The reddit dudebros obsession with proving Sasuke is a twink or not masculine☠️

Its like they relate being masculine with morality...so ofcourse they deny sasuke his masculinity to make his objectives and themes meaningless

When objectively speaking..he comes off far more masculine than Naruto(even Itachi) and I think kishi made sure to highlight it because Sasuke IS supposed to be superior to everyone in konoha 11...thats is the core reason of naruto and sakura's(their fans as well) insecurities

Sex is used as a means of obtaining power, as the sexual act is a reflection of the sentimental relationship of the characters, they tend to put the character they consider superior in the "penetrating" position of the relationship and usually link this role with the masculine/dominant condition, while the "penetrated", that is, the one they consider the weaker of the two, is cataloged as the feminine/submissive one.

Sasuke's particular beauty is another reason, since delicacy and beauty are characteristics usually associated with the feminine; while strong and hard features are related to the masculine.

I wrote something about this topic, so I'll copy it here:

Addition: Male characters that either present culturally associated female behaviors or male characters that the fandom perceives as female-coded. This specific point is more inclined towards, in its majority, yaoi shippers (such a fanbase mostly consists of female readers) that create and develop romantic dynamics between two or more male characters. The creation of such relationships isn’t bad or toxic per se, however, many of these fans portray these types of relationships with a heteronormative premise, in doing so, they give one of the two characters involved female-coded behaviors. It’s interesting to note how most of the time the male characters that the fandom links to such prototypical feminine conducts are Uchiha characters (particularly Sasuke and Madara), which are both the most beautifully designed (it’s often brought up in the manga how alluring they are), and the ones canonically accused of having a “biological” condition that makes them too emotional and therefore dangerous. It’s, again, a patriarchal and misogynistic mindset that associates females (or the characters associated with such archetypal conduct) with emotional responses due to biological conditions that they have no control of in order to diminish their merits, dismiss their ideas, downgrade their participation in government affairs and deny them of any political power. [And let’s not forget that many of the people reproducing such beliefs also consider themselves “feminists” whose idea of activism is creating female characters that follow the patriarchal standard analyzed previously -like many Sakura fix-it fanfictions]. Furthermore, they “balance” such chaotic behavior from the female-coded characters by pairing them with “virile” characters (often using Naruto, Hashirama, and Tobirama) that are able to “control” and/or withstand the emotional responses from their partners. It’s still a sexist mindset and conduct that gets merged with their idea of feminism, destroying the actual purpose of the movement and consequentially reproducing both the misogynistic values that downgrade and/or diminish women (and males with female-coded behaviors) and fetishize LGTB+ relationships, reducing them to a prototypical patriarchal heteronormative dynamic.

Source

"Neji's bad 'cause Sasuke's bad!"

Too many times you'd come across people that belch out an endless supply of word-vomit that intimately concerns the cruelty these boys extended to the sufferers of "domestic wife-battery" that are Hinata and Sakura (don't you just want to weep, be hysterical in the name of pop-feminism?!); and too many times, they're similarly derided. What's the issue?

Let's be as candid here as possible. The issue with the fandom is that it lacks empathy altogether: most people get into reading x, y, or z fictional (or even non-fictional) content for the sole purpose of contentment. They aren't interested in expanding their cognitive empathy and learning more about other realities. That's the reason why a mediocre girl on whom her father puts a lot of pressure is more appealing to them than, say, a slave that suffers at her hands. As in the case of the former, their own victim-hood takes center stage, and everyone and everything else is cast aside as it's I who matter, not so and so.

That's the reason why "civility politics" are dragged into the discussion and characters like Sasuke (because let's face it, Neji's disliked because Sasuke's disliked, not the other way around), Neji, etc., are derided as they don't keep quiet about their injustices. They lash out. They show anger. They exhibit sorrow. In fact, anger hides the immense grief that they've experienced in life due to the injustice. Characters like Hinata don't deal with the wider issues, such as, the military industrial complex, its unfettered violence, profiteering, and the consequences of the said policies. No, her issues are absurdly domestic, very mundane; and through that mediocrity, she's upheld as this bastion of "ideal responses" to tragedy: she's meek, nice (not kind, mind you, just nice; two different things), and non-confrontational. She's basically the idealized picture of garden-variety trauma that's supposed to be the template for every traumatized individual, for some reason. Why? Well, because she represents the benign-reader types who, then, themselves turn into moral gauges: "if I were a genocide victim, slave, etc., I wouldn't do this," when this is a preposterous argument, but one you can't lose as it's purely hypothetical. That's why characters like Sasuke and Neji are torn down for not offering emotional support for these cry-baby types, not shouldering their emotional burdens in spite of their own immense tragedies: Neji was mean to Hinata; Sasuke abused Sakura (this one is a real rib-tickler); they ought to have been nice to them; their trauma doesn't excuse their behaviour; so on and so forth, and other blah-blah-blah loose-yapper-confessions that go down the same well-trodden road. When they're, what, 12 fucking years old? Even if they were much older, they'd have no ethical, moral, and rational reason to offer emotional support to these girls or anyone, for that matter; but as these female characters catch a lot of shy and poor self-esteem types for the dreaded business of self-inserting, the slights are deeply personal; and you can never beat the parasocial-relationship-holding (with a fictional character) toss-pots at their own game, and you're back to square one. There's no point to these people's "discourse" against these characters as it purely exists to validate them.

