Naruto 694: Naruto and Sasuke (1)

[rouge_angle]

I'm later than usual, and there's no pictures this week (unless I find a moment to put them in later) but I will try to make up for that with the discussion, even though I feel like I'm rehashing a lot of old issues with it. It also might interest you all to know that Shonen jump has confirmed Naruto will be ending in 5 chapters, so this is

Comments

[rouge_angle]

691 was a wonderful thing. And I do personally prefer the childhood friendship between Hashirama and Madara to the one between Naruto and Sasuke. Naruto and Sasuke are shounen rivals that saved each other's lives, but who never seemed to interact just for fun.But Hashirama and Madara were shown playing together as well as just training, spent time discussing their dream and comforted each other when they were sad. That is a clearly demonstrated friendship, not a friendship we're supposed to believe just because the author says it's there. (Telling us things rather than taking the time to show them is a failing of Kishi's as an author.)

The other thing with N&S is that whenever one of them seemed to get stronger than the other, the other got ragingly jealous. M&H were on more equal footing and even as an adult Madara doesn't mind that Hashirama was the stronger, and actually revels in it (though that is his masochistic bloodknighting tendencies shining through).

I wonder if Kishimoto regards the Uchiha massacre as a genocide or a neccessay evil because I frankly don't know what to think. In any other manga or anime it would be treated as an atrocity and noone would praise Itachi unless there was something wrong with them.

IMO his treatment of the Uchiha as a whole is extremely problematic. These people are genetically predisposed to turn evil when they lose someone they love? Oh, just as well they were killed off then, they were a problem waiting to happen! I liked to think that Tobirama's explanation about ~special hate chakra~ was a load of rubbish, but it's clearly endorsed by the narrative and we're supposed to buy into it too.

[akatsuki210]

These people are genetically predisposed to turn evil when they lose someone they love?

I just realized it now, but you know what this reminds me of? There's a tabletop role-playing game called Exalted, where you play a character who has a divine spark inside them. Thing is, mortal bodies (and more importantly, minds) weren't really designed to handle that kind of power, and so each character has a Flaw and a Limit Break. A Limit Break is a situation that causes the Exalted to lose control of themselves and give in to their Flaw. If a Limit Break happens, the character has to make a Willpower roll, and if they fail, they become temporarily controlled by their Flaw. A Flaw might be something like "Deliberate Cruelty" (exactly what it says on the tin) or "Red Rage of Compassion" (attacking the perceived cause of another's suffering without restraint). Flaws based on compassion tend to have Limit Break conditions that involve the Exalted witnessing someone else's suffering--so an Exalted really can turn evil (for a day) if they lose someone they love.

tl;dr: Sasuke is an Eclipse Caste Exalted with the Red Rage of Compassion Flaw...except his Limit Break happened when Itachi died and can only be turned off by Naruto punching him in the face while yelling about friendship.