Itachi Is More Special Than You. In Fact, The Whole Uchiha Clan Is More Special Than You

[redbrunja]

But first...

I found places to direct download all the naruto episodes, and I'm wondering which are worth watching. I'm planning on Temari rescuing Shikamaru, the episode with their conversation in the hospital (135), the Sasuke vs Naruto fight, and then in Shippuden, the Sakura versus puppeteer fight.

What else would you recommend?

I'd be interested in the episodes with Kiba/Hinata, Hinata in general, Anko (I was so disappointed she was only in the manga for two seconds and we never find out how she came to fight for Konoha), Sakura getting to be awesome, as always, Kakashi, and really, any episodes that is, either because it's funny, well animated, or has something my inner shipper would squeal over, worth the 20 minutes.

Now, on to something that is bugging me about the retcon. The morning after my Naruto bing, I woke up, and like, some poor hungover girl only now realizing who it was she brought home last night, went 'WTF, this makes even less sense than it did at 2 am!'

Okay, so, assuming that the Uchiha clan clan was treated as second class citizens (which I will, for simplicity) you have, in Itachi's youth:

Three OLD people who mistrust the Uchiha.

A sympathetic Hokage who will presumably hire a sympathetic successor.

A position in Konoha of REAL POWER. (Because no one is saying they weren't doing their job as military police.)

And you're telling me that the MAJORITY of the Uchiha clan decided that with those circumstances, ARMED RESISTANCE is the best choice?

Instead of oh, waiting for the opposition to die of old age?

I'm not going to go into Itachi being a lovely, loyal son with morals and then deciding everyone had to die, because it makes no sense. I truly think that if you kill your entire family, it doesn't matter who tells you to do so - you were just waiting for that excuse.

Comments

[tobu-ishi.livejournal.com]

That occurred to me, too, actually. I guess ninjas don't do peaceful resistance. (Unless you're Naruto, in which case you publicly and persistently annoy people protest inequal treatment in the school system by staging one-man sit-ins at the ramen stand. Or something.

And if you watch no other episodes of Naruto, watch the one where they spend the space of a few DAYS running around trying to get Kakashi to take off his mask. It's an extension of the short gag comic Kishimoto did on the same topic, and it involves cows, creepy ninjas, frogs that laugh themselves to death, and Sakura inverting the time-old anime trope by peeping on the boys at the bathhouse. It's riotous. XD

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I actually watched that with a friend and adored it.

I'd never bought the fanon trope that Kakashi was drop-dead gorgeous (I always thought he was just ruggedly attractive with dimples) until I saw the ramen girl's reaction.

And then I was like, okay, drop dead gorgeous it is!

Plus, you had Sakura thinking on her feet, peeping on the boys (oh, god, that was funny), and my personal favorite, when she's dressed in those other ninja's gear. She looked like the love child of Kakashi and Sydney Bristow.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

The ramen girl's reaction (and the ramen man, who also had hearts in her eyes) was a funny part of it, and it made me like the idea of him being gorgeous.

I think of him more as an 8.5 - 9 than a full 10, though. I think part of the reason the "OMG YOU'RE SO HOT!" thing works in fanfics is that the appeal is the surprise. If they had already been looking at his face for five years they might label him a point or two less.

I am on board with the dimples. My Kakashi totally has dimples.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

* (and the ramen man, who also had hearts in his eyes)

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

*nods*

Yeah, I totally think that whole not-seeing his face often or ever is a fact in the labeling of his hotness. There was actually one fanfic that I really liked that had, later on, Kakashi pulling down his mask to 'eat like a normal human being' and Sakura being... rather underwhelled, even though everyone else was staring at him and dropping things, because after so many years of imagining what could be under the mask....

[pikabot]

I can't vouch for the voerall quality of the episodes, but I do know that at least parts of the fights between the Third and Orochimaru, and Sasuke and Orochimaru in the forest exam, were animated by Norio Matsumoto. Those are probably worth checking out as well. The fight between Rock Lee and Gaara was tolerably done, as well, but it was without doubt a bit drawn out.

And yeeeeeeah. Nothing about it makes sense. Fucking christ I hate that retcon.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I loved the Third-Orochimaru fight.

As the third dies, there's a really nice shot of his eyes closing on a younger version of Orochimaru that I think wasn't in the manga at all. Sometimes the anime had nice creative touches like that.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

The whole forest fight section was probably my favorite thing animated, though I also loved the bridge fight in the first season.

Definitely the bridge fight (episode 20ish to 24ish, I think) and the early 30s with them in the forest exam, particularly once it was Sasuke, Naruto, and Orochimaru.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Okay, thank you for the recs!