And what's mind-boggling is that many themes the narrative introduced and elaborated on, which intimately concerned military violence, that certain characters carried were transferred to Sasuke. That's another reason why the characters lost their value. Haku and Kimimaro were about ethnic cleansings; however, the reasons behind them were a bit different: Haku's clan was killed as it was feared; Kimimaro's clan was killed as they took Kiri head on, and they were also considered dangerous and crazy. You see where I'm going with this? Both genocides were carried out by Kiri, but the reasons are different. The Uchiha clan was considered dangerous, crazy, and a threat as they took Konona head on; and that resulted in their demise. Orochimaru spells that out pretty bluntly to Kabuto.

Neji is about otherness. He's branded. The Uchiha clan are othered via relocation and a dog-whistle; hence, Sasuke isn't physically branded, but he's still very much branded due to the reasons behind the massacre. Gaara was just aggressive as he was terrorized by his own kin. Sasuke shares a similar thread with him through Itachi.

Nagato was about revolution, so this one is self-explanatory; and Indra was about change. Sasuke pretty much took all of these aspects into his character and turned into a singular force in the narrative. Why would any reader even remotely interested in Naruto ignore a character like Sasuke? Yet this fandom struggles night and day to manage just that, convinced that its fixed version of canon is just better!

As a result, the "walking in some one's shoes" isn't even attempted; and everything simply turns into a game of "I'm like this character, but as I'm the better person, that character's a better person and vice-versa," to pat yourself on the back that, deep down, you're a very good person. A self-congratulation in the tragedy's aftermath, without any process through the tragedy. The reason's that these people don't want tragedies to reflect the very real trauma and the very real consequences of this type trauma that's very specific and very harrowing. They want them as window-dressings to fetishize these characters for the express purpose of shipping, one-upping them for power-fantasies, and what have you; and till this isn't addressed, you won't ever see any improvement on this front. It's just an empty discourse to self-fellate en masse, without ever engaging with the questions the canon asks; hence, it's unsurprising how this surface-level drivel is easily uplifted to "lol, owned!" discourse, whenever these characters experience defeat; it isn't the character that interests them; it's the humiliation of the character that they expect to see.

What's at the heart of the issue? It’s projection. They’d talk about the themes the manga talks of if they ever bothered to stop from filling up the shoes of these mediocre cartoons (Naruto, Sakura, Hinata, Lee, etc.); since they don’t, every character that stands in the way of their “promised greatness” (it’s so fucking Christian, I swear it), whether literally via battles, talent, and skill or metaphorically via ideology, would receive derision for x, y, or z reasons, most of which are rooted in the post-modern neo-liberal/centrist respectability politics.

The schadenfreude is there as many truly believe in the trappings of The American Dream and the Christian values that have comically been integrated well into the discourse to the point that they’ve become default. When a character denies them “the promised greatness”, it’s due to their belief that state is sacred, supreme, and divine; and the code of conduct (the “nice people syndrome”) ought to greatly decide as to who gets to be at the forefront and who gets to stay at the back. That’s why being nice is better than being kind as, when you’re nice, it’s empathy that’s for a specific moment, not something that encompasses praxis against a wide range of issues that breed contempt in the marginalised; as, in order to understand their contempt, you’d have to let go of passive empathy, which is being nice, and go for active empathy, which is kindness; something that’d compel you to rectify the faults in the system that produce people like Sasuke and Neji in the first place; however, then you’re back to square one, and the state trumps all; hence, all the empathy is manufactured and doesn’t extend beyond what the state deems of be worthy of its compassion. That’s why Itachi’s kind for ending a threat whilst Sasuke’s not for creating it for a system that brought into existence the entire conflict. That’s why Hinata’s kind for being a pushover whilst Neji isn’t for pushing back at her in spite of her power over him.

And with it come the added extensions that simply add superficial code of conducts, ones approved by the “popular discourse”, of bearing the emotional burdens of the kids who are just being nice, barely getting by, and are in need of support as so and so are mean to them, don’t care for their self-esteem, and treat them like dirt--look down on them. Sounds familiar? Because it is. There, right there, is the distillation of this entire discourse and why Sasuke and Neji are expected to bear responsibilities of their emotional short-comings as they’re unsympathetic in the state’s eye–-or rather, the socio-political discourse online has created these sympathetic and unsympathetic victims and the code of conducts to go along with them; and as they don’t fall into any category, certainly not into the ones that create victim-hoods for consumers with throwaway incomes (their low self-esteems, which stem from a plethora of hyper consumerist slip ups), they catch additional derision. Why? Well, it’s so easy to inhabit Naruto, Sakura, Hinata, or Lee, isn’t it? In this day and age when “body image issues”, born of late-stage capitalism and the populace’s rampant engagement with it, dictate the gradations of sympathies for the poor souls that fall “victim” to these self-inflicted miseries, why on earth would they ever want to engage in the topics that confront their world--a world whose excess consumerism stands on the very injustices Sasuke and Neji represent? Why would they when a meek girl, a bratty kid whose lonely in middle-school, a kid who tries so hard, and a girl whose forehead is a target for bullying…are right there?

