Namikaze Minato: Military Propaganda, The Character! (Part 1)

AN: If you can't see the images here, which I don't believe you'd be able to, you can read the same chapter on AO3. I'm not going to write lengthy dialogues and scenes and what have you from the manga scans. It's too much work.

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Which character (from Naruto) comes to your mind when you think, is this even a character? Ladies and gents, boys and girls, yes, I'm talking about the flash that thunders in a little fem- and in-cel's mind, makes shiver their teeny timbers, and the hopes, putting out gargantuan tears from their eyes, that they could be like him or have him, too—someday! You got that, right: it's your friendly neighborhood war-criminal with a hipster-fascist bend; the Flying Thunder God user, hoverer, and abuser; a bona fide jutsu-slot-machine on which all mediocrities can project their hopes and dreams and loneliest genitals—your one and only, Namikaze Minato.

(It's an all-in-one debunking post on Minato, so be prepared; and fr stands for for real, just in case you didn't know.)

To start off this little piece of mine, have you ever seen a "nothing personal, kid!" meme? You must have as it's fairly old now (google it if you haven't; you would gain nothing novel, and that's how Minato comes across as a character, as well); now, imagine, what if a character personified it to the point that become its perfect embodiment? That's what Minato is, a nothing-personal-kid meme taken to the extreme, dialed to eleven thousand and beyond, propelled forward at thundering speeds to Naruto-poll's top on a masturbator's ferocious desire to be that too-kwel-for-Genin-school kid-turned-man—ice cool, in fact.

With Kishimoto, you can tell what sort of intention he had with Minato: a talented young man who died young protecting the village (his tenure lasted for less than 6 months; Orochimaru taunted him for it when Sasuke summoned back all the Kages from the Shinigami's belly); he's less a person and more a character, even within the universe. He's only meant to be thought of as the "good ol' times" the character; but the fandom took up this mantra and dove headlong into this nuclear-family propaganda that he reeks of. What's he liked for? It certainly isn't his "impeccable" characterization (he barely has any); he doesn't move the plot much, other than that one time when Hinata fucked it all up, and her fandom shoved it in the candy-wrapper of weeaboo-sacrifice (what did she sacrifice other than everyone else for her throwaway Shōjo manga confession? Beats me); but Kishimoto had to think of something—and fast—to cover up Hime-Chan's egg-in-the-face moment that cost Naruto and what remained of Leaf their very lives. He swooped down . . . erm, rather into Naruto from the seal (waaaoow!), somehow, and fixed everything and flashed away. That's always been his character from the very beginning: he flashes from point to point, gets the job done (as his fans scream, with guts and spit flying out, foaming at the mouth; so I'd get to this in a bit), and goes back to the wife whose son's fanbase finds her hot enough to mount by proxy; however, what's better than the real deal? You tell me.

I'd go out on a limb here and confess it outright: Minato isn't a character; he's fashioned in the narrative as a semblance of it for Naruto to measure his worth, a previous place-holder for the seat he wants, a daddy that was just better; so if Minato was this school-yard-jock cool, he could be cool, too, no? Hence, he's a concept that elaborates on no particular concept, because he isn't meant to. A host of clichés, as you can call it, that stay clichés. He's basically there for a lot of dude-bros to self-insert into, the cool-dude effect. Bearing all of that obvious "mirage of greatness" Naruto Fandom associates with Naruto, I'm not surprised that he won as he's what many of these nerds would want themselves to be like: handsome, very popular with the ladies, successful, pretty wife, and an edgy solider on the side who'd take no prisoners (that's why they always wanted Naruto to not a have a receding hairline and a hideous mug, which he had since his teenage years: they wanted him to transform from an ugly duckling into a swan that is Minato; they bitch and moan about it to this day and edit his pictures to turn him into his pretty dad, lamenting, "Naruto could've been this!"; hence, as Sakura Fandom often hollers pathetically in every crevice of the internet they can lodge themselves into, Naruto was robbed of the genetic goods his mug deserved; they even grant the frog-aesthetic-holding loser a sharper chin; "no weak chin shall grace this normie's visage on my fucking watch; he was prettier than Sasuke, meant to rizz up all the bitches and his mom! Robbed-robbed-robbed!" they yell when the night is still young and beyond). Kind of like those CIA operatives and their posts on twitter handles. Minato reads exactly like those posts. What a surprise? Not really.

