[Manga] Naruto Chapter 627 Discussion Thread

[milan kyuubi]

Originally Posted by yogotah

This is where we disagree, I really don't believe that that was the first intent of the author with the character of Itachi at all

Not to but in in your conversation. But there is one evidence/hint that suggest Kishi intended for Itachi to be like this from the beginning.

[itachi-san314]

Originally Posted by milan kyuubi

Not to but in in your conversation. But there is one evidence/hint that suggest Kishi intended for Itachi to be like this from the beginning.

I've had that page cited to me before that kishi planned it all out, but i dont buy it. crying could pertain to sasuke as well. he's thinking about how he wants to kill his brother for killing, not for crying. it's not a logical succession of thoughts. 'yea, i've got to kill that crier!'

it's just a very vague line. if kishi planned it all from the start than i assume he would have dropped bigger hints than a vague line that could mean several things. he named obito 'tobi' for pity's sake. if he planned itachi's good nature then i would like to think that he could have made more sense of it. the retcon of itachi crying was simply tacked on to the end of the flashback. it certainly feels like a change in the author's intent because of that. i'm not saying it's impossible that kishi planned it all, but then what was he thinking when itachi tortured sasuke and kakashi? it's way too extreme for someone trying to do good and simply show them what MS was capable of, which is the running explanation for those tortures

[Ero-Senn1n]

Originally Posted by itachi-san314

if kishi planned it all from the start than i assume he would have dropped bigger hints than a vague line that could mean several things.

Just because you couldn't see the hints it doesn't mean those were not there. Many of us said way before the revelation that Itachi is not what he looks like. We didn't know why and how but it was clear that there's much more to him.

I don't want to list all the hints here because it has been done many times already in this forum. Just think about the general plot: for a plot that goes on for more than 10 years it can't be as simple as Itachi being a ruthless murderer who is then killed by Sasuke and then it's a happy ending. Such a plot could be good for a side character who gets a few chapters in the manga but not for a main character. The kyuubi attack got it's explanation too. What would the plot was just this: the kyuubi just randomly appeared because he's evil and Itachi just killed because he's evil, therefore now Sasuke just killed Itachi and Naruto learned to rule the kyuubi's power, so they just unite their forces and kill Itachi and Pain at about the same (of course then Pain had to be beaten by Naruto alone because Jiraiya succeeded in teaching Naruto how to control the kyuubi) time so then Sasuke returns to Konoha as Naruto is named the new hokage and they live in peace there forever. No other villages and kages, no Danzou, no KillerBee, no Tobito, no Madara, no other zombies, no happy end for dead and good people, no revival of Kakashi and other people who died, no Sasuke-Itachi stuff, no Naruto-Itachi stuff, no Naruto-parents stuff, and no big all out war. Of course these other villages and kages could be introduced in later story arcs that are unrelated, for example the evil raikage is planning to make the 4th world war and team7 goes on a mission to stop him!

[JustRob]

Originally Posted by Ero-Senn1n

Just because you couldn't see the hints it doesn't mean those were not there. Many of us said way before the revelation that Itachi is not what he looks like. We didn't know why and how but it was clear that there's much more to him.

I don't want to list all the hints here because it has been done many times already in this forum. Just think about the general plot: for a plot that goes on for more than 10 years it can't be as simple as Itachi being a ruthless murderer who is then killed by Sasuke and then it's a happy ending. Such a plot could be good for a side character who gets a few chapters in the manga but not for a main character. The kyuubi attack got it's explanation too. What would the plot was just this: the kyuubi just randomly appeared because he's evil and Itachi just killed because he's evil, therefore now Sasuke just killed Itachi and Naruto learned to rule the kyuubi's power, so they just unite their forces and kill Itachi and Pain at about the same (of course then Pain had to be beaten by Naruto alone because Jiraiya succeeded in teaching Naruto how to control the kyuubi) time so then Sasuke returns to Konoha as Naruto is named the new hokage and they live in peace there forever. No other villages and kages, no Danzou, no KillerBee, no Tobito, no Madara, no other zombies, no happy end for dead and good people, no revival of Kakashi and other people who died, no Sasuke-Itachi stuff, no Naruto-Itachi stuff, no Naruto-parents stuff, and no big all out war. Of course these other villages and kages could be introduced in later story arcs that are unrelated, for example the evil raikage is planning to make the 4th world war and team7 goes on a mission to stop him!

