The ultimate cartoon boyfriend

Listen I love Shippuden but why would you eliminate the political criticism from Naruto personality and erase so much of Sakura as a character by not furthering her friendships outside of Team 7 and why would you keep them for improving in both aspects so they can met again Sasuke under better terms, effectively increasing his agony.

Why not allow Sakura and Naruto to grow as their own people with their own opinions and relationships, so when they find Sasuke they can treat him as the person/individual he is and not the ghost of their memory that they want back. What is the point of making them physically stronger if you don't allow neither of them to progress in terms of personality.

It's not even the characters fault. The Classic left you with the impression that Naruto was on his way to cause a big political change (he was part of the mission to convince Tsunade to be their new Hokage, wasn't he) and that Sakura was on her shinobi breakthrough, but then none of it happened.

At some point wanting to become Hokage to change the system became and obsession to bring a lost childhood back. At some point Sakura's strength became merely physical, a mere performance, because any relationship outside of Team 7 had to be short lived or superficial in the story, her entire worth as a shinobi based on a competition with Sasuke and Naruto, which was rigged from the very beginning because they are overpowered to no end and she is only there to heal them and cry for their suffering or request them to go back because she misses/loves them.

It's insane. What the hell happened.

Have people considered the possibility that one can make mistakes, fuck up, do or say the wrong thing and - wait for it - not be a horrible person still? Still have done good and cared? Might actually be a rather decent person who erred?

I think fandom discourse and just general irl discourse around this stuff is very funny.

Yes this is about Kakashi haters because they all seem to think his imperfection and faults make him a shitty guy. This is not at all to say you have to like the guy either - it’s just to say this doesn’t make his character inherently a bad person or teacher. And I struggle to think of any adult in Sasuke’s life post-massacre who cares for him the way Kakashi did.

This is why being a Kakashi and Sasuke fan is annoying because there’s so many pro-Sasuke Kakashi haters and vice versa. How are you gonna recognize Konoha sucks and simultaneously dismiss the profound ways in which it fucked Kakashi up and how much it would take to undo that? Man’s been a shinobi since age 5 and then proceeded to have a horribly traumatic existence for the rest of his formative years into adulthood and you expect him to be the perfect sensei and counsellor for the only two shinobi likely more fucked up than he is. And refuse to acknowledge all the ways he subverts the expectations when he does, and actually does take care of his students and cares about them? Doesn’t actually trauma dump on Sasuke because what exactly does Sasuke, or any of team 7, know about him? Yeah, not much at all because he doesn’t talk about himself and it’s a big sin he tells Sasuke he’s also experienced profound loss when desperate to get him to resist the pull of the dude who wants to turn Sasuke into a skin suit. He probably should have talked more to Sasuke about his life and experiences, if anything. And how are you gonna support Kakashi who was so very stomped on and used by the system and hate Sasuke for wanting to change it? Neither makes sense.

Gives the impression that anyone who doesn’t react the way you deem correct or who isn’t radical enough is just bad and evil - and this applies to anti- and pro-Sasuke and anti- and pro-Kakashi people equally. These characters are both complex, nuanced, wonderful and flawed. Dissecting the show with psychology and sociology is fine and whatever but then acting like the characters should behave in some accordant way to be good or moral and like it’s black and white just doesn’t make sense because we don’t expect that in real life and media would be very boring if we expected that in fiction.

It’s very purity culture adjacent, the need for neat boxes and perfect representations of things.

I don't like it when people talk about the hypothetical scenario in which Kakashi actually listens to Sasuke and helps him get revenge, as it is utterly pointless in many ways.

I generally think it is pointless to think in terms of what-ifs when analyzing stories, because, well, you get a completely different one in most cases (there are exceptions, such as when the change would not drastically alter the themes). When you change key aspects of the story such as Sasuke's decision to leave Konoha, you completely change the themes the story carries, as Sasuke is the main carrier of Naruto's themes.

