229 replies to this topic

[Narufan85]

I don't really have much to add right now but I will say Lys and Tricksie have made some killer points this thread. Great stuff, you two.

[Niky]

 

Yeah, the "brotherly bond" has always struck me as the weakest part of part 1 and the most unconvincing subplot in the entire manga. Don't get me wrong. Naruto and Sasuke were rivals with mutual respect for one another, but this brothers stuff came out of nowhere, more or less shoehorned into the manga during the first VotE fight. After that, with no additional development, we're supposed to believe that it's the most important thing eva eva! To the point where Naruto is going kyuubi-mode at the mere mention of Sasuke's name, hyperventilating, begging on his hands and knees, literally letting someone pound his face to a pulp and wanting to die with Sasuke.    No need for all that brothers stuff. No need to save Sasuke because of some weird bond that had never been fleshed out before. Naruto's virtue and the POAL are sufficient motivations for saving Sasuke.

 

Look, in all likelihood, the obsessive emphasis on the 'brothers' stuff was only a cover for the more and more obvious 'homoerotic' stuff...

 

I mean, you realize that Naruto and Sasuke got together to two women that don't really mean anything (love, longing, memories... let alone desire) to them?  

Edited by Niky, 17 September 2015 - 09:08 PM.

[HalfDemonInuyasha]

As much as people say Sakura loses who she is when it comes to Sasuke, the very same can be said for Naruto. Whenever Sasuke is involved for either of them (at least since part two), it's like any real strength they currently or previously displayed just disappears and they both become pathetic shells, replaced with absolutely nothing more than an obsessive need for Sasuke. You can replace Sasuke's with pretty much anyone else and you know Naruto nor Sakura would end up like that. If Ino had been the one to turn to the darkness, Sakura would be slapping her silly while screaming in her face about how stupid she's being, how much she's hurting everyone, what she's throwing away, and so on, much like how Naruto initially tried to do with Sasuke at the VotE in part one. Same with Naruto if it had been someone like Kiba or any of the other guys.

Naruto's begging and hyperventilating over Ay's refusal to not kill Sasuke was, up to that point, the most pathetic appearance of Naruto and, as I said a few times before, I had hoped that reality would finally give Naruto a good slap in the face, but no, if anything, Naruto got worse in his mentality towards Sasuke.

[Toasty Warrior]

Who's Sakura again? I thought she perished in the battle against Kaguya when she and Kakashi fell into that lava pit, and she was replaced with White Zetsu clone that guilt trip Naruto into loving Hinata, and never keeping contact with him again, and vice versa, but I could be wrong.

[starlitestarbrite]

Who's Sakura again? I thought she perished in the battle against Kaguya when she and Kakashi fell into that lava pit, and she was replaced with White Zetsu clone that guilt trip Naruto into loving Hinata, and never keeping contact with him again, and vice versa, but I could be wrong.

no, she's the girl who was genjutsustabbed through the heart by sasuke for confessing to him again being an annoying fangirl, and only using naruto to get sasuke back! in chapter 693 LOL i have a theory that all the characters died in the I.T, and team 7 pretty much killed eachother, and everyone was replaced with white pierrot zetsu clones

Edited by starlitestarbrite, 18 September 2015 - 12:08 PM.

[NaruSaku fan in Kentucky]

no, she's the girl who was genjutsustabbed through the heart by sasuke for confessing to him again being an annoying fangirl, and only using naruto to get sasuke back! in chapter 693 LOL i have a theory that all the characters died in the I.T, and team 7 pretty much killed eachother, and everyone was replaced with white pierrot zetsu clones

My theory is that this is Naruto's nightmare in 698.

Edited by NaruSaku fan in Kentucky, 27 September 2015 - 03:03 PM.

[Iwantbuns]

Sasuke could've been a really cool villain... I mean he has a freaking sharingan and rinnegan. That's reeeeally cool.

 

But here's what I'm thinking. Is Sasuke justified for his choices/actions? I mean, Naruto may not have taken Sasuke's path, but isn't that because what happened to Sasuke was just wayyy worse than anything that could've happened to anybody? I mean he was a kid when Itachi killed his whole family. And as he grows as a teen it still haunted him - I mean something like that can really negatively affect a person. I.e. Itachi just comes back to him, beats him up some more, and pushes the issue even further (in Part 1). It must've drove him crazy. He was still young throughout the whole series. He did everything he could to live a life that could've been happy while still having revenge.