And that's what makes the dude blander than the white-trash bread. He acts like this . . . devoted family-man on the side when he's got "flee on sight!" order from Cloud, so he's your seasoned war-criminal; but look over there, away from this heinousness: he wears the apron, washes the dishes, smiles as his heavily pregnant wife rests (who looks as if she might explode with Kage Bunshins Naruto was abusing before his vag-popping time); he even rescued her via a trail of red clumps, which went on for miles, that didn't leave her with several bald patches, daaaaw! (The pretty war-criminal and his girl-boss nuke-carrying-wife who's a tomboy, too; she's so me, like fr; romance of the century!) Your trad wife fantasies realized, basically, and that's why even Sakura Fandom can't help themselves from tossing aside the Uchiha fat cocks every sunday to slow-flash-step their way onto his dick . . . to feel a flash of batter and a thunder of aftereffects (Kushina went full-on bald in this AU; that trail had come pricey; so as legend has it: whenever a hot-alpha-man-slot is empty, or made to be empty, it's the right time for the Sakura Fandom . . . erm, I mean, Sakura to fill it up from below; by Kami's design, as your mum would say!); however, at the other end, he's also this calculating solider that gets his hands dirty on the side, coats them with the blood of his "enemies", and you've got to say that with a deep Southern accent—all smiles. The dude is like this traditional family man, together with the poster cut-outs of a hideously smiling wife by his side who's secretly the nation's mother, a first lady who's relatable and goofy (also like me, fr, fr!), with a nuke in her boiler, and God fearing (Will of Fire fearing in this case) solider who's just perfect. Is he the very embodiment of 1950s Western Cold War propaganda? Shut the front door!

Am I wrong? No, with complete seriousness, just look at this guy and tell me with honesty: change his clothes and give him and Kushina funny hair and clothes and slap them on any 1950s poster of a family man who was out there risking it all for his nation, family, and future jingoistic bastard brood; and you've got yourselves a Cold War poster number 1000th on your hand. It's no wonder that the dude can't carry the whole narrative to save his life, because he isn't anything more than the aesthetics of that poster: a panel like that exists, as well, and it's disturbingly hilarious as to how close it looks to an average trad-wife and family-man poster from the 1950s America that was deeply embroiled in Cold War that it was the "American Values" versus the "Barbarism of Socialists"; only with Minato, he bought the Senju Farm quickly into his tenure, so we all got saved from the denture-filled grins Naruto would've bestowed us with on each of the panels, with his ma and pa shouldering the good (genocidal fascist) state and its burdens, smiling: it hurts them more than it hurts us all! Thank heavens for small favors (and Kishimoto truly lost it at this juncture as his "my village was closer to the American Base" is laid out naked for everyone to read, and it's pretty silly).

And the thing is, in spite of all the "myth" associated with the character, he doesn't live up to any of that save the myth the real people constructed about him. This can be read in two ways: Kishimoto deliberately deconstructed the myth and showed to us that legends are ordinary; he showed to us that myths are constructed in public discourse, not reality; or it could be both as Minato's performance . . . is less than stellar every time he's brought into the panels later on, to the point that the man turned into a farce of the very concept he was supposed to embody.

Let's look at his strategic feats first. When he came across Obito, who he thought to be Madara (without Obito telling him that he was), he struggled fairly hard against him. Obito kept up with Minato's so-called out-of-this-world speed just fine, to the point that Minato had to constantly teleport with Flying Thunder God (FTG) to counter Obito's foot-speed, of all the things, and get out of his chains. That isn't the feat of someone who's very fast, but the exact opposite:

(He matched Minato slash speed easily here, enough to grab hold of his wrist.)

