100 Things, Week 34: Naruto Ch. 616 - Those Who Dance in the Shadows
I cannot promise that this will be the only Naruto post I do, and it's by no means going to cover everything I think about the series (or even a notable percentage of everything) because I think a lot of things about the series, most of which I haven't had time to sort through recently because of Life(TM). Then again, I can't say these posts are designed to be a comprehensive catalog of my thoughts and opinions on any given topic -- just a five-paragraph foray -- so what am I apologizing for?
The fact is, this week I'm celebrating the fact that Viz's English translation of Weekly Jump titles, called Shonen Jump in America, has gone simultaneous as of today!!!! Professionally translated Naruto (and Bleach, One Piece, Yu-Gi-Oh, Toriko, and several others I haven't memorized, but my main interest is Naruto) available online,in easy-to-read format, the same day it hits the shelves in Japan! Granted, the scanlations still come out (on average) about five days before the official street date for the Japanese magazine, but I'm not asking for miracles, and the professional translations (while not perfect, but what is?) are usually very cleanly edited with proper grammar and a consistently high level of fluency. I'm proud to support the Viz and Weekly Jump teams! I still count on the kanji for really understanding what's being said, and the low cost of getting the new Naruto manga e-books from Japanese Amazon makes me wish I had the overhead cash to just plunk down on a Japanese Amazon-linked Kindle immediately... but I digress. The point is: SIMULTANEOUS NARUTO, YAY!!!
Kishimoto-sensei sends the following message to his American readers:
Congratulations on going simultaneous! As a creator, knowing that more and more people are reading my series give me the energy to keep working hard!
Obviously, this review will be put behind a cut for spoilers due to it being a fresh-off-the-presses chapter. But first, behind a different cut for spoilers, a quick-as-possible (and thus likely to gloss over lots of important details and certain to leave out 95-to-98% of the cast -- sorry) explanation of what went down in the 13-ish years and 615 chapters of story prior to this point:
So, Naruto.
The relevant timelines discussed in flashback for this story take place over more than four generations, so we'll just focus on Uzumaki Naruto: young, more bold than sensible, graduated from Ninja Academy by the skin of his teeth, and recently informed that everyone hates him because his body and soul form the cage for a nine-tailed fox that nearly destroyed his village (Konoha) on the night he was born. He's assigned to a combat cell with the brain-smart, somewhat naive but eventually badass Haruno Sakura (an outsider whose family have never been ninja), and the elite genius Uchiha Sasuke (with immensely powerful magic eyes courtesy of his elite ninja clan and even more immense issues with the fact that his beloved older brother killed the shit out of said clan and ran off to be an outlaw -- don't let the bright colors fool you into thinking this is a happy place to live). Their commander and graduate-level teacher is Hatake Kakashi, who had the value of teamwork branded into his consciousness when he was young, too powerful for his own good, and lost his best friend Uchiha Obito ("Like Sasuke's clan? Those Uchiha?" you say? Good catch! The very same!) while they were at war and Kakashi prioritized a mission over rescuing downed comrades. Back in the modern day, Naruto and Company save the day together, face enemies way above their paygrade, progress upwards in the power levels of being a Magical Fantasy Ninja, and form bonds of the heart that will only end with death...
Which becomes a problem when Sasuke -- hell-bent on vengeance for that time his brother murdered their clan (except him, which Sasuke believes is because he was too weak), frustrated with the options/his own growth in his home village, and with an offer on the table from the notorious fugitive Orochimaru who recently killed his home village's Badass-in-Chief -- runs away from the village and can't bring himself kill Naruto for daring to try to stop him. He leaves Naruto unconscious at the site of their high-impact farewell, and goes off to join Orochimaru as a fugitive. Naruto declares that friends don't let friends throw their lives away. Although he later trades this very naive idealism for a more personal understanding of Sasuke's desire for revenge against someone who destroyed everyone he ever cared about (see: Jiraiya's death, Pain's destruction of Konoha, and confronting his resentment and self-doubt caused by his horrific childhood before he can wrestle his inner demon), he remains more committed to stopping Sasuke from letting his resentment and hatred consume him than a cat is committed to being in exactly the most inconvenient place at the most inconvenient times. Yes, Sasuke has killed his brother (and is then informed by a Mysterious Masked Man that his beloved brother was really a patsy carrying out the orders of his home government, and the only reason said brother didn't kill Sasuke was because he loved Sasuke more than duty, cracking our young anti-hero's brain a little further and pointing Sasuke on a quest to wipe every man, woman, and child who benefited in any way from big brother Itachi's sacrifice off the map), and, yes, Sasuke's actions as a fugitive are partially responsible for embroiling the Ninja Nations in an all-out war (not wholly responsible, but part of the problem and not part of the solution). Yes, everyone else in their generation has labeled Sasuke as too dangerous to let live. But Naruto? Give up? Never.
