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srs-deep-dives · 3 months ago

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Minato & Kushina: A "Deep Dive" Analysis (Section A, Part III)

Today we will conclude Section A on Minato and Kushina as each other's anchors. (Parts I and II here.)

Picking up where we left off in Gaiden, we have Kushina’s coming-to…

…and the climaxing showdown with Kurama.

(Section A) III. Minato and Kushina as unified anchors

Now it must be emphasized that, as the manga has shown all along, Minato and Kushina rival Kurama together. There is no ‘Minato fights Kurama’ or ‘Minato wins ‘with Kushina’s help,’ as many fans have misread. The two are a duo, a uniform team; two equal halves of ONE. And ONLY against these two equal halves of one TOGETHER is Kurama overcome. That is how it is here. That is how it is the night they save the village. And that is how it is with Kurama’s redemption (the baby born of their love, half-Minato-half-Kushina, fulfilling their legacy).

To make this abundantly clear, Kishimoto filled the oneshot with notes to Kushina’s prowess. So let us consider the showdown within its proper context.

The chapter opens with Iwa’s two jinchūriki saying to an outmatched Team Jiraiya, “If you really wanna fight us you better bring Nine Tails’ jinchūriki.” Their use of Bijū Bombs tells us they would be rivaled by Kurama’s power. And it tells us Minato is no match for Son and Kokuō’s, who, put together, are weaker than Kurama by himself. Thus Minato by himself (let alone with a Sannin) cannot match two Bombs weaker than one from Kurama. “...you better bring Nine Tails’ jinchūriki.” The very opening line foreshadows Minato and Kushina fighting together.

A few pages later, Kushina meets her keepers, saying she has “sealing jutsu training with Namikaze Minato.” The next page reveals she is teaching Minato Uzumaki fūinjutsu. When Minato augments her seal in his own style, he is adding to and enhancing a jutsu he learned from Kushina. “I promise to go all out again today!” (Kushina has been giving these lessons her all and Minato has more than kept up.) “You pick up things real quick, Minato. And there are still tons of Uzumaki clan sealing jutsu WE haven’t covered yet, so...” (They have been doing this together for quite a while.)

Skipping forward (in flashback), Mito remarks that Kushina has “much more lustrous hair” (strength) than her – i.e. Kushina will surpass the woman who sealed the full Nine Tails inside of herself. This flashbacks takes place a few years ago. And we have seen a 24-year-old Kushina give birth, have Kurama extracted, subdue him while at death’s door, and offer to fully seal him back and drag him with her into death all within the same hour. At death’s door. Are we for a moment to assume she didn’t have even a portion of this power as a teenager? Why is this emphasis of Kushina surpassing Mito important? Because it is a mirror parallel: Minato has “a most powerful shinobi ranking alongside First Hokage Hashirama;” Kushina is “a strong child” with “much more lustrous hair than [First Hokage Hashirama’s wife Uzumaki Mito].”

While Minato is creating the Rasengan, Kushina with implied ease binds her ANBU guards (two of the top jōnin in the village) with both unable to break free. One thinks to himself how her binding power is getting stronger with age – implying that it may not be the first time she has done this.

The jutsu common to dying-Kushina, the ANBU-binding, and the present fight against Kurama is her Adamantine Sealing Chains. What do these Chains seal? Chakra. What is Nine Tails? A breathing mass of chakra. Where is she currently sealing him? Inside the seal binding him inside her. He is not at his full fighting capacity.

So we are inside Kushina’s seal by which Kurama is already bound. He has struck and stabbed Minato (we’ll get to Minato’s nerfing in a moment) and is wrestling Kushina for control – i.e. Minato and Kushina are also not at their full fighting capacity. Kurama is forming a Bijū Bomb in his (breaking) binds while Kushina is further binding him with her Chains. Our weakened Minato uses Rasengan against Kurama’s weakened Bijū Bomb and manages to match it enough to fix Kushina’s seal in a double knockout.