Many of you also said Yondaime was Naruto's dad, and Tobi was Obito.
Even though there were only vague hints to that at best.
And Yondaime and Naruto had no relation to each other at all save for their hair and eye color.

You know what I think? That Kishi one day heard about all these fan theories, for example the one about Itachi, and thought, "Hey that's a pretty good idea!".
And so everything was retconned.

[Ero-Senn1n]

Originally Posted by JustRob

Many of you also said Yondaime was Naruto's dad, and Tobi was Obito.

Actually i said the opposite for both, and i was wrong in case of Tobito. For me looking similar is not a clue. For some others it is, for some others it is not. But it seems you just want to generalize and put everybody in one group, you know that doesn't work at all, since much of what we write about on this forum is all the hints in the story that point to different directions.

Originally Posted by JustRob

Even though there were only vague hints to that at best.

There were clear hints even in Itachi's case. You need to think about the story in general when looking at something, then you can notice if the presumed hint points in the direction where the story is be going or it's the opposite. For that you also have to know the general direction of the story, but often we know that already mostly from facts but also from a lot of other hints. For example i argued first that the 4 hokages will be the ones that know everything and then later tha they will join the war, while some others argued for the opposite. I was simply looking at the story so far, and based my assumptions on simple facts and also on some hints. A simple fact is for example that in this war Kishimoto gives to most characters their "happy end", which means they can go to the other world in peace and some kind of happyness. Even those like Sasori. So it was logical that the 4 kages should not be stuck in an eternal battle inside the death god, and that's what happened.

Kishimoto is quite good at setting up starting situations from where he can go into many different directions, where he makes a lot of mistakes is the execution, how he reaches the end point. He wanted Itachi to be a tragic hero, but as you can see in this thread too there's a lot of debate about how bad the writing is, how many logical errors were made, etc. The reason i didn't think about Obito being Tobi was not because there were not clear hints about that but because it would introduce so many plot holes. The same would happen if Pain was Yondaime, luckily that didn't happen. But seeing the Tobito case it might very well be that Kishimoto had a Plan B where Pain was Yondaime, or maybe it was Plan A and what happened is B, because Kishimoto realized there's a better way to do things. In case of Obito he chose the easy soltion, maybe because he was out of good ideas or maybe because it was all planned like this. But when you make a very high level plan you don't care too much about specifics, so when it comes down to write concrete chapters of manga you have a lot requirements that might be impossible to overcome. So i guess Kishimoto sometimes just wrote himself into a corner from where he couldn't come out without making a few plot holes.

Again in this chapter he set up a great starting point. From here there are a lot of possible ways to go. I was thinking it's even possible that the 4 kages and Sasuke's team will have to fight Naruto and the alliance because Obito will use a weakened version of infinite tsukiyomi on the army to make them fight Sasuke and the kages. And that's just one possibility out of many.

[james0246]

Originally Posted by yogotah

I definitely wouldn't say mounting evidence, by watching Naruto part I, you could never have had a realistic conjecture that Itachi didn't kill his clan for any other reason than the ones mentioned at the time. Remember, Hindsight is always 20/20, and a lot of little details where given us to us through flashbacks after the first part of Naruto which is when I assume that Kishi started having different plans for Itachi then he did on the first part.

Hindsight? People were speculating on Itachi's martyrdom as early as his first appearance (13? 140?), and that only increased with the flashback, etc. None of this was baseless conjecture either, though I do agree it was extreme speculation based on very little evidence (which is why I said it was mounting ).

Originally Posted by yogotah

This is where we disagree, I really don't believe that that was the first intent of the author with the character of Itachi at all, the same way that his intent with Hashirama changed over time, the one with Hashirama happens to be more obvious that's all.

I do agree that certain things were only planned after the initial drafts, but there is much that was planned years in advance. The sole reason we had a Kakashi Gaiden arc was to introduce Obito so that Tobi could then be introduced 20 chapters later and later be used in the Madara storyline. The sole reason we had a Valley of the End fight in Part I was to introduce Madara and Hashirama (and all the comparisons between Sasuke and Naruto and the two). Etc. I'm not saying it is definitive that Kishimoto planned for all the major events well in advance (because you're right, he has said that he only have a general outline), but there are enough long reveals and hidden motives behind these characters that I can't help but believe what we see is and has always been what Kishimoto wants (failures of character logic and all).

