I will forever be salty that Naruto didn’t turn out like Andy Dwyer from Parks and Rec because let’s be honest…how is this not Naruto?
And thinking about the character Andy Dwyer and how good he was with kids, that really should have been Naruto. If you want me to believe in the power of JesusNaruto’s ability to be so pure as to talk down villains and make them see the light after years of thinking their violent ideologies into religion, he better be a pretty freaking amazing dad to his kids.
But no. He became a politician. Because that’s what makes him happy.
OMG this is so true.
(Also as a NaruHina shipper I sooooo badly wanted canon NaruHina to be like this: Naruto: oh babe… you had a crush on me? that’s embarrassing… Hinata: we’re married… Naruto: still…)
Realistically, I know a really politically/economically focused sequel to Naruto would never fly in the shounen genre, or even the seinen, since it would need to be action-focused, but it is nice to think about, and the sequel could have done so so so so so SO much better in this regard.
Certainly, a very modest initial reform–raise the minimum age of genin to, say, 16–would have been totally doable and maybe even preferable to another series starting at age 12. A sequel starts off with the standarards where they were at the end of the previous show. In Burrito, this results in the new Team 7 (blech) of Burrito, Salad, and Musubi being basically already at jounin level (or even higher!) at age 12, which feels unearned, Mary Sue-ish, etc.
A main hero who always thought he’d be able to choose to NOT be a shinobi, but there’s so much unrest and as Naruto’s kid he has so much power that yep he’s got that Spiderman responsibility? Sign me the fuck up for that please. A reluctant hero would be a great contrast to Naruto’s brash personality.
You could start out with ordinary missions and we could see the contrast between original Naruto and the new Actually Good Sequel: instead of civilians scraping together money they don’t have to pay for protection, Hero is going on a government-funded mission to rescue people who couldn’t afford to pay. Because nobody lied to save money, the mission is correctly geared to their skills. Thanks, actually competent Hokage Naruto!!! Sure do appreciate you changing the shinobi system!!!
A possible major villain could be foreign, non-ninja countries that got swept up in the God Tree nonsense and decided that shinobi need to be wiped out once and for all before they destroy the planet for real. This would be an excellent villain because unlike the Burrito movie’s Totally Evil Aliens, these foreign countries made up of humans would actually have a point.
God I can’t fucking stand it when Burrito stans go “hyuck hyuck but u don’t understand sweety 🙂 everyone in Burrito has to be shitty 🙂 because otherwise there’d be no plot :)”. How fucking unimaginative do you have to be to believe that?
tl;dr It would be easy to make an exciting sequel to Naruto where Naruto was a good and happy Hokage. Fucking BELIEVE it.
Yamato has the saddest story in all of Naruto. From early childhood to adulthood, in canon, he is never TRULY accepted and included, and he is CONSTANTLY exploited, by everyone, including the heroes, and never appreciated. I love Kakashi, but one of the reasons why I don’t personally ship Kaka//Yama (even though I’m fine with translating etc for it) is that Kakashi’s behavior to Yamato actually really bothers me considering that there is no pay off. Yamato is constantly doing so so so much trying to get approval and he never gets it. He just gets dicked around over and over. One at a time, how Kakashi teases and manipulates Yamato is funny, but as a pattern it’s not funny at all. I just can’t stand the idea of Kakashi letting Yamato sit alone on guard duty like that for years, retiring, and Naruto being basically oblivious, to the point that Naruto, the fucking Hokage, seems almost surprised to see Yamato there in Scarlet Spring.
Yamato just wants to BELONG, he wants BONDS, which once upon a time was the goddamn theme of Naruto. All the other sad orphan boys get to have this (Gaara, Sasuke, Kakashi, Naruto himself). Yamato? LMAO Yamato we’ll call you if we need wood release or a bill paid. Otherwise nobody cares about you, nobody notices the pain you’re in, and nobody wants to spend time with you.
Orochimaru, the guy who had a finger in probably 50% of the atrocities in the series, gets all his dreams come true (eternal youth and the ability to study anything and anyone he wants without any pesky morality stopping him), Yamato gets worse than nothing, and that’s fucked up for a supposed happy ending.
AU where everything is the same but all the men of Konoha 12 retire instead of the women.