This personal quest is complicated further by Sasuke's Masked Man -- who went for a good 100 chapters or so calling himself "Tobi" and pretending to be an idiot before it was "revealed" that he was somehow Uchiha Madara, a supposedly long-dead progenitor of Sasuke's clan who could control the fox inside Naruto (and did, on the night it destroyed Konoha) who plans to mind-control the world into obedience to his will, and who maintained this fiction for over 200 chapters before the presence of Actual!Madara's zombie and a few fractures to his mask forced him to reveal that he was actually Uchiha Obito the whole time (the best friend Kakashi thought had died, who carries an enormous grudge against all of reality for Kakashi's apparent and as yet unexplained battlefield killing of their third teammate, a girl named Rin), acting on old-and-then-dead Madara's behalf. No matter what name he used, though, he was responsible for the formation of an elite group of international fugitive ninja who've collected seven of the nine Tailed Beasts (Naruto's fox is the ninth) at the cost of their containers' lives (Note: someone who, like Naruto, contains one of these beasts is called a "jinchuuriki"). Various cover stories were put forth for why they were doing this, but the second day of the Great Ninja War (against Tobi, Madara, their now dried-up zombie army, and about a hundred thousand pod people) showed his true intention for the Tailed Beasts come to fruition: the recreation of the Ten-Tails, a primordial terror that the God of Ninja deemed too powerful to safely exist, so he broke it into nine parts. And now, the more-than-decimated Ninja Army is staring down a nigh-complete reincarnation of the Ten-Tails, a walking Apocalypse guided by Madara and Obito to slaughter friends, family, and loved ones (this time, probably for permanent) in front of our heroes' eyes.
So, Naruto definitely has to deal with that before he can go run off after Sasuke and have another fistfight/conversation with his childhood sweetheart eternal rival. He's probably not aware that, in the meantime, Sasuke had a chat with his zombie brother and then brought Orochimaru back from the dead (I don't think I mentioned... Sasuke killed him in a fit of bitch rather than allowing Orochimaru to move into his body like a particularly necromantic hermit crab) so that his former teacher could lead him to the mystical land of the Snake Sages, where Sasuke plans to learn the next level of Magical Fantasy Ninja badassery (which Naruto already learned from some frogs).
Add in a bunch of soul-searching (but, specifically stated, no answered questions) on the big ideas of the nature of power, responsibility, and growing up, the dilemma of human hatred and the fact that hatred can be born out of love, and such... (I've been known to say that Naruto is kind of like Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo is now Hamlet and Juliet is Henry V) and it's one of those stories you'll either think is rich, well-constructed, and fun, or that you'll think goes on way too long and needs to shut up about how its ugly duckling Shounen Hero is the Chosen One. If you're inclined towards the second, this story may not be for you. Not everybody likes everything. Otherwise, I'm sure you'll find this to be a worthwhile story to pick up someday, and I give you my word that the presence of 1) a "Ninja Academy", 2) a single, early tournament-style fight (it's for an exhibition, not a prize), and 3) a main character who wears orange despite being a ninja do not make this setting stupid. There you have my tongue-in-cheek summary of Naruto up to the present.
Ready for an actual look at Chapter 616?
100 Things Blogging Challenge, Week 34: Naruto, Chapter 616: "Those Who Dance in the Shadows". (Kishimoto Masashi. Trans. Viz. 2013.)
