Although Naruto still stands as one of the most iconic anime of all time, it is not without flaws. It’s been criticized (and rightfully so) for its hypocrisy in Naruto Shippuden, which contradicted many themes the first part of the franchise was loved immensely for. From “The Weapons Known as Shinobi” to Kakashi’s past, the Uchiha massacre, the Hyuga curse mark and plenty more tragic and corrupt acts of militant force by Konoha and the shinobi system, the audience is faced with an extremely bitter conclusion on the social and political “resolution” by the end of the second show. Naruto, whether intentionally or not, served fans a nationalistic narrative where disobeying the status quo is fundamentally enough to transform a main character into a full-fledged psychotic villain, and as a result of the conformity the deviants in the story are forced with, the social issues present in the series are never actually solved.
Creating Victims
Let’s talk about the cause and effects which create the deviants in Naruto in the first place. To begin, the shinobi system in itself is a self-serving militaristic regime with no empathy for the individual victims harmed by the violence and catastrophe it causes. Konoha, much like all the other Great Villages, view themselves as one collective identity through “The Will of Fire” and although that mentality and legacy can be positive and give hope to civilians had there been better leaders and government officials in power, it works more as a way of dismissing the suffering of everyday people in Konoha. With this slogan, the government tells them to persevere and keep fighting even when they are the cause of the people's hardship in the first place. This is made explicitly clear by Pain/Nagato in Pain’s Assault arc, “The Land of Fire and the Hidden Leaf had grown too big. To protect its national interests, it forced feudal clans to wage war against each other and then profited from it. Otherwise, the nation and the people of the villages would have starved” (“Nine Tails, Captured!” 00:14:55-00:15:11). Hiruzen, the Third Hokage, claims that everyone in the village is his family, but how does one have that view while waging wars for money and furthermore, using child soldiers for frontlines such as Team Minato? If anything, the Hidden Leaf prioritizes its economy over its people and is willing to dehumanize its children, turning them into apathetic, merciless killers such as Kakashi, Itachi, Yamato and many more, in order to maintain its status and power amongst the other Great Villages. It's because of these corrupt values that Yahiko, Konan and Nagato suffer and morph into the Akatsuki. It's the reason Itachi is forced to kill his clan and leave the village. It's the cause of Obito’s downfall into villainy. It always comes back to Konoha and its many skeletons. For the majority, all our present antagonists are merely a product of that government, puppets.
Conformity
The victims of this suffering go down one of two paths, deviance or conformity. Sasuke, Obito and Pain chose the former, while Itachi, Yamato and Kakashi settle for the latter. Kakashi is my favourite example of how a village can take a child and warp them in so many different ways that they are nearly completely broken come adulthood. He’s raised by his father alone and is happy enough before losing him to suicide, a result of the inhumane and immoral criticism from Konoha shinobi. The torment the legendary White Fang dealt with is not unique to his village alone, we can see that in the very first arc, Land of the Waves, when Zabuza and Haku go on long thematic monologues about how shinobi are weapons with no intrinsic value and their lives mean nothing if they do not benefit the state they belong to, “As Gato used me, I was simply using Haku. I thought I told you, we shinobi are merely tools. What I wanted were his skills and not Haku himself. I have no regrets” (“The Demon in the Snow” 00:03:40-00:04:04). Everyone is suffering. Everyone is complicit and most shinobi are manipulated from childhood into blindly following the orders of the agent of the state. When Kakashi’s father is ridiculed for prioritizing his friends’ lives over the success of the mission, it’s enough to make him take his own life and has lasting psychological damage on Kakashi as a young child. He desensitizes himself and becomes extremely closed off, vowing to only obey the village’s rules no matter the situation. This mindset forced upon him only leads to further despair as he is unable to form relationships with Team Minato, and as a result, they break up during one of their missions in the Third Great Ninja War after Rin’s kidnapping. There is a sliver of hope though when Obito delivers the line “those who break the rules are scum, but those who abandon their comrades are worse than scum” and Kakashi is able to heal a bit from his father’s death, accepting that he did the right thing by throwing the mission. But this one step forward only leads to taking two more steps behind.