Minato is seriously underrated. But let us not forget: so is Kushina. And it is their combined, two-halves-as-one power that defeats Kurama. Just like their final fight which saves Konoha.

Now onto Minato’s nerfing. Kushina is knocked down and he is stabbed in her seven-tailed bijūfication. Kushina screams for him to leave her and save himself, but he refuses. If this isn’t a display of utter, unwavering devotion I don’t know what is. With a literal hole through his stomach, Minato tells her that he will never leave her.

But let us backtrack even further. First, Minato has been training all day. Since he returned from the battlefield. Creating his A-rank jutsu. The training grounds are covered in craters he made, and he promised Jiraiya he would rest. This is no run-of-the-mill practice session. He is exhausted. (Similar, to note, as he is the night of Naruto’s birth. He – excruciatingly – keeps Kushina’s seal together throughout her entire labor.)

Second, the wound Minato has already received – from chakra tail one – was no run-of-the-mill slap. Recall a parallel when Naruto bijūfies and Sakura, trying to call him back, takes a similar hit. It effectively poisons her; Kurama’s chakra seeping through her wound and numbing her body. Even after she heals herself with medical ninjutsu and is later healing Naruto.

Sakura was struck by a manifesting half-Kurama. But Kushina, unlike her son, had the full Kurama inside her. Take the damage that Sakura – the Hokage’s apprentice and a medic-nin more adept than anyone in the whole Sand Village – took, and double it. That is Minato’s blow.

Poisoned (essentially) and stabbed (foreshadowing his future death), our man is facing losing odds. On top of having worked on his jutsu all day, expending a considerable amount of chakra. Yet in his endurance FOR Kushina (inspired BY Kushina's endurance as we noted last post) he realizes a way through. What a man. And thus, we have the climaxing resolution of the vessel motif: Kurama proclaims Kushina as his “pillar” – that, in effect, he has filled her vessel. Minato, sensing his own love inside her, tells him that he is wrong.

Here we play into the ninshū lore of people sharing chakra and emotions. We’ve seen it with the Sage bestowing ninjutsu. We’ve seen it with Naruto and the Allied Shinobi. Here at last, Kushina realizes her vessel full, and Minato, feeling those feelings, projects himself into the seal. This can also be viewed in terms of being a seal itself. Kurama is literally sealed, permanently, within Kushina. The exact same can be said for Minato’s love. Note his language, present tense: “I exist inside Kushina at all times!!”

Finally, persisting in their love and endurance, they muster the mental and physical power to together defeat Kurama.

This parallels Naruto’s overcoming – again right to the angle – where Kushina also uses her Chains and Naruto his father's jutsu. Put together thus, this moment in Gaiden foreshadows Kurama’s defeat – where his arc will shift from vengeful monster to redeemed friend of Konoha. Moreover, it foreshadows the climax of Minato and Kushina’s arcs: their legacy as fulfilled in Naruto, for both Naruto and the village.

So in summary so far, Kushina is Minato’s anchor and Minato is Kushina’s. Each sees the other as the stronger one, while simultaneously strengthening the other. They change each other for the better, and endure, embodying what ‘Hokage’ stands for. Which brings us now to our next section concerning the wider narrative: their dream of Hokage.

Section B, Part I here.

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srs-deep-dives · 3 months ago

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Minato & Kushina: A "Deep Dive" Analysis (Section A, Part II)

Last post we examined Kushina as Minato's rock. Today we will examine Minato as Kushina's.

(Section A) II. Minato as Kushina's anchor

To bridge into this, I want to linger on the hair-strength metaphor we established just a bit longer. For even before Kurama enters the picture we had a foreshadowing of love vs. hate. Both ends are symbolized in this same metaphor: because it was a source of her shunning, Kushina hated her hair; until it “brought” her Minato, where she began to like it.

[The red thread of fate is a real-world East Asian myth. An invisible red cord is tied around the finger of a boy and girl ‘destined’ to meet, fall in love and marry. The cord may stretch, pull, twist and tangle, but it never breaks. Interestingly, from the moment Minato saves her, Kushina never seems to cut her hair…]

Now on a thematic note, I've color-coded key aspects of their relationship blue (like the Rasengan in the anime, which we'll discuss later), for orange will be for Naruto.

