#almost all of the naruto characters are so poorly written

[team7-headquarter]

Now that I'm reading One Piece, let me say this: even when I think One Piece is better written, the comparison between both mangas in their pre timeskip period is often done poorly.

Naruto decides to be immediately a more explicit and visceral story in terms of cruelty, with a main cast of 12 year old children. While One Piece takes its time building the foundation for its characters and future arcs, Naruto jumps right into the issue at hand. The first chapter is practically spelling it out to you, the reason why Naruto could and even should be a villain, given the circumstances. He's a sad sight, the loneliness and general dark feelings coating Naruto as a story are strong from the very start. I'm not saying that One Piece doesn't have a lot of dark themes and feelings too, but Oda style is to use comedy and good humor to balance it first. One Piece is lighter at the beginning.

For example, compare the East Blue saga and the Land of the Waves arc. Unfair, I know, but I want to prove a certain point here.

Each arc of the East Blue has a bit of cruelty in it, the worst being Arlong Park. In the 3 first arcs, when Luffy meets his three first nakamas, we can say it is more comedy than tragedy. No one dies, there is cruelty and battles, but it's kept on the "safe side". The villains are shown to be more "evil" than anything else. Morgan, Buggy and Kuro are pirates after all. Then they reach the Baratie and things start to get serious. Sanji's backstory is heavy (everything Sanji and Zeff went through is dark, from the starvation to the amputation and the grey scale of their animosity turned bond). You have the first hint at Nami's complexity as a character, you get a taste of the Grand Line in the Mihawk and Zoro encounter where Zoro almost dies, there's explicit sacrifice...

Like I said, Arlong Park is the worst of it all. The story of the town, of Bell-Mere and her children, of what the fish-men did to Nami... It would be incorrect to say that comedy is out aside. First of all, because one of the most common purposes of comedy is to build the ground for drama. You will need a light mood to present the gravity of the situation at hand. The reader must be desperate to see the characters laughing and joking again, to recover the good times, to preserve the bonds and friendships. All the previous arcs needed to be so silly for Arlong Park to be impactful. Nami lived through hell. There's war and discrimination, abuse, manipulation, government corruption and betrayal. I'd never dare to say it's a light arc.

With Naruto, it's like they went straight to their own Arlong Park. It doesn't get clearer than the explanation Tazuna gave about what was going on with Kato and the bridge. They step out of the gates and there's an assassination attempt where Kakashi pretends to get explicitly murdered in front of the kids so he can figure out what they're dealing with. You have the story of how the local town hero was basically crucified to get his arms ripped by Kato's men. Hell, before all of these you have things like the Uchiha massacre and Sasuke saying his goal is to kill someone.

Then the top of the cake: Zabuza and Haku. They end up dead, both of them. Suddenly the enemy is not just "evil" or "ambitious" but also very very human. Kids killing kids or refusing to kill kids, it's a nightmare. Kakashi kills Haku with a chidori to the chest and the manga lingers on the blood of it all. There's a panel when Sasuke takes a hit meant for Naruto— the visual impact is insane. That one panel of Naruto awakening the kyubi's chakra and threatening to kill Haku? This is not a story about pirates and treasures and dreams. This is a story about survival and murder and duty, where a kid happens to want to dream above all the misery of his world.

Compare now the Arabasta saga and the Chuning Exams. Both are about politics, foul play to take a country/hidden village down, how normal people are nothing but pieces of a bigger game, how the world is baster and more dangerous than anyone could ever imagine.

The difference is that the straw hats choose to participate and choose how to do so. Every step is one they take conscious of the risk. They are teenagers still, sure, but they have their agency and they're powerful enough to not let anyone else push them around. They're at the heart of the conflict, they know what's going on behind the curtains. One Piece is about freedom, something that people in Naruto clearly lack. Even when there's death and sacrifices and a lot of cruelty, it's shown differently than in Naruto.

Team 7 gets thrown into the mess of Konoha's crush knowing nothing. The Chunning Exams are a shit show. The horror of Orochimaru and the cursed mark, the Hyuuga's plotline about family branches and slavery, arms exploding, Rock Lee's fight, Hiruzen's death, Gaara's backstory... Team 7 (at least the kids) move on such a different scale. It's terrifying. The Chunning Exams are war in a micro scale, designed to keep the power balance using their lower class soldiers, children included.

I can keep going, but well. I feel like I made my point clear with this post.

While Naruto's story pace is faster, the characters and the themes aren't rushed per se. It fits that in a world in constant conflict, things keep coming faster and the characters can't catch a break. The journey of the straw hats allows them more time to build the foundations of the crew, going from island to island. The way the stories are told are different too, so it'd be futile to compare them if you don't acknowledge that. What are the core values of the story? What is the general feeling? What is it trying to tell and how it corresponds to the way the story is told?

You either ask yourself those questions or you'll get a half-assed analysis, at most.

#shan's naruto posts #shan blogs about one piece! #shan posts about one piece! #naruto #one piece

[justthoughts1310]

Live Action Naruto: Does Sakura need to be re-written?

Spoiler Alert: The answer is Yes and No.

Now, if you follow me or look at my page, you will see that I wrote a post a few months ago about how Netflix's ATLA is misogynist, because of how they rewrote the female characters. So, you might be wondering if that went so poorly before, why would I advocate for it now? Well, because Dante DiMartino and Konietzko wrote a cultural and feminist master class on how to make compelling, strong female characters and I honestly do not know how they did it. I have No IDEA how these two men did this, because men have failed at this for centuries.

The creators of ATLA did not write one strong female character, they wrote an entire class of strong female characters who are diverse and strong in many different ways. Their show exemplifies the fact that there is no one right way to be strong or a woman. So... why? Why do I think Sakura Haruno needs to be re-written for the Naruto live action? Simply put, because Masashi Kishimoto did a bad job writing a strong female character, and as a reader of Boruto, I can tell you that he is still doing a very very bad job.

One could argue that he almost did a good job and then jumped off a cliff. I hope Himawari will be better, but I am not convinced, because he is failing Sarada (an Uchiha) miserably.

I digress.

Now some may argue, who cares if Kishimoto is doing a bad job? Naruto is a boys' show.

Maybe that was Kishimoto's intention, but it certainly isn't the reality anymore. Naruto is one of the most popular animes to ever exist, and A LOT of women watch it (including me), because it has a beautiful and compelling message about the power of hard work and human connection.

Now what would I rewrite about Sakura?

Her greatest character flaw of course, which is not hat she was mean to Naruto as a child. As NCHAMMER23 pointed out, she actually reflects the sentiments of the leaf village. She's also an irritating know it all to begin with, so her disliking Naruto because of his antics (and not understanding her own privilege) is very much in line with her personality and is a sign of her immaturity.

No. Her greatest character flaw is her simp behavior for Sasuke Uchiha and it gets her every single time. Her simp behavior makes her forever a damsel in distress to the most abusive and trash male character in the entire Hidden Leaf. It undermines everything about her, and makes her one of the most hated characters in the entire show. She is literally useless against Sasuke despite being the strongest Kunoichi in the entire Naruto Universe. The truth is that when Sakura falls short, all the kunoichi fall short. When Sakura has to be rescued by Naruto, Sasuke and Kakashi because of the most minute and inconsequential thing, it is an immense disservice to all of the Kunoichi, even Kunoichi like Temari who seldom need to be saved. Not to mention that the whole thing is just cringe.

However, it's not just a disservice to the Kunoichi, it's a disservice to the entire show. Why? Because Sakura embodies the central message of Naruto 1000X better than Naruto Uzumaki does.

Naruto Uzumaki is a demi-God who was born with every advantage in the Universe born to the most famous ninja in the village, who doesn't yet know how to use his powers, because his powers are that OP. Sakura is a no name, no talent ninja, with very low chakra reserves, who truly makes the best of what she has. She becomes a phenomenal ninja through hard work, perseverance, and intelligence.

When Sakura gets tripped up by stupid stuff and is saved by these three male characters: Kakashi, Naruto and Sasuke who were born with every talent and advantage in the world, it throws the entire point of Naruto into the freaking trash bin! Now I get it. We get it. Men on average are bigger, faster, and stronger, but as evidenced from Boruto that's not what Naruto is about. Combat amongst elite ninja is not a battle of strength, it is a battle of expertise and perseverance, it is a chess match, and if there's anyone who should be good at chess matches, it's Sakura Haruno. She is literally known for her brilliance and resourcefulness and perseverance.

So for this reason, the whole Sasuke fan girl thing and damsel in distress thing has got to go!

Now some of you might say, wait justthoughts1310, Sasuke was a large part of her driving motivation to get stronger. That's true. He was and so was Naruto, which is why Sakura should be modeled off of Attack on Titan's Mikasa Ackerman in this regard. Mikasa is a total simp for Eren Yeager, but she never lets him get too out of pocket. She'll punch him in the face if need be, and she is ultimately the one who kills him. Mikasa is indisputably stronger than Eren, and if not for Mikasa's love for Eren, Eren would stand no chance against Mikasa in a real fight. Eren knows this. That's why he never dared to challenge her.

Mikasa's immense love for both Eren and Armin is her driving motivation to become as strong as she is. Her desire is to protect them, because they wanted to join the Survey Corp and then the Scouts. Mikasa didn't want to do either of those things, and she even told Eren that he probably wasn't cut out to be a soldier.

However, because of her undying love and desire to protect Eren and Armin, Mikasa is the second strongest character in the entire show next to Levi. Titans don't stand a chance against Levi, and men and soldiers do not stand a chance against Mikasa.

Graphic Warning (In Italics): I mean Mikasa literally cut off a guy's head, impaled him into another guy, set off a thunder spear, and showered in their blood. When the other yeagerist saw this, they freaked out and RAN. As they should. Though, I still think Mikasa's unwavering love for Eren undermines her character, because it becomes her entire personality, I think that Sakura has a lot more to offer in that regard.

Sakura's personality could round out and complete these aspects of Mikasa's personality and make Sakura an all around more compelling character. Unlike Mikasa, Sakura has a whole personality outside of Sasuke. This is likely because Sasuke has been away from the village for so long. In reality, Sakura's love for Sasuke isn't her personality. It is one of her only (and most glaring), personality flaws.

So, in truth, I say that I would both rewrite Sakura and not rewrite her for the live action, because I wouldn't rewrite her. I would alter her personality flaw and make it the source of her strength. Her burning desire is to protect the two most important people to her: Sasuke and Naruto, and she holds both of them to equal account. No more of Sasuke's bullshit. He deserves to be punched in the face too. Of course sometimes Sakura will need a little help and a little bit of saving, but not more or less than any male character of comparable skill.

Sakura is the story of Naruto hidden in plain sight. Getting rid of her or rewriting her altogether would be an immense disservice. What the live action needs to do is work harder to highlight the characteristics that Sakura already has and bring them to the foreground.

Sakura is already the strongest Kunoichi in the Naruto universe by the time of Boruto, the movie needs to showcase how she became just that.