Another trauma-inducing norm they have in the shinobi system is child soldiers, if there was any progress in Kakashi’s mental health in that brief moment before he and Obito parted ways on the mission, it was smothered when Obito “died”. To make matters worse, he goes on to having to kill Rin, leaving him practically alone aside from Guy and Minato (who’s the Hokage so he’s not really present in Kakashi’s life too much anymore anyway). Watching Kakashi crying and trembling, frantically washing his hands of blood that isn’t really there is heart-wrenching. He’s a child orphan who has witnessed everyone he loves die and receives no help from the adults and authority figures in his village. Instead, his superiors appoint him to the Anbu Black Ops at age 13, a team of elite ninja ranking higher than jounin who handle the more brutal and immoral missions. And unlike genin, chunin and jounin teams, their priorities are uncompromisable and leave no room for argument, they serve the state and report directly to the superior state officials, those being the elders and the Hokage. It's a job that asks its employees to disregard their humanity entirely, willing to kill anyone from an enemy or ally nation, their comrades and even themselves. And they succeed in doing this to a teenage Kakashi, only to remove him from the team and put him in charge of children, out of all positions, knowing full well that he is nowhere near mentally equipped to teach them. His one gift to Team 7 is the power of teamwork, but even that is temporary.
At no point does Kakashi question any of Konoha’s decisions, he remains complicit and obeys all orders he’s given by his superiors. Even when he discovers the truth about what Konoha had done to the Uchiha, he refuses to act or speak up about the corruption. After Zabuza’s speech about shinobi being tools, after unintentionally killing Haku, a direct mirror to how he killed Rin, he goes on to entering his 12-year-old students into the chunin exams, a ninja Hunger Games, never registering the cycle of violence he is helping pass down to the next generation. He continues this after Naruto and Sasuke’s fight on the hospital roof.
Although he is correct in lecturing Sasuke in directing his hatred at his friend and teammate, someone who has suffered and been crushed by the same village, when he begins to lecture Sasuke on revenge, his subconscious nationalist traits begin to show, accompanied by his empathy for Sasuke’s pain that he recognizes he relates to, “Sasuke… forget about something like revenge. [...] Well, in this business I’ve seen a stink of guys like you. But the final days of those who speak of revenge are never good. They’re tragic. You’ll only hurt yourself and agonize more than now. Even if you succeed in revenge, all that will remain is emptiness” (“Bitter Rivals and Broken Bonds” 00:13:08-00:13:38). Here, Kakashi tells Sasuke that throughout his experience he has seen many deviants and that they never end in success to reimburse themselves from their pain or the target they're fighting against. He describes it as a futile act, and this is where the difference between Kakashi as a conformist and Sasuke as a deviant begins to build in the story. He continues, “I’ve lived longer than you have… The times were not good. I know all too well the agony of losing something. Well, both you and I aren’t the lucky ones, that’s for darned sure. But we’re not the worst either. You and I, we have already found dear comrades, haven’t we?” (00:14:12-00:14:45). With this, Kakashi establishes his solution to the pain he and Sasuke have endured, or a coping mechanism seems like a more accurate term. He suggests that Sasuke confides in Team 7 instead of pursuing his revenge. He seems to be doing this to protect Sasuke from causing himself more pain, but realistically, how it comes off is Hey I know you’ve undergone extreme psychological and physical trauma from watching your entire family be murdered that will definitely leave you with long-term damage, and that the benefactor of that trauma is still free, but you're making your middle school friends uncomfortable. Cut it out.
And of course Sasuke deserts the village and leaves to train with Orochimaru, in Sasuke's mind complacency isn’t an option, in Kakashi’s it’s all he has left. For someone who proclaimed to disregard rules when it comes to fighting for something you love and believe in, Kakashi has remained a lapdog to those rules and to the state he serves all the while. This is in no way an attack on Kakashi, but a means to show how the system has broken him to the point where he becomes the moral patient in decision making within Konoha and the shinobi system. The same can be said of Yamato and Itachi, although they go down very different paths, they live their lives obeying the village and acting in its best interest despite how immoral its requests may be.
Deviance
Sasuke is a primary example of deviance in Naruto. As a victim of the shinobi system, he decides to go against the status quo and follow his beliefs, acting as a vigilante, a complete contrast to the path Kakashi chooses for himself. But the narrative instead depicts and frames him as a villain for this as the story progresses, which is incredibly shady. Throughout all the villain redemptions present in the long duration of Naruto and Naruto Shippuden, Sasuke’s is drastically different, and that has all to do with how the series frames forgiveness and revenge when in relation to Sasuke’s ideologies. This is where the writing gets extremely problematic.