Oh, don’t be absurd, Barbie! There’s no evidence that they’re retired at all, you silly billy. They’re totally not retired! It’s just that we spend 95% of the airtime and panel time showing the female ninjas working, and whenever we cut to a male ninja usually they’re washing dishes or mowing the lawn or cooking! And of course dad always makes the meals for his family while they eat without waiting for him to join them, lol. And all the children use their mothers’ jutsus, none of them learn from their fathers. But I mean there’s nothing SEXIST about that! LOL you’re so projecting. Don’t be ridiculous!
Mitsuki Gaiden is being adapted for the anime which means everyone will get to see Orochimaru being a child abusing fuck in glorious moving colour. While literally no one moves a finger to save his victims.
Me, a genius of hard work: out of Orochimaru’s lab, into Danzo’s training program, into Team Disaster 7, into Kabuto’s lab, literally into a Zetsu, into the Infinite Tsukuyomi where he dreamed of being a valued and respected member of the team…….. into the “happy ending” where he gets to stand alone and basically forgotten watching his very first abuser having the time of his snakey life. for over a goddamn decade what the fuck is this
Ohhh boy. The Hyuuga branch system has a lot of problems in plot consistency, a LOT, such that I can almost feel sympathy for Kishimoto choosing to take the easy way out of that storyline by killing off Neji.
The question of who is in the main house anyway is a gaping plot hole and an example of Kishimoto’s tendency to go for maximum drama, logic be damned. (See also Sasuke going incommunicado despite having summons and a goddamn cellphone.)
Here’s the mutually contradictory facts of canon:
1. There are unsealed people in the Hyuuga main house other than Hiashi (the clan head) and his daughters. (Source: Kishimoto’s own illustrations.)
2. Hiashi’s twin brother was placed into the branch family, and his son was placed into the branch family when Hinata turned 3.
Okay. So. Who exactly ARE these unsealed main house Hyuuga and what is their relationship to Hiashi and previous clan heads?
If they are younger sons of previous clan heads and their families, why were they not also sealed? How is the decision to seal or not made?
Basically Kishimoto went holy shit what if the fathers of two children with totally different “fates” because of birth order were TWINS and just went with it for maximum pathos, logic and worldbuilding be damned. Also Kishimoto (an identical twin himself, whose twin is also a mangaka) seems to have a thing for rival twins and brothers in his fiction.
It would be more logically consistent for the main house members to never leave the village, but that wouldn’t work out with Kishimoto’s plot line to allow Hinata and Neji to clash in the chuunin exams, so that can’t happen. The commitment to the “branch family bodyguard” idea is also not consistent.
(If the main house always stayed in the village, or even remained within the compound, and the branch did all the work outside the village, then [in a sick and twisted way] the whole brain-scrambling curse part is more utilitarian than sadistic. There’s always a threat of coup d’etat in any system of government that relies on a ruler who sits in a palace and makes decisions while someone else does the more flashy work of going out and accomplishing the decisions. With the force of the caged bird seal, the main house can ensure that the branch house doesn’t rebel.)
Even so. The rough shape of the idea is compelling, for sure. It definitely grabbed me, and countless others all around the world. In a universe of sick and twisted yet self-sustaining systems, the Hyuuga clan and its literal, visible curse were a very… to call them an aesthetic example might seem dismissive, but I don’t mean it to be.
The branch house slavery was a really clearly demarcated, clearly wrong system, such that even 12 year olds can immediately grasp the injustice, and it was represented by a visual emblem. This should have made it an ideal symbol for Naruto to tear down. A lot of the grossness of the shinobi system would be fairly tedious or anticlimactic to show being dismantled, especially in the manga medium. The caged bird seal being lifted? Now that’s a visually dramatic scene that’s perfect for manga format.
But instead we got this:
Lovable grandpa brain-scrambler! He doesn’t do that brain-scrambling stuff anymore, probably, I guess. We don’t like to talk about it. How about a burger?
Mizuki–you remember him, the guy who tried to get Naruto to steal the Shadow Clone jutsu–is still in ninja prison as far as we know. (There was a filler where he broke out and became an evil furry and then was put back in jail.)
MIZUKI: Crimes? Injuring a ninja (who fully recovered) and trying to steal a scroll (failed) Sentence? LIFE IN NINJA PRISON
OROCHIMARU: Crimes? how much time do you fucking have Sentence? Has own lab, with dedicated team of extremely powerful ninjas, to continue extremely cruel and involuntary experiments on children–but it’s cool now! They’re his own clones so they’re, like, property, right? Disposable. I mean the important thing is, he’s beneficial to Konoha’s military interests. Long live the shinobi system!
Cheloneuniverse 