Originally Posted by yogotah

If Itachi is to be made into a good guy, then his action HAS to be justified...or by definition you aren't good. So my premise is just that he can't be a good guy if he's not cleared of any wrongdoing, but if he can be justified then he can roam with the stoic, or even sacrificial heroics people. But you make a good point, even Itachi himself declared himself a weak man, and his action were weak...Naruto would have found a better way to solve the situation ( some talk no jutsu perhaps lol) so in a sense even Itachi knows that he's a villain and if that's the case then you're absolutely right. I'm just making the point that if we assume that Itachi can be classified into the "good" guy category, then his actions against Sasuke and the clan necessarily has to be justified.

As I said, I classify Itachi as a anti-villain. He definitely thinks what he did had to be done, but at the same time he knows that what he did was inexcusable and monstrous. He is a pitiful, probably even tragic, character.

That being said, it is Kishimoto's fault for having other characters not recognize just how bad Itachi's actions were. The fact that Sasuke is still basing life decisions around what Itachi would want shows just how flawed Sasuke's moral code and internal thought processes are. In fact, I'm kind of expecting Naruto and Sasuke to fight solely because Naruto will call Itachi out on all of his bad decisions.

[JustRob]

That would be kinda lame if Naruto and Sasuke fought for that reason. In that case, why didn't Naruto call Itachi out on it when he met Edo Itachi? Did he think weeks later "Oh yeah, even though he had a reason I guess he's still kinda bad"?

But then again, with what they've done to Sasuke this chapter, I'm not expecting Kishi to come up with a reason less shitty then that for them to fight.

[mayumi]

to be honest itachi should have been called out long time ago for his massacre of the clan and spin it into "for the sake of village" philosophy. but he is the guy who aided in the jinchuuriki extraction and pretty much messing with sasuke his whole life but we are supposed to think of him as a great hero, saint.

if naruto does call itachi and the rest of the hokages out on the "for the sake of village" philosophy. i would accept it. after fighting pain and learning stuff from nagato, he should be looking at the bigger picture.

all villages suffer in war not just leaf. leaf does not have the right to say they can harm someone else for the sake of village and not expect to be retaliated on. will of fire should be recognized as a universal village thing. not just leaf village because naruto has met many good shinobis who are not leaf ninjas and are his allies. all those allies try their best to protect their loved ones and villages as well.

[Hunter]

Originally Posted by james0246

In fact, I'm kind of expecting Naruto and Sasuke to fight solely because Naruto will call Itachi out on all of his bad decisions.

You are? What could possibly make you expect this considering the massive body of evidence of the opposite? The author cannot stop himself from having all his characters on all sides singing praises of St. Itachi. Naruto already heard the truth about what happened and his reaction was to wonder why Sasuke hadn't merrily come back to Konoha. When he talked to Edo Itachi about it and learned that he was also planning on brainwashing Sasuke Naruto didn't utter a word of disapproval, he just told he had already done more than enough for the village.
The only character allowed to say bad thing about Itachi is Itachi himself and that's because he's also meant to be humble. Hell his parents couldn't help but babble about how very proud they felt as he was murdering them.

[JustRob]

To be honest that always seemed insane to me.
His mom and dad telling him that they were still proud of him despite the fact that he was about to murder them.

What I wanted to see was the Uchiha clan resisting and fighting back.
Instead they just submitted to their fate.
What the hell happened to the coup? "Oh snap, they figured us out and sent our son to murder us. Guess we need to give up now."

[yogotah]

Originally Posted by james0246

I do agree that certain things were only planned after the initial drafts, but there is much that was planned years in advance. The sole reason we had a Kakashi Gaiden arc was to introduce Obito so that Tobi could then be introduced 20 chapters later and later be used in the Madara storyline. The sole reason we had a Valley of the End fight in Part I was to introduce Madara and Hashirama (and all the comparisons between Sasuke and Naruto and the two). Etc. I'm not saying it is definitive that Kishimoto planned for all the major events well in advance (because you're right, he has said that he only have a general outline), but there are enough long reveals and hidden motives behind these characters that I can't help but believe what we see is and has always been what Kishimoto wants (failures of character logic and all).