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

The forest scenes are also good because they introduce Cell 10's combat style and because of Kabuto. And Sakura's hair-cutting. But mostly I liked them because the movement and action and intensity were really well-handled. The threat felt real and their reactions felt genuine in how it was animated. That's also where we get a ton of character development and plot dumped on us at once: Orochimaru's sudden arrival, Naruto's burgeoning talents, Sakura's crisis of purpose. And Sasuke... oh, Sasuke. I felt for him most in the fights in the forest, particularly with the sound genin and then Orochimaru, because we see Sasuke literally change as a person before our eyes. He gets the cursed seal, and he goes as far as to break the other genin's arms (ouch! OMG ouch) in an almost torture-like fashion, and he has an internal struggle about whether or not to give up the scroll that will help them win the competition (which pisses Naruto off royally.) It also has my favorite animated scene--- where Naruto stops the giant snake while activating his Nine Tails power. That episode, that fight... you can see Sasuke's thoughts change as he realizes that "dead last" Naruto is on the verge of surpassing him, and that Orochimaru wants whatever's inside Naruto more than he wants Sasuke (at the time, anyway), and there's jealousy and aggression and then there's the fact that it almost overwhelms him, and you think, "Oh my god, he's only a 12 year old boy. He's just a little boy." The forest is where Sasuke loses the last of his innocence, and by the time he goes to the fight in the run-offs, after he activates the seal, he's already started the path that will take him to Orochimaru. The trust in the team is gone, the willingness to lean on others is gone, and the obsession with power and dominating the enemy has completely overtaken his thoughts and goals.

I know most if not all of this was in the manga, but it was very nicely animated in the show. I just checked some of my old reviews, and #29-33 seem to be the really important ones. #29 in particular, though you may care to start with 28 for the proper lead-in. My reviews of 29 and 33 were very enthusiastic: here (search CNTL+F "naruto") (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=rashaka&keyword=anime+reviews&filter=all), though I'm nostalgic about it now that so many things I predicted have finally occurred.


For the dual fights of Gaara vs. Naruto and Sarutobi vs. Orochimaru, #77-80 are the best. #81 is the funeral. The Gaara/Naruto fight has some nice symbolic animation taken from the manga and adapted well.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'll put those on the list.

Sakura's hair cutting episode is one of the few you mentioned that I've actually seen - they did a really good job animating it.

[solace-adrift.livejournal.com]

Technically speaking, isn’t it more of a Dramatic twist then retcon? It’s a rather awkward Dramatic twist, and obviously one he didn’t think up till about halfway through the manga, but I don’t think it actually contradicts anything that’s already been mentioned in cannon.

We don’t really know how many elders there are total. It could very well be that three is a majority. And if Danzo had enough political backing to resist an order from the Hokage, obviously quite a bit were at the least sympathetic to him.

Uchiha were second class citizens, by pretty much any standard. They were segregated, cut off from the rest of the village. They were watched by black ops. I doubt they really had much of an option of whether to join the police force or not. The police force was as much a prison as any kind of role of power. It would be quite easy for the elders to slowly begin taking away power from it, especially with Root and black ops around.

Not to mention that if the majority of the public, or even a majority of leaf nin, suspected that the Uchiha had unleashed the Kyuubi, then the Uchiha would have faced quite a bit of anger on a daily basis that would have isolated them further from the rest of the village.

So, utterly alone, suspected for mass murder, watched by black ops, and having only one ally on their side, what would the Uchiha do? They had once been the strongest Ninja clan; would they cower or would they fight?

For the record, those old people are still quite alive seven or eight years later, and if the Hokage could have had one sympathetic successor, what are the odds each of them couldn’t have found their own? Especially with the brain washing in Root (as evidenced by Sai) gives out there could be a small of army of shinobi in Konoha ready to fight the Uchiha at the slightest provocation. And thinking about, there’s really no evidence that the previous Hokage gets to choose the new one. Especially considering that those elders are the ones that chose Tsunade (or technically, Jirayai), they obviously wield a lot of political power.

The Uchiha was probably wasn’t that begin a clan to begin with. There’s really no way to tell for sure, but I’d guess they weren’t more than fifty strong, or six or seven main families. With a group that small it’d be pretty easy for one (Sasuke’s dad) or two strong personality to more or less persuade everyone else to their way of thinking, and considering they were once a single clan to begin with, they still probably had those vestiges of pride left. Combine that with their treatment now, and you have an explosive atmosphere which probably didn’t need much convincing.

Oh, I definitely think the whole ‘Itachi loved peace and serenity’ crap that Madara spewed was bullshit. He simply knew it would make Sasuke hate Konoha more, because then he would have an outlet for his anger, and his killing of his brother was sorta not his fault anymore. I tend to think that while Itachi’s goal may have been to subdue the bloodshed, at some point before the massacre he cracked from the pressure (remember he killed his best friend for the Mangeyakou) and that crack only widened after the massacre.

Wow, I do ramble on, don’t I?

I’d make sure to catch at least the last of half of the Sakura/Chiyo vs Sasori fight, because while the first half is slow as hell the last eleven minutes are beautifully animated. The episode where they try and take off Kakashi’s mask is also funny.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Well, I call retconning because we, the audience, have been beaten over and over the head with the story Sasuke knows and shown Itachi as... distasteful of his sibling and rather bloodless in his interactions.

