without them.

“That’s kind of how I feel about you,” Tenten said contemplatively from above, startling Neji from his position against the tree. He jumped ever so slightly, the book in his lap slamming shut. She frowned, still looking down at him. He was reading in their usual spot under that willow tree, and she had ‘snuck up’ on him. (In reality, she’d been standing behind him and reading over his shoulder for the past few minutes. Hardly being inconspicuous, too.) “That could not have actually scared you, Neji. I was literally humming as I walked up here.”

“You don’t exactly inspire danger, Tenten,” he replied drily, but there was no real annoyance in his voice.

He leaned back against the tree trunk, craning his neck back to look at her. “I was reading.”

She scrunched her nose cutely the way she always did, before dropping down to sit next to him. “And you’re a shinobi. You should be able to sense danger,” she argued absentmindedly, reaching over to open the book back up to the page he was reading. He appreciated the gesture—the instinctiveness of it, the casual affection in it— and he, in turn, angled it towards her.

She gasped, her brows furrowed and her mouth dropping open, “How dare you—”

His hand reaching to grab a leaf that was tucked between her hair effectively silenced her. “You were saying?” His eyes barely strayed from her face— from her wide brown eyes and the slight part of her lips, to the pink on her cheeks and her skewed bangs. She was beautiful, Neji noted without any surprise. It was something that didn’t shock Neji anymore, a realisation he’d long come to terms with. Tenten was really pretty.

“Don’t do that,” she breathed after a second, dropping her forehead on his shoulder, no doubt trying to hide how flustered she'd gotten. That was also something she had sort of gotten used to— Neji doing seemingly small things that would set off a torrent of butterflies in her stomach. And it was hard to play it off when things like this happened— he knew her too well for her to be able to hide it. So at some point… she kind of stopped trying to.

She just let it happen.

“You were reading, weren’t you?” She shifted next to him, pointedly avoiding his eyes and staring at the book in his lap. It was something about Suna (and the neighbouring lands?), but she wasn’t quite sure. Her leg pressed up against his, and when she leaned into his shoulder to read with him, the smell of her shampoo wafted into his nose.

“Mhmm,” he hummed, and she felt the vibration. “You said something when you came here. What was it?”

She pointed at a paragraph on the page, leaning her head against him. He didn’t mind. “I was talking about this,” she replied airily. “I said it’s kind of how I feel about you.”

Yo’burnee (يقبرني) is an Arabic phrase that directly translates to ‘bury me’, and it is a way to declare your hope that your loved one will outlive you, as it would be unbearable to live without them. It is often used as a way to express extreme affection, and in a more lighthearted manner (ex: “Yo’burnee jamelak”, translating to ‘your beauty buries me’)...

Neji stilled, his heartbeat picking up in his chest. He didn’t know how to approach this. They’d been stuck in this will-they-won’t-they limbo for so long now that he was sure nothing she could say or do could shock him anymore, but there he was. Blushing like an idiot over a vague, roundabout declaration of affection.

So instead, he wilfully missed her point. Danced around it and toed the line but not quite. Nudging her gently with his shoulder, he asked, “So you think I’m pretty, huh?”

And as expected, she rolled her eyes, pushing herself off of him to make a point. “I take it back. You’re the worst.”

(After a while though, in the quiet of the meadow, with no one to hear him but her, he whispered, “I feel that way about you, too, Tenten.”)

︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶

The first thing a very teary-eyed Tenten said to her (could’ve been dead!) boyfriend when she visited him in the hospital was, “I didn’t think you meant it literally, you dick!”

many, many, many months (and a war) later.

[erumai-maadu]

(Slowly going back to my naruto era again…. Yay ) it’s so frustrating that Team Gai didn’t get to mourn completely. Like only Lee did and I get it that’s his rival and tenten that was her friend who also dealt with Lee and Gai ‘s shenanigans and Gai felt out of character when he told Lee like I get it but he never grieve after losing one of his students….

(muhahahaha come back to the pits with us mel. we have cookies!)

So much about Neji’s death was handled so badly, which explains the commonality of Neji Lives AUs. because EVERYONE knew that was bullshit.

So earlier I was watching an OSP Trope Talk (that series is a goldmine for writers btw everyone should go check it out) on fridging, and there were a few things that Red said which stuck out to me a lot.

Side note here: Neji wasn’t fridged, necessarily, but since fridging is a bad character death, Red was discussing a lot of character death tropes and how to write a good character death.

