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?
Cheloneuniverse 