The major action of this chapter has two parts: Naruto shares out a large quantity of chakra to his fellow combatants from his resident Tailed Beast -- which Orochimaru, Sasuke, and team notice on their trek past Konoha as Sasuke pretends not to care -- and his prominent comrades, Yamanaka Ino and Nara Shikamaru, remember their parents' final words while they mastermind a combined strike against the Ten-Tailed beast and its directing agents. Arguably, the final exchange between Naruto, Kakashi, and Obito represents the "big message" of the chapter, furthering the debate between Naruto's faction (on behalf of whom Naruto insists that he will find an as yet unknown path to world peace and understanding, as entrusted to him by his mentor, Jiraiya) and Obito (who has signed on to Madara's vision of world peace through mind control as a way to revive "his" Rin and Kakashi, though he doesn't consider himself an unreserved ally of Madara) on the subject of fighting to defend one's comrades. In this discussion, Obito is a very different interlocutor than the two characters who have previously filled his dramatic shoes: Gaara and Pain (aka, Uzumaki Nagato, Naruto's long-unknown cousin and -- it turns out -- also one of Jiraiya's students). Both Gaara and Nagato were focal antagonists who put a dangerously personal and sympathetic face on "the other" via extended backstory flashbacks while simultaneously serving as a necessary challenge to defeat at the climax of one of the story's major acts. Both Gaara and Nagato were, in their own way, a reflection of what Naruto could have been. Gaara was also a jinchuuriki, but was denied companionship and love, leading him to embrace the general perception that he was a monster and act accordingly. Nagato was a previous "answer" to the prophecy that one of Jiraiya's pupils would provide a solution the ninja world's cycle of hatred and retribution -- but having lived through the thoughtless destruction of his land and the death of his closest friend, he opted to enlighten everyone by visiting the same pain upon them.
Gaara found a way to accept Naruto's offered friendship, saw a different possibility for himself, and is a changed man. After serving as the antagonist in the climactic battle of Act I (our heroes' naive youth), he comes back to support them just before the curtain goes down and remains an unshakable ally. Pain played his part as the antagonist in the climactic fights of Act II (our heroes starting to understand what adults mean when they say the world is complicated), and after Naruto made him want to know if a different "answer" to the cycle of hatred and retribution was possible, he gave his life on behalf of Naruto's comrades. Thereafter, Naruto can count Nagato's former allies in Akatsuki as his own allies, and can cooperate with Nagato's zombie (when said zombie is not under direct mind control) during the Great Ninja War (until all the zombies are freed to go on with their afterlives). Obito, like those two previous antagonists, is the personal face on a climactic, mid-act battle, and like them, he can be considered a reflection of Naruto. He once believed in going to any length to protect one's comrades. In fact, Naruto's line from a few chapters back -- that he wouldn't let any of his comrades die -- is a line he took from his teacher, Kakashi, who drilled into his team's heads the sentiment that "someone who abandons his comrades is worse than trash". That sentiment and the corresponding refusal to let a teammate die, in turn came from that fatal mission when Kakashi was thirteen when Obito himself called Kakashi "worse than trash" for being willing to abandon Rin. Kakashi etched those words into his heart when he thought Obito had died, and tells Naruto in this chapter that "I won't let any of my comrades die" is as much an admonition to himself, being someone who has been unable to save everyone in the past, as it is a promise to those around him. He explains that the weight of all the lives you can't save is a heavy burden, as Naruto learned last chapter when his friend Neji died saving Naruto from an oncoming projectile. Obito adds that his own desire to save his comrades (that was the prototype of the urge to protect that Naruto feels) is what made him the disillusioned man he has become. He calls that commitment a curse.
Naruto's reply is to recall that "ninja" (or "shinobi") means "one who endures" -- a matter of linguistics referenced by Jiraiya and Orochimaru much earlier in the manga, wherein the kanji used in the word has since come to indicate a warrior trained in the arts of stealth, but carries the original base meaning of "enduring". He'll take the pain, even if it is a curse, and would consider the mind control dreamworld where Obito wants to revive images of the people he's lost to be a lie and a true loss of his comrade's life. Naruto concludes by saying he'll keep the real Neji in his heart. Now that we've reached the grand speeches where Naruto considers his experiences and pronounces his position on the question, we're nearing the point where pattern indicates that he will sway the climactic antagonist to his own way of thinking and gain a powerful ally for the fight ahead. Within five chapters? Almost certainly not. Within fifteen? Possible, but twenty-five or thirty at least would be far more likely. Fifty chapters from now will probably find our heroes moving on to a new and as yet unlooked-for disaster that will fall out of Madara having control over the Ten-Tails, overshooting the mark by just a bit. Obito, however, is different from Gaara and Nagato in one critical way: he used to believe what Naruto believes. He saw that conviction twisted in front of his eyes when, for reasons that are not yet explained (but, if Kakashi doesn't spill the beans in a heart to heart very soon, I project will be explained roughly around chapters 750 to 760-ish, give or take a... let's unscientifically say a ten-chapter margin of error in either direction -- feel free to call me on this in three years if I'm wrong) he saw Kakashi kill Rin with his own hands. Just as the experience of seeing Obito crushed and presumed dead transformed Kakashi from someone who believed a ninja who didn't prioritize his duty was worthless into someone who values his comrades' lives over the mission, and would probably be psychologically incapable of leaving a fellow teammate behind, the experience of seeing Rin killed transformed Obito. It's possible that he will continue to see Naruto's decision as that of a fool who's still wearing blinders because Naruto's words were once his own, before experience changed his mind.