#sakura #naruto x sasuke #sasuke uchiha #mikasa ackerman #mikasa aot #netflix atla #atla #two blue vortex #boruto uzumaki #sarada #armin arlert #masashi kishimoto #eren jeager #aot #naruto: shippuden #himawaari #hidden leaf village #shang chi #sakura haruno #temari #kakashi hatake #kunoichi

[rin-enjoyer]

long and detailed ramblings about rin's character under the cut <3

rin is flatter than almost any other character in naruto- an impressive feat, considering how badly kishimoto hates woman. i'm not saying that everyone else was written better than rin- all things considered, the complete lack of attention focused on her means that she's probably one of the more consistent characters. no, the flatness arises from a general lack of anything interesting about her presented in an easy to understand or. um. intentional way.

fandoms take the traits that characters display and explore and expand upon them- when a character or concept is interesting but poorly executed in canon, it will often receive a large amount of attention dedicated towards giving it its due.

when a girl has no real personality to speak of and exists pretty much just to die and make two others guys sad- well, that doesn't lay a very good base to explore! it's no wonder rin is an incredibly overlooked character.  

not me tho. id never overlook my girl. this is because i am a little bjt insane and also rabid about her. take my hand. let's explore the deep rabbit hole ive been silently digging for half a year now. there's nuance to her character i prommy- let me show you it.

disclaimer before we begin: i'm aware that the amount of character depth i can extrapolate from rin was not intentionally written in. i mean, like, that's not gonna stop me or anything. but im aware of it. some of the things here have little to no canon basis- i cobbled my rin characterization together with dramatic irony, copious amounts of masks, and spite. i do think that viewing rin like this adds flavor to the canon story, though, so maybe keep that in mind?

the first, central headcanon that influences pretty much everything about rin (to me) is that she hates the idea of being misinterpreted in life or in death. despite that, she wears masks built of what people expect her to be, and makes no effort to remove them and build real connections. and then she gets mad when no one really knows her. she contains multitudes.

this also adds a delicious twist to canon- from rin's pov, obito's great fault is not the murders, the betrayals, or the longing for a perfect world; its him mis-remembering her so BADLY that he somehow mischaracterized the mask she was wearing. my guy.

part of the reason rin wears masks is because she is unsure of who she is and what she wants, and she views that as a personal failure. she has made the logical fallacy, of course, that she has an immutable "true self" who she has managed to lose. she's also 12 and living in kill people repress your emotions city, so i guess we can give her a pass on that. the real important thing to understand here is that rin views any presentation of herself that is not her "true self" (smth that doesnt exist) as equally false. therefore, she assumes that it is easier to continue on with the mask she is already wearing than switch it out for smth just as bad. she does not know that the self is something cobbled together over a lifetime of stealing thoughts, feelings and mannerisms from other people and mixing it with your experiences and innate personality. she paints her cheeks purple because her father does, and he does it because his father did, who did it because his mother did, and on and on, but she cannot comprehend that the laugh she learned from him is just as unique. lmao

another thing about personhood: kakashi and obito, from an outside view, seem very put together. they have goals, for heaven's sake, they must know what they're doing! rin doesn't have a crush on kakashi- she admires him because he looks like he's got his life figured out! (when you start thinking kakashi's put together, you know something's wrong.)

the thing about rin's relationship with the rest of her team is that it's very one-sided. rin is obito's best friend- obito is not rin's best friend. the team spirit and unity that konoha tries to impress on them is lost on rin because she interacts with them like she's on an infiltration mission, and then gets mad that they don't know the "real" her, gets sad that she doesn't know the "real" her, and then puts on more masks to make sure no one notices, and the cycle repeats. the rest of team minato is fooled into thinking that they are close with her, and rin drifts further and further away. we see this when obito "dies-" she almost unaffected by it. now, it's probably portrayed like that as to not take away from kakashi's reaction, but it feeds nicely into my interpretation that she just… doesn't really care.

after obito dies and kakashi starts falling apart, i do think he and rin get a bit closer. he's obviously not in a great mental state to be worrying over her in any manner except physical safety, but he does wonder when her smile stretches a bit too thin and brittle. he never knows rin- not by her definition- but i think sometimes he gets to see her without any masks on: a limp doll who's tired of pretending at humanity.

last point on rin's mental state before we move onto the totally-there-and-real symbolism aspects of her character: she has a very, very apathetic attitude towards death that's only exacerbated by the fact that she's not really close to anyone. she's not exactly suicidal, but she wouldn't care if she died. she's not jumping at the bit to sacrifice herself- that apathy means she doesn't really care if anyone else dies, either. she holds on until she can't hold on anymore, and then she drops it like a hot potato. rin voice: wait if there's an afterlife why are we scared of dying. and then no one ever explained it to her so she never unlocked her fear of death.

ok! symbolism time! i, personally, am a huge proponent of moth/astronaut/icarus rin. there's a few threads that weave into that tapestry, so stick with me while we make our way through em.

first: remember what i said earlier, about rin hating obito for mis-remembering her rather than the whole infinite tsukuyomi gig? well, part of that is because she just really hates being misinterpreted, but the other part is that she wouldn't think infinite tsukuyomi was bad at all! remember, rin is very… nihilistic, and already has a tenuous relationship with consequences- she wouldn't see the problem with fixing things with an illusion. this slots into the moth interpretation- she's chasing the moon! 

second, there's the whole chidori thing. idk if you guys remember it, its only the most defining moment of rin's entire character in canon. the chidori looks like the sun. icarus. do you catch my drift

the rest of the points towards this symbolism are more vague and tend to lean more towards like. obscure references to the challenger crash and a reliance on my insistence that moths and icarus and astronauts ARE basically the same thing, thank you very much, but i think i've said enough to get my point across.

there's more i could say- we could explore aus where rin lives to adulthood, and how she would grow and develop, or we could dive into the fascinating relationship she has with minato and being a mednin, or how she and sasuke are 2 flavors of the same guy, but this post is already stupid long, so i'll save that for another time. just know that rin is the coolest girly ever. and she deserves to kill.

#nohara rin #rin nohara #naruto #send me asks if you have questions or contributions btw. id love to talk about her lmao

[watermelonsloth]

Sakura’s Character Motivations

I want to talk about the obsession/crush/love Sakura has towards Sasuke, specifically why I think it garners as much hate as it does in comparison to the other characters. Yes, other characters, and not just female ones. There are plenty of characters motivated by men in the Naruto series(though not women, but that’s a-whole-nother post). Naruto wants to bring Sasuke back, Sasuke wants to kill Itachi, Hinata wants to be like Naruto, Gaara wants to be like Naruto, all of team Taka is motivated by Sasuke in some way, Shikamaru wanted to kill Hidan then to carry on Asuma’s legacy, Deidara wants to fight Orochimaru and Itachi, etc. The Naruto series is about the bonds between people, so, go figure, a lot of characters are motivated by the relationships they have/had. However, people within the fandom almost exclusively talk about how Sakura is motivated by Sasuke. I’m gonna try answering why.

Sexism

To be clear, I’m not actually accusing anyone of anything here. I see a lot of people (on Tumblr) accuse the people who hate Sakura/Hinata as simply being sexist. I don’t know these people’s experiences nor do I know what part of the internet they’re on, but my experience with the male side of the Naruto fandom is them being really into power-scaling. Yes, I’ve come across the occasional objectifying joke, but those are more of the exception than the rule some of these posts may lead you to believe. Of course women can be sexist too, even towards their own gender, but those cases are also the exception. That’s all to say that people’s sexism may be a factor, but it seems to be greatly magnified by certain parts of the fandom.

Now that I’ve checked off my tangent for this post, let’s get to my point.

I think people, primarily women, hate Sakura’s love for Sasuke as a response to past experiences with sexism and poorly written female characters. A lot of women already enter male-directed series with extremely low expectations for the female cast and it trains them to be on the lookout for red flags in the female character writing. So, when the heroine we’re supposed to root for is introduced with her position in the love triangle, followed by her being a vain brat(even if she promises herself to be better), and then it’s revealed she’s motivated by her crush on a boy, a lot of women roll their eyes and pull back. Yes, being motivated by your crush at twelve is realistic. Yes, a lot of male characters in this series are also motivated by men. But the issue is over saturation. When a male character is motivated by a man, it’s just another of the many motivations a male character can have. When a female character is motivated by a man, it is a rehash of a motivation already done to death that is associated with damsel in distress heroines.

Of course many female fans don’t care about Sakura’s subplot with Sasuke, they’re sick of female characters having the men in their lives be the most important part of their character.

Lack of Depth

Something else that makes Sakura’s relationship to Sasuke stand out as easy to hate is it’s noticeable shallowness. Let’s compare it to Sasuke and Naruto’s motivations for a second:

Sasuke’s brother killed their entire clan for seemingly no reason. Because of this, he swears to avenge and restore his clan. So, for the entire series Sasuke is either motivated by killing Itachi or carrying Itachi’s legacy with him(literally represented by Amaterasu). Throughout the series his motivation is given more depth, it changes with Sasuke, it carries him through twists and turns, it asks questions about humanity and society.

Naruto grew up in social isolation that caused him to resent his home village while also craving its attention. Multiple characters are relevant to this part of his character, but Sasuke is the most important. Sasuke was one of the first people to openly acknowledge Naruto and that made him incredibly important to him. Because he’s so important, Naruto doesn’t want to see him get hurt or spiral, so Naruto does his best to prevent both. Throughout the series, this motivation stays mostly stagnant but it stays interesting because Naruto has to change his methods to both fit Sasuke’s changes in motivations and to juggle the other responsibilities he tries to take on. This relationship also asks most of the most thematically relevant questions of the series.

So, how does Sakura’s motivations hold up? What makes Sasuke so important to her? How do her motivations or methods change throughout the story? Uhhhhhh… To put it mildly, they don’t hold up(or at least for the most part, but I’ll get to that). We never get a canon reason for Sakura to “love” Sasuke. No, attraction is not love and it doesn’t explain away the lengths she goes for someone who clearly doesn’t reciprocate her feelings. No, Sasuke being a decent teammate isn’t a reason either. You don’t “fall in love” with every peer that’s decent towards you(are you trying to marry whoever pulls their weight in a group project???).

I’ve heard arguments that her lack of explicit reason is to symbolize “unconditional/pure love.” I’ve also heard that it’s following a Japanese cultural belief that love without reason is pure love. I don’t wanna shit on a whole culture but I also don’t trust SasuSaku fans that say that because 1. SasuSaku fans have lied about Japanese culture in the past to make their ship look better and 2. I have found this idea nowhere else. So I’m just gonna ignore that in this post, but feel free to site a source or explain this to me if I’m wrong.

Not giving reason behind Sakura’s “love” is just plain bad writing. It shoots her motivation in the foot before she goes to run a marathon. By not giving her motivation reason behind it, it limits the amount of people that will get invested in her character, it limits what can be done with her character, and it characterizes her as a shallow person motivated by shallow things. And I can’t imagine that Kishimoto was trying to make her a shallow character because that part of her character is never addressed in the story.

