Naruto

Happy "Thank the Sage Uzumaki got the support structure he needed to stay stable and sane or things would have turned to crap real fast with the Demon Fox he had in his stomach, ready to burst out at moments of incredible anger" Day!

Edit: Oh, no. The Pagetopper Curse Mark on my neck...is trying to take over!

Edit^2: Oh, I forgot to ask: what if Naruto had snapped and let go control of the Nine-Tailed Fox earlier? If that happens, what is the largest amount of tails it would take to stop him?

...Contemplating the explosion and death of the teenage outcast protagonist in a hypothetical school shooter scenario.

Friendship Day!

Edited by fredhot16 on Jul 30th 2021 at 5:54:32 AM

Wait! Is it Friendship day in the USA too!? COOL!!!

Where are you from, Aegis?

PARAGUAY! Yay! Where are you from? Tell in a PM if you must.

Edited by AegisP on Jul 31st 2021 at 4:49:05 AM

...Damn, nobody really does look below and a few inches near the avatar.

USA, Louisiana, Baton Rogue.

Edited by fredhot16 on Jul 31st 2021 at 7:49:56 AM

I know. I'm stupid! I did look AFTER I posted! God I am stupid.

This Boruto episode was pretty entertaining if you like wholesomeness.

Kawaki is a better Sasuke than Sasuke. And I’m glad we got to see him and Himawari being siblings.

Which one?

Kawaki definitely feels like a better early Sasuke.

@fred Newest one.

Team 10 gets to hunt down Kashin Koji with help from Kakashi.

Gotta admit, from the L they're going to get soon, this was a solid W effort from them. Never underestimate a blackenese woman's intuition.

We even got a brief KH vs KK fight.

For a fun trivia, you know how Kashin Koji's jurisdiction was on the Land of Fire? Well which of the other great nations do you think the others were in?

Really liked the previous episode, where Konohamaru got faced with the reality that cults aren’t so easy to break the cultists from it, especially as Delta was blowing up parts of the place at the same time and one of the main heads of the cult was just as devout as the regular folk.

"Delta was blowing up parts of the place"

I guess you can say she was Konan's "Delta Variant".

Jokes aside, someone once asked why Naruto doesn't wear his headband anymore like Kakashi does. I was going to say it's because he's the Hokage, but symbolically, Naruto's always tried to prove he was a member of the Leaf Village and the headband was a symbol that he was. Now that he's the leader, he doesn't need it anymore. And that's pretty heartwarming in it of itself.

So, re-watching one of my favourite episodes of the original series: Neji vs Kidomaru.

And it now dawns on me that Kidomaru would have been even tougher to beat if he knew Shadow Clone Jutsu.

Like, combine his long distance fighting with the ability to make clones, which means potential more Web Kunai. And if he's able to perfectly distribute his Chakra like Naruto did during his Chunin exam match with Neji, then the latter would be screwed since even if he managed to get close, he'd have only one shot at hitting the right Kidomaru.

I wonder if Kishimoto considered that and that's why Spider-nin didn't know the technique?

It'd be too hard to beat. Look at all the characters who knows the move: Boruto, Deidara, Hayate, Hiruzenchi, Jiraya, Kakashi, Kiba, Koji, Konohamaru, Madara, Minato, Naruto, Orochimaru, Sasuke, Tobirama.

The Sound Five's powers are freaking weird as it as. Adding a jutsu with that much creative potential would make things even harder.

Agreed. I kinda realized that myself. Neji wasn't actually able to see through Naruto's clones (because he perfectly distributed his Chakra) and fell for a feint where he had a clone deliberately stand back to trick Neji into thinking that was the real one (since everyone knew Neji was deadly at close quarters).

If Kidomara was able to create even one or two clones like that, Neji'd be screwed if he maintain all his other abilities too. He'd have lost even if he pulled the Taking the Bullet stunt he did in canon, because he'd have to do it to three arrows at once, and that'd be impossible.

Yeah. Definitely too broken.