The main takeaway from the video is that a good character death feels like a conclusion to their arc somehow. Like even if it cuts off their life and their arc/future to some degree, things have wrapped up enough in their arc that the death feels correct or acceptable in some way. That clearly doesn’t happen here.

I think the reality is that Kishimoto designed Team Gai to be side characters, and killed Neji for emotional impact to Naruto and Hinata, as well as to set an example for how brutal the war was going to be. Nobody else died. It wasn’t a satisfying conclusion to his arc in any way, especially given that his whole narrative was about breaking free from the idea of the branch protecting the main family with their lives.

I think the arc of the Hyuuga clan was handled badly just in general but that’s a different (and related) conversation.

People can talk about “well it was Neji’s choice not because he had to” all they want. it just doesn’t feel satisfying. it’s a spit in the face to everything that Neji’s arc had worked up for till then.

Another thing is that a good character death has the characters around them grieve and be deeply affected by it.

Lee didn’t really grieve. He got to be sad, got to go “nooooo nejiiiiiii” and then never really mentioned it again. Naruto got a scene with Neji (that was longer than anything he got with HIS OWN TEAM RAHHH GRRR) and then was at the funeral.

The war was raging around them so one can argue they didn’t have the time to grieve. And honestly that could’ve been a very interesting thing. Forcing all of them to delay their grief because there’s a war going on, we’ll have to deal with this later, having them fight to stay focused on the task at hand, and the consequences of putting off that emotion.

Seeing something, anything that Lee and Tenten and Gai do to keep Neji in their minds. Even just them visiting his grave. Gai lost his father in a war and to lose a student, someone he probably saw as like a child to him, in a war would have been incredibly traumatic and hard for him.

Insane that in the manga there is literally no panel of Lee and Tenten at Neji’s funeral. We see team 10. but not Gai or Lee or Tenten. In the anime they’re there, so small condolences I guess.

Neji, like Shikamaru, is what I like to call a “main side character”. They are the side characters with a lot of screen/panel time and have these big and important narrative arcs that take up time and have an impact on the main character.

Lee, and Tenten especially are minor side characters who don’t get much. And Gai to some extent.

Lee gets his match against Gaara and his time during the chunin exams, and then beyond that I don’t believe we see much of him in a major narrative way. Even in the retrieval arc he’s mostly just there to show how strong Kimimaro is, rib Gaara a little about injuring him, and then sit there and ooh and aah while he summons enough sand to change the landscape.

Gai gets a bit of panel time as elite kickass jounin and Kakashi’s good friend, but still gets relegated to the side for Obito once he pops up. Madara vs Gai changed the culture the same way Lee dropping his weights did, and I think having Naruto bullshit no jutsu him back to life was…. A Choice. I got thoughts about that one too. I like that they did permanently disable him as a consequence, so his choice does have some narrative weight that others don’t. Gai gets a level of respect and dignity as a character but doesn’t really get an arc.

Tenten is the side character of all side characters. Doesn’t have a canonical last name, we know nothing about her, gets a fairly forgettable jutsu that you only really think about if you’re obsessed with her (diagnosis), and gets less screentime than Tsunade’s pet pig or Naruto’s sad boy hours swing. Her main traits come from anime filler arcs that only exist because some mfs on SP’s team LOVE team gai with all their hearts, and i adore them for this. But again, as a very minor character, she doesn’t get an arc or a focus or anything. and that’s fine, such is the nature of side characters, and such is my burden for getting obsessed with them so hard.

the point of all of this is that Tenten and Lee, and Gai to some extent, aren’t narratively important enough to bother getting panel time for grief. I think that’s why they didn’t get any sort of scene mourning Neji. I and the rest of the team gai fandom care more about Team Gai than Kishimoto ever did and that’s a little sad.

In the end it’s just bad writing, plain and simple. If Kishi needed Neji to die, there was a lot of narrative setup that he skipped in the process, and a lot of narrative afterward that would’ve helped justify the choice and make it actually satisfying.

Neji Lives AU for the win, as always.

[doodlesfromacat]

*waits until the end of pride to post gay shit*

I colored this last night on a rush so it doesn't look great, but i still like it, here's ShinjuTen posting

This is kinda cool, when i was a teenager i told my friends i was gonna make Shinju Bi, to sorta like... check the vibe, and got just the most atrocious response, and shoved myself deeper into the closet than ever before

Literally over a decade later, i'm out of the closet and so is Shinju, and i can freely have my "weapons master x weapons maker" ship