It isn’t that difficult to understand that why it happens; it’s fairly clear as to why it does: genocide, slavery, and oppression in various forms and the seething, incomparable anger that’s a consequence of these harrowing injustices is just not…relatable. That’s why the post-modern heroes, status quo mongers whose tragedies are very middle class, mundane, and domestic, take to the fore and the othered kids have to be beaten down, humbled, knocked down a peg to reassure the middle-class that their efforts will one day be realised, one unsympathetic vanquishing of a victim at a time. Itachi, by comparison, is the cream of the middle-class crop, the place where they want to reach: a good prodigy who’s humble, recognises that his fellow men just aren’t worthy of sympathy, and culls them in a very “killing your people make our soldiers cry/it hurt us more to hurt you” fashion; and as a result, upholds the militaristic grandeur that post-modern middle-class culture lionizes, utterly reeks of. (It's no wonder that they can't wrap their heads around the fact that this guy did zero A-Rank missions, literally zero; and his speedy climb in Anbu ranks had squat to do with his intelligence or lack thereof.) That’s why Minato’s popular, a very peculiar character that reads like this “1950s cold-war soldier and a family man” propaganda poster; and Kakashi, whose military depression is fetishized to lend credence to this endless wave of violence: see, how men can weep, too!

You’d have to realise that all of this is extremely deliberate, and the victims have to be healed of their trauma, put back in their place; for if they don’t fall in line nicely, the state can always dispatch its sensitive heroes (Itachi and Kakashi) to smother down the insensitivity of the matter, coat their hands in blood, and exhibit the classical “weeping war-criminal with a heart of gold (a pigsty in which Full Metal Alchemist wallows)”. That’s why you’ve got these two segments of Sakura wankers: one that weeps that she wasn’t like the template that Itachi occupies, a monstrous killer who hunts down minorities in the path to great careerism; and the other perpetually sniffles that Sakura wasn’t allowed to heal Sasuke and that he ought to have showed consideration for an imperialistic foot-soldier, no matter how many times she fetishized, dehumanized, and objectified him in a bid to get access to his body. Both of whom occupy the same spectrum; both of whom cull the minorities in their own way; both of whom want themselves to take the spotlight. It’s never about righting the wrongs of the system, but about righting the wrongs of their lack of integration into the system. If the plethora of “torture of Sasuke at the hand of x, y, or z cartoon boyfriend” fanfictions that float atop this creatively bankrupt gutter don’t define this, I don’t know what does.

In this regard, Neji’s a mere extension of Sasuke; and as Sasuke catches derision for the aforementioned, so does Neji. Their traumas are belittled, gleefully used to torment them (the Fanfiction Kill Your Heroes literally has a scene in which the “white feminist author”, a massive red-flag already, wrote down a prolonged torture of Sasuke at Sakura’s hands where she uses Mikoto’s mutilated body to call him a bastard; and the female fandom was cheering on; tearing and hunting minority coded characters at the hands of a white woman stand-in, of course, is the most feminist thing in the world); and female empowerment is practically enacted through their culling, a complete genocide of their legacies (Kill Your Heroes pretty much is a long and vile genocide-apologia written by an unhinged white cunt that goes as far as to give the charge of the Uchiha Clan to Sakura; this is literally cultural genocide, but the audience is fine, because “white women empowerment”). These sensitive souls, you see, who got denied access to the greatness as Sasuke and Neji got in the way have to be emotionally fellated, literally, too, to over-compensate for this glaring narrative short-coming by providing them with minority-hunting opportunities, arse-kissing from important men, and a slew of "hot and career-minded men" as sexual playthings to right the wrongs. Naruto chuds are cut from the same cloth, so the female side of the fandom never had any moral high-ground to stand on.

If all of this isn’t a self-tell, this deranged tendency to keep hunting down starkly minority-coded characters who’re victims of state-sponsored terrorism (Konoha is literally based on Mossad and British Intelligence Service), then what is? It’s championing ur fascism and allowing the “little guy”, a middle class hyper-consumerist whose entire lifestyle flourishes on slavery and genocide, to shine. That’s why there’s only accountability for the state-targeted victims. Why? The middle class is only trying to get by. Poor things!

The fact that Izanami existed before Itachi and that he learned about it just tells us how the Uchiha clan was concerned about this matter and the strength of Izanagi, and how it took measures to prevent its members from becoming too powerful and superior ("humbling them").

This is not a jutsu Itachi created when seeing the egoistical nature of the clan members that had access to Izanagi (Sasuke even states that a small portion of the clan possessed Sharingan, those that get access to MS are even fewer), so he is berating the clan for being conceited enough to force others to create this jutsu, when the same members he's berating are the ones that came up with Izanami out of concern for this outcome.

In other words, the Uchiha created Izanagi and also its counterpart to prevent other members from becoming arrogant, how is that an issue? Doesn't that mean they were humane enough to know such a weapon would make them too out of touch with reality? Too powerful? This is the only time we hear of a clan coming up with ways of stopping themselves should they get too dangerous, how is that "evil-coded" in Itachi's eyes?

