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?
It’s important to remember that Kishimoto made and wrote and published tons of work without ever thinking through the backstory, so the Naruto worldbuilding is just a continuous process of attempting to retcon and stretch and gloss over and tie together a bunch of disparate puzzle pieces.
Not only did Kishimoto not originally think of Naruto’s nine-tailed fox as a being one of a set of tailed beasts, even by the time the Chuunin Exam arc had been written and published, he hadn’t come up with it. Gaara’s Shukaku was not originally supposed to be part of a set of nine tailed beasts with Naruto’s Kurama; they just both happened to have sealed demons. That’s why there’s that bizarre stuff about the monk in the tea kettle.
I’m not sure if Kishimoto just panicked or what, but he eventually started settling on “it’s fate” and “it’s prophecy” and “it’s destiny” to hold together a lot of the backstory of the main struggle of Naruto vs Sasuke. Naruto also became such a powerhouse success of a franchise that a sequel became a certainty, so Kishimoto couldn’t stick with the original true enemy of Naruto–the shinobi system–because actually fixing the shinobi system would eliminate the possibly of Lucrative Child Soldier Comic 2.
So in the Naruto ending, the ultimate source of everyone’s issues isn’t society or government, but aliens and fate. And the rabbit goddess is both.
You can look up on the Naruto wiki or similar if you want to know canon’s actual explanation for how the Sage of Six Paths (the rabbit goddess’s son) made the tailed beasts. You’re right, it’s weird, really weird, and more importantly, unsatisfying.
The tailed beasts as mighty forces of nature that got roped into humanity’s systemic power struggles are much more interesting than “Alien’s grandkids take inheritance struggle to world-ending levels of petty”.
In Naruto Gaiden: Scarlet Spring (the one that was just adapted for Boruto the tv show), it’s fairly clear that Orochimaru’s abuse of his clone-children is well-known:
“Who do you think you are? Orochimaru?” says Sakura to Shin, who is using his clone children as involuntary living organ donors.
Regarding Naruto and Yamato:
“Lord Sixth (Kakashi) filled me in for the most part…”
Naruto is the Seventh, and yet he and Yamato don’t seem to have been in any kind of communication, not even regarding Orochimaru.
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 