But maybe this isn’t a Sakura thing, maybe it’s a female character thing. After all, Naruto is one chapter away from being known for the bad writing of its female characters. Except the other female characters do have more complex motivations. Hinata wants to be like Naruto because she wants to overcome her inferiority complex caused by years of abuse by her family. Tsunade carries the legacy of her dead loved ones because of the expectations placed on her by the village and years of grief. Konan wants to achieve Yahiko’s dream of world peace because she grew up in an active war zone and watched him die and Nagato lose his mind trying to save her.

Sakura has no reason to have this simple of a relationship with Sasuke, especially when she’s supposed to marry him at the end.

Lack of Other Things Going On

Sakura is a main character, but she doesn’t have anything going on outside of her male teammates(at least in regards to motivations). Naruto wants to become Hokage, Sasuke wants to restore his clan, Sai is trying to understand his identity and others, Yamato is trying to build a life of his own. Sakura wants to become strong enough to not be a liability for her male teammates(a goal that is also debatable in how well it was achieved). Sure, Kakashi also doesn’t have much of anything going on outside of his teams(he wants to help Naruto achieve his goals and to move on from the tragedy of Team Minato). Except, both of his goals have depth while Sakura’s goal related to Sasuke doesn’t and her goal related to strength isn’t given enough time or attention to grow(ha ha, get it). If both, or even one with how low the bar is, did get the depth they deserve, I’m sure she’d be treated much more similarly to Kakashi by the fandom.

Failed Potential

If there was one way to describe Sakura’s character writing, it would be with “failed potential.” There’s a lot of things set up for Sakura’s character(genjutsu, Inner Sakura, her rivalry with Ino, getting bullied in the past, parallels to Kakashi’s teammate that killed herself and the Fifth Hokage who’s motivated by her grief, etc.), but most of it doesn’t get any proper pay off. Her motivations could be interesting, but they’re never given the chance to. Case and point: the Five Kage Summit arc.

Although I have a past of loathing the Five Kage Summit arc, I now find it to be one of the most interesting arcs of the Naruto series. In this arc Sakura is forced to face the fact that both Naruto and Sasuke are spirally and, despite her want to help, she hasn’t been able to do much of anything for them, just like she feared. On top of that, Sasuke now officially has a kill order on him, meaning that she now has to choose between her feelings for him and her loyalty to her village. And what makes it more interesting: she chooses the village! Since the bell test, the series has been building up the idea of prioritizing friends over orders and Kakashi was trying to ingrain that in his students and Sakura subverts that expectation! And it’s not because she’s insensitive, it’s because she’s empathetic. She asks the question that should’ve been asked a long time ago: “What right does she and Naruto have to prioritize Sasuke over everyone else?” She realizes that Sasuke has moved on to hurting people other than herself and Naruto and those people didn’t choose to take on that pain like them. In the Five Kage Summit arc almost all of team 7 fuck up in some major way, but it’s Naruto who’s being the selfish one in this regard. He’s choosing Sasuke’s life over justice for his victims and he’s making that decision without treating it with the nuance it deserves(yes he’s trying to stop the cycle of pain but he isn’t taking the need for justice into account). But Sakura is taking the needs of the victims into account and she’s trying to prevent Sasuke from hurting himself and others any more.

Then, when she tries to go through with it, she chokes. People shit on her for this, but it’s realistic. Since the Land of Waves arc, the series has been trying to say that shinobi aren’t tools, they’re human beings. And human beings can’t just shut off their feelings for others even when they think it’s the right thing to do.

Sakura is acting more in character than ever before and she hasn’t been this interesting since the Chunin Exams! This is the Sakura we could’ve have gotten! This is the Sakura Kishimoto is capable of writing!

This is why I and at least a few others have such mixed feelings towards Sakura. We like what we see when we get glimpses of what she could’ve been, but we know that’s not what she is.

#sakura haruno #naruto #naruto shippuden #Five Kage Summit arc #Rant #Analysis #naruto analysis #when I say that Naruto needs a second draft I mean it #Sakura Haruno deserved better #I genuinely believe that Kishimoto is a good writer #But he made so many mistakes #my stooff #anti sakura haruno #anti sasusaku #i guess #I I mean I do talk about her relationship with Sasuke #Sorta kinda

[pastballads]

TEN Q’S

1. When are you usually online?

My activity is sporadic. If I even make it online depends on the weather, my plans or if anything comes up, if my family needs me to handle stuff, if I woke up with neck pain or a headache, and if I’m not so tired that I just decide to mess with video games instead. Doesn’t help that my sleep schedule is also all over the place, but when I’m basically the living alarm clock for my whole family, it can’t be helped much

2. What verses are you involved in outside of this page?

Pokemon is the big one. My Pokemon blog, Cxlxssal, was originally a self-insert I made back when I was 14 that turned full-blown OC through character development. It’s also my oldest active blog, having officially been around for seven years as of May. Other than that, there aren’t any others in different verses that I still operate.

3. What is your biggest RP pet peeve?

It’s mostly the usual pet peeves that most people have, but blogs that put aesthetics over legibility are ones I loathe. Having to strain my eyes just to read something as basic as the rules quickly drains any enthusiasm I may have to write with them. Seventeen spaces between every word, small font on a vivid neon background, mixing colors and font colors in such a way that it physically hurts the eyes to read; the list goes on. I rarely, if ever, follow those people.

Second to that are overpowered muses with no weaknesses or rivals. Got tired of that shit after my stay in the Naruto fandom, and it’s one of the many reasons why I left the RWBY fandom.

4. Are you drawn to specific types of muses?

No, I’m not drawn to specific types of muses. A muse could be an interpretation of the Black Huntsman from Der Freischütz, it could be Goku, or it could be a painfully average man like Connecticut Clark. It doesn’t matter to me, I’ll love ‘em all if they’re well-written.

5. Are there recurring themes in your writing that people might not notice?

If there are, not even I might notice them. Because I usually don’t recognize that kind of thing until way further down the line.

6. What are your favorite RP trends?

I’ve been on Tumblr long enough to watch it go from borderline shitpost-y three sentence roleplay into novella written like an old gothic horror novel. Having me name one favorite would make me drudge up almost a decade of experiences. Mostly due to the fact that I... don’t remember most of them. My favorite trend were the days of anons bombarding inboxes with questions and interacting with muses. For a long time, I found those more fun than most actual threads.

7. What is your process for starting a new story with someone? 

Generally, I just come up with a few ideas for what muses of mine might work best with theirs in terms of interaction. I would work around their interpretation of the character, then offer a muse or multiple muses and throw out ideas that try to subvert typical introductions. If they can’t read my muse pages, I’ll summarize the muse as briefly as I can... even if it often comes out poorly.

Here’s an example. Let’s say that Fillin Theblank plays someone like Tohru from Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid. I would reread their info on her, then suggest something like this; after the apartment building suffers from a sudden power outage, Tohru looks into the cause, finding Kouki after he fried the electrical system from trying to drain too much power at once. If Fillin didn’t know who Kouki is, I would explain that he’s basically an energy-based kaiju in the form of a small outlandish child.

8. How do you feel about duplicates?

Duplicates are great! I mean, more varied and unique interpretations of a well-known canon character, each with their own distinct way of interacting with others? Hell yeah dude, hit me with that!

9. How long have you been involved in roleplaying?

I’ve been roleplaying since 2011/2012, originally starting on Chatzy. After several RP servers I was in died off, I moved here and made a Naruto OC blog... which is hilarious in hindsight, since I never actually watched Naruto. Or read the manga. I mostly went off the wiki and what I learned from a friend.

Oldest blog of mine you can stiff find dates back to 2014, though it’s from my days on mobile and before I learned how to make decent-looking blogs.

10. Is there a muse or verse you wish you could write in, but haven’t?

Verse-wise? It’s specific to certain muses, such as the white dwarf star of lore that is the Fate franchise and a series like KanColle for Claudius due to his obsession with history/mythology, or Girls Frontline for Tino due to his shtick being tech and weapons. However, me adding more verses is a rarity.