(Minato was so slow to counter Obito, with any Taijutsu, here and had to teleport away to save his life.)

It's so silly that he wasn't even fast enough to jump out of Obito's chains and had to resort to FTG (again!) to break free; no, he practically landed into them!

And contrary to what his belligerent wankers would have you believe, he couldn't land a finger on Ae, the 4th Raikage, and a teenaged Bee, who had yet to be confined in the village for the Perfect Jinchūriki training, something which happened after the 3rd Raikage's death and Ae's coronation as the 4th one; so this war was fought before that as Ae isn't a Kage yet here and Bee is free to roam about and spread terror. Bee anticipated both of Minato's dainty flashes and stalemated him with ease:

(Bee intercepted him once here with no trouble, even though he's using FTG, not foot speed/ Shunshin no Jutsu; he couldn't even lay a finger on Ae, contrary to what you've heard, and Bee allowed him to attack his Partial Transformation.)

(Funnily enough, it's Minato and his team that're asked to retreat when Bee reveals himself to be Hachibi's Jinchūriki, not what the internet that's filled with his belligerent wankers claims.)

(His FTG "trick" isn't anything novel as even a fool like Ae, who's like Bee a pure brute force fighter, figured it out just fine; and so did Bee who stalemated this supposedly super-fast shinobi that was using FTG this whole time, not flash-step/foot speed.)

In the War Arc, despite being in Kurama Bijū Mode (BM) and accompanied by his clone, he failed against a bloated Jūbi Obito and got kicked and thrashed about, together with his clone. Whilst Sasuke flashed from so far away and saved Naruto in the process; he also used Susanoo that is known to make the user slower:

(Notice how close Obito is to Minato's Kage Bunshin, who's about to call the original to him: Obito's landed right in front of him!)

(Minato's KB teleports the original to himself; and Sasuke's way over there whilst Naruto and Gamakichi are in front of Minato and his clone, and so is Obito: if you look closely, you can see Naruto falling down from Gamakichi.)

(You can see the scene much more clearly here as Obito has fallen right in front of Minato and his KB; and Naruto is falling right behind Obito who's used the Truth Seeking Orb, TSB, turned it into a rod, and stabbed it in Naruto's direction; and at the bottom left panel, as the manga is read from right to left, you see Sasuke's Ribcage Susanoo's formation, its fist, basically.)

(Sasuke's caught the TSB's end with the Susanoo's fist, long enough for Naruto to fall and land safely; and this is the orb that cancels out all Ninjutsu, by the way, including Edo Tensai, which I'd explain in a bit; so that's quite the chakra potency feat by Sasuke that the rod, which obliterates all Ninjutsu, didn't immediately break through his Susanoo that allowed Naruto to fall down with his life intact; you can even see the place which was struck by the TSB; and all the while, Minato couldn't do a thing and he and his KB are kicked away by a bloated Obito.)

(As I mentioned: Susanoo makes the user slower, so that's an incredible speed-feat by Sasuke as he'd have been much faster without it, and yet another poor show of speed by Minato.)

Before that, whilst Obito was still struggling against Madara's control to use Rinne-Tensei on himself to bring Madara back to life, Minato was so slow that he had to teleport his Kage Bunshin to Obito as he still had Minato's FTG marking on him from their past encounter. He was absurdly slow that he couldn't run on foot whilst Tobirama, with his clones, and Hashirama, also with his clones, covered the distance quicker than him. And Sasuke covered the distance the fasted, and with Susanoo (which canonically makes the user slower, as I showed above) might I add, and reached there the fastest—right before Minato used FTG to reach Obito.

(Hashirama is mentioning here that they have to stop Obito, who's being controlled by Madara, from using Rinne-Tensei and bringing Madara back to life; so it's a race against time here.)

