fineillsignup:

blackkatmagic:

I think I’ve finally realized what bugs me the most about how a lot of the fandom characterizes Obito. 

Not to say that other people are wrong – seeing characters differently is part of the fun with fandom. But personally, I don’t agree with the view that Obito did what he did because he was in love with Rin. 

Maybe it’s a reflection of all my problems with how crushes are treated in the story, but I’ve always been of the opinion that Obito went off the rails because his only friend was killed, rather than because she was the girl he had a crush on. It’s an idea that’s played out in canon, too – Obito only comes back to reality when he realizes that he still has friends, can have friends, and when he and Kakashi start to mend bridges. Love is his driving force in his madness, but it feels more like it’s the platonic kind than the romantic kind. After all, Obito is thirteen when Rin dies; no matter how strong the emotions behind his crush, it was unrequited. She was his friend first and foremost. And Obito accepted that. He wasn’t precisely resigned to her crush on Kakashi, but he also wasn’t up in arms about it. He accepted it. 

When people only show what was between Obito and Rin as some great tragic romance, I feel like it takes a lot away from Obito’s character and motivations. Rin was his only friend. Kakashi was a teammate, but they weren’t close before Kannabi Bridge. It can be argued to what extent Obito was rejected by his clan, but he grew up alone, with Rin his only point of focus, the only one who believed he could make something of himself. This was also mostly in wartime, when the village was likely short on adults due to them fighting on the front lines. Obito had Rin and no one else that he felt he could rely on. She didn’t return his feelings, but I don’t think that matters nearly as much as the fact that she did love him as a friend. And when Obito lost that, at the hands of the boy he died to save – 

Well. The mental instability isn’t excusable, but it’s certainly understandable.

I’m gonna get a bit death of the author here also because, based on the ending, I’m not a huge fan of how Kishimoto apparently intends romantic attachments to begin, develop, and end (or never end as is more often the case).

What I want to see in Obito’s great face-heel-turn after Rin’s death is that his subsequent actions aren’t primarily about Rin, that it’s not “I want to put myself into a permanent hallucination of happiness with my dead crush and I’m willing to kill anyone and everyone in the entire world to make that happen.” Rather, Rin’s death is so pointless, so harsh, so cruel, such a waste, that it confirms what Madara had been pouring into his ears for the past year: that the shinobi world is incorrigible.

Rin did nothing wrong, within the context of her upbringing and culture, and beyond that, she was as kind and genuine as it is possible for a shinobi to be. And yet she was killed, by her own love’s hand, after having been turned into a container for a demon, as part of a war that was completely out of her control. And yet neither her death nor her life ultimately would have made that much of a difference in that war.

Rin’s death is a critical example of utter systemic depravity. Obito comes, in that catastrophic moment, to agree with Madara that the only answer is to force people to be happy separately, in their own individual delusions, where they can’t hurt each other.

(Now I hasten to add this is what I want to see, what I think would have been more powerful, more logical, better written, etc. The ending abandons the idea of systematic reform and has Obito revert to a “pure” 13 year old boy in the afterlife and rewards him with a version of Rin that is endlessly validating and adoring, essentially making the afterlife almost like the Infinite Tsukuyomi…)