When you say that Sasuke may not have left Konoha had Kakashi offered him to help him get revenge on Itachi you ignore the fact that narratives ought to be read in their entirety and full context rather than in isolated units. You ignore that Sasuke is meant to react to the injustice of the makeup of the whole world rather than just stop at what happened to his clan. His arc neatly goes from dealing with the specific moving on to the general, and his personal involvement motivates him to pursue his goals in the story on both of these levels. What happened to him is not a grave tragedy that happened in isolation but something that is bound to happen in a world as cruel as the one he inhabits. Sasuke is the one who wants to bring a global revolution to the shinobi system precisely because he is the one who was affected by it in a deeply personal way. Sasuke is meant to challenge the legally legitimate with the morally legitimate, and when you play with the idea that Sasuke does not leave sooner, but later in the story, you lessen his narrative weight, as you would make him choose the legal on his first step. He always possessed a rebellious streak, and a rebel and a revolutionary is not one who plays safe.

There are other things to consider as well. Why does it matter whether Kakashi realizes that Sasuke may not have left had he offered his help? Sasuke's choice was something we are meant to see as an inevitability, as he would leave and vow to destroy Konoha the moment he finds out the truth about what happened anyway, sooner or later. The moment Sasuke opposes Konoha, Kakashi would stop his support for him, so what difference does it make for Kakashi to offer his help or even acknowledge that Sasuke may not have left sooner rather than later, theme wise? With this you legitimize Kakashi and Konoha, if only they offer the kids some solutions for symptomatic stuff rather than curing things at their root, then there would be no qualms about anything.

When you do this you also ignore Sasuke's goal in a very careless manner, and that is that Sasuke wanted to be the one to kill Itachi on his own. Kakashi would probably not have allowed Sasuke to seek Itachi out on his own and would have probably intervened at some point, something Sasuke wanted to avoid. Sasuke felt that his duty is to personally bring Itachi to justice, something Kakashi would not have been able to provide him, as we now have to operate on the premise that Kakashi is actually concerned with Sasuke's wellbeing.

I'm not going to mention the issue of Danzo, as there is an amazing post here that goes into greater detail about that (which I am not going to tag here as I am yet to ask the creator of it whether they're okay with that).

Or Sasuke never finds out the truth, and then we would not have this story, but something completely different. Which is fine if you want to write fanfic, but not in the analysis of the work.

I believe no arc of Naruto or Naruto Shippuden hits as hard as the arc of the Land of the Waves, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but it's true.

It sets the tone of the entire story flawlessly. The whole Naruto thesis condensed on one mission.

The way it speaks so early and in so raw terms how unfair and corrupted the world of Naruto is. The first big mission of Team 7 is fully political. Go protect this man responsible for building a bridge that will bring prosperity to his land, what could ever go wrong?

⠀⠀⠀

It slaps the hell out of Team 7.

Here, see a tiny land ruled by crime and poverty. Do you want to speak about injustice?

Let's talk about heroes that end up in public execution and kids that are let to drown by their bullies and men who has to lie because they can't pay proper protection even if their job is crucial. Let's talk about kids begging for food in the street and single mothers that could get assassinated any day now and let's see what a prodigy with a blessed kekkei genkai has to tell you about how the world treats them out there. Let's see survival and bonds without white and black morals 'cause the definition of "crime" is vast and a criminal can be anyone. Let's see atonement that came too late and loyalty among bastards and compassion and the beauty of sacrifice.

Go see how your sensei almost dies and your teammates almost die and go see the enemy die to realize it doesn't fulfill you at all because the real enemy was a man with power controlling desperate people. And he, the real villain, was just sitting all along, waiting for you all to kill each other so he could later come and collect his gain.

There's a good reason why Naruto finds his resolve there. It's his manifest, his point zero.

Haku and Zabuza dead side by side while it snows is an image I could never erase from my brain. Zabuza's words are forever imprinted in my heart.

There's no way I can analyze the Team 7 dynamic before saying a bunch of stuff about Sakura.

Most vital parts of her character in relation to the theme of the story get completely overlooked in favor of #GirlPower, making her just part of a ship or hating her without taking a moment to really dive in how she exists on the Naruto world.