If the climactic battle going forward from here doesn't end with Naruto convincing Obito to subscribe to his newsletter, what are the options? Other literary patterns and evidence thrown around recently imply, reasonably, that Uchiha Madara (one of the most terrifying names in ninja history) will supplant him as the main antagonist in a future act of the story (possibly Act IV, possibly Act V, possibly even both if Obito breaking the pattern completely morphs the structure of the story out of its current mold, but almost certainly in control of the Ten-Tails when his time comes). Zombie though he currently is, this was his plan to begin with, and it has gone forward with very few deviations from what he'd laid out -- the most pertinent deviation being that he is, as mentioned, a zombie. As a zombie, he's incapable of turning himself into a jinchuuriki for the Ten-Tails, which would allow him to use its power more effectively. His plan relies on Obito sacrificing his own life to perform a true resurrection, returning Madara to his human life and the potential for the same level of power that earned the Sage of the Six Paths god-like status in this setting. That it would also return the currently immortal Madara into a form that will also face mortal limitations makes it nearly certain that, somehow, at some time, something will convince Obito to go through with Madara's resurrection and accept his own death as a consequence. This new Madara (although I would be interested to see if he retains his youthful form or reverts to the elderly body in which he died) would be more dangerous, but would also be someone it's possible to defeat. At present, you could reduce him to dust, and he'd simply reform seconds later, and restraining him in a sealing jutsu requires constant effort from the caster. Psychoanalyzing away a zombie's lingering dissatisfaction with the world is the only demonstrated means to take them off the battlefield permanently. While I would dearly love to see someone try that on Madara, my gut tells me that the heavy hints towards his resurrection will pan out first.
I've said all this before: that Obito will probably tag out and leave our heroes facing a bigger, badder Madara. What has never been clear is what could motivate him to do it. He needs to enact the jutsu himself, willingly. In this chapter, however, we see the central issue of his ideology outlined in bold. As Gaara's story focused on a hurt caused by definition of self based on how he'd been treated and Nagato's was a hurt caused by resentment against an enemy who has done you harm, Obito's central focus is on the pain caused by caring about those closest to you and having them taken away. Naruto was able to provide himself as an example to both Gaara and Nagato as to how their pain could be handled in a different, arguably more productive and/or healthy fashion. Whether or not that demonstration was acceptable to all characters in the story (or even all readers of the manga), I think that was the basic nature of the change in their lives and choices caused by their interaction with Naruto. Already we can see the setup for Naruto to face Obito's pain and confront him with the example of how he, Naruto, will go on with his life even with the burden of seeing loved ones he had sworn to protect die before his own eyes. One might argue that, to be equivalent to Obito's shock at seeing Rin killed by Kakashi, Naruto might have to see Sakura killed by Sasuke, but while that would affect Naruto, I doubt it's the sort of situation that would cause Obito to even pause. What Naruto had in his interactions with Gaara and Nagato that his example would need to establish with Obito is a single experience that would profoundly affect them both. Naruto and Gaara could share their understanding of how it feels to be a jinchuuriki. Naruto and Nagato reached their shared understanding over their mutual experience of being Jiraiya's students and inheriting his passions. Naruto and Obito have only one thing in common now -- they share a bond of affection to Kakashi, Obito's teammate and Naruto's surrogate father-figure. Is it possible that Kakashi's (this time, permanent) death will be the catalyst that causes Obito to resurrect Madara, somewhere around that early-to-mid-700s chapter mark coming in three years? I think yes, although many things remain possible in a 150-chapter story arc before the next act. It's also possible, I suppose, that everyone will live happily ever after and Madara will be Sasuke's best man when Sasuke marries Naruto, but unfortunately less likely.
