Uchiha Itachi: Woes of a Fascist Pacifist.
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Will of Fire is when the Senju arrive, belch fire and brimstone and an assured damnation to Leaf's own brand of hell, a tradition that's only bequeathed to the "yes men". And that's the point, right there at the beginning of all the mess, where Itachi's character just utterly falls apart, to the sort of pieces you can never bring together.
There's some vagueness to Itachi's outward semblance, his persona, in the beginning: embellishments from 47 Ronan (his arm in the sleeve); one of the lines that he states to Sasuke is lifted from the aforementioned narrative, word for word; and his seeming, and I truly mean seeming, soft heart for Sasuke, enough that he quells his anger in front of his father and others who'd come to implicate him for Shisui's murder. All of that (during Sasuke's recollection of the turmoil leading to the massacre) represent parts of the puzzle; yet when the full picture is put together, his character doesn't change for the better; it's the exact opposite.
Through Kishimoto's erroneous structuring of Itachi's narrative, we're to assume, from what fractured bits are presented to us from his boyhood, that he was a boy who stood apart from all; and that instilled in him a sense of being a pariah amongst others, whose ineptitude and the arrogance that stemmed from that ineptitude pushed him away from his own roots towards greener pastures—leaves or Leaf, basically.
And all that molded him in ways that he engendered a deep contempt for his own, willing to extinguish them in a moment of great foolishness, a catastrophe borne of youth's audaciousness in being headstrong and too willing to tread too far for what he believed in. (Strike first and think later, which is what youth and its risks are all about, especially for young boys as they take great risks in adolescence.) You can state that he was a boy who was butting his head with a generational problem that was way over his head, having no agency in reaching the right juncture in spite of being supposedly intelligent, gifted, or what have you.
Then Obito spills the Senju beans (to Sasuke), and when all the pieces fall into place, it's a very messy picture that ought to have stayed as vague as before. Where did it all go wrong? Kishimoto's inhuman schedule? Fandom popularity, a horde the called the shots? The editors that forced Kishimoto to fall in line with the popular demand (which has happened time and time again in the manga)? I'd say that it's all three as you can't conceive a colossal narrative fuck-up as big as Itachi on your own; it's, given how many aspects in the manga are utterly brilliant, just not humanly possible.
And I'm going to jump straight into this without any dillydallying as the fuck-ups are as numerous and colorful and as they're scroll-thin. The very first blunder that the narrative makes in the "revelation pages" is his handshake with Obito (whom he was dead-sure was Madara, but I'd refer to him as such). What's the purpose of letting another Uchiha live, one that could bypass even Leaf's defenses? Sure, Obito was beyond his capabilities, but it isn't as if he even inched towards creating the tiniest possibility for that confrontation. Did he join hands with Obito as he was Itachi's only way into Akatsuki? You can make that claim, but it isn't as if they don't take dissidents into their group, because that's what Nagato wanted, a place for powerful Shinobi who'd forsaken their villages in the wake of injustices, disagreements, or simply for the sake of freedom. A line than ran across their place of alliance, one which was akin to loyalty on the brow, was enough to offer them his sanctuary.
The unshakable disloyalty was enough to create a camaraderie (of sorts) between them all, the makings of a unified step towards salvation that all of them wanted—each in their own way. What was stopping Itachi from letting his government know that another Uchiha—except for the very malleable youngling, Sasuke—existed out and about, heart of the "band of terrorists" that not only meant business but also to see it through all the way to the end in regard to that business? Hence, nothing was more dangerous than the Akatsuki, a threat that was armed to the last teeth to make true to that promise of a greater world that lay beyond these villages' wanton thresholds, grotesqueries of their worlds, dreams, freedoms.
If he'd grasped even the tiniest bit of the situation's seriousness, Konoha would've had detailed dossiers on each of these so-called S-Ranked "terrorist threats", but they were in the dark; and Itachi, by choice, remained in the dark himself, not lifting one ringed-finger to sabotage, delay, or muck-up even one of these bijū-gathering events. No, he participated in them with gusto, throwing out decidedly cheap philosophical musings when the mood presented itself. And if we're to take Obito's and Danzō's brief encounter seriously, and we ought to, we can safely assume that the two knew each other, hence, the sharing of Sharingan stashes. Since they did, can we also safely hazard a guess that Itachi was played for fools? And after all that, he went back and tortured Sasuke once more—a boy that was already teetering on the edge of sanity—expediting his descent into a self-destructive pit, a maw to which Sasuke directed his course after a miraculous recovery from a life-ending coma (which Itachi had gifted him as a reunion present).