Let’s begin with the source of it all, the event that led Sasuke down his path of vengeance. Let’s discuss how the series convinced viewers that genocide (at least in a fictional setting) is justifiable. The unremittingly sad and horrifying portrayal of the Uchiha massacre which is carried out by a psychopathic Itachi alone, juxtaposed to the watered-down, frivolous Uchiha genocide conducted by Konoha gives us a scope of how the narrative’s themes and ethics may change in certain situations. Kishimoto presents the mass murder as an unforgivable and monstrous. Itachi is framed as an insane and villainous murderer (ironic since the main occupation in the story is assassins) for wiping out his own clan, save for Sasuke. And why wouldn’t he be? He committed an inhumane, heinous crime that left many in the village terrified and his little brother permanently scarred. It’s made very clear in part one that Itachi is irredeemable by other character’s reactions to him. Sasuke who is consumed with rage when meeting him again for the first time in years, and more importantly, the protagonist Naruto, who shapes most of the central themes of the anime, views Itachi as an evil person as well. Every time the infamous Akatsuki member makes an appearance, whether in person or in flashback, the message is made clear, viewers are supposed to hate this guy without question, and the massacre is made to be perceived as a single-minded, violent act of evil. End of story.
Why is it that when it's discovered that the Uchiha killing was actually an inside job, that Itachi was merely a pawn for the authoritative higher-ups' plans, that the crime becomes debatable? Why does the narrative bend over backwards to fill this massacre with reason and excuses, claiming that it was caused because of the Coup, because of the Nine Tails, because of Madara? Why does it try to dodge its way around its own definition, and is afraid to recognize itself for what it is: genocide? This is one of the biggest problems within Naruto. As soon as the system the main character’s defend and serve unremittingly is put into controversy and open to criticism, the narrative creates an abundance of arguments on why this massacre was necessary, or at the very least, that seeking justice for them is wrong i.e Sasuke. The story goes from one individual Uchiha going mad to the revelation that this tragedy was inevitable. Because the Uchiha are too powerful and suspicious within the other clans’ perspectives. Because their ancestor, Madara, set the example of how all Uchiha are. Because it’s in their nature, every shinobi to manifest the Sharingan will succumb to deep-rooted hatred. Because it was their fault, they were a threat, and it was only a matter of time.
As a response, Sasuke rejects this system and all those who abide by it, including Itachi’s beliefs (yet not Itachi himself) on protecting Konoha, “If you want to ridicule me as a brat swayed by his emotions, go ahead. Carrying on Itachi’s wish are merely pretty words. The foolish sputtering of those who don’t know hatred. If anyone criticizes my way of life, I’ll kill every single one of their loved ones! Then they might understand a little… of the hatred I carry” (“Somber News” 00:08:01-00:08:34). Although this quote can be taken with a grain of salt with Sasuke’s extremist retaliation, it's important to point out that he recognizes how idealistic and naive Itachi’s wishes of protecting Konoha are. Sasuke can’t align himself with Itachi’s view because his grief is too painful and makes him understand that obeying the village for the sole cause of not starting a civil war isn’t enough reason to let a genocide go unanswered and the higher-ups to walk free.
Sasuke fully accepts the fact that the Sharingan is attached to extreme loss and trauma, and uses it to fight against all corrupt or evil people he encounters. During the Valley of the End, Sasuke bluntly admits that he knows Orochimau means to do him harm, and accepts the fact that he’s meant to be the next vessel when Naruto tells him so. But he goes with him anyway. It makes no sense for Sasuke to be making a deal with the devil in order to kill Itachi when he runs the risk of his personhood being eliminated before he gets the chance to accomplish that goal he’s been waiting so long for. It can be argued with very little doubt that Sasuke never intended to support or side with Orochimaru but noticed he was just as evil at his brother, if not more so, and used him as a means to obtain power, fully intending to kill him 3 years later when he was strong enough and Orochimaru would be at his weakest. This can be confirmed after Orochimaru’s death when his first line of action is to free the countless suffering prisoners from each hideout. This all exemplifies Sasuke’s character and shows that he isn’t a bad person. When he selects the members of Hebi, it is fundamentally for his personal gain in killing Itachi, but he doesn’t hold any of them against their will, telling them they can leave at any time, and he makes it clear to all of them that the no-killing rule is non-negotiable. The only people deserving of death are Orochimaru and Itachi. So when the Itachi reveal happens and he figures out the identity of the people who are actually responsible for killing his clan, why would he not have the same murderous intent for them like he did for his brother?