Ok Itachi, but I don't think the Uchiha clansmen are the ones in need of humbleness here. It is not like they believe they are the only ones worthy of leadership, or the ones that do megalomaniac things like carving their faces on a mountain or commissioning crazy big statues to commemorate their glorious fights. They also didn't instigate a genocide out of fear of losing power. So what are we talking about here, nii-san?

(inspired by tags from @narutobrainrotstuff)

fanboys will say they hate danzo but then refuse to throw some respect on sasuke's name. like, excuse me, but WHICH of your bootlicker favs would have murdered their government official for the crimes he committed that you say are unforgivable????? which other character in the damn series had the ability, the skill, the motivation, the disregard for his political power to do the damn deed???????? shikamaru??????????? get fucked

I was just wondering...

If the Hokage is just a symbol...

Sasuke needed to kill the daimyos. They are the ones which even a hokage can listen to. And they are the ones who choose a new hokage.

The Daimyos are not responsible for the decisions of the Hokage within the villages, so the UCM was likely kept a secret from the Daimyo.

The Hokage are rulers who are under the Daimyos and who depend on their economic favor, which is why they need to protect them during the Third Shinobi War, it was Kaze no Kuni's Daimyo favoritism for Konoha's shinobi that pushed Suna to betray and invade Konohagure.

They don't seem to intervene in the wars between the villages. Still, they do have to authorize an alliance between each faction as the shinobi villages are a second armed hand of the nation that must answer for its country of establishment in case of being ordered. Asuma's narrative arc explains how the Shugonin Junishi split due to a group wanting the Daimyo as the sole supreme leader as they considered the Hokage to be dividing the military power of Hi No Kuni.

I'm not sure what would've Sasuke done and if that's the next step he needed to take to genuinely bring down the war industry as the nations likely benefited from conflict between villages (Suna's Invasion), the manga focused on his immediate next step, which was to bring down the Kages and become the one true focus of the shinobi.

Sasuke copied Ino's fashion sense

You can give me all the justifications you want to but I will forever maintain that Sasuke would never cover his eyes with his hair. He's just not that kind of person. But also it parallels Kakashi way too much and listen they were never that close

Personal revenge vs community justice is the usual tension in revenge stories where a single character chooses to enact revenge for themselves or the people they love and in the process hurt innocent bystanders but that does not work for "sole survivor" or "genocide survivor" stories. There is no such thing as "eye for an eye" revenge, no proportional punitive justice, when it was a wrong done to a community.

The reason why Sasuke's revenge is so justified is that killing one man to avenge an ethnic cleansing is not proportional in the least. There is no getting your enemies to suffer like the Uchiha have suffered. Revenge in this context is a consolation and a bad one at that, but it's all he has. Sasuke has no community to fall back on anymore, no community to hurt in his pursuit of revenge and that tension is lost. Furthermore Sasuke goes out of his way to spare collateral damage, consistently refuses to kill and spares his friend even though killing him promised him the power to kill itachi. There is no collateral damage to Sasuke's revenge, no destroyed community, and that undermines the central tension of morally grey revenge arcs.

The only collateral damage to Sasuke is himself, how he destroys his life in pursuing revenge, but even that is flimsy. His life has already been destroyed by the genocide because, again, this isn't a personal hurt but a whole lifestyle, culture, and people who were eradicated. He's already had his world blown up before so it's not like he's making an uninformed decision. Sasuke chooses to go to Orochimaru because the hurt is really, truly, incomparable to the wrong done to him. Again, a lack of proportionality. Avenging a genocide trumps personal hurt.

Then we get to the "destroy konoha" bit after the reveal that his people's demise was not the work of one man but the actions of military leaders motivated by the bigoted opinions of the even wider community that actively isolated the Uchiha before they were murdered. Now I'm not such a loser to have a bad faith idea of Sasuke thinking "destroy konoha" meant personally targeting konoha babies considering all his actions, but it means killing the individuals responsible as well as the state, the system that did this. It's revenge, sure, but it is also now very much a pursuit of a higher justice and, yes, restorative community justice. He is working to materially improve the condition of the world by, yes, killing a bunch of people who absolutely deserved it. It is revenge and justice rolled into one. He gets to have his cake and eat it too.

There is only ONE moment in the whole of the series where Sasuke ever lets his hatred get the better of him, and again it is the only action he ever truly apologizes for. It's when he stabs karin to get to danzo, hating that man so much and needing to undermine his belief that Sasuke wouldn't do anything to avenge his people. Every other moment his hatred is normal, I'd even go as far to say good.

His revenge quest is good if tragic because it's a poor consolation next to the justice he will never get, and his subsequent revenge against konoha lies within justice, works in tandem with it, and is good.

That weird fanon trope the Naruto fandom has about Sasuke hating women is so weird to me. Sasuke just doesn't have a special attitude towards women the way some characters like Naruto, who fixate on their attraction to them, do. And he doesn't demean women like Shikamaru and other explicitly misogynist characters,,, Sasuke literally just treats everyone the same and if he's critical of someone that happens to be a girl,, it is never because they are a girl.

