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anime97-99 · 2 months

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NARUTO COMPLEXITY

⚠️Sorry, this is going to be long and I may sound repetitive at times!! I have to say this is my point of view thought I tried to make it as objective as possible!! Hope you like it!! Also I apologize for a bad use of grammar and vocabulary since English is not my first language!!⚠️

This post is dedicated to exploring and analyzing Naruto’s characters through the whole series including Boruto. Starting with Naruto, he is supposed to be a pure and innocent boy, naive who doesn’t understand feelings and seeks acceptance from other people in search to experience those positive feelings such love, friendship and what feels like to have a family.

Since Naruto was young he tried to get attention from other people even if this attention resulted in disgust towards him, he acted out of fear of being alone, just imagine a child living alone in an old flat located on the outskirts of the village which is probably a dangerous area full of criminals arm with swords, shuriken…

Like this isn’t enough he is hated by the whole village without him knowing the reason and the only support came in money from Sarutobi, I suppose being the third hokage took a lot of time and he did what he could with Naruto but at the same time I think you shouldn’t just give money for the rent to only a child and that’s it. I think he wanted to secure his image at the same time protecting Naruto and the villagers from harm (if the villagers noticed that the hokage was supporting “the demon” they probably would have started to distrust Sarutobi and a fight between the higher ups and the villagers to get ride of Naruto would have taken place because of the fear of thinking that Sarutobi is allying with the enemy), so he chose to spend less time with him, which is not the best decision but it was made with good intentions.

Then Naruto has a goal and a dream, to be recognized and accepted by everyone becoming the hokage, that translates to turn the hate into love, the naive dream of being loved by everyone (falling in love with being in love, like Ada said, (fall in love with the love from others, when mother said “you just loved how much I loved you” in the movie Mother, which I recommend, they touched on this topic) Naruto is really idealistic and romantic (romantic not as love but as romanticism), themes that are presented in classic literature and offend end in tragedy, It almost looks like part of Naruto is heavily inspired by Romanticism literature, for example some similarities are that it is really idealistic, it has drama, love, tragedy, though the ending may not be the best it could be actually be considered a happy one.

The definition of Naruto’s personality as a selfless and self-sacrifice person. His worse fear is to be ignore and be alone, that is why he is loud and problematic, to attract eyes towards him. He is not self centered, he is the whole opposite, he cares a lot about what other people say that is why he is explosive since young, he is sad and shows that sadness with anger and a fleeing personality.

The first person that makes him not feel alone is Sasuke and this is really important, we have two kids with problems, they are obviously different from Naruto point of view but then one afternoon he sees Sasuke alone and they meet eyes, this is a really important scene they see themselves reflected in each other eyes that is why Naruto finally recognizes Sasuke and Sasuke sees Naruto who used to be only an annoying child, and with this it shows an union, two children who hates each other because of their differences have a lot in common and ends in them being the only ones to truly understand each other pain and loneliness. Thought this is more complicated since Sasuke knows about love, what is a family, what is friendship and he is popular and loved by teachers and students, but he also experienced since really a young age the pressure to be part of an important clan and to have a genius brother being constantly compare to you by everyone even his family, though his mother tried to calm him down by saying Itachi is different this is really bad to say to a child!! This comment will make him think that he is less that Itachi and will create distance between his brother and family, it will end in an inferiority complex.

Through Naruto’s series he will be so obsessed with revenge he will forget about himself and others, hurting the people that loves him in the process, he is so fixated in revenge that he forgets there’s more than just killing his brother but he is stuck in the past, showing obvious signs of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), OCD (obsessive compulsive syndrome). He could be compare with Coriolanus Snow from the Hunger Games who loved someone, looked like a good person and was loved by his family but his obsession with power made him a villain and someone to be feared. Like Niccolò Machiavelli said “the end justifies the means”, this is their ideology, thought Sasuke is still unable to kill Naruto, his feelings towards him are so big that killing him is worse than committing suicide.