(And Immediately, Hashirama and Tobirama scramble to create Mokuton and Kage Bunshins; they can make less than what they should be able to as the remaining are busy holding the barrier around the Jūbi intact.)

(Minato makes a handseal to create a KB here, the quickest guy in the manga, apparently; look above as they're much closer to Madara, who can be seen as a flaming dot above Hashirama and his Mokuton Bunshins, than Sasuke is to Obito.)

(Look at how small Susanoo is in comparison to Obito's size; Hashirama and his Bunshins in the previous panel don't look much larger than Madara; and Sasuke, again, is using Susanoo and an Enton Jutsu, rendering him slower.)

(Sasuke uses Chidori Blade here, too, so that's three Jutsus in a single flash-step; all the Shinobi in the manga don't ever use more than one Jutsu during fast movement, but Sasuke does that all the time because he's simply that fast; and he's still closer to Obito than Hashirama and Tobirama are to Madara, and Minato's still nowhere in sight.)

(And this is when Minato decided to slash Obito, and he'd send his Kage Bunshin instead, which makes it funnier as that means that the seal he used way back was for this very purpose.)

Another poor speed-feat, one of the many in the war. Even when Minato jumped away from Obito, whilst in BM, Sasuke matched his speed easily.

Then when Obito came at them with a TSB again, after he managed to sync himself properly to the Jūbi, Minato stood around like a fucking moron whilst Sasuke, again, used Susanoo (which, to remind you all for the third time, makes the user slower) to guard all of them against its blast:

(Sasuke has formed a full Ribcage Susnaoo whilst Minato has yet to teleport the orb away, which Tobirama does for him through FTG, a Jutsu which Minato abuses regularly to get away, not foot speed, by his own admission in the above panel.)

However, apparently, for some curious reason, it's Minato, despite having his speed massively augmented by Bijū Chakra through-out these above panels, who's very fast and not Sasuke. Hmm, odd. And if you haven't noticed, his speed feats are excruciatingly mediocre, only all of them, even though he's well beyond his regular speed as he's in BM. And why wouldn't they be? Cloaked Ae is faster than Minato without his Teleportation, anyway. Don't let the pitiful "I could also be a trad wife holder!" wank fool you!

Then are his acclaimed S-Ranked, as his wankers put it, strategic feats that are straight up preposterous in canon. He countered Obito's Kamui with pure dumb luck as he had no clue that it was an ocular ability: it's mentioned nowhere in his analysis that it's an ocular ability, so his decision to teleport to Obito's back had little to with how Intangibility works and more his assumption that Obito would be vulnerable when he's solid; so he just teleported behind an opponent's back (again, like he always, a complete meme) on a whim:

(I love it that he's so fucking stupid, the "elite prodigy" that kids like Sasuke just can't compete with, that he just lands headlong into Obito's chain and its obvious loop-trap, isn't even fast enough to jump out, and has to resort to FTG, again!, just to make an escape; and Obito's just 14 here!)

So not only is Minato not that fast compared to a 14-year-old child but he's also a goddamn arse. And in order to overcome this Raiton-coated kunai-up-the-arse slight against their patron saint of basement-dwelling would-be "chaddies", they just keep abusing this last scan to feel special about themselves that Minato delivered this "whoop-arse!" in totality to Obito when the scans illustrate the exact opposite; and as if Minato didn't fail repeatedly on all fronts during this battle before this final strike! And his little plan could've massively backfired. It worked because he was lucky. And we later learned that Obito was merely 14 here, a little kid, who nearly cost Leaf Kurama, managed to kill off his middle-class simpleton-perfection trad-wife, Kushina, and Minato himself in the process, and cost Leaf plenty of casualties; so it was a job well-done from his end, and Minato had no choice but to the seal Kurama into his own perpetual loser of a son, a decision that's lauded by the fandom, because . . . ideal solider, remember? It's a cliché as they adore to be that cliché some day, or in another life vicariously if their balls haven't FTG'd down to hit the water yet!

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