If Obito, a living relic of the past in his eyes, one whose ideology he hated, was calling the shots of the very group in which Itachi decided to camp out in, what were the odds of this "sacrifice" of his ever finding any right course? And knowing that he was about to perish, what did he do to warn the world of the group's plans? You do see that how this character burns to ashes before he even takes off the ground for any meaningful discussion?
The thing is, there's "something" there, something painfully ambiguous, in all that muck that could afford him a charitable interpretation, but it isn't nearly enough to save his every aspect from being undercut by the obvious writing pitfalls. For one, the Uchiha demands were very benign. Fugaku and his sympathizers asking for a Hokage post isn't the sort of demand that they were in any position to make, not with a forceful hand. It was within Hiruzen's power to deescalate the situation: desegregate the clan, police, and compound, which was in their power. The job is done. The crisis, averted. Why wasn't it done? Why did any of the so-called "demands" tick Itachi off to the point that he decided to make a choice? What are the negotiations that keep getting referenced, but with no tangible evidence in sight? If the council, together with Hiruzen, were bent on never making even a single change to the way things were, am I supposed to believe that Itachi was in the right? If the clan was asked to smoother the dissidents, then what was the Council offering to even set the plan into action? And knowing all that, what prompted Itachi to declare at the end that the clan had to change? Change to what? Stop the resistance? Stop any demands? Accept the subservience? Accept the social degradation? Espouse the village's brutality? Espouse its…will of fire at their own expense? When no reason is awarded other than what the manga shows, how can any individual tell me, with sincerity, that Itachi wasn't a callous jingoist, a single-minded, wanton, and uncompromising zealot? You can't tell anyone to bring out any sympathy—even empathy—for a monster such as Itachi.
And all of that sprung…from what? Conspiracies and unfounded bigotry levelled against his clan at every turn? And to risk repetition at this point, am I also to believe that he didn't know that Tobirama set up the Uchiha to be smothered to death tortuously or quickly depending upon which stance they took against the injustice he structured into the village's very pillars? We know that from Hiruzen that Itachi, from a very young age (7, in fact) took great interest in the village's history—that he thought like a Hokage (let's assume that to be a compliment for now). Tobirama himself admitted to all that, declaring how prophetic he'd been about their inevitable demise. Am I then supposed to believe that Itachi was unaware of the fact that Tobirama didn't let any grudges against the clan go, which he'd harbored from the Warring Clans' era, refusing to embrace the other clan, choosing a path of constant provocation and escalation against them? You ought to be aware that Itachi was aware of the clan's history to the point that he perverted its aspect to lead Sasuke astray (he recreated a brand-new tale on Madara, one which took pieces of history and rendered them in ways to cast a terrible light on the clan's past)—to redirect Sasuke's anger to a path that he desired: contempt for his own; furthermore, he was a double-agent, playing both sides, so he knew which surveillance mechanisms were in place; he was one of the very mechanisms to keep the clan in check.
And to be candid here, Tobirama's the most insidiously evil mother-fucker in the entire Shinobi World's history—Itachi's a good shadow, a great Shinobi, of the doctrine Tobirama engineered. The 4th war sprang out of the political infrastructure, malice, and the culture he created. This is stated in the manga—by his own brother. The other wars are consequences or actions that he and his followers took.
Once you reach this realization, Itachi's character loses any semblance of sympathy—even a façade of it—in the process. He comes across as nothing more than a misguided and ruthless patsy, an attack dog who turned against his own for a fascist state that never had any reason to act out for "survival", when all the power, all the cards, and all the courses existed in its domain from the very beginning. The most charitable, and stretched to great thinness, reading of his would be that Leaf charmed him so brutally that any and all cruelty from its end was a justified course in his mind, as long as the state's dominance was upheld; something that, to no one's surprise, culminated in Leaf's final escalation with the Senju "prophesied" ethnic-cleansing.
