Short Commentaries

AN: You can see the chapter posted with scans on AO3.

1: It's "cartoonishly evil"; therefore, it ain't real!

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The idea that narratives can get "cartoonishly evil" is a funny one—a very funny one. There's a whole world out there that exists beyond privilege that's impossibly wicked than your worst expectations; furthermore, anything that lies beyond the horizons of stability will always be remote. That's why it's important to read fiction and non-fiction works that don't aim for instruction but a realization in the reader that there's a different world outside his domain, a world that's foreign to him, a world that's gravely deplorable. (Only a complete dullard engages with art to perpetually reaffirm his own ideas of the world.)

Sure, many things in Naruto's world emulate reality, but you'd be surprised just how vile many realities are; and Naruto's world, in many ways, is quite muted. A good illustration of this would be the following: after America was done ruining Libya in every way conceivable, young individuals were sold in open-markets, 400 dollars a person (yes, less than the popular consoles these days); in India, each year, over a million newborn girls are sold for only a couple of dollars; there are countless narratives of allied soldiers killing people, including children, for the sheer sport of it (not that long ago, an Australian soldier put three bullets into the head of a poor man in Afghanistan, simply because he thought that it was quite funny; and he had many glorious words like "cunt" to spare for the man he "vanquished"); children are made to pick out coco beans at gun-point (you gotta love the chocolate, man); your computers run on the parts that are collected through abhorrent slavery, including child slavery, but it's always the corporations fault, obviously; it's still trendy in remote parts of Kuwait to wed off girls as young as 5 to adult men (many of them die horrific deaths from genital and bladder tearing; yes, they're used for intercourse); young boys are plucked from conflict areas, who've witnessed the slaughter of their communities, and inducted into private militias funded by the very militaries that ruined them—which reads like some sort of a very sick joke (however, your "other-worldly intelligent" keyboard-warriors, mostly from western countries, are firm in their belief that anger is unethical, vengeance is bad, and children, who're recruited into these armies, are just dull because they're "manipulated"; we should all let bygones be bygones; and that "greater goods" always require fresh sacrifices, just not theirs, and the people at the receiving end of this utopian blood-bath should simply deal with it, man, because "freer worlds" aren't built without committing some "lesser evils" here and there—or some shit like that); etc.

I don't know where you live, but the above? All of that is the daily reality for many people; however, I've seen many privileged individuals use words like "misery porn", "cartoonishly evil", and "oppression olympics" to not only blunt the severity of these atrocities but also tacitly show disdain at the mere fact that they were made to witness them—in any shape or form. Perhaps people need to look inwards when they liberally use the aforementioned phrases as a reaction to explicit illustration of brutalities: are they angered because it's too remote, or are they angered that any of this is shown at all, an allusion to their complicity in a world that's "remote" to their "familiar"?

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2: Two Worlds...

The more I re-read the Kage Summit arc (for the post I promised you all), the more I love it. It's so fucking good that even the chapters' covers tell the characters' stories; and none do it better than the chapter-drawings and the sharp contrast that exists between Sasuke's world and Sakura's.

This is how Kishimoto depicts them: Sasuke's cover (476-pg.2); Sakura's cover (483-pg.1).

Look closely. What do you see? The Sasuke's cover, which is the 2nd page of that chapter, Danzo vs. Sasuke, shows the Uchiha Village, abandoned, broken, and lashed by rain; this is what Sasuke remembers of Konoha. A bleak reminder of his legacy whilst the village about the graves that Konoha desecrated flourishes.

Now, look at Sakura's, Master and Student Reunited: her world is that of the village, vibrant, sunny, and bursting with activity. If you can't tell that how violently different they are, then I don't know what to say. Sasuke's is isolated and the colors are bleak; Sakura's is the exact opposite; and the most striking thing about this is that when the clash occurs, it's during that reunion between the former teammates. Sasuke's world is embroiled in what his panel suggests whilst Sakura has progressed in her world; a world that's noticed her. Whilst Sasuke's kin lie buried, forgotten.

This shows that Sakura and her team can't understand Sasuke and the broken world from which he comes. Heck, albeit Kakashi accepts, he's quick to suggest that Sasuke should be ended; in that he's a victim, but one that has to be silenced for the village's good: Kakashi, "Hatred. It is the history of repeated, accumulating hatred that has created the Sasuke before us...and even if it is not crystal clear, Naruto and Sakura are seeing with their own eyes that Sasuke is the victim of the times we live in."