Following Naruto, he is someone who only knows about negative feelings that is why he seeks acceptance an love, he is in love with the idea of love like Ada, he chooses Sakura as his crush because she is really intelligent and a very good student (I believe Sakura has the same fear as Naruto, she was bullied because of her forehead and she wants to be liked by everyone, so she studies hard to be the best student and if Sasuke who is the most popular and handsome boy sees her then those bullies who constantly hurt her about her appearance will shut their mouth, so just as Naruto she wants to be seen and recognized, though the way they act is different, Sakura is really insecure and has to prove herself through others praise this probably because of the bulling even if Ino is there they got separated at some point which made Sakura limit herself even more, she is like a white canvas that change not because of what she likes but what the others want to see on her. Sasuke likes long hair then she will have long her even though she obviously prefers a shortcut, that is why Ino was really important in her life, she was the first to tell her she is beautiful and she doesn’t need to listen to other bullies but Sakura necessity of being recognize through Sasuke and Ino liking Sasuke made them get separated and a healthier development for Sakura to explore herself with the help of someone to support and guide her as an equal was stopped). Sakura didn’t fall in love with Sasuke, she fell in love with the idea he represented.

Also Sakura’s inner voice is totally normal, it is not her having another personality it is just showing her subconscious and unconscious mind who everyone has. Just stop and analyze yourself then you will notice a tiny voice going on an on, it is just your brain thinking, it is completely normal. This reflects real Sakura, what she desires compare of how she acts to be liked by other people, or didn’t you notice for example a friend showing you a dress and you telling them is beautiful to not hurt their feelings but inside you are thinking it is horrible, it’s the same thing with Sakura is very human!!

You can’t analyze Naruto’s characters like Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke without taking account of their closest influence including each other, Kurama, Jiraya, Iruka, Ino, Tsunade, Sarutobi, Kakashi, Gaara, Rock Lee and maybe Sai with the other friends such as Shikamaru and Choji… So continuing with Naruto who works really hard the same as Sasuke and Sakura (even thought he doesn’t know and thinks of then just as genio is), but contrary of them he doesn’t obtain results ending in frustration, (thought he does gardening which is something psychologist recommend, is really good to maintain the mind relax focused and concentrate in just one thing and make yourself conscious of reality, this is to make the brain take a break from overthinking which saturates it, make it concentrate in just one thing at a time will help you to control yourself, it could be through meditation, but also through gardening, doing crafts, reading whatever you like always doing it without pressure just to enjoy, understand your feelings and let them pass being conscious of them but not avoid or succumb to them just taking notice of reality and that those negative thoughts and feelings exist and you can just let the past without judging yourself), (judging is negative while feedback is positive).

At the beginning of Naruto, since the first episode, you see Iruka as a parental figure to Naruto who loves him and supports him, who scolds him and teaches him, who protects him and accepts him, and Naruto realizes he is not alone, but also discovering that he is seen as a monster because he has a “demon” inside him. This gives him a reason to prove himself as a separate entity from Kurama and confirms the possibility of being loved and accepted because of Iruka (a villager who feared and hated him from killing his parents, but Iruka realized that he didn’t hate Naruto but the demon inside him thanks to the guidance from Sarutobi), and that is enough for him to keep trying.

Naruto’s goal to be hokage is getting stronger, but he is too worry about it to stop and analyze himself the same happened with Sakura and Sasuke.

The boy wants to love and be loved but he didn’t even know the meaning of this feelings that is why Naruto, the series, is about self discovery, the most important part when people realized what they are or want to be is during their teen years that is why we see the characters going through a roller coaster of emotions!!

Kishimoto has called Naruto too idealistic and naive who didn’t understand Sasuke, Sasuke as a pure and self-centered and Sakura as more than just cuteness!!