Speaking of Neji, what do you think of the Naruto vs Neji fight? And how it relates to the themes of the overall story?

Edited by GAP on Aug 22nd 2021 at 9:23:36 AM

It's a pretty entertaining fight, and the themes are, on their face, admirable to explore. It's too bad that the resolution of the fight, and the entire back half Shippuden completely undermine them.

Honestly, a lot of the griping about supposedly defying its message stems from misinterpreting what the point was due to the fog of time.

Neji's deal was that he felt that one's circumstances from the beginning decide everything about oneself going forward. Those who achieve greatness began great and never falter, those who are mediocre start as such and never manage to rise above that, and so on. All of this because Neji thought that his father Hizashi's death was forced upon him because he was the second-born twin.

Naruto's point at the end of the fight is about how he, the dead-last graduate of his class, took out Neji the "genius" with a (shadow) clone fake-out, despite Naruto's constant bombing of his exams stemming from having been shit at making clones. Then the reveal where Hiashi explains how Hizashi sacrificed himself of his own volition, over Hiashi's protests, which kinda collapsed the foundations of Neji's worldview.

Besides, it's detailed through the later parts of the manga that 1: Naruto didn't inherit any special traits from Minato or Kushina (so there's no grounds for claiming that he was 'born special'), and 2: Naruto and Sasuke defy the "fated result" of their final battle.

Then there's the supposed 'hard worker vs talented genius' thing, but that was more Rock Lee's deal, and as I recall, the writing frames the conclusion of that deal as something closer to 'there are many forms of "genius", with Lee being a "genius of hard work"'.

Edited by Tsuzurao on Aug 23rd 2021 at 9:40:42 AM

You can go back and forth on what you think Kishimoto intended, but these arguments still came from his failures to deliver on what he tried to say.

Edited by VeryMelon on Aug 23rd 2021 at 9:45:46 AM

Lee being a "genius of hardwork" also falls flat because he never actually accomplished anything on panel.

Biologically Naruto inherited the Uzumaki clan's stamina and chakra level, his seal is a special Uzumaki fuinjutsu that allowed Kurama's chakra to leak into Naruto, something that was only possible because Minato learned it from Kushina.

Beyond that his destiny also included being the child of prophecy destined to save the world, which he did, and the fated result is always caused by Indra's reincarnation always being a complete douche, which supposedly was changed by Naruro working hard to maintain his friendship with Sasuke but their relationship wasn't developed that well either.

IIRC, Naruto doesn't even have the special Uzumaki chakra and vitality. Compare Naruto dropping like a rock when Kurama is extracted from him vs Kushina still getting back up, ready to chain Kurama down when he's extracted from her (and minutes after giving birth, too).

The Child of Prophecy was a barely defined thing, as I remember it was basically 'a student of Jiraiya will either save or doom the world' - that doesn't pin down much of anything, does it? Lots of different ways that could pan out.

And the fated result of the Indra and Asura clash wasn't just that Indra and his successors become dicks who break away and go hostile. Part of the cycle was also that Asura and his successors always end up deciding to give up on Indra (or his successors) and decides to put everyone else above his brother (or brother figure). Hashirama pushed against that fate during the pre-village era, but fell into the same trap and gave up on Madara at the Valley of the End. Naruto refused to give up all the way to the end despite what anyone else said, and so he managed to break the cycle.

I accept that the bond between Naruto and Sasuke could have been written better, but I don't know how much of that was on Kishimoto alone, and how much was on editorial pushing the story to higher stakes so quickly in Part 1 (as I recall, it was the editor who pushed for the plot to go so quickly from Wave to the Chunin Exams, and to have the third stage of the exams be interrupted with the Konoha Crush Arc) and that making it hard to create on-panel moments of their bond developing.

Edited by Tsuzurao on Aug 23rd 2021 at 10:15:51 AM

I just realized the cloud tried to kindap Naruto's GF and mother for the sake of eugenics

Damn all the great villages pre-Boruto are garbage.

Edited by DevilSketch36 on Aug 23rd 2021 at 7:58:14 AM