This entry was originally posted at http://psiten.dreamwidth.org/101727.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
The fact is, this week I'm celebrating the fact that Viz's English translation of Weekly Jump titles, called Shonen Jump in America, has gone simultaneous as of today!!!! Professionally translated Naruto (and Bleach, One Piece, Yu-Gi-Oh, Toriko, and several others I haven't memorized, but my main interest is Naruto) available online,in easy-to-read format, the same day it hits the shelves in Japan! Granted, the scanlations still come out (on average) about five days before the official street date for the Japanese magazine, but I'm not asking for miracles, and the professional translations (while not perfect, but what is?) are usually very cleanly edited with proper grammar and a consistently high level of fluency. I'm proud to support the Viz and Weekly Jump teams! I still count on the kanji for really understanding what's being said, and the low cost of getting the new Naruto manga e-books from Japanese Amazon makes me wish I had the overhead cash to just plunk down on a Japanese Amazon-linked Kindle immediately... but I digress. The point is: SIMULTANEOUS NARUTO, YAY!!!
Kishimoto-sensei sends the following message to his American readers:
Congratulations on going simultaneous! As a creator, knowing that more and more people are reading my series give me the energy to keep working hard!
Obviously, this review will be put behind a cut for spoilers due to it being a fresh-off-the-presses chapter. But first, behind a different cut for spoilers, a quick-as-possible (and thus likely to gloss over lots of important details and certain to leave out 95-to-98% of the cast -- sorry) explanation of what went down in the 13-ish years and 615 chapters of story prior to this point:
So, Naruto.
The relevant timelines discussed in flashback for this story take place over more than four generations, so we'll just focus on Uzumaki Naruto: young, more bold than sensible, graduated from Ninja Academy by the skin of his teeth, and recently informed that everyone hates him because his body and soul form the cage for a nine-tailed fox that nearly destroyed his village (Konoha) on the night he was born. He's assigned to a combat cell with the brain-smart, somewhat naive but eventually badass Haruno Sakura (an outsider whose family have never been ninja), and the elite genius Uchiha Sasuke (with immensely powerful magic eyes courtesy of his elite ninja clan and even more immense issues with the fact that his beloved older brother killed the shit out of said clan and ran off to be an outlaw -- don't let the bright colors fool you into thinking this is a happy place to live). Their commander and graduate-level teacher is Hatake Kakashi, who had the value of teamwork branded into his consciousness when he was young, too powerful for his own good, and lost his best friend Uchiha Obito ("Like Sasuke's clan? Those Uchiha?" you say? Good catch! The very same!) while they were at war and Kakashi prioritized a mission over rescuing downed comrades. Back in the modern day, Naruto and Company save the day together, face enemies way above their paygrade, progress upwards in the power levels of being a Magical Fantasy Ninja, and form bonds of the heart that will only end with death...
Which becomes a problem when Sasuke -- hell-bent on vengeance for that time his brother murdered their clan (except him, which Sasuke believes is because he was too weak), frustrated with the options/his own growth in his home village, and with an offer on the table from the notorious fugitive Orochimaru who recently killed his home village's Badass-in-Chief -- runs away from the village and can't bring himself kill Naruto for daring to try to stop him. He leaves Naruto unconscious at the site of their high-impact farewell, and goes off to join Orochimaru as a fugitive. Naruto declares that friends don't let friends throw their lives away. Although he later trades this very naive idealism for a more personal understanding of Sasuke's desire for revenge against someone who destroyed everyone he ever cared about (see: Jiraiya's death, Pain's destruction of Konoha, and confronting his resentment and self-doubt caused by his horrific childhood before he can wrestle his inner demon), he remains more committed to stopping Sasuke from letting his resentment and hatred consume him than a cat is committed to being in exactly the most inconvenient place at the most inconvenient times. Yes, Sasuke has killed his brother (and is then informed by a Mysterious Masked Man that his beloved brother was really a patsy carrying out the orders of his home government, and the only reason said brother didn't kill Sasuke was because he loved Sasuke more than duty, cracking our young anti-hero's brain a little further and pointing Sasuke on a quest to wipe every man, woman, and child who benefited in any way from big brother Itachi's sacrifice off the map), and, yes, Sasuke's actions as a fugitive are partially responsible for embroiling the Ninja Nations in an all-out war (not wholly responsible, but part of the problem and not part of the solution). Yes, everyone else in their generation has labeled Sasuke as too dangerous to let live. But Naruto? Give up? Never.