Yeah, I definitely think that Kishi had a plan for Obito since Kakashi mentionned all of his friend dying during the early Naruto chapters. And of course, Kakashi Gaiden confirmed this...and also Mardara was probably meant to be the man that we see today..though Hashirama is a different story ( I think we may agree on that)..the only disconnect I have is that I think that this is not the case for Itachi. I think that Itachi wasn't meant to be a victim of tough moral choices, or a martyr..I think he was planned to be Sasuke's goal to get stronger and when he got strong enough to fight Itachi, he would. Then, Sasuke would beat Itachi and have the possibility to kill him, he wouldn't, and in turn would forgive Itachi for his actions thus giving Itachi a switch of heart ( which most villains in Naruto seems to have).

This may or may not have happenned exactly the way I speculate, but not in a thousands years, do I think that Kishi had the "whole" picture in mind,as we know it, when he introduced Itachi.

Obviously, I may be wrong, and you may be absolutely right, but I just don't buy it based on all the inconsistencies that we see in the early chapters. Itachi torturing Kakashi, beating the pulp out of Sasuke and even using the Mangekyou on him, and then leaving because of Jiraya's involvement.

We learn later that he came just to "check" on Sasuke after the Orochimaru's invasion attempt.....Is this how a good loving brother check on his sibling, by putting him in a freaking coma.....no, I just don't buy that but that's just me.

As I said, I classify Itachi as a anti-villain. He definitely thinks what he did had to be done, but at the same time he knows that what he did was inexcusable and monstrous. He is a pitiful, probably even tragic, character.

That being said, it is Kishimoto's fault for having other characters not recognize just how bad Itachi's actions were. The fact that Sasuke is still basing life decisions around what Itachi would want shows just how flawed Sasuke's moral code and internal thought processes are.

lol I don't deny that AT ALL, Sasuke has consistently chosing the least logical decision to most if not all of his decisions but I also think that Sasuke inherently loves his brother despite of what was done to him and his clan, and doesn't blame any of that on him, thus honoring his martyr brother comes as a priority to him. Decisions based on emotivism is never a good idea.

In fact, I'm kind of expecting Naruto and Sasuke to fight solely because Naruto will call Itachi out on all of his bad decisions.

Lol Nah, Naruto pretty much worships Itachi also...it always seemed to me that Naruto was always in awe with Itachi and the hold that he has on Sasuke. Naruto always want Sasuke to see him as a rival, and have a brother/rival relationship. Sasuke didn't see of any of that and had a higher goal, Itachi, and I think that Naruto always coveted that ( at least the attention that Itachi had from Sasuke compared to him).

...anyway, kind of off topic, but it's going to be tough to make Sasuke and Naruto's fight happen in a coherent manner. Espcially a free will fight, because if Mardara controls Naruto through his Sharingan ( that can presumebly control the Kyuby) and makes Naruto fight Sasuke...I think we would all see that as a non decisive fight since it's not an automous one.

It'll be fun to see where Kishi goes with this..

Originally Posted by JustRob

To be honest that always seemed insane to me.
His mom and dad telling him that they were still proud of him despite the fact that he was about to murder them.

I think that his parents were proud of him because they realized that Itachi was following his path, what was the utilatarian good for the village. His dad and mom realized this, and knew that Itachi wasn't kiling them to "test his skills" or because he was "evil" but becaues he thought he was adhering to the greater good.However...it's still weird for parents about to be murdered to say this to their son, and even I was taken back by it..but remember some warriors who are about to die in the hand of their opponent usually praises their opponent for taken them this far.

[Ero-Senn1n]

Originally Posted by JustRob

To be honest that always seemed insane to me.
His mom and dad telling him that they were still proud of him despite the fact that he was about to murder them.

