*Person* So what can you tell me about the Uchiha Clan?
*Kishi spends 6 hours explaining every minute detail*
I can understand the intention here to a certain extend. You got some important characters (Madara, Itachi, Obito, Sasuke) with each of them having a big role in the story. So trying to cover up their background-story + including the needed details about their special sharingan = requiers a large spectrum of narrative information. The problem is that kishimoto felt the need to extend/fill these informations with more and more unnecessary content. Many of them don't even make sense.
For example:
You got the tension between the Uchiha-Clan and the rest of Konoha. It was so much boiled up that the elders feared a upcoming civil-war. The rumor that the Nine-tailed attack was planned by an uchiha (it was known that uchihas can gain the ability to control the beasts) was also adding more pressure to that tension. The Uchiha-clan received almost no sympathy (few exceptions like the 3rd Hokage). So i dont understand the love/praise for sasuke, since he was the brother of the guy who did the massacre.
How can they say "Get away from that demon-brat, he can kill us all one day", but they dont come to the conlusion "Throw that Red-Eye out, he will follow the footstep of his brother and repeat the massacre in konoha.. the Uchihas are crazy"
Sasuke being the 'prodigy' doesnt make sense either since he was always in the shadow of his brother who achieved much more at his age. Its like "sad, the talented Uchiha-Guy isn't around anymore... wait.. he got a brother! he must be a prodigy too then!!"
The are logical errors in the way kishimoto tried to combine his pieces regarding the uchiha-clan.
But hey, Kishimoto would likely say "He got much praise and attention because they felt pity for him after the massacre" (sitting next to him: Naruto, in disbelief).
Yeah, I liked that revelation about Naruto being the 4th's son because Kushina and Minato were great. The only problem I had with it was that it felt like an insert later on because the way people treated him at first. Despite being an orphan and having the nine-tailed fox, you think him being the son of the 4th would have had people treating him differently that how it was depicted early on. Also, the whole nine-tails thing seemed of little importance to the village even though didn't it show that other holders were treated in much higher regard in their villages? I don't know. I think Kishi played a hand for coming up with some of these big ideas later on when they should have been established earlier.
I agree with the fact that having Naruto as the son of the 4th Hokage/Kushina is a nice and great thing, i'm not a fan of the revelation though. it was so unstatisfying to see the revelation. There will never be a time, where i think that reviving a dead-character for a short amount of time is a good thing. You take away so much of the effect.
You never saw Minato. You only had a glimpse of him from stories, told by some villagers/elders. He was known to be a killer, a century-talent, a hero who could stand 1-on-1 against the strongest tailed-beast and a guy so strong that all the enemies wanted his head to roll down. You can make up your own impression of him. Personally for me i thought of him as a bad-ass guy with serious priorities as a hokage. And then you
see him in the next panel "Hey Naruto, im your father" with a soft-hearted pesonality. It just destroyed my impression and i was left with disappointment.
Also Afterwards, Narutos reaction infront of Kakashi ??? I mean standing infront of him was porpably the last person alive who knew the most about his father.. and he didn't ask a single damn thing.
"How was my Father?"
- Kishimoto: "I think that doesn't sound like a logical question to ask"
"Did u know my mother too? what was her name?"
- Kishimoto: "Should Naruto know at this point that he came out of a Woman, called "mother"?"
----[Start of the Conversation about Narutos Father]----
Kakashi: "What did your father say?"
Naruto: "That he is proud of me!"
----[End of the Conversation about Narutos Father]----
- Kishimoto: "Perfect! im such a masterpiece author"
My ideal vision back in the days was having Naruto fighting in some kind of war-scenario, taking out enemies who got revived by edo-tensei until he faces the 4th Hokage who looks similiar too him. Naruto facing his father for the first time, on the battlefield as a opponent. He doesnt even have to know beforehand that the dead-man before him was his father, just the similarity should alrdy point it out, forcing him to feel uncertain through the fight against him. And afterwards confronting kakashi with the question "was the 4th Hokage my father?" with a dead-serious expression. Imagine the tension as a viewer if you see the 4th Hokage for the same time, and he just looks like to be the father.. and he has to fight him right now. that kitten would have gotten me hyped up.
Of course with the fact that revived people shouldn't have any soul left or being able to talk.
I keep thinking that the problem isn't fully about Naruto being Minato and Kushina's son or being a Jinchuriki, considering that he still for a while had to work hard to be able to do some things, it was just how it was handled, since the concepts are solid, it just was done by piss-poor writing, just like nothing done with the Senju and Uzumaki clans or some of the others. And that also takes me to some relevance to my fanfic and what I was thinking.
I agree with many of your following points, and i also really do like your ideas and thoughts-process behind your concepts to fix issues. But i think the issue wasn't "doing them in a poor way" but more "having them taking such a big role in the first place".
Thats mainly because im not really interested in the clan-stories, and i think they shouldn't take such a big role in the plot.
It doesnt matter how much u try to fix these background-stories, it still leads to the same problem: Konoha got all the important history-interfaces and the other villages are meaningless. The source of every big event lies in konoha. they have the strongest shinobis, the strongest clans, they got the re-incarnation of X and Y. they got everything.
There are other villages, there are other clans and other characters lack so much depth, and primary because Kishimoto focused to much on konoha, specific clans (uchiha) and the history. I wanted to see Naruto growing up from Zero to Hero, in a World filled with interesting and detailed characters/places/styles/villages etc. i dont want to go through 30%-Screen-Time-History-Class in the last Arcs on how interesting the build-up of konoha and their clans was.
i would welcome more details on other parts of the story, rather than having a fixed history/clan background.
because you don't need it.
Naruto doesn't need a big chakra pool. I dont want to see him making 1000 clones who fight like fresh-up genins without any use of brain, or him throwing flashy jutsus just to miss 80% of them. 4-5 clones with a smart-use is enough (like in Part-1). I mean Sasuke has the same chakra-pool as him, litteraly. There was never a hint of Sasuke having less chakra than Naruto.. he could always keep up with him without a tailed beast or being a uzumaki-member.
Hyuga-Clan doesnt need such a OP-eyepower. they can just have their own martial-art style with the focus to hit the choke-points of the human body and a good chakra-control to force all their power into their hands.
The uchihas can also just have their own style of training where they read the body-language to read enemy movements and react/counter them in addition having fire/lighting style jutsus.
Etc. etc.
all in all u still have unique clans without digging so DEEP in the history to explain their source. And you can have this cute love-story between Naruto and Sakura, both having 0 Clan-Bonus and just trying to achieve their goals just with amibition and hard work.
EDIT:
but thats only my preferred view of course, everyone got their own preferences and ideas on how to improve the story
Edited by Riverkid, 19 October 2018 - 09:38 PM.