What do you mean you can't remember Haku's speech on how in the shinobi system people want to become tools for the people they love and how it connects to Sakura later becoming a medic nin?

What do you mean you can't see how she was not given proper continuation to her Naruto classic breakthrough in the Chunning Exams + after the Sasuke Retrieval mission? And before someone can say her only realization was has been useless all that time, it's even more important!! She knew she had been unfair to Naruto for treating him so bad and expecting him to shoulder all her burdens like nothing, that she did a disservice to Sasuke too by not acting as her teammate but basically asking him to rescue himself and Naruto it failed. She makes a promise to herself to grow for her and not someone else, to become a kunoichi and focus on her career instead of letting times drag her around, she makes herself a promise that she won't be powerless anymore, because her friends deserve it and she deserves it.

Naruto Classic even makes a point of letting her go back into her old ways out of stress and the minute she notices what she has done, what she did to Sasuke and Naruto, she apologizes to him (Naruto) and promises to burden the weight of the promise he made with him— that's why, back then, Shikamaru and Tsunade were able to smile to both Sakura and Naruto, seeing their courage in the face of Sasuke leaving.

Shippuden just repeats and exploits those scenes in new ways, bringing Sakura back at the start for the sake of drama or ship baiting. What Sai told Sakura and how it leads to Sakura fake confession makes no sense given the hospital room scene!!!! She knows she hurt him, she saw it back then!!!! She knows he suffers for her and that's why she promised to go after Sasuke with him next time! She apologized for her behavior and she worried about Naruto's wellbeing and she ran to ask to be Tsunade's apprentice because she knew!!!!

It makes no sense!!!

Her arc in the Classic is supposed to be about how she doesn't have a definition of herself that she feels belong in the world, so she hides behind pretences. During their presentation, you learned more about Sasuke than Sakura. She was on the same level of Kakashi revealing nothing about her life. The Chunning Exams start with Kakashi all worried that her lack of confidence/independence would force her into the exams. She realizes how little she has truly work on her own self during the Sound shinobis attack and cuts her hair, swearing she'll do better. It's her sense of self HIDDEN SO DEEP WITHIN HER, what break a technique that is not supposed to be capable of being broken.

The Classics portraits Sakura as being annoying and naive and causing damage through ignorance but it always Sakura to grow. She learns and she's able to keep that knowledge. She's neglected by Kakashi in her training, but she's able to seek a sensei for herself —and that's an important thing for her! She's not waiting for someone to teach her or recommend her! She has agency now! She has gone so far, evolved so much!

Sakura offering herself as a puppet to Chiyo is not about lack of independence, it's Sakura showing that she acknowledged and accepted the Shinobi philosophy of being a weapon. She's still Sakura, too sentimental, too willing to jump to shield the life of another, but now it gives Tsunade's energy. Those women turn weakness into power, love and fear into determination. Sasori allows them to kill him because the battle was never about the knifes and always about the dispute on points of views.

It's a battle of philosophies: Chiyo and Sakura won

But after that? There are moments of importance and coherence, but the story starts regressing her progress in favor of some angst with Naruto or Sasuke and it kills their dynamics. The storytelling is messy —not cohesive enough. Contradictions start to appear everywhere. It's not even a form to being depth into her characterization, it's clear it's nothing but indecision, confusion, too many lines to take so you take several and end up mixing it.

The Sakura from the Classic was unknowable for her teammates. Naruto couldn't see her struggles because he was too young. Sasuke could see it, but he didn't want to engage with it 'cause he had his own agenda. They had their dreams and they were her dream. They were far more developed and on a different stage of their storylines, while Sakura was far behind, a late bloomer.

Her whole story is about her trying to catch up with them not in power, not in importance, but merely on the idea of having work on herself enough that she can't stand on her own and do something on her own and mean something of her own, without them, outside of them, so their dynamics can mature too.

Must mention that I'm not talking about romance at all, but you can't avoid it a lot because romance is one of the obstacles in their relationships. The love triangle and later the nostalgia encourages them all to see the others through the lenses of idealization or through memories. It's not until the end of the Classic that the masks fall, with Sasuke forcing it. He forces Naruto and Sakura to grow, the same way the violent reality of the Waves arc forced them to face the nature of the shinobi life.