 

But that just wasn't possible. Seriously, what could he have done to reach his goal? He needed to get stronger, and Itachi's shadow loomed over him every step of the way, and the emo-ness of his family dying can never possibly make anyone have an optimistic personality and make a person be nice to everyone. And it's not like he was a bully. He was just a guy who kept to himself and didn't want to be bothered. It's not his fault that everyone loved him, and tried to get in his life. He just made those people feel horrible in the end, because he's just naturally dismissing. They just can't understand why he's so cold and decide that's just a cool aspect of his character - when it goes much deeper than that. 

 

Sakura for example, knows of Sasuke's past life. But she still doesn't understand him. I'm not saying her family's gotta die, I'm saying he never lets her in, plainly because of her approach. Sakura approaches him in a romantic way, and when she does that, all she can think about is herself. Sakura can also be a little desperate, and sometimes her crazy wild side can slip out, and that probably turns Sasuke away from her. He still cares about her, but never in a personal level. Naruto's an exception... because he sort of forces his friendship on him in that Naruto sort of way that everyone loves. His morals or so positive and so different from Sasuke's, and that makes Sasuke come to Naruto. Naruto does great things that surprises everyone despite everyone looking down on him. It's not just Naruto's past life... because Naruto doesn't try to let his past define him. And in all realness, his past isn't nearly as horrible as Sasuke's was.

 

Naruto and Sakura both gave Sasuke the kind of companionship he needed... but he was still too far down in the darkness. It couldn't be easy to just change paths, when the choices that he made were just too big, and he was wayyy crazy at that point in Part 2.

 

What I'm saying is that... yes Sasuke hurts everyone around him. But is he to blame? I feel like he's a victim more than anything. Idk. I'm still thinking about all this. People like Sakura and almost everyone else just push themselves into his drama, without actually trying to stop and understand him. They're just hurting themselves, and only thinking about themselves. "Loving" someone goes deeper than desperately trying to take that person for themselves, and hurting themselves pointlessly in the process. "Loving" someone has to involve caring about both parties. Sakura just plain never understood Sasuke. Which is why I feel in the end, Sasuke really didn't get the happy ending I really truly feel he deserved. 

 

I'm not really sure what point I'm trying to get across... I guess I'm kind of saying that this is kind of the reason why Sasuke's popular? Like even though he did a lot of damage towards people, he was just really too far gone... and his reasons are really.. good.

[HalfDemonInuyasha]

I think it's safe to say that, in terms of what he eventually wanted (not wanting anyone else to suffer like he had suffered), most people have no problem with that.

The problem comes in between people with his methods.

On one hand, you have people completely disagreeing with his methods, seeing them as too extreme and whatnot. As I brought up before, Sasuke's initial suffering via the massacre via the system was indeed terrible, but he still had many choices he could have made at different points since then; try to talk to someone, try to make friends, try to actually live the life he still had. Instead, he chose to focus on vengeance while not letting anyone in and pushing everyone away, he chose to betray Konoha for one of its worst criminals for as little as a promise for more easy power for that vengeance, he chose to try to kill the teammates that were trying to "save" him several times, he chose to spit on Itachi's sacrifice and continue his never-ending need for vengeance (only moving the bullseye from the now-dead Itachi to Konoha), he chose to assist Obito and Akatsuki.

On the other hand, you have people who are more than willing to forgive Sasuke simply because they want to see him as nothing more than an innocent victim who was screwed over by the system, which he was indeed screwed over, but they seem to only see that while ignoring everything else he had done in the meantime. Basically, they seem to believe that the ends justify the means. We also can't forget that Sasuke never had any such "noble intentions" until after Edo Itachi pulled more Sharingan hax just to be able to talk to him.

In the end, rather than really being more meaningful, it felt more like "the system", much like the whole "honor of the Uchiha Clan" and such Sasuke kept trying to cloak himself with, was being used as just another convenient method of absolving him of any and all responsibility for his own bad choices, something to shift the blame on rather than holding Sasuke responsible for his own choices.

That's not to say he is not a victim, because he is, but that reason alone can only go so far. It would be like saying a person whose family was murdered/a rape victim or someone who ended up going down a path of betraying/murdering/hurting other people (even those that had nothing to do with what happened to them), then planned to nuke their home town where it happened, and then planned to overthrow the entire US government, was completely justified in all of those actions, and that we should feel absolutely nothing but sympathy for that person and not punish them at all for any of those actions, focusing solely on the fact that their family was murdered/they were raped/etc.

And even if Sasuke did get the "revolution" he wanted. All he would get in the end is peace based on yet another lie, not "true peace", which is contradictory to what he had now been fighting for. He would simply be in the same spot Itachi was in with his plan essentially; playing the role of the bad guy when he wasn't. But Sasuke is not immortal and would not be around forever, so eventually that "peace" would be gone because the "threat" of himself would be gone. And even if Sasuke had gained/kidnapped someone he could indoctrinate his beliefs in, who's to say that successor would follow his beliefs to the letter and not try to pursue their own agenda once Sasuke was gone, or even pervert those beliefs towards their own ambition (which would make Sasuke's position no different than Madara when it came to Obito)?