I actually like the idea that something in rotten in Konoha, because just from the way Naruto was treated, as well as the whole ninja lifestyle (Iruka and Kakashi's snipping at each other pre-Chuunin exams springs to mind) exists strikes me as something that is ripe for storytelling.

But.. I don't know, I really have a hard time, with the way Sasuke was treated, what we were told before, etc, believing that in a clan full of (we presume) smart, skilled ninja, an uprising against a FUCKTON of other smart, skilled ninja was the best choice.

We don't have the details of there plan, but I just think that there would be a massive amount of things they could do covertly that wouldn't cause the kind of death tolls that it seems like the original Uchiha was talking about.

Oh, I definitely think the whole ‘Itachi loved peace and serenity’ crap that Madara spewed was bullshit.

Oh, so much.

I really need to do so rereading to get it all straight in my head, but on the whole, this felt super slap-dash and like everyone's i.q. needed to drop for it to work, which I hate.

[solace-adrift.livejournal.com]

It bears thinking that all those things are from Sasuke’s viewpoint. None of them are said to be fact. And Itachi was specifically trying to deceive him. But yeah, it’s hardly like this was planned far in advance by Kishimoto. He definitely had it planned by part two, but earlier than that? I doubt it.

Yeah, I really like any time an author tries to add some moral greyness to the story. And not just the bad guys had a weepy past or something, but that the good guys aren’t entirely perfect. That’s what I really like about the Senju Uchiha dynamic: it’s equally neither and both of their faults.

Unless they had complete surprise on their side, I doubt the Uchiha uprising would actually have worked. It’s a combination of the fact that even if they could gain control of the government, it’d be ridiculously hard to hold it against once the rest of the village woke up. Though it is possible, just highly unlikely.

All that really matters though is whether they thought they could accomplish it, which is quite a bit more believable. It’s hardly like they’re the only ninja clan which has had the idea of starting a coup. Kimamaru’s clan tried, as well as the seven swordsman of mist. Even in real life there are quite a few examples of countries who have absolutely no chance of winning, fighting much larger countries. The South during the American civil war comes to mind, as well as Germany during WWII. Both were ridiculously outmatched, but still made a bid for power.

By the point of the massacre it had been seven years since the Kyuubi attack. The Uchiha had probably already tried every other option by that point. What other choice did they have? The Uchiha still carry the pride for the position they used to have. They’re a warrior clan. They’d probably rather die than admit they’re no longer the strongest. Which they did.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

And you're telling me that the MAJORITY of the Uchiha clan decided that with those circumstances, ARMED RESISTANCE is the best choice?

I think some of what Madara says is going to be ret-conned later as untrue. At least, I hope so. Because even if some of it is true, the whole story plays to Sasuke's power vanity. "Your people were too strong, the others were jealous of the Uchiha specialness, they were targeted."

I would generally like to give the entire Uchiha clan the benefit of the doubt, especially sicne they've presumably been the police force through at least 4 generations of hokages and haven't tried to force a coup yet. Why would they? They already have the power. And if they waited through 4 hokages, why get up in arms now?

I don't buy into the second-class citizen thing because how could they be the village police if that were true? Maybe keeping them off the council, but on a citizen daily level they'd be more powerful than most other citizens as the people who enforce the law.

If it was said that they had turned into a corrupt gang that was abusing their power as the police force of the village that would make a lot more sense, given they're all related anyway so it would presumably be like a gang instead of like a professional operation. THAT would feel more believable to me.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I would generally like to give the entire Uchiha clan the benefit of the doubt, especially sicne they've presumably been the police force through at least 4 generations of hokages and haven't tried to force a coup yet. Why would they? They already have the power. And if they waited through 4 hokages, why get up in arms now?

Exactly! It's like, why now? Why with THIS hokage, why at this time?

If it was said that they had turned into a corrupt gang that was abusing their power as the police force of the village that would make a lot more sense, given they're all related anyway so it would presumably be like a gang instead of like a professional operation. THAT would feel more believable to me.

That would make sense... actually, I would REALLY like that if it turned out to be true, because I was totally thinking, 'wait, the police are all related? Who is watching the watchmen?'


However, I think it's too clever and in character for Kishimoto.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I feel like the police force thing was thrown out there as a good idea, but not utilized properly in explaining this backstory. Why all this garbage about a coup, when it's more logical to have them abusing their police powers. If the council really feared them for THAT reason, and couldn't arrest them for corruption because there's no one else to do the arresting, then I can see why they'd be so scared of them. That might justify something drastic. But this "planning to take over" business is stupid. Take over and do WHAT, exactly? Why take over when they're already in power in a very real way?

Plus, these are all assassins. It's a town full of assassins. Why wouldn't the uchiha clans just assassinate the councilors they don't like, frame another village for the crime, and make sure one of their own gets to replace the dead councilmen? Why plan a drastic takeover when there are so much easier ways?

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I know! Bullet through the head, people, bullet through the head! It would make so much so much simpler!

I hate it when you have characters for whom it would be perfectly in character for them to do that, and they don't, just because.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

This series has never had a very intelligent grasp on basic politics, which is a shame given the set-up of the world and the general story premise.