Muse-wise? Lemme tell you, having ADHD is a bitch because every single time I find a show or game I get invested in, I spend over a week trying to purge the idea of adding one of the characters to my blog. Last month, it was Soma Cruz or Julius Belmont from Aria of Sorrow. Before that, it was Kat from Gravity Rush, the Necromancer from Castle Crashers prior to that, and my take on the main character from the MMOJRPG Onigiri. Hell, I’ve even thought about bringing back Algol from Soul Calibur IV as a muse recently.

~~~~

TAGGED BY: @inxtricabilis​ (Thank you, my dude!)

TAGGING: @caestusvulpes​, @monmuses​, @dcviated​, @musesnetwork​, @eliteimperialism​, @kemikorosu​, @madamhatter​, and anyone else who wants to do it!

#{Book of Riddles | Dash Games} #{Mun Info}

[shaina-19]

HEAR ME OUT!

Okay, so I originally didn't get the Sakura hate before because I wasn't that invested on Naruto and I only really got interested on Naruto Shippuden (esp when they were fighting Pain).

BUT rewatching Naruto and watching it with more interest than ever made me realise that her character was so poorly written. She wasn't great at anything and ALL she could thing about was Sasuke. Let's say that yes, she loves him and she feels somewhat attach to him more than Naruto or anyone else but come on! She literally gave her and Ino's friendship up because of a guy. Ino build her confidence up and everything. Also with Naruto. She's so ungrateful. Naruto literally saved her so many times but all she thinks about is Sasuke. Even in the most dangerous times, she only thinks about Sasuke.

There's so many more I could add but aaagghhhh! I'm almost done with Naruto and now moving to Shippuden. I like her better there. I just want to rant it out my chest because I can't continue watching this with all this hate for her.

Don't get me wrong, I only hate her on Naruto. I've watched Shippuden more times than Naruto so not really used to this Sakura being this useless. That's all. Sorry of I offended any Sakura fans. That was not my intention and I just really needed to let this out.

#Naruto #Naruto shippuden #Sakura #sasuke #rant

[marchlione]

rant

started rewatching naruto and ohhhhhhh boy.....

people who call naruto ‘sunshine boy’, like i get that different strokes for different folks but, naruto is straight up annoying. i can excuse 12 year old naruto for being annoying, he’s 12. i hate all the 12 year olds, even sasuke who is my favourite character. like wtf stop being a little shit for two seconds and cut back on your ego. sasuke has no business being that prideful, and he needs to be cut down a little. but he’s 12. again, sakura, i’m a girl too, i was not that insanely boy crazy at 12, stfu and sit down, you’re a child.  

but even at 16 when you’re supposed to be slightly less annoying, naruto managed to get worse. i just want to gag him. sakura gets slightly more bearable when sasuke isn’t around, but i still don’t care for her. and this curse of hatred is such bull shit. like imagine taking an entire ethnic group and telling them, yeah you’re all insane and messed up people. like that’s fucked. can we think of real world examples of this? :)

so anyway, i turn to fanfic because that should make it better. no. the only thing worse than naruto canon is its fandom. good god. if i see one more ‘good uchiha sasuke’ tag where sasuke ‘lets go of all those silly notions about honouring his family because they’re dead and don’t matter anymore’, i will lose it. like do you people not understand what honour and family honour is and what it means? and then we talk about how vengeance is bad but really. how do you expect sasuke to act. “i know that the brother i loved and idolized so much went and murdered everyone that i have known and massacred my entire ethnic group on orders of a military dictatorship that profits off of conflict after years of marginalization and hatred from the village our ancestors helped create because of blood, buuuuuut revenge is bad uwu”. is that what you want??? revenge isn’t good or pretty or right, but you have to admit, sasuke is at least a little bit justified. genocide is considered an awful thing in their world too.

this doesn’t even cover the whole ‘Team 7 family uwu’ thing. they were not a family. they were barely even friends. naruto and sakura eventually became friends, but they weren’t sauke’s. i get being a fan of found family, but this ain’t it. they were a couple of messed up kids who were thrown together for a couple of years at best. sasuke most likely stuck to the uchiha clan kids pre-massacre, and was alone post-massacre. sakura didn’t respect any of sasuke’s boundaries and naruto was obsessed with sasuke. if they really were his friends they would have recognized the horrors that their beloved village had enacted and even if they didn’t help sasuke get revenge, they would have slowly helped him try to heal, instead of trying to kill him when he didn’t fall into line and become another brainless soldier. and naruto most certainly wouldn’t have said that godawful line “i will break all your bones and drag you back to konoha kicking and screaming” if he was sasuke’s friend. that alone should show you how well konoha indoctrinates its soldiers. they took the kid that had largely been abused by the village throughout his childhood and turned him into the model soldier that sprouts the villages propaganda verbatim.

i also don’t understand why fanfic authors feel the need to give sakura a sob story. like the other members of this team are messed up, so we gotta fuck you up so we can have a matched set. i mean you can do that if you can justify it but for the most part, authors write it like they have to give her serious trauma for her to be a strong character or have her become a “BAMF”. you are allowed to have mentally healthy characters, team 7 has suffered enough, give them one sane characters. also you do not need to justify power with trauma, you don’t. trust me. also its ok to not be the most overpowered person in the room. you can be fucked up for no reason, you can be perfectly average and still be valuable. no offence but “uwu sakura queen” won’t make you a feminist, and disliking her doesn’t make me a misogynist. none of the character are written well and least of all the women. kurenai, tenten, sakura, hinata, and karin all had potential. too bad every character was just a representation for one ideology or another with the intention of showing that yes propaganda does work and is effective and repeating something enough times will make it true. after all, we need not look further then the fandom itself. after all, if everyone took the time to peel back the fluff and padding and look at the themes and ideas presented in the story, you’d see how problematic some of the ideas conveyed by canon are. in conclusion i hate everything about canon AND fanon

#naruto #sasuke #pro sasuke #pro uchiha #sakura does not need to be op #nor does she need trauma #she can be a great character even without those #if all of them are similarly fucked up no one will get anywhere #naruto is obsessed #sakura is a femcel in canon #you need to realize that stanning a woman doesn't make you a feminist #and disliking sakura doesn't make me a misogynist #if you think im being biased #maybe i am #but here's the tea #almost all of the naruto characters are so poorly written #and the girls most of all #for gods sake let sakura be friends with tenten #that would be fun #sakura has anger issues (and no she doesn't need a reason to have them) #and tenten has pointy things #they'd make a great team #and while sasuke is my favourite character #he is also annoying #your clan is dead #its not the vengeance you need to get rid of #its the stick up your ass and the gigantic ego #he should have been a lot more desperate #he should have been more hungry #stop throwing kunai at a tree and start being useful

[sneezemonster15]

you said kishi wrote a gay love story on purpose saying that the fact they invested so much in a 15 year long project is proof,

so why do all that and then ruin it at the end? have them be het, have children and create all that? what happened to the story 'they were so invested in'??

😳 Because it's shounen? What, did you expect them to get married in some gay ass ceremony with Sakura as their flower girl? Did you think they would kiss and Konoha would wolf whistle and throw rice at their heads? Did you really think that, that was a possibility? What are you even asking me? Guess you are new to my blog.

I will not repeat myself for your benefit, but you are welcome to go through my blog, the trials and tribulations of Kishi to continue writing a gay love story till the end, I repeat till the end because the last chapter is so utterly out of sync with preceding 699 chapters, you asking me this question seems almost surreal to me. But have at it.

However, it's not like having them be married to women and having children with them is such a proof of heterosexuality. No. The proof is in the narrative so fully rich with poetically and aesthetically placed nuances and twists and turns that assimilate so seamlessly with the development of Sasuke and Naruto's characters, that I don't have to look at a poorly manufactured and ridiculously inferior attempt of continuing to milk a gargantuan franchise for any fucking proof. Yes, that's what Boruto is.

And bless Kishi, who could have chosen to finally write Naruto and Sasuke as heterosexual in the sequel, but my dude still writes them like they are in love with each other while their actual wives either make do with twelve year long absences or sleep on their beds alone. We really don't need to know any of this for Boruto's sake but we still keep getting bombarded with throwbacks to SNS moments from part one and two. You think the producers aren't aware of this??

Look. It's really not that difficult a deduction. Like I always say, work with what you have. Solid facts. The fact is Kishimoto wrote 699 chapters dedicated to a love story between two male characters and that he didn't leave any stone unturned to tell us how they were made for each other visually, symbolically, narratively, like cosmic freaking lovers and this is all literally text. The haphazardly applied band aid that is the last chapter doesn't overturn any of that. Any conscientious reader or viewer should be able to see that.

People underestimate the process in which stories are written. Which is to say that they often ignore the deliberation with which an author decides to give us information about the plot and the characters. They don't question it, well if you don't question it, you won't understand it.

The fact is Kishimoto mindfully wrote a vastly intricate narrative that gently but routinely and firmly urged the audience to evaluate and revaluate the nature of Sasuke and Naruto's relationship in order to process the progression of the story. It is so well assimilated in this medium defined genre (shounen), that a younger, more inexperienced audience may still enjoy it without noticing the details that are so obvious, they are easy to miss. But a more mature audience will notice it. And marvel at the obviousness of the fine details. Naruto and Sasuke's story is a poetry of paradoxes. And trust me, it's a privilege to understand it in its finer details. I don't call it one of the greatest love stories in the world for nothing.

It's a coming of age story as well. Coming of age stories don't always end positively. Boruto does not read like a positive ending to me. Not for Naruto and Sasuke, the two heroes and survivors, who look so perennially dejected and defeated, Kishi makes a point of it. Why? Does this not scream investment? Why still be loyal to consistent characterization in a sequel that is not even about the two characters anymore?

Sigh...

The proof is in the pie. Like, please look nowhere else. It's all in there, just be more open, a bit curious. It's in text, subtext, visuals, like tbh, what I don't understand is how you miss it...

#its not rocket science #its obvious as fuck #what's so fun about ignorance? #reply #anon #sns #sasunaru #narusasu #sasuke #naruto #uzumaki naruto #uchiha sasuke

[im-still-watching-anime]

warning: this post is just me ranting about the writing of the naruto women for far too long

i honestly feel that one of the most frustrating/vaguely hilarious aspects of naruto is how naruto ended up being - and bear with me here - the best example of the extremely specific female archtype that kishimoto seemed to be obsessed with. 

like when you focus on sakura and hinata - arguably the most important female characters in the show as the two male leads’ respective end game love interests - you can break them both down into the same general mold:

- both devoted to the same boy their entire lives

- both are shown chasing after their crush in order to stand on “equal” footing (i.e. sakura’s “i finally caught up to them” and hinata’s “no longer chasing but standing by your side” mentalities)

- both suffer and try to overcome feelings of inferiority in their respective character arcs

and i want to be clear that while female characters who fit this mold aren’t usually my favorite thing it can definitely still work when written carefully and written well -  to be blunt i personally think both hinata and sakura are awesome character concepts and both had SO MUCH potential and i love their fanon interpretations but i feel that canonically they were poorly written, underdeveloped, and flat characters

most of their canonical character motivations revolve around their love interests - which really sucks because i would have KILLED for a deeper look at everything involving hinata and the hyuuga or even more about sakura’s development of her medical ninjustsu so much got skipped when it came to them which definitely didn’t help anything - that aside this is especially true in og naruto though to be fair - sasuke was still in konoha in og naruto and team seven was together for most episodes which made it especially prevalent in sakura’s case

the point is by the time shippuden came around it was extremely obvious that efforts were being made to improve the female characters - sakura now had much higher combat ability from the start of shippuden and, though she gets much less focus hinata is repeatedly shown doing brave acts and pushing herself to become stronger. and while i really loved the effort and it was definitely an improvement from especially sakura’s original character - it still fell flat to me.