This personal quest is complicated further by Sasuke's Masked Man -- who went for a good 100 chapters or so calling himself "Tobi" and pretending to be an idiot before it was "revealed" that he was somehow Uchiha Madara, a supposedly long-dead progenitor of Sasuke's clan who could control the fox inside Naruto (and did, on the night it destroyed Konoha) who plans to mind-control the world into obedience to his will, and who maintained this fiction for over 200 chapters before the presence of Actual!Madara's zombie and a few fractures to his mask forced him to reveal that he was actually Uchiha Obito the whole time (the best friend Kakashi thought had died, who carries an enormous grudge against all of reality for Kakashi's apparent and as yet unexplained battlefield killing of their third teammate, a girl named Rin), acting on old-and-then-dead Madara's behalf. No matter what name he used, though, he was responsible for the formation of an elite group of international fugitive ninja who've collected seven of the nine Tailed Beasts (Naruto's fox is the ninth) at the cost of their containers' lives (Note: someone who, like Naruto, contains one of these beasts is called a "jinchuuriki"). Various cover stories were put forth for why they were doing this, but the second day of the Great Ninja War (against Tobi, Madara, their now dried-up zombie army, and about a hundred thousand pod people) showed his true intention for the Tailed Beasts come to fruition: the recreation of the Ten-Tails, a primordial terror that the God of Ninja deemed too powerful to safely exist, so he broke it into nine parts. And now, the more-than-decimated Ninja Army is staring down a nigh-complete reincarnation of the Ten-Tails, a walking Apocalypse guided by Madara and Obito to slaughter friends, family, and loved ones (this time, probably for permanent) in front of our heroes' eyes.
So, Naruto definitely has to deal with that before he can go run off after Sasuke and have another fistfight/conversation with his childhood sweetheart eternal rival. He's probably not aware that, in the meantime, Sasuke had a chat with his zombie brother and then brought Orochimaru back from the dead (I don't think I mentioned... Sasuke killed him in a fit of bitch rather than allowing Orochimaru to move into his body like a particularly necromantic hermit crab) so that his former teacher could lead him to the mystical land of the Snake Sages, where Sasuke plans to learn the next level of Magical Fantasy Ninja badassery (which Naruto already learned from some frogs).
Add in a bunch of soul-searching (but, specifically stated, no answered questions) on the big ideas of the nature of power, responsibility, and growing up, the dilemma of human hatred and the fact that hatred can be born out of love, and such... (I've been known to say that Naruto is kind of like Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo is now Hamlet and Juliet is Henry V) and it's one of those stories you'll either think is rich, well-constructed, and fun, or that you'll think goes on way too long and needs to shut up about how its ugly duckling Shounen Hero is the Chosen One. If you're inclined towards the second, this story may not be for you. Not everybody likes everything. Otherwise, I'm sure you'll find this to be a worthwhile story to pick up someday, and I give you my word that the presence of 1) a "Ninja Academy", 2) a single, early tournament-style fight (it's for an exhibition, not a prize), and 3) a main character who wears orange despite being a ninja do not make this setting stupid. There you have my tongue-in-cheek summary of Naruto up to the present.
Ready for an actual look at Chapter 616?
100 Things Blogging Challenge, Week 34: Naruto, Chapter 616: "Those Who Dance in the Shadows". (Kishimoto Masashi. Trans. Viz. 2013.)