The main conflict of part 1 is that they were kids.

Then Shippuden (with all the love in the world, I love Shippuden so much but wait a minute) goes the coward route. It pretends to be all mature and political and then avoids the real problems, never continuating that personality traits presented in the Classic that would lead Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke to take different decisions that what they took later on the manga.

Naruto wanted to semanticsize the word shinobi after Zabuza! Sakura questioned the system right then and Kakashi had to give a speech about it!!!! The real context of Sasuke leaving is not "oh no, Sasuke you can't be a rebel!!", it's the knowledge that Orochimaru wants to experiment on him and he already has without Sasuke's consent and he (Sasuke) was in real danger by going forward with the cursed mark! The other kids only knew about Orochimaru through the tell of how he killed the Hokage, but Sakura and Naruto fought with him on the Forest of Death!!

Sakura says all she says to try and stop Sasuke for leaving because it is a director callback to their conversation after Naruto transformed in Sasuke and tried to kiss her. Sasuke said Sakura made him sick because she didn't know what how lonely was horrible and dared to talk about it without knowing and saying stuff like she would be better without her parents. So Sakura tries to tell him on that night, look! I'm feeling it now! If this is how you were feeling then stay! Or take me with you! She plays with the fact he must remember that conversation. This time she's not thinking "I want to overwhelm him with sex appeal", mouth full of words she doesn't comprehend. She's saying "I love you!" because she still doesn't comprend how Sasuke feels, but she knows how she feels now.

She's gone a long way, but she still has further to go and Sasuke would never mess with her own development. He would never do that to her. He can't talk to Sakura, she won't get it, she still has to learn about the world, so he won't waste more words. So he thanks her. Who knows what for, but he thanks her. Her ignorance's annoying to no end but he appreciates how she, despite the barriers, tries to reach him anyway. She lacks the words or the method or the strength, but she tries anyway.

For him.

It's very much the same with Naruto. She turns herself into a weapon for them both and she even internalizes the cruelty of the shinobi world, that she had to treat Sasuke like the enemy and fight him like the enemy and stop him for commiting more crimes (view from the Konoha perspective), but she fails. She can't. She does the same thing Tsunade did to poison the people she loved and tried to solve it on her own, but in both cases they were lying to themselves. They wanted an easy way out. I kill you, it's over, I don't have to deal anymore with the pain your own decisions bring me because I can't stop you, you're your own person. They KNOW it and the fold under the knowledge of it, okay?

Naruto is a jinchuriki and they are hunting him to kill him and she can't do nothing, because going on with those missions is Naruto's decisions and not hers. She's selfish in wanting them save and sound! It is bad and it is human! She is erasing them as their own persons! She loves them so so much! She acts several times on her desire to go back and pretend everything is okay and then her friends have to correct her, sometimes gentle or sometimes reprimanding her. As tempting as it is to close your eyes and pretend, it can't be. That's the only reason why she didn't fell for the lure of the Eternal Tsukuyomi: her whole life has been about learning why that living of illusions won't bring happiness to anyone.

Shippuden somehow traps her in that realization like a personal hell. I love you both. You are willing to sacrifice your wellbeing for your dreams. I can't do nothing. I can only cry and ask you to stop and do something reckless and try to use myself as a living shield. But I can't do nothing. You are your own beings and you will destroy yourselves if you want to. I can only sit, wait and see if I can mend you later. I can only deal with the afterwards. I can only control my reactions to your actions.

Making her a medic is amazing because she has to wait for one of them to start bleeding to come in the scene. They will never allow her to fight for them in the way they did for her in the Classic, for multiple reasons —including just how important is agency and free will for both Naruto and Sasuke.

When people say she's useless? Or have no place in the narrative? Or bring nothing to the table? Or speaks in no way about the failures and cruelty if the shinobi system? When people don't get that she's Naruto and Sasuke narrative foil in terms of her arc being narrated in a completely different way with different aspects? That's she's all they're not or can't be or can't have or weren't allowed to be? When people erase her from the dynamics of Team 7 and don't see the gaping hole they left in her absence?