sakura’s fight with sasori was perfect and a great way to revive her character but then she was pretty stagnant in a lot of the following arcs - i.e. injured in the reunion arc, not very important during the two saviors arc, her weird fake love confession during the assembly of the five kage arc, etc. - she constantly bounces between “now i’m strong” and “i still don’t measure up” making her character development - especially pre-war - virtually nonexistent because every step forward gets followed by a step back.

hinata is a bit more difficult simply because she’s such a minor character for so much of shippuden which is insane since she’s literally the protagonist’s future wife. regardless, looking at hinata’s big moments: her fight with neji in og naruto, blocking naruto from pain in shippuden, and the Smack during the war (there’s a few i’m missing i’m sure but those are really what constitutes her biggest moments to me during the meat of shippuden’s actual development phase - not the post war resolution phase) two of three of these moments precede her getting very heavily and soundly beaten which personally irks me - even if i don’t particularly like it i can see why and it makes sense to me she didn’t win the fight with neji or her pain confrontation and it definitely shows that she is brave and emphasizes the all-important devotion to her love interest aspect of her character BUT it’s also a little obnoxious that we never get to see her be REALLY victorious in her major moments.

so to sum up so far: sakura and hinata are both meant to be perceived as innovative and strong female characters but this perception doesn’t work in sakura’s case because she immediately repeatedly reverts back to the damsel in distress archtype and it doesn’t work in hinata’s case because the few strong moments she has are highlighted by failure.

and also the all important point that the majority of their “strong moments” are driven by their love interests - not a bad motivation except for the fact that that is one of their ONLY motivations

to the main point i’m trying to make: lets compare naruto (obviously take this with the understanding that naruto has a MAJOR advantage of having way more screen time and development as the titular character)

in regards to sasuke, naruto:

- is extremely devoted

- repeatedly chases after sasuke to match-up with him and improve

- and, especially in og, struggles with feeling inferior to sasuke

the context is a little different and the motivation behind some of the points changes between the two but it’s the exact same mold as sakura and hinata

the major difference between the two and the main reason that so many more people get frustrated with sakura’s devotion to sasuke and not naruto’s really boils down to development

sakura barely had her own character outside of loving sasuke and when she did, it immediately got downplayed in some way - just look at the war arc and her triumphant “i finally caught up to them” right before both sasuke and naruto essentially gain godlike powers, she then spends the war constantly distracted by sasuke even when fighting “sasuke isn’t worried about me at all” which really downplays her role.

on the flip side, even with his main goal of bringing sasuke back to the village, naruto has tons of motivation and character building outside of sasuke - ex. becoming hokage, gaining everyone’s acceptance, fixing konoha, living up to his parents/jiraiya’s expectations, bringing peace, protecting everyone he can, freeing the tailed beasts, etc. etc. you could go on forever the show is named after him after all.

we are told that sakura always chooses sasuke and nothing else about it but then we are told that naruto chooses sasuke despite everything else.

to sum up: the traditional female love interest that kishimoto wants to invent is the woman who is devoted. she puts the person she loves above everything else because she loves him. she’d do anything for that person even if it puts her at risk, etc. but at the end of the day there’s still the tired trait of still relying on the man in her life for certain things. and he doesn’t bother to expand characters like sakura and hinata beyond that. (great examples of characters who are almost completely separate from this mold are tsunade and temari - though one might argue about the way they were written designed to fit specific tropes for comedic moments - personally i think they manage to dodge that for the most part though)

with naruto and sasuke - naruto manages to fulfill every roll sakura is meant to in a much more elaborated and better way all without the curse of the female love interest that sakura and hinata bear. it’s hard to accept sakura and hinata’s “i’ll love you no matter what” when naruto is already actively outright doing that with sasuke. the roots of sakura’s feelings for sasuke, hinata’s feelings for naruto, and naruto’s feelings for sasuke are all exceptionally similar to one another which is what shoots kishimoto’s main romances in the foot - because it’s hard for them to measure up to the main “platonic brotherly” relationship he built between sasuke and naruto.

this post is obviously disregarding a lot of the Other really deep parts of sasuke and naruto’s relationship and some important points about the other women of naruto. also it’s important to think on the time period naruto and naruto shippuden were written in. we’re in a major incline period for improvement in how women are presented in fiction - just look at the difference of women between og and shippuden. obviously it doesn’t completely excuse anything but it’s a point to consider.

sorry for the rant and sorry if this is all really obvious to you or if it’s worded poorly, kinda just needed to word vomit my thoughts. i really like analyzing how women are represented in fiction and how the representations have developed over the years. i wrote a few essays about it for some of my courses and now i think about it all the time. obviously i’m not claiming this is how everyone should view these characters or anything i just had lots of my own thoughts about the entire situation and dynamics that i had to put SOMEWHERE. if you have any thoughts about it or points you wanna bring up feel free to do so i love fiction analysis a lot so i love hearing other people’s opinions

#naruto #naruto shippuden #naruto analysis #20 years old and doing naruto analysis in my spare time rip #long post #pls ignore my messy thought process i haven't been sleeping super well so i'm not sure about the clarity on this one tbh #also sorry i know this isn't like my usual posts was just in a Mood #if any of you like my awful takes let me know because i have tons of them i just never post any because the posts end up stupid long like so #anyone who read the whole thing im sorry are u okay? #my posts #also i know sometimes these posts can bother some people so let me know if i need to add any tags to help with that! i gladly will

[chattegeorgiana]

You keep insisting that the ending Naruto pairings are the reason Boruto's sales are nowhere near as great as Naruto's, yet how come Boruto Naruto the Movie has brought in far more income than both RTN and The last combined? The Boruto Movie has gained almost 40.000.000$ while The Last only 20.000.000$ and RTN only around 17.000.000$. The reasons boruto is not as popular as naruto was is because the plot sucks, the anime has too many garbage fillers, the artstyle in the manga sucks, the new gen characters suck, and the manga wasn't even written by Kishimoto until recently. It has nothing to do with pairings. Hell, if NS became canon, people would've hated it even more, considering how hated Sakura was, and you even admitted she is the most hated character. And you also contradict yourself. First you say she's the most hated, then you say SP missed a marketing opportunity with her... like girl make up your mind? She's the most hated character in the franchize, in a poll she was chosen as the most hated by both male and female, even Kishimoto went out of his way to say girls came at him and said how much they despised Sakura, most people don't give a shit about her, using her as marketing strategy would've done more harm than good. She's even more hated in Japan and other Asian fandoms than she is in the western fandom, and that already says a lot! You're really arrogant to assume that the "silent majority" you speak of are all NaruSaku fans. I guarantee you it isn't. In fact, most people don't even care about ships that much. NaruSakus, you along with the SNS fans, SS fans, NH fans are part of the vocal minority that has nothing better to do than bitch about ships all day long.

But did I ever say that they were THE ONLY reason they are bad? They are an integral part of it yes, but not the only one.

Just because you saw some asks of mine here on Tumblr, you just throw these things around, like this is the only place I talk about the story of Naruto and this is the only aspect I do.

Yes, here on Tumblr I might do it through the virtue of the asks I receive, but that doesn't mean it's the only space I address these matters.

I have other social media channels as well where I discuss other aspects as well. Ya know, how like Boruto is nothing more than a tweaked "cooler" wanna-be version of Naruto, with no real substance whatsoever, a story that doesn't truly leaves a message behind, a morale, with characters that are the shells of their former selves or mechanics that are skewed and "free of" any logic.

But sure, make it as if that's the only aspect I talk about if that makes you sleep well at night.

As for the reason Boruto made so much? Well, I'll tell you why: because it had NaruSasu. Because they knew they messed-up with The Last, so they did the next best thing they could to try and keep the fanbase engaged.

Focused on the biggest portion of the fanbase that gathered around both shippers and non shippers by the virtue of focusing on Sasuke and Naruto and their offsprings. You know why? Because this way they catered to two human emotions: familiarity/comfort & curiosity.

Aka familiarity via having NaruSasu and curiosity to see the new gen kids.

Which yes, had momentum and seemed to have a perfect recipe: no focus on the ships that initially brought he whole mess (Sakura and Hinata were close to non-existent in that movie), and "repaying" the fanbase that was initially pissed at the fact that people thought this was gonna be a T7 movie because of the heavy Kakashi and Ssuke advertisement when they were there to be found for onlyyy few seconds, lol.

But you see, in the test of time, Boruto failed because of the aforementioned reasons.

You say that people would've hated the ending if NS would've been canon, yet curiously enough the number of people that are even non shippers and agree to the idea that NS should've been canon has been increasing over the years. Which in a really curious way was surprising to me too as an NS fan that returned to the fandom after so long.

So you see, I am not sure exactly about that aspect there. Not to mention, since when does a story has to do what the fanbase dictates it? The story should follow its course and intended narration and that's that.

Yes, Sakura was hated, but that's not a reason to not have Naruto end-up with her because within the story mechanics we had many proofs that indicated that they should've ended together, regardless of how people felt about them.

Kishimoto didn't say girls came at him, he said girls sent him letters, which are two different things, because to his face no one truly said that, minus the editors who kept pushing Hinata forward and their bias as well.

Lol at you saying that using her as a marketing strategy would've done more harm than good when she's the only female character being marketed right now via figurines and all those other things.

So reality seems to be contradicting you a bit on that side.

Not to mention, you say that she's the most hated even in Asia and Japan? LOL, where did u even take out these lies?

The hate phenomena has always been a western fandom thing, not an Asian/Eastern fandom one.

You say that the pairings ripped with Sasuke and Naruto as well (funny how NaruSaku isn't dead even after years of being supposedly dead tho), for a character that should've been hated??

This whole hate thing was always a western fandom mirage, sadly, but in Japan and Asia she's always been loved. Like where did u even pull out that information from?

Also what I always said about a NaruSaku ending was that they could've taken a RTN route where they could've had ALL the pairings shown within a parallel universe, but sure, nice way to twist my words and make it like "I can't decide".

There are slight nuance differences which you either purposely not address or you don't know how to do the difference. The truth in this case only you know it.

But stop trying to act that high and mighty coming here on anon making it seem like ooh, I contradict myself and spread nonsense, just because you read a faction of all the ideas I discuss over my social media.

And now to address the silent majority argument. I never said silent majority are ONLY NaruSaku fans. That's what you assumed. Silent majority included NaruSaku fans yes, but also other fans who ya know, have some common sense within them and see how the story has been butchered for the sake of poorly treating a certain aspect of Naruto, which was the romantic one.

Which btw, you say that it wasn't a big deal, yet it was the no. plot included within the story, being presented as early as chapter 3, because chapter 1 and 2 revolved around Naruto wanting to become Hokage for people to acknowledge him and create bonds.

You say that the pairings aren't such a big deal in the fandom, yet guess what, SJ and SP directed a movie on that specific subject. Makes you wonder why now, doesn't it?

And it's a normal aspect to care about if you think about it for a manga that has been focused on BONDS. The romantic plot gets weaved in within the one about bonds really easily, because at the core of it it's about relationships.

And this whole world that we live it it's a relationship: between the body and the spirit, between then heaven and the earth, between friends, between relatives. EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD HAS A RELATIONSHIP BASIS: atom interacts with atom and here we are, living, breathing beings.