Guys, I'm thankful and flattered, but please, let it go, don't feed the trolls. Let's keep our spaces safe for us.

It's this article even real? I found it hard to believe someone would read the manga or watch the show and decide that Naruto "doesn't need the overdone Sasuke Arc".

First and most importantly, Sasuke singlehandedly moves the entirety of the plot forward, he doesn't have an entire arc dedicated to himself because he's relevant for every single arc the story possesses, and he's the reason key characters behave the way they do; taking away Sasuke's journey to make him a complying tool of the state wipes out the reasoning behind every villain's actions, therefore, it destroys them as well.

It's hilarious how this article exists to take away Sasuke's relevance within the story to give it completely to Naruto, something his fandom has wanted since the very beginning of the manga and that Kishimoto never complied.

In the Naruto series, Sasuke was Naruto's rival in the Hidden Leaf. However, he was training to kill his older brother, Itachi, for wiping out their clan. In time, Sasuke would learn Itachi did what he did to protect Konoha as their Uchiha kin wanted a coup. This enraged Sasuke, who nonetheless vowed to kill Itachi and exact revenge on Konoha.

Okay so, we start awfully, and no surprises there. Sasuke killed Itachi and later on, through Obito, learned about the reasoning behind his brother's actions. It's after this that he vows to bring down those who allowed and encouraged the construction of a system that pushed the Uchiha to rise up against this power dome and forced his brother to murder his entire family.

Regardless of the circumstances, Sasuke hated the fact he had to grow up alone. This is the reason he joined the Akatsuki, formed his own terrorist cell called Taka, and tried to murder Naruto after the wars against Obito and Madara.

No. You cannot use "regardless of the circumstances" when those circumstances are detrimental to his character's actions and the functioning of the system against which he, like other characters throughout the plot, stands. He not only hated having to grow up alone (a consequence of, once again, the genocide carried out BY THE STATE ITSELF through his brother), but also the indiscriminate murder of his relatives, both those who engineered the coup and those who were profiled based on biological conditions over which they had no control.

Also, there was one single war against Obito and Madara that stretched through a couple of days for which he participated in bringing down both of them as his idea of revolution didn't partake in their idea of absolute control of people's minds.

The Naruto movie (and obviously, the sequels) would be better served by doing something unpredictable. The Evil Sasuke arc is overdone, especially since it comes up in the Boruto era. In the latter case, a redeemed Sasuke keeps using it as a lesson to teach Boruto and Kawaki why they should not let rage guide them. Fans don't like being reminded how unnecessary this was in the source material.

Overdone? Did this guy actually watch the anime at least? The entirety of the plot focuses on the system flaws that even the protagonist is "set to change", Sasuke's arc is detrimental to the story as both Naruto and Sasuke observe the same issue from different standpoints, the former wants to keep the system and make gradual changes as not to "bring chaos" and the latter wants its complete destruction as a gradual change only guarantees greater injustices being committed over time until it is "changed".

Take Sasuke off of this equation and there's no reason for Naruto to even go on or have any introspection on the matter of Konoha's political and military system --and I'm being incredibly kind about this as even when Sasuke blatantly exposes it Naruto has a hard time grasping the most basic concepts to rebel against.

Additionally, Sasuke's villain arc would be a lot to condense into live-action, even if it's done over a trilogy. It could be done the way the MCU took 10 years to build the Thanos fight in Avengers: Endgame, but by that time, the story would be stale. Everyone would know what happened. The advantage the MCU had while adapting the source material is that it subverted the lore and crafted an original story. c

Does this author actually know what "adaptation" actually means? Or what it entails? What they seem to want is a reversion of the story as they desire to modify the entirety of the character that is the main plot device within the original product, not an adaptation. Also, what's with the last phrase? How can Sasuke be a loyal rogue? That's a contradiction in itself, is he a rogue of Konoha or is he loyal to Konoha? Pick one -you can't have both.

The advantage of Sasuke being a rebel without defecting from Konoha is that Naruto would have the help needed to fight the big villains of the franchise: the Ōtsutsuki. 

Sasuke fought alongside Naruto against Kaguya, bringing the union of former Team 7, without having to compromise his original ideals... did they just... forget?

Kaguya was the first alien who came to Earth, got sealed away, and then tried to return to enslave it. Naruto and Sasuke were reincarnations of her sons (Ashura and Indra, respectively), but the manga and anime didn't spend much time detailing how they would form their clans down the line and the emotional impact Kaguya had fighting her descendants.

Haha, come on, this is clickbait isn't it? Ashura and Indra are not Kaguya's sons, they're her grandchildren that reminded her of her sons, bet your ass this is a Boruto fan that just heard about the original series and wrote whatever this was without eyeing the og manga.

but the manga and anime didn't spend much time detailing how they would form their clans down the line and the emotional impact Kaguya had fighting her descendants.

That's because one of Kaguya's sons went to live on the moon and the other one, Hagoromo, had two sons on Earth (Indra and Ashura) who -as the manga establishes, founded their own clans (Uchiha and Senju respectively) that were at war until Konoha's foundation.

It focused heavily on Sasuke plotting in the shadows, and Naruto forming an army, realizing much later in the story of their link to Kaguya.