Kushina’s accepting of herself is significant because without it Kurama’s hatred would crush her. (This is why Naruto, when attempting to tame his chakra, must first overcome himself in the Waterfall of Truth.) Even though Kushina hated her hair, she had, prior to Minato’s rescue, accepted it as a part of her. But of course, as we see with both Kushina and Naruto, self-acknowledgment is not enough. Only love can conquer hatred, and that love must come from the bond with another.

When rescuing her from the Cloud captors, Minato wins Kushina’s reverence and faith. Reverence for his skills as a ninja, and even more so for his devotion to all the village: he came to save her, the outsider, calling her “one of us.” In this rescue, he gains her dual-way faith: that he would one day become Hokage; and that he could “make all of [her] dreams come true.”

This dual-way faith entwines the Hokageship and their marriage long before either happens. In other words, Kushina is wholly devoted to Minato, sharing his dream for the future. How do we know this? She determinedly decided that she’d “be the wife of the Fourth Hokage.”

Now there is a misinterpretation plaguing the fanbase that Kushina ‘gave up her own dream of being Hokage so that Minato could fulfil his.’ Friends, this couldn’t be further from the truth. It comes from a complete misreading of her character. Her statement of becoming the “first female Hokage” came from a reason she herself explains, and while it (very much) parallels Naruto’s she is not once shown chasing Hokageship.

(We will touch on this further in a later post.)

When Kushina realized her decision to “be the wife of the Fourth Hokage” is up to speculation. The Whorl Within the Spiral however – if not precisely – gets us pretty damn close.

Recall first, with the conjunction “so” (chapter: The Birth of Naruto) from our panel two screenshots above, that she names Mito and Hashirama’s marriage as influential. Before Kurama’s transfer, Mito takes Kushina to look at the Hokage rock-faces. They gaze up at Hashirama’s, and Kushina learns he is the love “inside [Mito’s] vessel.”

Which brings us to the ‘vessel’ motif. As Kurama’s jinchūriki, Kushina is a vessel for the embodiment of hatred. To overcome the hatred – that is, Kurama’s essence – and live happily, she must fill her OWN ‘vessel’ with love. This motif is repeated through the same flashback occurring in both the main manga and oneshot, the screen below being from The Birth of Naruto as introduced for the first time:

In Gaiden’s ending, Kushina is standing where Mito stood, looking at Minato’s face; Minato being, as Hashirama was for Mito, the love inside her vessel. Minato is angled exactly where his face will one day be carved in the rock. A direct shot from Kushina’s viewpoint, the panel implicates that she resolutely believes he will become the next Hokage, and, now knowing her vessel full with his love, she will one day be his wife.

Let us now consider how Minato’s love enables Kushina to overcome.

First, the words that trigger her seal to break, which leads into his confession. The trigger itself, ironically, is an implicit statement of love. (Not simply or specifically romantic love, but one of protective devotion.) Minato tells Kushina about the jutsu he’s been creating (oh we’ll get to this gem later) for her to protect her. He reveals, in other words, that she’s tremendously precious to him and keeping her safe is his top priority.

Do these words sound familiar? To the anime-watcher they should. They’re the exact words Minato told Kushina the day she fell in love with him.

The repetition is immensely important for it is Kushina’s moment of realization, in the sense of her faith and hope in Minato being proven true (a faith and hope so strong she crossed the safety of the sealing barrier to go to him, resisting Kurama’s taunts and threats with “But I’ve got... [Minato]”). Not just the realization that Minato cares for her so deeply that he will create an A-class jutsu for her, but the realization that Minato has cared so deeply for her this entire time. His protection, she realizes, is unwavering; it is a protection that endures. And so, in perfect contrast, this realization sits framed between Kurama’s tauntings on trust.