If we analyze it I interpret that Naruto love for Sasuke is too pure and he is too naive, someone that doesn’t understand love and is experiencing it, he is supposed to realized that he loves Sasuke in a different way and there are different kinds of love but it is still too early to understand, Sasuke who understands love and experienced all kinds of love realized that what he feels for Naruto is romantic love, that is why he gets frustrated at him when called his brother or friend, but Naruto that at the end explains what means to be his friend, (which is the same Ada said in Boruto to Mitsuke when explaining her love to Kawaki) he realized that he was special and their feelings were the same even if Naruto didn’t notice the difference.

And both, Ada and Naruto called themselves fools because of love!!

Now Sakura is not cute, it was said by Kishimoto, but for real being cute or not is not that important that is why Kishimoto says she is more than just cuteness!! She is intelligent and determined and if she wanted she could be really powerful remember she is the best at understanding and controlling chakra a quick learner, and she is the smartest of the three but her fixation in Sasuke limited her.

Talking about Naruto’s development as a person, for me Naruto puts a lot of limits on himself because he wants to pleased everyone and is scare of what other people will think of him. Naruto’s world is closed minded, with traditional thoughts, the representation of Japan at that time. The same way Sakura chose Sasuke, Naruto chose Sakura. Though I think he realized that what he felt for Sakura is the same he felt for others like Shikamaru or Choji, still since he liked Sakura a lot as a friend he thought it was good to love her, he didn’t understand what romantic love is, he just wanted to experience it, to explore it and to not be lonely.

His self dicovery soon would be questioned in the form of Sai, a sexualize boy who will make Naruto question his sexaulity, Naruto has never show interest in any woman, (he actually show interest in one and that one looked like Sasuke and that’s it) even Jiraya thinks it is strange for a teenager full of hormones to not get interested in beautiful woman or describe porn as boring. But Naruto gets loud and nervous towards Sai, he gets shy and blush when bathing with naked men and protected himself hiding under the water (it reminds me of the bath scene from Mulan), to make it more obvious for the readers Kishimoto makes Yamato say that Naruto shouldn’t act strange between men, showing what Naruto felt and Yamato acting as their society that they categorize his behavior as strange and not normal.

Naruto starts to understand himself and the possibility of being sexually attract to men but is afraid of what other people would say and rejects himself, he is just a repressed boy. He doesn’t like Sai he is a person who doesn’t care about being labelled and shows interest in Naruto without embarrassment (because yes, Sai is someone who doesn’t understand himself not his feelings but being with Naruto and Sakura made him understand what friendship was, the way he act showing it made Naruto nervous overthinking things because he was attracted to him and being too close made him nervous at how careless Sai was). He also got nervous and overreacted with Kakashi when he praised him thinking he likes him, and when ask what he is thinking about, when he is thinking about Sasuke changes and says he is thinking of going on a date with Sakura, which could be also a way to make others don’t worry about him being so upset and depressed about Sasuke or it could be his repressed feelings towards him, which he unconsciously has but is not aware of them and their meaning.

In Naruto Shippuden we see a development of Sakura’s character, in the first part she cut her hair symbolizing breaking through her fixation in being and do everything to please Sasuke, now in Shippuden to me she started to see herself as a whole, with her own identity, separating herself from Sasuke.

The decision of Sasuke leaving was positive for her character, she found a new goal and her feelings for Sasuke became more dull. I would say that see started to see Naruto as a love interest, someone good for her, a good friend that respects her but since she is observant and intelligent realized Naruto’s real feelings at the end and decided to not confess or she didn’t realized her feelings towards Naruto because she was too fixated in Sasuke and was confused at her change of heart.

For Sasukeas I said before, he always knew about Naruto’s feelings that is why when Naruto says that for him Sasuke is a friend he looks angry an confuse, as Kishimoto said Naruto is just too naive to understand Sasuke frustration, he showed it pretty clear, and as a Chinese proverb says “A picture is worth a thousand words”

Naruto is idealistic and naive, in this picture he is oblivious and daydreams imagining his own world without realizing that his world is centered around Sasuke and him, and that makes Sasuke frustrated because Naruto doesn’t understand his feelings. Naruto is obviously drawn in a compromising way, he is wearing shorts and a shirt, or maybe he is not wearing a shirt with the angle we can’t tell for sure, that shows a lot of skin, Sasuke is supposed to be thirsty but he is lost looking at him that he forgot the water, then we have Sakura looking at Sasuke, and Kakashi who is in his own world Xd. The water could be a representation of arousal, sexual deviance and the repression of desire.