The major action of this chapter has two parts: Naruto shares out a large quantity of chakra to his fellow combatants from his resident Tailed Beast -- which Orochimaru, Sasuke, and team notice on their trek past Konoha as Sasuke pretends not to care -- and his prominent comrades, Yamanaka Ino and Nara Shikamaru, remember their parents' final words while they mastermind a combined strike against the Ten-Tailed beast and its directing agents. Arguably, the final exchange between Naruto, Kakashi, and Obito represents the "big message" of the chapter, furthering the debate between Naruto's faction (on behalf of whom Naruto insists that he will find an as yet unknown path to world peace and understanding, as entrusted to him by his mentor, Jiraiya) and Obito (who has signed on to Madara's vision of world peace through mind control as a way to revive "his" Rin and Kakashi, though he doesn't consider himself an unreserved ally of Madara) on the subject of fighting to defend one's comrades. In this discussion, Obito is a very different interlocutor than the two characters who have previously filled his dramatic shoes: Gaara and Pain (aka, Uzumaki Nagato, Naruto's long-unknown cousin and -- it turns out -- also one of Jiraiya's students). Both Gaara and Nagato were focal antagonists who put a dangerously personal and sympathetic face on "the other" via extended backstory flashbacks while simultaneously serving as a necessary challenge to defeat at the climax of one of the story's major acts. Both Gaara and Nagato were, in their own way, a reflection of what Naruto could have been. Gaara was also a jinchuuriki, but was denied companionship and love, leading him to embrace the general perception that he was a monster and act accordingly. Nagato was a previous "answer" to the prophecy that one of Jiraiya's pupils would provide a solution the ninja world's cycle of hatred and retribution -- but having lived through the thoughtless destruction of his land and the death of his closest friend, he opted to enlighten everyone by visiting the same pain upon them.
Gaara found a way to accept Naruto's offered friendship, saw a different possibility for himself, and is a changed man. After serving as the antagonist in the climactic battle of Act I (our heroes' naive youth), he comes back to support them just before the curtain goes down and remains an unshakable ally. Pain played his part as the antagonist in the climactic fights of Act II (our heroes starting to understand what adults mean when they say the world is complicated), and after Naruto made him want to know if a different "answer" to the cycle of hatred and retribution was possible, he gave his life on behalf of Naruto's comrades. Thereafter, Naruto can count Nagato's former allies in Akatsuki as his own allies, and can cooperate with Nagato's zombie (when said zombie is not under direct mind control) during the Great Ninja War (until all the zombies are freed to go on with their afterlives). Obito, like those two previous antagonists, is the personal face on a climactic, mid-act battle, and like them, he can be considered a reflection of Naruto. He once believed in going to any length to protect one's comrades. In fact, Naruto's line from a few chapters back -- that he wouldn't let any of his comrades die -- is a line he took from his teacher, Kakashi, who drilled into his team's heads the sentiment that "someone who abandons his comrades is worse than trash". That sentiment and the corresponding refusal to let a teammate die, in turn came from that fatal mission when Kakashi was thirteen when Obito himself called Kakashi "worse than trash" for being willing to abandon Rin. Kakashi etched those words into his heart when he thought Obito had died, and tells Naruto in this chapter that "I won't let any of my comrades die" is as much an admonition to himself, being someone who has been unable to save everyone in the past, as it is a promise to those around him. He explains that the weight of all the lives you can't save is a heavy burden, as Naruto learned last chapter when his friend Neji died saving Naruto from an oncoming projectile. Obito adds that his own desire to save his comrades (that was the prototype of the urge to protect that Naruto feels) is what made him the disillusioned man he has become. He calls that commitment a curse.
Naruto's reply is to recall that "ninja" (or "shinobi") means "one who endures" -- a matter of linguistics referenced by Jiraiya and Orochimaru much earlier in the manga, wherein the kanji used in the word has since come to indicate a warrior trained in the arts of stealth, but carries the original base meaning of "enduring". He'll take the pain, even if it is a curse, and would consider the mind control dreamworld where Obito wants to revive images of the people he's lost to be a lie and a true loss of his comrade's life. Naruto concludes by saying he'll keep the real Neji in his heart. Now that we've reached the grand speeches where Naruto considers his experiences and pronounces his position on the question, we're nearing the point where pattern indicates that he will sway the climactic antagonist to his own way of thinking and gain a powerful ally for the fight ahead. Within five chapters? Almost certainly not. Within fifteen? Possible, but twenty-five or thirty at least would be far more likely. Fifty chapters from now will probably find our heroes moving on to a new and as yet unlooked-for disaster that will fall out of Madara having control over the Ten-Tails, overshooting the mark by just a bit. Obito, however, is different from Gaara and Nagato in one critical way: he used to believe what Naruto believes. He saw that conviction twisted in front of his eyes when, for reasons that are not yet explained (but, if Kakashi doesn't spill the beans in a heart to heart very soon, I project will be explained roughly around chapters 750 to 760-ish, give or take a... let's unscientifically say a ten-chapter margin of error in either direction -- feel free to call me on this in three years if I'm wrong) he saw Kakashi kill Rin with his own hands. Just as the experience of seeing Obito crushed and presumed dead transformed Kakashi from someone who believed a ninja who didn't prioritize his duty was worthless into someone who values his comrades' lives over the mission, and would probably be psychologically incapable of leaving a fellow teammate behind, the experience of seeing Rin killed transformed Obito. It's possible that he will continue to see Naruto's decision as that of a fool who's still wearing blinders because Naruto's words were once his own, before experience changed his mind.