The first time Minato said, “I didn’t want to lose you,” Kushina was the outsider brought into his circle of precious people. Now the context is far more intimate, and Kushina is overwhelmed with what it means. Kurama has been provoking her despair and loneliness day after day. Saying that everybody is out to use her – a reality echoed in Minato’s own words prior (panel below). The village is out to use her – she’s its trump card in war. But Minato is not, putting his every possible effort toward her wellbeing.

So when Kushina hears this she is overcome with emotion. And with her vulnerable outside the barrier, Kurama takes the opening.

It may be worth mention (though this is me speculating) that something similar happens during Naruto’s birth. Kushina’s seal weakening is explained in the physical: while she is pregnant, her chakra that would support it is divided and diverted to growing the baby. Childbirth is also specified as the time a jinchūriki’s seal “can come completely undone.” But the exhilaration of becoming a mom playing a role in its breaking strikes an interesting parallel. In both situations, the seal is already weakened: one in her leaving the barrier to see Minato; the other for Naruto’s nourishment. Both weakenings are in themselves driven by Kushina’s love: one romantic; the other maternal. In both, Minato strenuously keeps the seal in check, the fight being driven by Minato’s love. And in both, Kurama’s attempted breakout is enabled because of their love: Kushina being emotionally vulnerable due to Minato’s direct declaration; and the literal life-result of their love being ready to leave her womb.

In both situations thus, Minato and Kushina’s love pushes Kurama’s hatred to further retaliate, highlighting a foilism between the couple and Kurama. Just as Kushina and Minato fight his hatred, Kurama fights their love, foreshadowing his eventual redemption through that love passed onto Naruto.

Now back to Gaiden and out of the theory zone. We have a bleeding Minato holding a bijūfying Kushina while augmenting her seal. Which leads to Kurama acknowledging Minato’s skill and strength. Which leads to Kurama asking why Minato would stick with Kushina to the point of risking his life. Which leads to Minato proclaiming with utmost determination that he loves her.

Hearing this, Kushina recalls Mito’s words about filling her vessel, and, realizing her vessel filled, she gains the strength to fight back. Moreover, Minato declares this to Kurama, placing himself in the role of a perfect foil: Minato is the embodiment of love inside Kushina; Kurama the embodiment of hatred.

“Release your sealing hand! This is my human pillar. You are irrelevant.”

“No. You’re wrong.” I can sense it... “I exist inside Kushina at all times!”

And here we are given one of the most striking parallels in the series. Minato’s declaration spurs Kushina to unleash her Chains against Kurama in her seal. The same thing happens – right to the angle – when Kushina appears in Naruto’s seal.

Hugging his mother for the first time, Naruto is overcome with love – under the mirror circumstance of a near-defeat by Kurama. Kushina projects her Chains, her own chakra, through her son, pinning Kurama herself. She then tells Naruto her and Minato’s story, and then, in playful conversation about her hair tells him that she loves him. The significance, recall, is that of “the red thread of fate” – i.e. the unbreakable thread of love that exists between Kushina and Minato.

She tells Naruto he is the second man to ever compliment her hair. Following her recount of genin-Minato calling it beautiful, we get this:

Kushina’s declaration to Naruto being centered around the “red thread of fate” symbolizes her passing to him her and Minato’s love. Upon hearing her words – receiving that love – Naruto gains the strength to defeat Kurama, in precise mirror to Kushina hearing Minato’s confession.

But there’s more. Note the language: “I love you,” “…so happy!!” This is identical to the language Mito employed when telling Kushina to fill her vessel.

And to top it off we have the vessel motif explicitly repeated. The Japanese anime dub (episode: Thank You) emphasizes Naruto as having his “vessel filled with” his mother and father’s love.

During their final moments alive, Kushina will say these words to Minato, reinstating that throughout her whole life with him, his love gave her utter joy. Naruto asks her, “So you were happy, even though you were a jinchūriki, Mom?” To which Kushina replies with a resolute “Yes,” bringing him to tears.

We have examined Kushina as Minato’s anchor, and Minato as Kushina’s anchor. Concluding Section A, we will look at them as each other’s anchors together.

Section A, Part III here.

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