I prefer the visibly detached, yet still morally conscious Sasuke that lead Hebi. You could say that it was sort of the high point of his character. He was driven - pulling himself away from the shackles of Orochimaru's tutelage to fulfill his life's ambition of killing Itachi to avenge his clan. There was a consistency to his actions then and his fights were, admittedly, some of the more interesting during that time period (Itachi vs Sasuke remains as one of the top fights in the series for me). His personality, while certainly ambiguous due to some of the choices he made like attempting to kill Team Kakashi and joining Orchimaru, still held a certain degree of rhyme and reason.
It was afterwards in later arcs that Sasuke appeared to be flailing along from one target and moral perspective to the other. Kishi just didn't seem to be capable of keeping him on a set course of action. Perhaps that's why the execution of his final redemption seems so underwhelming. We were lead to believe that his thirst for vengeance had driven Sasuke to the point of almost no return where only Naruto could get through to him, and that it would have to be him who helps steer Sasuke away from the self-destructive path he was on. But then comes Itachi, followed up by Hashirama who handled the most difficult parts of his psychopathy that turned him from a genocidal madman to an autocratic revolutionary who believed that he was helping everyone and was willing to work with them to achieve the goal of saving the world instead of slaughtering everyone in his wake as his earlier self would have done.
When you actually think about it, all Naruto really did was put on the finishing touches to other people's handiwork. All that hype back in the Kage Summit about being Sasuke's last anchor to sanity was nonsense. Then you have the utter lack of accountability to his crimes which I suppose Kishi thought could be swept under the rug with no remorse or sincerity truly given for the people he's murdered and the terror he's caused.
Yeah... In hindsight, I do kind of wish he could have died. I'm not sure when exactly it would occur, but it presents a more favourable alternative than the crap we actually got.
The only scenario where I could possibly see Sasuke surviving is if he's actually judged for the crimes he committed. It would have to be written very appropriately for it to be convincing. Like he willingly turns himself into the Alliance forces to be judged by an international military tribunal that results in him being incarcerated, reflecting upon his crimes for the rest of his life while personally carving his eyes out and offering them to the nations as an act of penitence and assurances that he'll never take up a blade again.
Edited by Atheck, 30 May 2015 - 09:50 PM.