[Iwantbuns]

I think it's safe to say that, in terms of what he eventually wanted (not wanting anyone else to suffer like he had suffered), most people have no problem with that.

The problem comes in between people with his methods.

On one hand, you have people completely disagreeing with his methods, seeing them as too extreme and whatnot. As I brought up before, Sasuke's initial suffering via the massacre via the system was indeed terrible, but he still had many choices he could have made at different points since then; try to talk to someone, try to make friends, try to actually live the life he still had. Instead, he chose to focus on vengeance while not letting anyone in and pushing everyone away, he chose to betray Konoha for one of its worst criminals for as little as a promise for more easy power for that vengeance, he chose to try to kill the teammates that were trying to "save" him several times, he chose to spit on Itachi's sacrifice and continue his never-ending need for vengeance (only moving the bullseye from the now-dead Itachi to Konoha), he chose to assist Obito and Akatsuki.

 

Didn't he try to have friends, but it didn't work for him as well as it helped Naruto? Like... he decided to stay on the team for most of Part 1. But it wasn't helping him become stronger in the slightest to kill his brother. And his brother implanted it really hard into his brain to kill him. He felt as if he was just weak - like when Naruto's rasengan was bigger, and when Itachi choked him so bad, and that whole idea of having friends pulling people down instead, the darkness of the mark and many things just luring him into the darkness mercilessly. He had no other choice but to push everything away, which meant losing his friends and anything that could push him down on his goal. And as he was older, he was just too far gone. So are you sure he had a choice?

 

:/ perhaps he did. I'm still thinking about it.

 

 

In the end, rather than really being more meaningful, it felt more like "the system", much like the whole "honor of the Uchiha Clan" and such Sasuke kept trying to cloak himself with, was being used as just another convenient method of absolving him of any and all responsibility for his own bad choices, something to shift the blame on rather than holding Sasuke responsible for his own choices.

 

 

And even if Sasuke did get the "revolution" he wanted. All he would get in the end is peace based on yet another lie, not "true peace", which is contradictory to what he had now been fighting for. He would simply be in the same spot Itachi was in with his plan essentially; playing the role of the bad guy when he wasn't. But Sasuke is not immortal and would not be around forever, so eventually that "peace" would be gone because the "threat" of himself would be gone. And even if Sasuke had gained/kidnapped someone he could indoctrinate his beliefs in, who's to say that successor would follow his beliefs to the letter and not try to pursue their own agenda once Sasuke was gone, or even pervert those beliefs towards their own ambition (which would make Sasuke's position no different than Madara when it came to Obito)?

 

And these are really good points ^.^

[HalfDemonInuyasha]

 

Didn't he try to have friends, but it didn't work for him as well as it helped Naruto? Like... he decided to stay on the team for most of Part 1. But it wasn't helping him become stronger in the slightest to kill his brother. And his brother implanted it really hard into his brain to kill him. He felt as if he was just weak - like when Naruto's rasengan was bigger, and when Itachi choked him so bad, and that whole idea of having friends pulling people down instead, the darkness of the mark and many things just luring him into the darkness mercilessly. He had no other choice but to push everything away, which meant losing his friends and anything that could push him down on his goal. And as he was older, he was just too far gone. So are you sure he had a choice?

 

:/ perhaps he did. I'm still thinking about it.

 

 

 

 

 

And these are really good points ^.^

As far as I can tell, Sasuke never really made any effort to make friends even before the massacre. Seemed to mostly just train, then sulk by himself when Fugaku didn't praise him and/or Itachi was "too busy" to train (with) him. It's not to say that the events of the massacre should not be counted, but rather that you need to look at everything Sasuke did, and Sasuke himself since then, rather than only the events of the massacre. Like Sasuke still clearly knew right from wrong (he just didn't care as long as he got power and could kill Itachi) and he wasn't brainwashed, tricked, or blackmailed into doing the things he did.

And Sasuke was getting much stronger. The main problem, though, was his ego. He was just under the constant belief that simply because he was an Uchiha, and Itachi's brother, that he should easily be able to become as strong as Itachi did at the same or faster rate while always being "the best", so when he clearly wasn't, he got pissed off and only kept choosing to see how he wasn't at Itachi's level yet rather than looking at the things he did accomplish. Unfortunately, Kakashi, whether he knew it or not, only indulged Sasuke's ego rather than be an actual sensei and hammer it into Sasuke's head that not everyone, even those in the same family, develops at the same rate, that there will always be someone stronger than him, that bloodline alone does not make the shinobi, and so on.