But sure, come to me and paint me in this way you're trying as if talking about relationships and their quality is a bad thing.

Mhmm.

Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

You're free to have your opinion, sure.

I just happen to not agree with it.

And that's that.

Have a good day or night or whatever.

#anti-boruto #narusaku #narusasu #relationships #shipping #naruto

[teddybasmanov]

Unexpected FicRec

Since I’m super euphoric, because I’ve passed one of my exams almost without preparation today, I want to do something good for the world. So, I decided to share with you one of the jewels I’ve discovered on AO3 a month or so ago. A person who writes for an almost non-existent fandom and wonderful original works too.

ThiccDiccEnergy (yes, I know how it sounds, but bear with me)

I’m going to recommend two series – “Audio Roleplay Continuations” (pretty self-explanatory) and “Monster Fu**er” (honestly, also pretty self-explanatory, but these are the original works I mentioned). Technically, they also have a “Doom” fic (but it scares me with its size and even #sizekink doesn’t help), a “Naruto” fic, an “Among Us” fic and three “My Hero Academia” fics (and I’m not in the fandoms), go check those out if any of these is your thing.

Before I start going into details, keep in mind that all the fics are rated explicit, all of them include smut, sometimes graphic and all of them include graphic descriptions of violence and some other stuff, so read the tags carefully. All the fics, except for one “My Hero Academia” fic are reader-inserts. All reader inserts except for one are gender-neutral and all the readers are badasses. So, without further ado:

Audio Roleplay Continuations:

1.           “Continuation of Hollow_VAs A Mission With A Charming Spy” – you probably don’t even remember that Hollow has such a video, but he does (here it is). It’s literally a ten-minute-long one-shot – some back-story, some teasing, nothing more to it. Here, we have four chapters of even more backstory, great plot, action scenes, very exciting smut and (probably spoilers) an absolutely wonderful ending. This is one of the two fics that are currently finished.

2.           “A continuation of Hollow_VAs 'Noble Paladin Needs Your Help'” – again originally a one-shot with no continuation but this time in our beloved Sarrus. We’ve got quest set up and a very nice character with potential but that’s it. The fic is written partly on my request, which I still can’t believe, and for now has quest development, a sweet naïve paladin and an in every way experienced thief/rouge listener who gets “busy” with literally everyone (good for them), but also has a tragic backstory and a gentle soul deep down there somewhere. The other quest companions (if you remember, there’re supposed to be two more of them) are also very interesting and very well written characters.

3.           “Continuation of Siren Son ASMR's 'Comforting a Bull Man'” – man does not live on Hollow_VA alone, so here’s some Siren. Also written partly because of my recommendation and I can’t be prouder of myself. It’s a very recent work (I mean, while I’m writing this it came out just this morning) and it has only one chapter now, but Duke is one of my favourite characters and he deserves some comfort and protection and that’s exactly what’s the reader here is going to give him.

Monster Fu**er:

1.           “As Above, So Below the Bed” – have you ever wondered how would it be if a huge scary demon-monster lived under your bed you’d run from it, but then befriended it and you know… *points to the series title* Don’t wonder anymore, because that’s exactly what this work is about. Kind of also reminds me of an ASMR roleplay script written by Waterway The Wordsmith, but I’ve only listened to two first parts, so I can’t be sure. This is kind of gorier than the previous stuff, but it never stopped me. The other finished fic. This one has not just gore but VERY graphic smut - two versions of it - male and female - and I loved every word of it, every letter.

2.           “Loyal to the King, Never to the Kingdom” – this feels like it was written to target me personally. A protector/spymaster loyal to the king even when treated very poorly by him? But they actually love each other? And there’s also politics involved? I mean, have you seen my username? Count me in. The reader there has much more backbone than “I” do, though (good for them again).

3.           “You are Opal Eyes, and I Can Not Compare (congrats, you have your own symbiote now)” – this is technically a “Venom” fic, but it has nothing to do with the Marvel universe, except for the existence of a symbiote (and it’s not Venom, it's an original symbiote character). This is the only not gender-neutral fic out of all because it is *drum roll* for trans!masc readers! Where else would you get a badass trans guy, who's teaming up with a symbiote to kick some serious butt and then to screw each other? I don’t know, but you’ll definitely get it here.

That’s it, go give them a lot of love, they deserve it so much!

#ficrec #fanfiction #ao3 #writing #hollow_va #siren's son asmr #reader insert #male reader #gender neutral reader #smut #graphic depictions of violence #asmr roleplay #they are absolutely amazing and give so much feelings #please go check them out #gods that's so many links

[hamliet]

when does a relationship become queerbaiting? theres a book that i really like and the 2 male leads characters have a lot of storylines and arcs where they get closer and i think some of the tropes used can be similar to the typical romantic tropes, neither of them end up with anyone at the end of the story since its more about found family and the long journey the whole cast goes through. they even get shipped by another character as a running gag. personally i always saw it as being open to interpretation but recently the revised edition of the original novel came out and there were several lines those 2 characters had about each other that were kinda toned down, i didnt think much of it but i saw a post about how it was clearly baiting and the author was being homophobic for toning it down. i didnt think it counted as baiting since as far as i know, the novel was never advertised as anything with romance and the author never pretended they were gonna end up together. i am definitely a little weirded out by the decision to change those specific lines but a lot of the story stayed the same, including a lot about their relationship so idk what to think.

i guess im more confused on if it counts as baiting, or even substext??

Sooooo I am not the best person to ask about this, because I’m a cis woman who has thus far in life only been attracted in a romantic sense to cis men. I can talk a bit about baiting as a general concept in fiction, but you should definitely take it with some grains of salt. 

Baiting, for me, is like deliberately playing up an aspect writers have no intention on delivering on. Usually this is done for ratings, to tease fans, fanservice, etc, but without payoff, it is just bad writing. Red herrings are good in writing, but only can be successfully used if the actual result is more satisfying than the herring. This applies to writing in general, not just to romantic ships. However, when the baiting involves historically underrepresented groups for no reason other than to get fans to spend money consuming the story, I think we can all agree that becomes something more grotesque than just bad writing: it’s insensitive, socially irresponsible, frankly hurtful. 

Some common examples are Bridgerton which has a gay character, who is extremely minor, yet they played up this character in advertising. Also, Rizzoli and Isles I think actually had its producers mention deliberately playing up the lesbian subtext to hook the audience without ever intending on following through. 

That said, context also matters. Like, there are aspects of the culture of the work’s author, the target audience, and such that come into play here also (so like, romantic tropes differ by culture. For example, enemies to lovers is common in Asian stories but less in the west, and the “girl who pursues a guy” is extremely common in Japanese shonen in particular, while it is very much a cringe trope that almost never results in romance in American fiction. So if a writer reads, say, tropes that are common in America into a Japanese work and says it’s baiting, that’s quite possibly not the intent even if it may have been the experience of the reader. So even if there was no intent, there can still be hurt, and that hurt can be real, if that makes sense. 

The definition of what constitutes ‘baiting’ varies. I do think that, in true Tumblr fashion, the term gets thrown around a lot and loses its intended meaning, or is so rigidly defined that creators can meet the letter of the “not a bait” requirement while ignoring the spirit of it.

To start with the latter: regarding something hitting the letter of what most wouldn’t consider baiting yet not really the spirit, let’s look at The Rise of Skywalker. This movie had a genuine lesbian kiss in it... between two characters we’d never seen more than a glimpse of while others are celebrating around them. Since it has a kiss, it’s not baiting, right? Well... the director deliberately said in the lead-up to the film that he included it because he “wanted LGBT people to see themselves in the film.” If “see yourselves in the film” is like a nanosecond of background, then, like... idk. Baiting or not, it feels icky, and I know some people consider it baiting and some don’t even if they don’t like, love that representation. But I think this is more queerbaiting than like, Nobara and Maki, who don’t have explicit romantic coding. 

Going back to the former, in terms of ‘queerbaiting’ losing its intended meaning... I think there are a lot of really poorly written romantic ships out there, often het, while a lot of same-gender relationships are really well written regardless of whether there’s romantic coding within the text. The main emotional energy in stories with 90% male characters (as frankly many if not most stories are, great job world) is probably between two men. There’s just so much more potential with well-written characters who share a lot of screen time, so of course people are going to ship them. In my opinion, this does not inherently make it baiting, but it certainly creates an environment that lends itself to baiting even if the writers aren’t intending to do this. 

Like, you could say the main emotional energy in BNHA is Bakugou and Deku. However, Bakudeku is 100% not queerbaiting. It’ll never be canon romantically (I don’t even ship it lol). There has been nothing to imply romance between them even if the main emotional message can be seen in their development. Deku/Ochaco is likely to be canon, but there is a significant lack of genuine emotional energy between them (the story’s plots and themes don’t coalesce around their relationship), so it’s probably going to feel forced. In contrast, Naruto/Sasuke had an actual kiss in canon, which while played for laughs is a lot more direct romantic coding than anything between Bakugou/Deku. I actually don’t think the majority of Narusasu is baiting, but I definitely think that one moment in chapter like 3 was really poor fanservice for yaoi fans, and has not aged well at all. 

It is also the case that fans can confuse headcanons with what is actually in the text, and that just never ends well. For example, Clover and Qrow’s ship in RWBY: a lot of people read Clover as gay, which led to “bury your gays” outrage when he died. A member of the crew stated explicitly they had never intended for Clover to be a love interest for Qrow, and truthfully here was nothing strictly romantic in their relationship--nothing like a kiss or a declaration of love or a parallel to another romantic couple. Hence, I don’t personally consider it queerbaiting or bury your gays, but a lot of fans felt that it was and their pain is legitimate even if I think textually the argument isn’t there. The one thing I do think is true about this in particular is that there was also no strict platonic coding, which encourages headcanons. Clear writing, yo. It can help. 

Note the word “can” not “will,” because strict platonic coding doesn’t always fix things, either. In what was probably a reaction to the outrage over Clover’s death, you had extremely blatant platonic coding of Ruby and Penny’s relationship this season leading up to Penny’s death. Ruby refers to Penny as “our friend” three different times, wherein “friend” sends a platonic message and “our” sends an even stronger message that it’s not about the two of them despite the fact that their friendship is one of the sweetest and most interesting in the show. A lingering Ruby-Penny hug then is followed by a lingering Penny-Weiss hug, then Yang, then Blake, etc. The writers went out of their way to hit people over the head with “platonic” and yet they have still gotten accusations of bury your gays and queerbaiting because people will see what they want to see in a story. 

Seeing what you want to see in a story also isn’t inherently bad. People who are underrepresented are going to have to read themselves into stories because Lord knows writers ain’t incorporating them well enough if at all. It’s why “Mary Sues” are common in fanfiction, which is primarily written by people who are not straight white men: because where the hell else are we to see ourselves in fiction? So essentially the macrocosm of culture creates this problem, both in terms of baiting and the misuse of the term, and the only fix is a shit ton more good representation.

#ask hamliet #writing stuff #Anonymous

[whomturgled]

the problem with wanting to Fix naruto is that in the absolute ideal i wouldn't want any of the terrible shit to happen in the first place so there'd be little conflict or drama or plot beyond what would at that point be a slice of life anime about a bunch of little freaks in their silly village and where's the fun in that.