It makes me utterly insane. All members of Team 7, the original and all the Shippuden versions, are relevant to the themes. All of them.

One thing I love about Team 7 is that they're all bitchy and can be pretty cruel with their words when they want to.

Most of the Konoha-12 teams have at least one member that's gentle and softens the abrasive effect of the other members of the team: Hinata, Choji, Rock Lee... Don't get me wrong, they can be bitchy sometimes.

Sometimes.

The interesting thing about Team 7 is that they are all assholes. Looking back at the Classic, none of them had friends, not really. Maybe a rival, but a friend? They were lonely and stubborn and stupid to no end. Kakashi told them first thing first he hated them and as much comedy as it was, I think it was a reference to this.

They were mean. It you ask me, the role of the gentle teammate goes to Sasuke. Putting his quest for vengeance aside, he tried to be respectful as much as he could, had a good relationship with both Naruto and Sakura, he even kept his mouth to himself most of the time if unprovoked.

If he hadn't had so much trauma, maybe in one of the not massacre aus, I bet he would have been the softer of the three. Because Sakura tries to play the part, but it's never specified why she feels she must keep her personality locked inside her head. Naruto is sweet too, but he has no filters and there's no way his honesty wouldn't be a problem.

Then comes Sai and really? It's a combination of Sasuke's trauma and Sakura's personality and Naruto's bluntness. He's genuinely so so funny because he fits Team 7 so perfectly.

They were giving people mean nicknames and rejecting suitors based on their looks and eccentricity and calling out people on their trauma like???

The biggest menace was their mouths and their judgy tendencies.

A not too quick aside on Sakura now that I’ve finished Part I, but it amazes me how many times her completely valid concerns about Sasuke and his well-being during Preshippuden are kind of brushed off by the people around her. On numerous occasions, she correctly identifies that Sasuke is not only unstable, but also an active danger to himself, but every time she tries to talk to Kakashi, I can’t help but feel he’s intentionally trying to shelter her from what’s going on, resulting in interactions where it can come across as if he’s not really taking her seriously. I want to note that I specifically say 'come across' because he knows that Sakura's concerns are serious, though it's also obvious he very much views her as a child (which she is) and his protective nature towards his students leads to some... complicated things in regards to how he interacts with them due to the whole ninja fiasco.

A very noticeable instance comes directly after Naruto and Sasuke’s rooftop fight, where in seeing Sakura is noticeably shaken after seeing two of teammates nearly kill each other, Kakashi tells her everything will be alright. He specifically tells her in the Viz Media translation that “Everything will be as it is before.” And of course, Sakura is reassured by Kakashi, but considering she later brings up her issues with Naruto, it shows that she still has reservations that she didn’t feel comfortable expressing to her teacher, which makes sense. Naruto is Japanese fantasy society based on those very customs, and in a culture that heavily values age-based hierarchies, I imagine that Sakura probably wouldn’t question a trusted mentor figure to his face.  

She attempts to talk to Sasuke into seeking help and telling the adults about the curse mark during the final leg of the exams, but he flat out refuses because it would mean resigning and having to put his personal goals on the backburner. She reaches out to Kakashi at least twice from what I remember, and both times seem to have done not much. She finally confides in Naruto, but he idolizes Sasuke so intently that he just doesn’t seem to believe it’s even possible for him to fall victim to the seductive nature of Orochimaru’s offer. It’s actually kind of amusing how Sakura seems to gradually begin growing out of her idyllic view of Sasuke before the reality of it all hits Naruto near the end of the Retrieval arc. She is aware of the fact that Sasuke could very well fall into Orochimaru’s clutches, and she took the signs he was putting out seriously enough to follow him on the night he left to the village gate. This is no doubt in part to the fact that Sakura has had moments alone with Sasuke where he reveals the more concerning parts of his personality; the awakening of his curse mark, for example, happened while Naruto was unconscious.