This can be blamed on the nationalistic bias in Naruto that favours only acts of violence that benefit the village, otherwise, the deviant will be subjected to the categorical imperative and via Talk No Jutsu which the village leaders don’t even follow themselves, “it’s not even that most works of fiction will dismiss vengeance as wrong unilaterally, but the depiction tends to be ‘revenge is bad…when done outside of the legal framework you exist in, without the approval of a state, to avenge individuals who are not agents of the state’. otherwise, the narrative will flip to frame it as justice” (narutosbigmanlyhand). Point being, up until he declares war on Konoha, Sasuke’s actions are presented at worst, self-destructive, as the characters express their guilt and sadness over the loss of their friend. He’s something still worth saving and essentially in the Konoha 11’s eyes, an edgy damsel in distress (which they are completely wrong about). But after having a literal existential crisis and openly aligning with the Akatsuki, the enemy, his character becomes extremely cold and merciless, which wasn’t a new concept for him, but this time it’s directed at the people he showed kindness to, Taka, and innocent people caught in the crossfire.
The difference between all the other villains with vendettas against Konoha and the shinobi system who get the 2-second redemption arcs and Sasuke’s long, drawn-out pilgrimage is that Sasuke is not a foreign enemy, he’s from Konoha, and thus, a traitor. Sasuke has never been on board with the village’s patriotic, “Will of Fire” and it costs him everyone’s forgiveness but Naruto’s. The problem with this isn’t the character’s reactions to him, most people aren’t aware of the Uchiha genocide, and they would realistically turn on Sasuke given the limited information they have to base their beliefs on. Their government has fed them lies and instilled nationalist propaganda into them since childhood, so they can’t really be blamed. What’s problematic is the writing itself. The moment Sasuke’s target and hostility changes from Itachi to Konoha and the shinobi system, his character takes practically a 180 and acts psychotic, having no empathy for anyone but Itachi and himself, forgetting about Taka who have stood by him and the regular innocent people who had nothing to do with the corruption in Konoha. For someone who was ordered to fight dozens upon dozens of prisoners by Orochimaru and refused to kill a single one because they themselves were not deserving of it, it’s very out of character for Sasuke to want to kill the villagers who benefited indirectly from Itachi’s sacrifice unawarely, rather than only target Danzo and the elders who directly benefited and intentionally caused the genocide. This is how the framing becomes problematic:
sasukes revenge is not against a singular very evil person or organization, its against the entire shinobi system that perputated the source of his trauma & hurt other countless people… yet sasukes portrayed the villain because that system in question is the status quo the protagonist serves .. sasukes framed as irrationally angry and downright cartoonish evil because hes going against the system everyone in the series is rooting for regardless of how bad the system actually is (tenkya)
The System’s Response
The fundamental problem within the anime is its political shinobi system, it’s dehumanizing and merciless against the innocent, the guilty but remorseful, children etc. The issues themselves within this system isn’t problematic writing, what’s problematic is how the narrative goes about resolving these issues throughout the story. It’s normal for there to be corruption in a fictional world, it parallels real life and makes for good conflict throughout the story, but by the end of Naruto Shippuden the shinobi system isn’t fixed in any constructive way, instead, it’s swept under the rug and now they only have world peace and stability in Boruto because Hokage Naruto is at the power level of a god and can single-handedly detain all the other kage if they attempt to break that peace. Yet the system itself is not changed.
Throughout part one alone it acknowledges that the shinobi system is an oppressive and militaristic regime and then proceeds to deny all notions of changing that broken system in order to sustain lasting effective peace. Naruto is offended by the attitudes of the adults in the village, the treatment of Jinchurikis and the curse mark of the Hyuga clan, but when he becomes Hokage and is in a real position to bring about change to shinobi society, those very problems that were once the focal point of the series are never brought up again. And the series has a secretive but chaotic way of doing this without being instantly caught on first viewing by most fans. The War arc highlights all the violence the shinobi world has to offer and becomes the most unifying era in Naruto history. For once shinobi come together and Kage’s are willing to put their personal agendas aside to fight for everyone’s freedom, at least so they can live another day to pursue their corrupt desires they have. However, the Fourth Great Shinobi War acts as a scapegoat. After losing 80,000 soldiers on their first day of battle, seeing countless people die, Madara’s freaking meteors, and Obito’s entire arc, they have fought and seen enough, by the time Kaguya makes her appearance the fighting characters are so exhausted that ceasefire peace is all the argument they can really bring to the table. So when Sasuke traps the tailed beasts and fights Naruto for the second time in the Valley of the End, the narrative begins to dismiss the argument of what is right and how is the shinobi world corrupt and instead plead for peace because everyone has seen too much and wants to wrap it up and go home. But all the problems that caused most of the antagonists to act out still stand, and Sasuke (a poorly written, out of character Sasuke) isn’t going to let the matter be dropped so easily, not until he gives in at the revelation that he’s hurting Naruto, the only person or thing he cares about.