What? They learned about their connection to Kaguya through Hagoromo before fighting her, Sasuke also never plotted in the shadows, he blatantly tells them he wants a Revolution and later on decides to kill Naruto as he's his last connection to his past! That's the whole reason they fight!

By switching this up and making lineage a primary and not secondary arc, the movie can dial more into the emotional core: Sasuke and Naruto exploring their family tree and the overall theme of dynasty. Sasuke could learn more about how Indra developed a dark side, which passed down to the Uchiha, while Ashura's light gave way to the Senju and Uzumaki (Naruto's family) clans.

That's incredibly explored throughout the manga. The Senju are the only clan linked canonically to Ashura himself, the Uzumaki obtained Ashura's attention after the Senju disappeared as they were distant relatives.

Also, love the distinction of "Indra developed a dark side which passed down to the Uchiha" and "Ashura's light gave way to the Senju". Hagoromo favored this distinction by granting the totality of his power to one of his sons and expecting the other to be functional to his brother's decisions. If Hagoromo considered that Ashura's position was better than Indra's, why did he not teach his eldest son to make similar decisions? How is it that Indra decided to form a clan and a collective group of people if his idea was to move and gain power alone? How is it that Ashura, the being full of light, decided to fight his brother for power instead of seeking a peaceful solution to work together if what he wanted was power through union? Why did he not question the idea of a single person having the totality of command?

This would allow the movie to not hinge on Naruto and his fate with his Nine-Tailed Demon Fox (Kurama).

This just proves my initial point.

Instead, Sasuke would become a key player by garnering clues as to who Kaguya is. This would also unearth her plan to place everyone in a dream state (via the Infinite Tsukuyomi genjutsu technique) and drain their chakra. In other words, he would be the egotistical brains of the operation, while Naruto functions as the go-lucky muscle.

What's the point of doing all that if this exact thing ends up happening anyway without having to destroy any character's core? Are they serious?

This would not be different from what's been seen with Iron Man and Captain America, and Batman and Superman.

Brain minimized by the same comic story over and over again, what's the point of seeing a dynamic story repeated hundreds of times in different products? Is the main idea of this theme to make audiences like this guy believe that he possesses some kind of intellect because he can predict a plot he has seen thousands of times before?

Such an approach speaks to the legacy of both warriors, which makes them the yin and yang they were meant to be. 

Don't believe this fool. Sasuke and Naruto as characters explore the Yin and Yang implications very well as they are, he doesn't seem to understand what this metaphor actually entails.

Such a change fits Sasuke's destiny organically because this is the kind of sleuth he would become in the Boruto era, where he atoned and roamed the lands as a Ranger. This same development felt rushed and left-field in the manga, as he never did that kind of work before.

Making Sasuke a heroic anchor in the Naruto movie also works for the evolution of Team 7. To start with, Sasuke, Naruto and Sakura were all trained by Kakashi, but their story felt disjointed. Naruto was preoccupied with bringing Sasuke home, Sasuke was off seeking Itachi and an army, while Sakura tried to quell the anger in both of them. This took away time from her personal development and detracted from the bigger threat of the aliens. By making the plot so convoluted, fans found it odd the Boruto era would marry Sakura and Sasuke, despite them never being developed as an official romantic couple.

By not splintering the team, Naruto's director, Daniel Destin Cretton, can focus on what made Team 7 work in the first place. Sakura was known to stop arguments and function as the team's mature, responsible leader. Naruto also liked her while she liked Sasuke. Sakura eventually realized she needed to change the views of Konoha and have the village recognize female shinobi more. This worked in the love triangle that allowed Sasuke to develop feelings for Sakura that would pay off down the line. This would also allow Naruto to understand he was meant to lead the Hidden Leaf.

What is removing Sasuke's entire characterization gonna do for the rest of the characters? The author is not saying Sakura realized this canonically, by the way the paragraph goes, what he implies is that she could realize this in the movie. So he’s telling us that Sakura didn’t notice she needed to change Konoha’s views about females because Sasuke wasn’t there to help her or what? It's Sasuke staying that detrimental to her development?

He wants to change everything about the original Team 7 in order to make them fit their Boruto’s characterizations. Hell, I bet he’s a Boruto fan who barely watched the original series, I’ll go as far as to state he used AI to write this garbage.

That also was Tsunade’s ordeal as well. Shikamaru questioned her involvement and was proven wrong when she “consoled” him after Sasuke’s Retrieval Arc and proved herself to be a good Kage. He’s asking something of Sakura that Tsunade already did.

Does he know what character development is? Why should they change everything about the original series to fit better the spin-off? Is the spin-off that it's badly written as it couldn't follow the original's characterizations, not the other way around.

According to his page, Renaldo Matadeen, "author" of this abysmal take, focuses on: As a filmmaker and scriptwriter, Renaldo loves to dissect the nuances of stories, especially narratives involving people of colour, minorities, and the socially-displaced. He believes art is a medium to reflect and provoke, and loves engaging in content that evokes this energy. 