Honestly, I think her team was pretty lucky that she seemed to blame herself for not being able to stop Sasuke more than anything else. If I was in her position, I would’ve been livid at the idea that my concerns were completely correct and yet nobody around me seemed to agree until it was too late. At age thirteen, far less was enough to make me incoherent.

i jsut think kakashis bond with sasuke was one of the core bonds of naruto og and its insane it lost screentime after the timeskip. itsokay if you dont believe this its okay to be wrong. i know the truth. it hurts me every day

I love how sakura is just unhinged and it gets funnier as the manga progresses because she literally doesn't have a traumatizing backstory (there's some bullying and while that's impactful, it's not something that changes her to her core).

like kakashi is a magnet for corpses of loved ones, naruto is hated by his entire village for something he never had a choice in, sasuke saw his entire clan killed by his brother, sai was raised by the Most Evil Man of the Century. they all have valid reasons to be batshit insane

whereas sakura keeps up with them in the insanity department and there's no reason. she's just like that

Team 7 introductions are like:

Naruto: I want to obtain POWER so I can force people to look at me like an actual human being and not a monster, haha! They won't ignore me or isolate me anymore! They're gonna BEG ME and put their lives on my hands and— Oh and ramen. All the ramen. And maybe prove to everyone that they are dumb ass fuck for not believing in me? Yeah, prove them wrong, that's cool! And and and Iruka-sensei is cool! I'm so happy when someone does the bare minimum and respects my life and acknowledges the fact that I'm just a kid and that I'm suffering (one of) the craziest discrimination acts applied by our government Hokage...

Sakura: you know how the first real goal I got like the first thing I wanted for myself after years of being bullied and being nobody and wanting to disappear was the affection of this boy? Well, all these other girls think I don't stand a chance and that they'll get the boy, so I'm gonna win the boy and laugh at their faces. Does it mean that I need validation and affection and attention and love? Not, what are you saying, I have a perfect normal life and parents that are totally involved in my life and I am happy! So happy! I wouldn't know what sadness or loneliness is like! Never! I'm normal and totally nothing to worry about!

Sasuke: you'll find that the things you like in life are meaningless when you carry the trauma of being the sole survivor of a genocide committed by the brother you loved and adored. I want him dead which shouldn't be surprising given that we live in a society ruled by violence, right? I hate a lot of things because I'm painfully aware of how miserable our reality is. Since this is my trauma, no one else has the right to do something about it. They certainly didn't seemto have the balls to go after him, even when they call him criminal, so I'm gonna kill Itachi myself. Obsessed you said? Try enjoying life when you know someone can commit genocide and no one would give a fuck and the government won't do a thing. Try caring for others knowing they can get kill any day and you'll have to look the other way. I dare you to.

Kakashi: *most emotionally neglected adult in the village, abandoned as a kid, saw his father do the right thing and get so socially pressured he ended up commiting suicide and the government didn't give a shit, forced to become a perfect weapon at young age to show off the village strength, forced to become an elite assassin as a kid, people in the village widely making fun of his trauma and acting like he's just weird / peculiar and not on the verge of losing his mind for real, a champ at dissociation and a minute more away taking roots in front of the graves of his mistakes because he spent way too much time there in self-punishment, basically the most miserable jounin in the whole village*

Kakashi: hm, I won't let you get to know me or get close to me because everything I touch dies and I don't want to get attachments because you're soldiers and you might die and it doesn't matter that I have history with two of your families and that you all remind every single minute of the boy I watched die and the girl that I killed and the boy used to be. You will never know any of that. I am a whole man with a whole life that you'll never know because I am just your superior here and you must obey me in our missions. I'm definitely not hiding the fact that the village just failed me and set me up to be the one who failed you all in case you get killed or lose your shit once and for all.

The Akutagawa siblings actually mean so much to me TT__TT

origins odasaku + other doodles

(it was then the day fukuzawa became a single mother of two)

someone correcting me on something i said to be silly on purpose and now theyre treating me like im stupid

IM PLAYING! IM PLAYING!!!! WHY ARENT YOU PLAYING WITH ME WHY ARE YOU PUTTING AWAY OUR TOYS