the other extreme is i accept all the shit up to near the end of shippuden or smthn and then just tweak a few lil things but at that point there's still a lot of bs and likely a lot of characters left poorly written (kishimoto learn to write women challenge) and plots left hanging. the balance and almost Playing God in deciding what stays and what goes and what gets changed and how much it gets changed is interesting to think abt and can lead to so many different paths that then it's hard to choose. what makes a story Good? is there an objective answer? i guess at the end of the day of the question is like. what do u want the final outcome to be. what's important. what events, aspects, specific scenes, choices etc were so maddening it made u want to Fix It in the first place and working back from there. and at that point I also don't know if i'd feel more or less insane for having 'fixed' it (which is subjective) or not and the work i would've had to put into it mentally. i may already think abt it a Lot but thats just to placate how some of the nonsense makes me foam at the mouth. and after all that. why put all that work into an early 2000s media that already had its ending and made its choices when i could just as easily go insane abt some original ideas???

but my original ideas aren't sasuke

anyway i think i finally understand AUs now. welcome to the beginning of my 10 different naruto timelines/universes,

#welcome to hell #so really all this post accomplished was the thought process of fic writers and authors and subjective vs objective #and the folly of man (caring abt naruto anyway) #my best comparison of like. my feelings on wanting to fix naruto is like. its like being a skyrim mod maker. #i could expand but i feel like if u know u know. #long post //// #ok one more problem: im not creative enough for original ideas. + no one wld care abt the og ideas so thered be no one to share thoughts w #and even if i were creative or decided to try giving substance to my own silly ideas regardless of my ability and lack of potential audienc #theres the whole thing with me and always having ideas and starts to things and being able to come up with little specifics #but the like. the stuff in between. what ties it all together? bad at that. if its a book with people and theres interactions??? dialogue?? #i also lack the motivation and energy and all that to continue and/or finish anything ive ever started ever #that. may just be the adhd. but still. #anyway sometimes i wish there was a career where i could just sit on a couch somewhere and spout ideas abt..like.. anything #and ppl would sit around me maybe behind windows or smthn as they observe and jot it all down nodding their heads #and maybe they cld pipe up with suggestions or expansions on my ideas yknow throw ideas around make them better #and then we take all that at the end of the day and we deliver them out to whoever it may be useful for. the end.

[retrocontinuity]

rev, rev, fight the power: thoughts on the first half of chainsaw man

Spoilers through the end of the Bomb Girl Arc.

Devil Hunting in the Age of Fascism

As one of the cohosts of a podcast on Gundam Wing in 2020/2021, I've been thinking a lot about how authoritarian regimes and the concept of societal control is treated in anime. Which is to say: usually in a very limited sense, and based on the actions of a few bad actors, as demonstrated with its effects on a few unfortunate protagonists. It's not that creators don't care about the issue, but rather a sign that the genre (and yes, I do consider manga/anime to be a genre more than just a medium, but that's for another time) and its conventions are not particularly well-suited to showing you those effects.

So, Chainsaw Man. On an individual character level, Fujimoto has some stuff to say about the choice between death and life, and I do want to talk about that and what it says about the characters and what life means in CSM. But it's hard to tell whether or not he meant to create a world with some really fucked up institutions too. 

For instance, the civilian, non-public sector Devil Hunters. These appear to be explicitly authorized by the Japanese government, to the point where it is a crime for the Public Safety division's hunters to kill a devil that a civilian is in the process of capturing. They don't have guns (this is Japan!) and I imagine they are only allowed to kill Devils, but just, like, think about this. What if you kill someone else in the process of trying to kill a Devil? What if you suspect someone is a Fiend but actually they're just acting weird? What if you kill someone, then claim later it's because you thought they were a Devil?

This is likely the American in me talking, but I can’t help thinking about how badly this would be abused and how horrible an idea that would be. And I can’t help but think about how the Devils allow the world of CSM to separate fears from human nature. By which I mean, in the world of CSM, evil is otherized in a very specific way; they’re represented by very individual, very distinct, and very monstrous representations. Here is the fear of scissors, the fear of sharks, the fear of the future, and so on. But in the real world, we know it isn’t just fear itself that is the problem; it’s people, well-meaning or otherwise, animated by those fears that create the most evil, or people harnessing those fears to gain power. This may be unfair—I don’t know what Fujimoto has planned for Makima, whose mythos and power seems very much wrapped up in the idea of using Devils to her own advantage. But there’s an assumption here that all actions taken towards eradication of the Devils, or maybe just one Gun Devil, is a de facto good. And in 2021, that’s a very unnerving position to take.

Death in Chainsaw Man is a sacrifice. In these early arcs of the series, death is a "contract," an expending of activation energy to achieve something else. So Pochita gives Denji life (which is really a contract repaid, for when Denji gave him life), so the Devil Hunters "trade" something in a contract with a Devil for power (like Aki giving away literal years of his life to his curse sword), so Denji dying to the Eternity Devil would have freed the rest of the team. But there are plenty of deaths in the series where nothing is traded, nothing is given. These tend to be nameless victims or, in one harrowing scene, convicted felons who die at the hands of Makima as she chases down Katana Devil. 

What did they gain? What was the contract formed by the deaths of these 雑魚?

Makima says at some point when she's attacking the gangs that are affiliated with the Katana Devil that "the truly necessary evils are always kept collared and controlled by the state." Which I think is at its face about the fiends and Devils kept “collared” by the Public Safety Bureau. But maybe it’s also about the idea of sacrifice, about giving yourself over to the state, in order to control a world thrown into chaos. The contracts formed by the deaths of those ordinary citizens is meant to bring about an eradication of fear. It gives birth to the Public Safety Devil Hunters, to Devil Hunters in general, to the use of whatever means necessary to achieve an end. But whatever those consequences are, we only see them in the fates of Denji, Chainsaw Man, and the impossible characters around him. 

A state under threat, a state that feels like it must collar evil in order to survive, will have ruinous consequences. I just hope we get to see what those are. 

Just A Teenage Dirtbag, (Bomb) Baby

I read some reviews about Denji being the anti-shounen shounen manga hero which I can presume were written by people whose only frame of reference is Bleach, Naruto, or One Piece. Sure, the Big Three were, in their most simplistic forms, feel-good series, and CSM's first half is basically a feel-bad series, but that hardly makes it unusual. It's really not dissimilar from other manga like Homunculus, Freesia, and Oyasumi Punpun. Of course, only old fogies like me, who still remember getting scanlations of these series off of IRC, and query, of course, whether or not those series are shounen at all, or more like seinen. If it were up to me to name the genre, and of course it is not, I would call it “simply another line of stories about fucked up things happen to fucked up people.”

Many fucked up things have happened to Denji. I’d call it traumatic, but I don’t think “trauma” covers what this poor man has been through. The effect, though, has been to make Denji less than human, even in his human form.

Denji and Power's nonchalance towards the fate of their human coworkers who die to Katana Devil and Sawatari is framed by the manga through Denji as a potential sign of callousness. Kishibe notes it as a sign that they are "insane," in other words, "not like other humans," and thus capable of bringing down something like the Gun Devil, which would otherwise drive "normal humans" insane. 

But like, huh? Denji and Power's reactions are, on the contrary, extremely human, because there’s no reason for them to extend feeling towards other humans. Simply put, they’ve never been human to the humans around them. They seem to be bonded most closely to each other, and in fact almost all the Fiends are, because the wider Public Safety employees treat them so poorly. Remember how the Infinity Devil Arc starts? Basically, they're told to be the advance guard, and threatened to be killed if they ever act out. Denji is kept on a short leash, and is so proud (in front of Reze) that he's allowed to go places on his own now.

Which, I'm not saying that that's wrong. Denji is incredibly dumb, holds monstrous power that could easily be tricked into using for horrible purposes, and appears to be the target of a number of Gun Devil's allies. Power is... well. I wouldn't let her out of sight either. But what Makima does that makes Denji feel so loyal, so utterly tied to her, is simply treating him as a human. She convinces him he has a heart, just like any other human. She tells him about all the love experiences he'll have in the future, because he's just a human teenager. And just like Makima, Reze is able to bond with Denji by treating him like an ordinary 16-year-old horny boy. Is it because as a Devil she knows what he wants the most? What he is craving, and never had? It doesn't matter that Denji had been just an ordinary human before fusing with Pochita or before he began his life as a Devil Hunter; as an orphan growing up on the street, unwanted and unloved, he was no more human than a Devil.  

The ending of the Bomb Girl Arc—with Denji asking Reze to run away with him, only to be stood up—reminded me so very much of Aku no Hana. There's the classroom scenes between Reze and Denji, of course, but mostly I think about how Denji—betrayed, injured, manipulated Denji—still asks Reze to run away with him. I'd written about Aku no Hana before, how one of the saddest things about Nakamura is that she cannot imagine a world beyond her current circumstance (and, in fact, the manga ends up dooming her to stagnation). Denji and Reze are Nakamura and Kasuga's perverse mirror. It is because Denji doesn't have the capacity to imagine a larger world beyond his immediate now, three meals a day and a job and this woman who taught him how to swim, that he asks her to do this impossible thing, to run away with him knowing that to do would mean both of them betraying their masters. It is because Reze knows that it is impossible that she does not meet Denji at the cafe. Reze is more human than Denji, because she is capable of dreams, and because she is capable of dreaming, she knows she cannot afford their luxury. She knows too much about the world and its cruelty. And, so, she walks straight into its open maw, and straight into her death.

I don't think we can take Reze at her word that she wanted to be a town mouse, or rather we should say instead that Reze proves that the division between the town mouse and the country mouse is immaterial. The issue is that both, in the end, are only mice, dreaming of a safety they can never achieve. Safety, in the world of CSM, is neither town mouse nor country mouse. It is to not be mice at all. It is to be the dog that digs them out from the cold winter dirt. 

It is, in fact, to be Makima, the person who orders the dogs to kill the mice.

Denji, aim for the top! Transcend the town mouse/country mouse divide! Or else you will constantly be hunted and used!

(Side note: CSM goes at a break-neck pace, and I think the speed through which Fujimoto rushes through these early storylines has made it very difficult for me to actually connect with the characters. Reze and Denji’s relationship is one of the victims to this pacing. Do I believe that Denji could fall for a girl and be willing to risk it all for her after about 3 chapters worth of interaction? Sure, he’s that kind of guy. But does it work for me? Not particularly. We’ve hardly had time to linger with Reze before she swears she’ll protect Denji forever, as long as he’ll run away with her. Though the reader at that point knows there’s something off about Reze, it’s still just not believable. Reze’s actions seem like someone trying to bulldoze her way into Denji’s affections, and though she herself is a bittersweet character, I just really feel like CSM could have spent less time with Bomb Devil vs Chainsaw Man and more time with Reze and Denji.)

No Ethical Women Under Capitalism

The Eternity Devil arc, for all its mini-boss game feel (it wouldn’t be out of place as one of the floors in Tower of God), struck a nerve with me, if only because it felt, however unintentionally, to be a story about working under modern capitalism. A floor you can never leave, that loops endless, where the only way to escape is to destroy it, literally, from the inside, by making it so painful, an eternal feedback loop of destroying ourselves and destroying it, before it opens its heart to us. The Capitalism Devil threatens us, tries to tear us apart. Asks us to sacrifice the strongest, the weakest, anybody among us, as if by climbing over the bodies of our friends and coworkers, we can come out ahead. It makes us suspicious of each other, ready to tear into any weakness for an advantage. 

No wonder this is the chapter where Kobeni lays bare her reasons for joining the Public Safety bureau. She needed to work, to make money. Her options were to be a sex worker or a Devil Hunter. Either way, she was selling her body to the system. Kobeni is a victim of capitalism, which forces her to do what she hates, for goal that are not hers, and then gaslights us into thinking that she’s wrong for being crazy, she’s wrong for losing her shit, for not being able to handle it.