Even thought at the end Sasuke understands Naruto, the guilt overtakes him and he decides to leave the village for redemption hoping that when he returns Naruto will be there for him but he is not, Naruto moved on and is getting married and Sasuke distanced himself from him too hurt to attend the wedding, also sending a poor congratulating letter which feels more like a mocking than anything else, though we don’t know what happened for two years, from Sasuke leaving to Naruto marrying Hinata, so maybe many things could have happened, I say this because Naruto seems to have changed, he looked serious when marring Hinata and he sleeps in another room separate from her, he is a workalcoholic and spends little time with his kids, he is a bad father.

People will get mad saying it doesn’t make sense, Naruto doesn’t understand love in The Last and he is a bad father but they forget that he never had a father or mother and he doesn’t understand the different kinds of love so through his adulthood he realized his feelings for Sasuke, that is why when Kurama said that Sasuke and Naruto are like brothers he said that he never felt it that way, Sasuke has Itachi and Kurama is like a brother to him not labeling his relationship with Sasuke.

Remember I said that he didn’t fell in love with Sakura but since he liked her as a friend and wasn’t able to differentiate the different types of love he confused it as a crush probably because he liked her (as a friend) and she was a girl.

Sakura was confused because she knew about Naruto’s feelings for Sasuke but at the end decided not to comment on it showing her dislike and opinion as a reflection of Naruto’s closed minded society, which is a critic to Japan’s society at the time, maybe it was not that and she just thought that Sasuke could hurt him again as she saw Naruto suffered during Shippuden. So instead of making him realized his feelings she encouraged Hinata thinking that she would be better for him, I believe she did it with good intentions but the decision she made was made based on her values and that wasn’t the correct decision for Naruto.

This way of thinking also shows in Iruka, his parental figure, and Kakashi, they know but they don’t say anything, this is obvious when Iruka gets mad at Naruto deciding to marry Hinata but doesn’t encourage him to talk with Sasuke, Iruka suffers in secret and thinks he did wrong not talking with him but at the end he will just observe (we are talking about Iruka, he is extremely strict, diplomatic and a person who always follows rules and he didn’t prepared anything to say in the wedding day that should be enough in what he truly though of it), Kakashi also knows but he never served as an emotional support at that scale those were Jiraya, who died, and Iruka who is part of the same village, maybe he is just afraid of what they will think and how could affect Naruto’s reputation since his “dream” is to be hokage, which actually was to experience love and be loved (like Ada) and not feel lonely.

The last two pictures compare a Sasuke’s card vs a formal card to give in a wedding and if you notice the villagers card is like the formal one but Sasuke is different, like making fun of it!!

As this quotes says, “hell is paved with good intentions not with bad ones. All men mean well”. George Bernard Shaw

“For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.” Simon Wiesenthal

“Bad decisions made with good intentions, are still bad decisions.” James C. Collins

A little poem reflecting Sasuke losing Naruto;

what's it to me

if you love me or

miss me or need me

when you are doing

nothing to be with me

if you can't allow me to be

the love of your life I will be

the loss of your life instead By Rupi Kaur

Japan at the time practiced arranged marriage, a marriage without love is not hard to imagine happening in Naruto’s world, even more between people with high occupations to unite important families. Hinata also commented on it.

The people that loves us can hurt us even if they have the best intentions.

Actually there are a lot of things that I didn’t say but I decided to stop here because if not it would be too long and for being repetitive!! Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed it and feel free to comment!!

Also if you watched Shang-Chi and the legend of the ten rings you may notice why Kishimoto is so excited with Destin Daniel Cretton he really likes him because he is open minded, but actually the film when watching it reminded me a lot of Naruto!!

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