So you mean to tell me that Sasuke, a metaphor for the socially displaced people, a survivor of a state-sanctioned genocide, and a revolutionary is somehow better by being stripped of any value inside a story that focused on his struggles, to begin with? That somehow the story would be better if he, a minority, was more complacent with the State that represses him?

karin

Dude relax a little bit, me and that Harry Potter account are not friends. It was all a coincidence that she found my comments funny in your post. Plus, nobody called you any names. As I said, I was just joking with the fact that you are a Sasuke stan, but just because I found your post attacking Hinata fanbase in the tag. You can make any critical you want but just let the fanbase out of this. Hinata fans are not attacking Sakura. The biggest hate against female characters comes from the incel base of the fandom, you are creating a rivalry between two characters that doesn't exist.

And yes, your critical is superficial but so what? As you said they are fictional characters, they don't know we are exist and guess what? THEY DON'T EXIST!!! So enjoy your crying emo kid and chill.

I'm not exaggerating by defending myself from you. If you want to "chill out" the situation how about you just leave? You keep telling me to "relax" yet you do nothing to allow me such a thing, you kept replying to my post and now you send me an ask?

Leave.

Maybe you just need to stop telling women to "relax" whenever they feel attacked, that's not very feminist of you.

You know, I don’t mind one or two responses filled with insults, I’m used to this sort of behavior from this fandom. You tend to engage in a correctly tagged post, and blame the author for Tumblr’s shitty layout (it’s not our fault Tumblr doesn’t work properly and we are entitled to use the ‘anti’ tag as it’s quite literally ours to use, you can easily ignore it as we ignore the anti-Sasuke posts that are tagged correctly and Tumblr shows), you come throwing insults, calling me names, then you can’t accept the criticism and go running away to your friends?

This is my blog, I write what I like, I was kind enough to allow you to insult me and not escalate it further, yet you keep doubling down on your efforts to defend a 2D character that doesn’t know that you exist (it’s quite more complicated than that, you see, you’re not defending Hinata, you’re defending yourself as you both see yourself in her and feel the need to justify why you like her, so me criticizing her stance in the narrative is criticizing you and your tastes). Let’s just ignore the fact that a pro-Hinata fan (known slave owner and daughter of a brother torturer)  just made a joke about family violence; I would’ve let that slide hadn’t been for your noticeable lack of care on the matter.

Your friend didn’t do you any favors either, so is Hinata a goodlywritten female character or isn’t she? You can go and talk this out on your own. My post was written well enough that it was left alone for five months until you two had a problem with it (what a coincidence two Hinata stans reply to it the same day!).

"I don't think the problem is your criticism" vs. "criticizing female characters in 2024 without thinking they were made like this on purpose by a man is just misogyny".

So which is it? Is there a problem with my criticism or there isn't one, pick your fighter and try to don't contradict yourself in the process challenge.

Your "Also, I never saw anyone saying these characters are well written" is immediately challenged by your friend's "and you're talking about a well-written character." I don't even know what are you arguing about, I literally said that a character's value amidst the narrative relies on how well they represent their theological narrative, and I presented evidence as to why Hinata and Sakura don't matter that much in that front, so them having "depth" isn't necessary.

Oh well, jeez, you two keep going. Take Sasuke out of the narrative and you're left with nothing, there's no goal for Naruto to achieve as the entire manga revolves around him chasing Sasuke down, he had to be taken off The Last for Naruto to concentrate on something that didn't involve him.

You needed to bring Sasuke into the discussion because lord knows you can't go anywhere without putting him down, you know, a genocide survivor. You thought that insulting him would make me go as feral as it did to you that I criticized Hinata, but I'm far smarter than you give me credit for and I have his canon relevance to soothe my wounds.

Criticizing female characters isn't "misogynistic" when such female characters and their fandoms follow patriarchal tropes. I would take more time to express this point to you but I don't see my efforts going anywhere.

You wanna enjoy Tumblr? How about you go do that? You don't see me jumping in pro posts despite them also appearing in the anti-tag, so why would you? Is attention what you seek? You've got it, now you've lost it.

Here, I'll add no tags.

Bye. PS: In the original post, I literally stated that I want to defend Sakura from her attackers, it isn't my fault most of them are inside the Hinata fandom, that's your doing, not mine. If you don't identify with the portion of the fandom that criticizes Sakura in such a manner, why are you defending it?

I spoke about an abstract figure from which you can detach yourself if that's your wish as you don't want to "confront two female characters", so why would you be so triggered when I criticize the portion of the fandom that does? You also defended such an abstract figure from my critique by attacking me personally with insults and allusions to family violence (if you don't want people to take such claims seriously maybe don't use them as a "gotcha!" moment?) and decided to call back up from a person not involved in the matter when I already established I wouldn't be replying further. You wanted this to escalate and continue, you encouraged an aggressive situation where there was none, and when I decided to cut it short you deepened your actions by bringing in another person instead of giving me clear and concise reasons why I was wrong, deciding to attack me instead of my analysis.

Your friend also went as far as to blame me for your insults, deciding that I deserved such treatment for expressing my point of view against, once again, an abstract figure, how can you call yourselves feminists and deem me a misogynist when you abide by the patriarchal weapons you claim to detest?