If the climactic battle going forward from here doesn't end with Naruto convincing Obito to subscribe to his newsletter, what are the options? Other literary patterns and evidence thrown around recently imply, reasonably, that Uchiha Madara (one of the most terrifying names in ninja history) will supplant him as the main antagonist in a future act of the story (possibly Act IV, possibly Act V, possibly even both if Obito breaking the pattern completely morphs the structure of the story out of its current mold, but almost certainly in control of the Ten-Tails when his time comes). Zombie though he currently is, this was his plan to begin with, and it has gone forward with very few deviations from what he'd laid out -- the most pertinent deviation being that he is, as mentioned, a zombie. As a zombie, he's incapable of turning himself into a jinchuuriki for the Ten-Tails, which would allow him to use its power more effectively. His plan relies on Obito sacrificing his own life to perform a true resurrection, returning Madara to his human life and the potential for the same level of power that earned the Sage of the Six Paths god-like status in this setting. That it would also return the currently immortal Madara into a form that will also face mortal limitations makes it nearly certain that, somehow, at some time, something will convince Obito to go through with Madara's resurrection and accept his own death as a consequence. This new Madara (although I would be interested to see if he retains his youthful form or reverts to the elderly body in which he died) would be more dangerous, but would also be someone it's possible to defeat. At present, you could reduce him to dust, and he'd simply reform seconds later, and restraining him in a sealing jutsu requires constant effort from the caster. Psychoanalyzing away a zombie's lingering dissatisfaction with the world is the only demonstrated means to take them off the battlefield permanently. While I would dearly love to see someone try that on Madara, my gut tells me that the heavy hints towards his resurrection will pan out first.
I've said all this before: that Obito will probably tag out and leave our heroes facing a bigger, badder Madara. What has never been clear is what could motivate him to do it. He needs to enact the jutsu himself, willingly. In this chapter, however, we see the central issue of his ideology outlined in bold. As Gaara's story focused on a hurt caused by definition of self based on how he'd been treated and Nagato's was a hurt caused by resentment against an enemy who has done you harm, Obito's central focus is on the pain caused by caring about those closest to you and having them taken away. Naruto was able to provide himself as an example to both Gaara and Nagato as to how their pain could be handled in a different, arguably more productive and/or healthy fashion. Whether or not that demonstration was acceptable to all characters in the story (or even all readers of the manga), I think that was the basic nature of the change in their lives and choices caused by their interaction with Naruto. Already we can see the setup for Naruto to face Obito's pain and confront him with the example of how he, Naruto, will go on with his life even with the burden of seeing loved ones he had sworn to protect die before his own eyes. One might argue that, to be equivalent to Obito's shock at seeing Rin killed by Kakashi, Naruto might have to see Sakura killed by Sasuke, but while that would affect Naruto, I doubt it's the sort of situation that would cause Obito to even pause. What Naruto had in his interactions with Gaara and Nagato that his example would need to establish with Obito is a single experience that would profoundly affect them both. Naruto and Gaara could share their understanding of how it feels to be a jinchuuriki. Naruto and Nagato reached their shared understanding over their mutual experience of being Jiraiya's students and inheriting his passions. Naruto and Obito have only one thing in common now -- they share a bond of affection to Kakashi, Obito's teammate and Naruto's surrogate father-figure. Is it possible that Kakashi's (this time, permanent) death will be the catalyst that causes Obito to resurrect Madara, somewhere around that early-to-mid-700s chapter mark coming in three years? I think yes, although many things remain possible in a 150-chapter story arc before the next act. It's also possible, I suppose, that everyone will live happily ever after and Madara will be Sasuke's best man when Sasuke marries Naruto, but unfortunately less likely.
This entry was originally posted at http://psiten.dreamwidth.org/101727.html. Please comment there using OpenID.