Sasuke’s imprisonment makes an example of the consequences of deviance. What makes the situation even more pitiful, is that he fully submits to Konoha, to the elders who go without any sort of confrontation for their part in the Uchiha genocide, and becomes even more of a lapdog than Kakashi and makes a direct comparison to Itachi’s double agent role undercover in the Akatsuki when he leaves the village as the “Shadow Hokage”. Malcolm X said, “A fox and a wolf are both canine, both belong to the dog family. Now you take your choice. You going to choose a Northern dog or a Southern dog? Because either dog you choose, I guarantee you’ll still be in the dog house” (Mowla 412). Sasuke picks his by the end of Shippuden.
Naruto (who is also out of character if compared with part one and the first half of Shippuden) defends Konoha by default after it is nearly destroyed for the second time due to the war, and this subsides all desires of changing it. This can also be due to the fact that Naruto’s reason for wanting to be Hokage in the first place was to get recognition, and later just because he didn’t want the world to end and all his friends to die. He isn’t alone in this, the rest of the characters from the battlefield resort to the same method even after seeing Naruto’s childhood memories through shared chakra and knowing the extent of what the village did to him. In his book “The Wisdom of Life” Arthur Schopenhauer said, “Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority” (University of Adelaide 7).
The fact that the truth about Uchiha is never made public is terrifying and downright holocaust denying. The fact that the Hyuga branch is never mentioned or seen on screen being freed can only lead viewers to assume they weren’t, and that slavery canonically exists in Boruto under the rule of a Konoha 11 generation running the village. A clan under the submission of a curse mark that induces agonizing pain they used on children such as Neji. Did everyone forget that the war was about freedom? There seems not to be a single person from Naruto’s generation that is willing to address these issues in Boruto or just Post-War arc.
This anime is no doubt beautiful and inspiring and invigorating in its best moments, it does deserve credit for all the hearts it’s touched with its messages of following your dreams, found family and believing in oneself, but it is an extraordinarily flawed piece of work. And those flaws should not go unnoticed, because they promote extremely dangerous ideals that unfortunately exist in reality today. The way that deviance and rebellion against a powerful “peaceful” state is met with outrage and villain/terrorist labelling is alarming, but it can also be acknowledged that people in that state following orders have been the subject of its so-called “peace” and aren’t in the right position to stand up for themselves or even acknowledge that there is a problem. Whether the victims of the shinobi system fall under conformity or deviance, they have both struggled under a corrupt system that didn’t care for their humanity or their lives. It would be nice if this was taken into account when writing the last few arcs of Naruto Shippuden so that the system might undergo social and political reform and retribution can be delivered to the tyrants in the series. Maybe then there would be survivors rather than victims still bound to the corrupt clutches of that system.
Work Cited
“Bitter Rivals and Broken Bonds.” NARUTO: Season 3. Writ. Masashi Kishimoto, Katsuyuki Sumisawa. Dir. Hayato Date. Tokyo TV, 2004. Television.
Mowla, Khondakar Golam. The Judgment against Imperialism, Fascism and Racism against Caliphate and Islam. Vol. 1, Authorhouse, 2008.
narutosbigmanlyhand. Tumblr, 6 Dec. 2019, cyphervv.tumblr.com/post/189513817085/
“Nine Tails, Captured!”. Naruto Shippuden: Season 8. Writ. Masashi Kishimoto,
Katsuhiko Chiba. Dir. Hayato Date. Tokyo TV, 2010. Television.
“Somber News.” Naruto Shippuden: Season 8. Writ. Masashi Kishimoto. Dir. Hayato Date. Tokyo TV, 2010. Television.
“The Demon in the Snow.” NARUTO: Season 1. Writ. Masashi Kishimoto, Katsuyuki Sumisawa. Dir. Hayato Date. Tokyo TV, 2002. Television.
tenkya. Tumblr, 6 Dec. 2019, cyphervv.tumblr.com/post/189513817085/its-not
University of Adelaide. “The Wisdom of Life, by Arthur Schopenhauer.” The Wisdom of Life, by Arthur Schopenhauer : CHAPTER IV., EBooks@Adelaide, 27 Mar. 2016, ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/wisdom/chapter4.html.