Then I'm, by his insistent and sociopathic and moronic sympathizers, asked to believe that he sold out the clan to safeguard his brother, whom he mentally and physically terrorized for the better part of a decade, with the end-goal of fracturing the child's psyche (through the KA command, might I add) and forcing him to assume the role of Konoha's solider—one that would replace him as the next Leaf dog, next perfect solider. Did he…really care about Sasuke? After all that I've said, can you truly reach that conclusion when the object of his love was seen as a replacement for his absence in the village? You can't sincerely believe in this, can you? As from this perspective, he only spared Sasuke because he saw him as his own replacement, not that he nurtured any love for him.
Itachi reads like a fucking awful, inhuman, and psychopathic military man; and any argument, from his sympathizers or the manga, comes across as blatant war-criminal apologetics. Even his disdain against the Uchiha Police Force (PF) makes nary a sense as it was a poisoned chalice; and lo and behold, it was described as such, even by people like Orochimaru who were objectively detached from Leaf's politics. The "illusion of power" that the PF was granted to investigate and arrest their peers didn't bear any fruit; as not only were Anbu and Root created to be utterly immune to their reach but canon also showed people like Itachi (who belonged to Anbu) retaliate with great aggression for this innocuous transgression, proving yet again that even the lowly soldiers had full authority to overrule any of the investigation attempts at any given moment, and with force at that.
This gave the clan power's illusion, to which they quickly became very aware, and also denied them any power at the same time. A paradox that existed solely to humiliate them consistently. In the meantime, the entire setup attached the stigma associated with PF, investigation, and incarcerations with the clan; and that in turn created another great barrier between the clan, Leaf, and all other perks that come with being a part of a powerful military junta. And that was the sort of cornering that the clan had no hope of ever overcoming, not in any meaningful way, to turn things around for the better, salvage their repute, change the course that assured their destruction. It was a poisoned well from the start as they couldn't take a single step without any approval from the political stronghold that denied them the very aspects that they desired. This was a lose-lose situation, one which Itachi single-handedly tipped over the edge.
Suggesting, "it was all Danzō's fault!" doesn't represent the nexus of the trouble: it's the argument that's conveniently chosen to side-step a very real reality: Danzō was Tobirama's protégé, like Hiruzen; and like the rest of the council, he inherited his bigotries against the Uchiha. So did Kagame. So did Shisui. So did Itachi. It's a chain of command, a hierarchy of power where all play their own part; and Tobirama lies at the apex of this issue; Itachi, at its tail-end.
The worst part of it all is the manner in which he flaunts his clan's legacy, gloats about his Sharingan's power, and belittles his opponents through the possession of the very same power that he ended in a bloodbath at Leaf's alter. And that brings to the fore another repugnant side of him that he considered the clan to be unworthy of that power; and himself, worthy. And his supposed "pacifism" is rooted in this phenomenon: power to end lives shouldn't be in the hands of the ones not collared and restrained by the state; once that changes, it becomes a source of utilitarian good, and all the lives lost are mere mistakes that are correct in that journey to greatness.
Doesn't that send a chill down your spine? A teenaged, and later a young man, fascist whose arrogance is nigh biblical, who did all that he could for a state body that perpetuates the Shinobi Doctrine that's perpetually stagnated in the waters of an unending cycle of life and death and a cold war? And here's the truth of the matter: Itachi destroyed everything he touched—everything—save for Danzō, the council, and Leaf. Sasuke, the great object of his "love", suffered the most at his hands, in his own narrative to write a replacement of him out of Sasuke.
But hey, apparently, all that's required to detach yourself from the past as a dedicated serial killer and cleaner of contrarians on a pay-check (à la Kakashi, Gaara, and others like them) is to swallow down Naruto's sandal and by extension the Leaf's. Then watch the lovers burst out their love-juices in their jorts in glorious details, most of which pollute the Fix-it Fan-Fictions shipping gutters (Sakura Fandom being at the forefront of this fascist vicarious fantasy; they didn't like the "canon robberies" she went through) and the "he was a kind soul" discourse in great numbers. Some people deserve all the mockery. They're born for it!
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