You know there’s a weird connection between the fandom’s perceived idea of “good writing” and their personal feelings about specific characters. “I like this character, therefore, they’re well written” and viceversa, “I dislike this character, therefore, they’re badly written” –I’ve seen this in many fandoms and with different characters, but there’s no fandom where this is more noticeable than in the “anti Sakura” portion of the audience.

Before we start, let me be clear on something: I don’t personally like Sakura, I don’t consider myself a fan of hers (or her stans, which are just as annoying as Hinata’s), nor I believe she’s the “heroine” of a story that has no room for a character with such status (I’ve said this before, Naruto is the hero and Sasuke is the antagonist -there’s no necessity nor space for anyone else as Sakura is merely the female character with most panel time, yet she doesn’t move the plot forward and she isn’t relevant to the development of other key characters, as most of them completely ignore her existence).

“Likeability” isn’t a determining factor when it comes to labelling a character “well” or “badly” written, such notion relies on subjective factors which makes it impossible to objectively determine the overall value of a character inside a story.

The most important factor to label a character “goodly written” has more to do with how well they represent their theological narrative. For instance, Danzo -who I genuinely despise, is amazingly written, as he spot on tackles the subject of extreme-nationalistic world view, while Itachi -on the other hand, is sort-of all over the place as he subscribes to Danzo’s ideology and defends it with the same actions, yet Kishimoto desperately wanted to keep him inside the “good guys” group, which ultimately failed and took down anything Itachi might have had going for him (besides other inconsistencies as he’s presented as a genius who made nothing but mistake after mistake). There’s a reason why the antagonists are often the ones with the best characterizations, as they aren’t tied to been “morally correct” or “likeable” in order to reflect their thematic plot, which is why the better characters in Naruto happen to be Uchiha (Sasuke, Obito, Madara).

Sakura has no weight inside the plot, as she is mostly used for support of either Naruto and (to a lesser extent) Sasuke, she stands narratively in the same spectrum as most “good” characters of the show, so she’s thematically not much more relevant than the rest of K-11; yet she’s given more depth than many other characters, as she’s a layered character of whom we see both her strengths and flaws, something we can’t say for other characters, such as Hinata.

In the Hyüga princess™’s case, her personality is mostly one dimensional as she is a thematic piece used to deepen Neji’s character. In case you haven’t noticed, she was constructed in opposition to him: She needs to be shy in order for Naruto to take pity on her when Neji insults her (as Neji is mostly arrogant and outspoken), she’s comically bad because Neji is a prodigy, she’s “a freak” (said by Naruto himself) because Neji isn't, she’s a slave owner because Neji is her slave, and so on –the only thing she has that wasn’t built in order to oppose her cousin was her infatuation with Naruto, something she makes a priority.

Everything we “know” about Hinata was mostly fandom-made, Hinata is shy and soft spoken, why is she considered “nice”? We never saw her worrying about anyone but Naruto: She was glad Kiba lost his match and offered Naruto the ointment to treat his wounds, she diminished her cousin’s trauma and endorsed the oppressive system of her clan, we never see her visiting Kiba after he returned from his mission to bring Sasuke back to Konoha (something we see Ino and Sakura do with their respective teammates, and while Hinata was recovering from Neji’s attack, she had enough strength to train and go see the Chünin Exams final stage, at no point is mentioned she was bed-ridden, as Sasuke had enough time to recover from Gaara’s attack before escaping the village), she thought about Naruto’s warm hand seconds after her cousin died and she was the only character not shown to be glad about Shikamaru being alive as we saw her pouting and thinking about how much she wanted to be beside Naruto. Furthermore, is there any scene in which she appears where she’s not thinking or talking about Naruto or where he is not the main focus?

How come a character designed to be nothing more than support (for Neji and Naruto, as her infatuation with him was built in order to have some oppositional force to the idea of “nobody likes him”, as Naruto has an unrequited love for Sakura during the whole duration of the manga) is “better written” than Sakura, who despite herself being also support she has far more thematically ground to move around (Kishimoto explores through her different themes, even if they aren’t relevant to the plot itself, such as romantical obsession, low self-esteem and the decisions/characteristics that are driven by it, female friendship, and few others).

Honest question: It’s her sad background reason enough to like Hinata? Do you truly need a “compelling” backstory in order to claim a character is “better written” than others? Sakura was bullied because she was shy, Hinata -being the Hyüga heir, wasn’t shown to suffer the same fate at the hands of her classmates. Think about it this way, while Sakura was being bullied and had to be helped by Ino, Hinata was being trained by her father and witnessing Hiashi torture her uncle while Neji cried, helpless! –and just a few years later, she used that exact knowledge to insult him! So she’s not really that nice after all!

What is it with the obsession of both fandoms with the idea of “potential” and how, apparently, they were “robbed of it” (what “potential”? When did Hinata even hint at improving her fighting techniques? She was defeated every single time! When did Sakura, who canonically has a smaller chakra pool than both Sasuke and Naruto, have the possibility of surpass literally Ashura and Indra’s reincarnations? Them having more panel time will mean absolutely nothing as we’ll see them doing the exact same thing we already see them do only twice as much. “Potential” is about exploring a latent ability of them, Hinata has none and Sakura’s chakra flux control was properly exploited!).

There’s more to say about this, but I’m honestly tired at this point…