Ask The Tropers

Examples Are Not Arguable, either Naruto has this lesson and doesn't follow it, or it wasn't a lesson to begin with.

I think the example is too long to make a point and is just complaining. However, I do agree that hard work in the series often doesn't matter since every important character turned out to be genetically gifted (something the protagonist argued against in Part 1).

But that's the point Satoshi Bakura is making. Naruto may say it but the series has long made clear that Hard Work Hardly Works. It is consistently made clear and doesnt really spouse the hard work will work aesop.

I actually think the entry is correct in spirit, but bad in execution. Naruto, especially pre-Shippuden Naruto does try to make the argument that with hard work anyone can succeed, with multiple different characters, MC Naruto included.

But this aesop all falls apart in Shippuden and later chapters when the story shifts more on a discussion and exploration of lineages and the power/legacy people get from them. I feel like that's a pretty clear example of Broken Aesop to me

Um... you SAY it is but dont really SHOW the manga spouses this at all. I can play nice and give you one scene: The one where Naruto says to Sasuke "Bushy Brow aka Rock Lee, trains way harder than you ever will. Of course he creamed you" after Rock Lee defeats Sasuke. But other than that you just say the manga preps this aesop where there is nothing further from the truth.

^^ That's your interpretation, not a message that the series espouses. The hard work vs. naturally talent thing was an Accidental Aesop people latched on to early on that quickly proved not to be the case.

I've argued on this a few times on r/CharacterRant. I don't think it's sufficiently clear that Masashi Kishimoto actually intended any moral that hard training trumps everything. Rather I think that people identify more with Rock Lee, the guy who's completely incapable of anything but martial arts which functionally makes him a person with a disability by ninja standards, than with the ninja aristocrats with tailed beasts and bloodline powers that they got from their ancestors (even Naruto himself is the son of the Fourth Hokage). In other words, Lee has to work fifty times harder just to be a competitive second-string fighter against people who landed in the top slots by an accident of genetics, which resonates in a world where ten percent of the population has ninety percent of its wealth locked up and half of the rest of us are struggling just to survive.

I think the situation is more an Accidental Aesop about class privilege and generational wealth inequality than a Broken Aesop.

You are so awesome Star Sword. I never saw it that way but now that you say it it is the truth!

"you SAY it is but dont really SHOW the manga spouses this at all." and "That's your interpretation, not a message that the series espouses."

• I offered examples and character dynamics that reflect the overall aesop. A work doesn't have to spell it out in the most obvious terms for it to have a certain message and works can have multiple messages, particular long-run and complicated ones.
• and yeah, themes, messages, and symbols are interpretative to a certain extent, unless there is a definitive Word of God stating otherwise. Star Sword's point would make sense if I gave just an example of Rock Lee. I didn't. I gave multiple examples of other characters, Rock Lee not even being one of them (though he would certainly fit, in retrospect).

I'm wondering why Broken Aesop isn't a YMMV trope, now that this conversation is going. Because I didn't even realize this was a contoversial opinion to have, let alone one that is debated in many other forums if the google search I did shows anything.

No the Aesop has to be spoused by the show openly, or at least have more meat to it than apparently just "the work seems to be setting this aesop up".

Also what you are saying isnt actually controversial. Your opinion is the one the majority shares. But that doesnt make it right at all.

^^(EDIT: ignore this, responded to what turned out to be a typo: Broken Aesop becoming YMMV is a relatively recent change by the TRS, I think, and the reason is because it's basically an Audience Reaction that the moral attempted by the work fell flat in execution.)

And I focused on Rock Lee pretty much just because he's a fairly blatant example. The man with an inherent disadvantage of birth, works his ass off to be in the top of society, and then loses anyway to the guy who got handed more power than Lee will ever achieve on a silver platter just because his daddy is a village chief.

^Whoops that was a mistype on my part. I mean why it isn't YMMV. Because it currently isn't.

^I think we both ran into the Mandela Effect on that one lol. Yeah, I think it should be YMMV, too.

^^^^Y'see, this is why I'm confused as to why this isn't YMMV or Audience Reaction.

If most viewers walked away from the story walked away with the idea that the work started off with an aesop but then dropped it, how is that not a Broken Aesop?

^^^My point is that an aesop is created not by a single instance but by a collection of them. Rock Lee's not the only case and many of the characters play with that theme in the beginning of the story. That's why I think it's a fair argument to make that it was an aesop of the work's early period that fell away as the story developed because most of the characters used to make that aesop were revealed to be either born into super powered families, were genius-level talented in their own right, or ended up not amounting to much in the long run.

But that's kind of moot now. I'll open a trope talk thread about making Broken Aesop YMMV which would clear up this problem too

Because the trope isnt about audience opinion. Otherwise we might just see about any random aesop the average troper come up with randomly. Sure this seems to be an objective audience reaction but the trope itself is not and has never been about what people feel. It has to be a lesson the show spoused and it has to openly violate the lesson. Period. End of statement.

^And again, I provided evidence that based on the early segments of the manga, it is fairly reasonable to get the "hard work can trump talent" message due to several character dynamics and story lines. I didn't pull it out of thin air.

If it's true as you said that reading the early stages of the story as a "hard work pays off" is the majority interpretation, then it's rather presumptuous to assume that everyone else is just reading the story wrong and a small minority has the true, correct understanding.

I hate to say this but yeah. Feeling someone is presumptous doesnt make them less right or you less wrong.

Let's not forget that even with genetic advantages, Naruto still had to train his ass off to become strong. Which is why some fans argue that the story doesn't push the "hard work trumps talent" message, but that "hard work will unlock your true potential".

Here's the link to the Trope Talk thread about Broken Aesop [1].

^^I'm not really interested in continuing this discussion because I think the argument that "most people 1) see this aesop and 2) think it gets broken, but they're wrong" is just not a defensible position without Word of God and even then, only marginally so.

It's starting to seem like various aesop tropes might need a visit to the TRS, if they haven't already. Whether an aesop has to be specifically intended, and if so how do we know, seems to be an issue

It seems consensus is to remove the entry on grounds of too much ambiguity.

Edit: It was already done last night, I see.

Would there be any objections to me adding a version of what I wrote in my first comment under Applicability?

Not from me. Looks good.

Done.