Forget the chapters; how can anyone read the two chapter panels that show two vastly different worlds the characters occupy and come away shocked from the way this ended. They weren't going to reconcile as the world where Sasuke's exists is antithetical to the world where his former team resides. This lays bare the fact that Sasuke is right: the village has prospered over his clan's graves! The imagery is a dead giveaway as this is the arc of consequences for the village. Just this once, it has to pay for its transgressions! Just this fucking once!

I...don't get it. This fandom has a hard time getting the most basic things, so I'm not surprised.

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3: The difference between Kushina and Itachi isn't that large...

...but a matter of who was allotted which responsibility! Kushina like Itachi, too, thought that her clan was that of savages: Kushina: "Full of Shinobi brimming with vitality, Uzushio village was also known as The Village of Longevity. The clanfolk excelled at sealing jutsu. But they were also a bit savage."

However, when she her tiny ego was incorporated into the Will of Fire's gargantuan state ego, the prospect of being a powerful wife of the Hokage, like Mito before he, was very appealing: Kushina, "...even though Uzushio no longer exits as a nation now. During the era of war and unrest, our sealing jutsu abilities were greatly feared. We were targeted and eradicated. Survivors fled and hid themselves throughout the lands.

Naruto, "But...why you, ma...?!"

Kushina: "I was born with a particularly powerful chakra. Strong even for one from my village. Strong enough to suppress the Ninetails. In fact, the first Ninetails Jinchuriki was also an Uzushio Kunoichi. Which made it tradition. Her name was Uzumaki Mito, and she was the wife of the first Hokage. So I decided that I'd be the wife of the fourth Hokage."

That's why it's very telling that, as the hokage's wife, she offered no diplomatic support for the genocide survivors, wholly content with just the power the position provided her with, albeit she knew that her clansmen were scattered, without a home to return to, hunted down relentlessly.

I, personally, notice very little difference between her and Itachi: both thought their clansmen to be dangerous, savages, eradicated because of their powers; both of them felt that they were "special", given the positions Konoha offered them compared to the other savages in their clan; and both acted in accordance with what was required of them, protection of an asset for Kushina and eradication of miscreants for Itachi. They're both duty-bound, down to the last letter!

If you switch their places, for argument's sake, can you sincerely tell me that Kushina wouldn't have taken the same steps? Thought the same way? Gone down the same path? Itachi, too, started off with these sentiments that, accompanied by ghastly undertones, were somewhat benign: an impressionable youth that wanted to belong, away from the clan's savagery.

Yet overtime, they were nurtured, transformed into something very sinister; and that savagery that was accidental, if nothing else, became its long-standing curse. The Curse of Hatred. First Madara was in the wrong, misguided, and egoistic; and then he just became a boogeyman, one that tempted his clan, tempted it in ways that couldn't be remedied anymore. Madara, and Indra before him, had turned into curses themselves. Then all he wanted to do was purge that curse out from Konoha, expunge it from its domain, make his Leaf mighty again; however, the seed, root of that evil, is present in both; and where someone else cleaned up the savages for Kushina, no one did it for Itachi: he had to clean up the mess that was his clan himself. (Nagato, in that regard, becomes another accident, a child of prophecy that was one of the savages!)

In the end, as nearly all my discourse is empty without Sasuke like Canon is, I'd say this: I find it fascinating that, as I mentioned in another post, Kishimoto's views greatly evolved throughout the manga; at this point, you can see that there's an undercurrent of that doubt that's apparent through Kushina's gusto, a doubt that gives way to slight chagrin from Naruto; he didn't find justifiably in retaliation here, only later, but the censure is quite mellowed as Naruto had forsaken his reason when, nearly at Kage Summit'd end, he naively thought the genocide to be a kind of inconvenience in Sasuke's life, not the factor in his life. (Kishimoto, if you haven't noticed, started to make Naruto more and more naive, too foolish and blinded by Will of Fire to be reasoned with and taken seriously, a flaw that's very intentional as idealism like Naruto's isn't real, it's very much childish, which Kishimoto didn't agree with at the end!)

It's hard to say that where Kishimoto applied the breaks and truly changed, but I'd say that it'd be around the Kage Summit Arc as, immediately afterwards, you see Sasuke state very plainly, "these eyes, EMS, can see through the darkness!" and carve a path through that darkness, his gait bold; when, earlier, darkness was shown swallowing him up, especially at Part I"s end; and that's another reason why you never get to see Sasuke's inner thoughts, because he was Kishimoto's struggle as a writer; he couldn't understand him, either, not internally. That closed window is very much intentional as your hindrance to Sasuke's mind reflects Kishimoto's; and the more I think about the narrative, the more layers it reveals. It's fucking...fascinating that much more is concealed here and there, just waiting to be discovered and discussed, a narratological aspect called depth in literature!

Food for thought!

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