But... that's an asspull for me, even if it's my ass and I'm the one pulling. I'm truly not sure how to feel about Kobeni. Like, what is her deal?! I’m not sure what to make of her appearance in Chapter 20 in her sister’s hand-me-down. Are we supposed to pity her? See ourselves in her? Even in what I think was intended to be a mic-drop-ish line (at least for her), telling Aki that she didn’t quit because she was waiting on her bonus, landed flat for me, too deadpan to be pathetic and not sharp enough to be actually funny. Part of it may be because she is a character very much shaped by her circumstances as opposed to her personality or any interaction/action she does onscreen, but we don’t actually see her family situation in these chapters. We’re left with a painfully shy and cowardly woman who can’t seem to form any human connections with any of the other characters, who in multiple scenes is shown caving to the slightest pressure or threat.

Do the rest of the women fare any better? I’m not sure. Kobeni is unique in that she does not use her gender/sex appeal to manipulate the men around her and/or Denji (even Power lets Denji cop a feel to get her cat back!). Himeno, Makima, and Reze all hide their intentions for Denji behind the veil of his attraction to them (weak or strong) and are either unable or unwilling to be forthright in their desires and ambitions (Himeno to care for Aki; Reze, to accomplish whatever mission Gun Devil had her set out to do; and Makima, for fuck do I know at this point, but she’s up to something!!). Meanwhile, the men are straightforward to a fault. Did Fujimoto intend this? Is this just a subconscious reveal of his own conceptions of gender and Bitches Be Weird? 

I’m not a person who needs to have a strong female narrative in a story, but when you start a story with a protagonist whose life ambition for many chapters was just to feel a boob, you better be careful, you know? CSM doesn’t lack for women; Makima and Power are both formidable characters in their own rights, self-assured and unbeholden to anyone but themselves. But so far almost every arc has featured a woman offering herself to Denji sexually in order to get him to do what they want. It’s getting real old real fast. 

#chainsaw man #reading too deeply into the text

[threecheersforinking]

Debunking: “Anime women are poorly written”

Hi everyone! I mainly use this blog for anime recommendations/reviews, but I wanted to address an attitude I’ve seen a lot online lately. I am constantly seeing people (usually men) claim that most women in anime are poorly written and that’s why people tend to dislike those characters. And while there is some merit to that statement, the conversation is a lot more nuanced than you’d think.

Firstly, I would have to agree that in many shonen works, because much of the emphasis is on a male main character’s development and his interactions with other male counterparts, the women in those shows usually end up being delegated to either love interest, plot device, or fanservice. This definitely happens and I’m not going to deny it; Sakura in Naruto is a good example, and I’m sure it’s not difficult to think of others.

However, my two biggest gripes with this attitude is 1. it’s less often a criticism of misogyny in the industry and more used as an excuse to hate on female characters, and 2. it completely ignores the fact that there are a wide variety of genres outside of shonen where women are written perfectly fine.

There is much to criticize about the anime industry, I completely agree and I always encourage it. And I understand that this conversation is very binary when it comes to gender, so that’s something else to consider. That being said, 99% of the time I hear someone say “well anime women are just poorly written”, it follows them saying something about how much they hate Ochako Uraraka from MHA, or Misa Amane from Death Note, or how they don’t have any favorite female anime characters because ‘they’re all bad’.

I’m not gonna lie, Misa really grated on my nerves when I watched that show, and I’m obviously not claiming that disliking a female character makes you a misogynist. But if that is the only time you want to bring up how the women in anime are written, maybe check yourself. Or, expand your horizons!

Something I desperately need people to realize is that other genres such as slice of life, josei, romance, even seinen sometimes are much more likely than shonen to have female characters in the lead. Anime such as Chihayafuru, Love is War, Toradora, and Violet Evergarden to name a few all have complexly written female characters. Even Madoka Magica (which is technically thriller) is very well written and almost the entire cast is made up of young girls.

A lot of this might come from the fact that romance and slice of life are much more likely to have female mangaka/creators behind them, and that is certainly a factor, but it is not the only factor at hand. The majority of Hayao Miyazaki’s Ghibli films feature a strong female lead, and he is a man. A few of the above titles I mentioned are written by men as well. While it is always a benefit to have gender diversity in the writing room, I don’t think manga authors being male is an excuse for them to write female characters poorly.

(This isn’t to say that shonen always has poorly written female characters, either; one of my favorite anime of all time is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood which is categorized as shonen yet is consistently praised for its complex female characters... though it is, you know, written by a woman)

In conclusion, if your statement that ‘female characters are poorly written’ isn’t being used to criticize misogyny in the anime industry, then you really need to do some introspection. Or you know, watch a rom com once in a while.

Anyway, I always encourage civil discussion on my posts, so if you have anything to say feel free to comment or reblog, but please don’t be mean or rude bc I will block you :)

Thanks for reading!

-threecheersforinking

#anime #manga #anime review blog #anime women #anime writing #naruto #miyazaki #ghibli #chihayafuru #fullmetal alchemist #sakura #my hero academia #anime nerd #ANIME DISCOURSE #anime discussion #anime review #shonen #josei #slice of life #slice of life anime #seinen

[masteroftheblade]

What are your favorite and least favorite animes? Why do you like/dislike them?

oh god here we go lmao 🤠👍 prepare for an entire novel as always lol

my favorite animes atm are Naruto, Dragon Ball, Attack on Titan, and Claymore. Overall, my favorite genre of anime is shonen (and in case you dont know what that is, its basically shows that are marketed to young boys. it'll have shit like superpowers and poorly written female characters). My least favorite genre is Shoujo (marketed at young girls). I honestly don't hate the entire genre, I just hate how much romance is in there since im pretty romance-repulsed. If there were more Shoujo series like Claymore, I'd probably be in love w/ it. I'll start talking about these shows individually, starting w/ Naruto.

1. Naruto.

Honestly, the only reason I started watching Naruto was because my friends peer pressured me into doing it, and it actually differed from what I expected it to be story-wise. The beginning of the show started off amazing; it had excellent world building, magic systems, interesting characters, and it attempted to address how messed up the whole shinobi system is. But then Naruto got on the front page of Shonen Jump, and everything went down from there. It started to focus more on cool fight scenes than the actual plot. I wont get too much into that, because you can literally find entire blogs dedicated to dissecting that, but Naruto killed itself w/ its own popularity. That said, I love the characters and world building and I can look past most of its flaws anyway.

Would I recommend reading/watching it? Yes, but only to say you did it for bragging rights. Don't go into watching Naruto if you want deep looks into imperialism and militarized governments, because you will get the complete opposite of that :P Also the best way to watch it is to watch it with friends.

2. Dragon Ball.

I only started watching DB about a month ago, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I think its a garbage series. The fight scenes have little to no weight to them, because no matter what, the protagonist of that episode will always succeed in some way. For example, when Goku (a 12 y/o boy) was fighting Giran (a 10ft tall godzilla man) and was getting his ass beat until Goku just... randomly grows back his tail that was cut off earlier and wins. We are never told why he grew back his tail, and i think he only gets it back so he can have a cool fight scene in a later episode. Goku can literally be battling genocidal gods and he will still always win. The show also goes out of its way to sexualize/show a female character being harrassed. Every. Fucking. Episode.

That said, it is a fun show, and I really enjoy watching it. Like Naruto, I really love the characters and the world they are in, I just hate the way it was handled, and its painfully obvious that DB was made by a bunch of old men in the 80s. Unlike Naruto, however, I really appreciate how simple it is. It doesn't force a narrative about space genocide or whatever being bad, and I'm very thankful because that kind of narrative would be absolutely botched in this kind of series. It's also nice to have a show that doesn't take itself too seriously. Shows like AOT are amazing and important, but those shows can be overwhelming with their heavy subject matter. I would only recommend watching DB if you want to see some really good art/character design. Don't take the show seriously, and you'll have a good time.

3.Attack On Titan.

This anime was actually the first I've ever seen! I saw the very first episode when it aired in 2014, so I'm definetely biased in that regard, but I still try to look at this show in the most objective way I can. This show does almost everything right. The pacing, the characters, the art, the plot, you name it. It takes a concept that looks silly on paper and turns it into this grueling story about war, politics, and the trauma of being a soldier. It never treats it's characters like they're only one-dimensional, or like they are there just for one purpose only. These characters feel human in a way Naruto and Dragon Ball could never be. But there is one thing that has me concerned about this show, and its about the weirdly anti-Semitic undertones it has.

You probably heard the controversy already, but it really effected the way people on the outside of the fandom view the series. The show is heavily inspired by European culture, specifically that of Germany, and there are an ethnic group of people called The Eldians in the show that are pretty anti-Semitic in this kind of setting. The Eldian people have the capability of turning into Titans, and the Titans are what divided the world and killed millions. As a result, another group of people started doing the shit the Nazis did to Jewish people, basically making the Eldians into this weird allegory for the holocaust??? Which was kind of a shock to me when I first realized that was the angle they were going for. I genuinely did not expect that considering what the series started off as. The foreshadowing is there and all, I just didn't think they'd use real-world events as inspiration.

Now, this actually has the complete opposite problem Naruto and DB had. Naruto and DB had amazing ideas and concepts that went to shit, AOT's whole holocaust narrative was trash from the beginning.

The show could have easily had a different kind of social/political commentary without even going near the holocaust narrative. It comes off as kind of a half assed idea that people put way too much effort in, so it's kind of in this weird grey-area between "modern anime masterpiece" and "what the fuck were they trying to get across with this show?". If you asked me what the moral of the show was, I wouldn't be able to tell you.

Now, because of the fact that the Eldians can literally turn into man-eating beasts, this makes the comparison of Jewish people and Eldians very racist, and it doesn't help that Japan is still full of legitimate Nazis, making the whole situation look even worse. Since I am not Jewish, I wont speak for other Jewish people. There is a very heated debate on whether the show is racist, and frankly I don't think it's within my right to say if it is or isn't. What I will say, is that I really loved the show and appreciated the social commentary it provided, and I think a lot of people would benefit from watching it, but I think it's also important to listen to Jewish people's views on the show. For this reason, I specifically avoid reblogging AOT stuff, but I do love that show and I wont hate on people who do reblog stuff from it. It's definitely not a light watch, but it does provide a lot of thinking material.

4. Claymore.

This. Show. Was. Amazing. But. Underrated.

First off, this is a shonen show that is led by a majority female cast and a female protagonist, and all of those women are badass swordwielding lesbians and I love it. Second, the art style is beautiful. Third, the story is really interesting from so many angles, so much so I am not even going to mention what its about because you dont need to know, you just need to watch it and see what happens. The first season was an absoloute ride of a show, and if you love shows like AOT or Berserk, you'll love Claymore. Honestly, this show was what AOT should have tried to be. It also has its fair share of militarized imperialist commentary, but this is the only show on this list that actually fucking critiques imperialist ideals and has a main character that actively refuses to participate in that kind of oppressive system, choosing to fight it all together.

But the show got fucking cancelled right before the first arc even finished. You can thank shows like Naruto for that 🙃🙃🙃

10/10 Would reccomend, but just be prepared to be left on a major cliffhanger. You can try reading the manga, but it's kind of hard to follow since all of the warrior girls look the same.

#i spent too much time writing this #oh well #im not gonna tag the shows i talked about in this bcuz if i do ill get discourse blogs to start shitting on me #so im just gonna avoid it all together lol #also didnt write abt my least faves because this was too long to write as is #anyway as promised we can now get married any time you want @kindasortasalty /j /p #👩‍🦲