We also have very similar thinking about Japanese people. The samurai, the ninja, the harakiri, the kamikaze, etc. These are mostly stereotypes, but there's always some truth to it. In japan to commit suicide because their honor is lost seems to be a noble thing, but in the west suicide is consirered a coward thing and results in going to hell, and even if in the modern era we have left religious stuff behind but we still don't like suicide. We watch movies like The Last Samurai, and even if it's not historically accurate, we mostly accept what happened in that movie as being very close to the truth. People in that movie practically commited suicide by going against machine guns and cannons with swords. And i'm sure others could tell even better examples. The world of this manga is even more extreme, where children like Kakashi's team are sent to war to die, where they seal monsters into people and don't care how many die in the process, where they say a ninja is a tool, etc. Itachi was a perfect ninja in this sense, he did everything for the village, no matter what he had to do. If you look at another Mr. Perfect guy, that is Minato, what you see is that he is a perfect mass murderer, even if Kishimoto carefully avoided showing him killing people. We didn't see how he killed the guy who made 20 kagebunshins against Kakashi, just the sound of killing, then he killed the rock ninja army, then he went back and killed all those who tried to kill Kakashi and Rin.
What i want to say that these guys are supposed to have a very different way of thinking about good and bad and such stuff. Its very different from the way a modern world guy thinks, but it's not that much different from the ancient times.

When Itachi's parents say that they recognize Itachi as a great ninja, you should think about that as a ninja talking to another ninja and not just as ordinary parents talking to an ordinary kid. They recognize Itachi being a great ninja of Konoha, so much that he is willing to become a "tool" for the village even if it means killing his own family. Then you see Danzou who was one of the supreme leaders of the village for most of it's existence and became even hokage for a bit saying how perfect Itachi was. We see even the "good guy" Sarutobi did nothing against Danzou after the massacre. The raikage kidnaps Kushina, the tsuchikage uses akatsuki, etc. Itachi's parents were ninja that had a way of thinking that's very similar, otherwise they would not try to take over Konoha instead of enduring and serving. The clan itself had two sides: the side with Kagami and the side with Sasuke's father, so Itachi's parents knew very well what it means to be on Kagami's side and they recognized Itachi having Kagami's will of fire as ninja, even if they didn't agree with that. That family wasn't ordinary fromt the start, they used Itachi against the village, Sasuke's father didn't even care about Sasuke when he wasn't good enough.

[itachi-san314]

Originally Posted by Ero-Senn1n

Just because you couldn't see the hints it doesn't mean those were not there. Many of us said way before the revelation that Itachi is not what he looks like. We didn't know why and how but it was clear that there's much more to him.

i see them, i just dont think they mean what you think or thought they mean. or perhaps i should say that i dont think they hold as much weight as you give them. they are way too vague for me to take them seriously. kisame poking fun at itachi for possibly caring about his old village seems a lot more to my like kisame poking fun at itachi (carefully i might add) than delving into some hidden meaning behind kisame's words. there's no evidence ever that kisame knew itachi's truth, prior to his death anyway. so why would he be dropping hints about something he was unaware of? all the hints people cite pre-timeskip seem to be making something out of nothing to me. in tobi's case, i saw some hints for him being obito that couldn't have meant anyone else. the biggest of which was him never taking kakashi's sharingan and showing him his when he didnt have to. itachi never did anything to suggest he was good pre-timeskip

[JustRob]

Well to be honest when I saw it the first time I did think it was weird Itachi didn't kill Kakashi, or tried to kill Jiraiya.
Kakashi knew about the Akatsuki, and back then that organization was still kind of low key apparently, because Itachi was notably surprised that Kakashi knew so much.
Yet he decided to let him live when he could have easily finished him off.

[itachi-san314]

Originally Posted by JustRob

Well to be honest when I saw it the first time I did think it was weird Itachi didn't kill Kakashi

i did too actually, but the presence of 4 jounins at that time meant a lot. now with itachi's overwhelming strength, those 4 look like nothing, but back then it was alot. it made sense that itachi didnt want to start a major battle if he was really only after naruto. he did torture kakashi pretty ruthlessly. quite horribly actually if you think about 72 hours of pure pain that put him in a coma

or tried to kill Jiraiya.

well jiraiya was quite strong. enough to intimidate itachi and kisame back then. sure, with what we and kishi know now, itachi would have beaten jiraiya one on one, but i would guess that kishi wasn't even sure how far he wanted to take both jiraiya and itachi's powers at that time so he just went with an easy stalemate. this was all well before sage mode and susano'o

[JustRob]

I guess that makes sense. Isn't also kinda weird that back then Itachi's eyes didn't bleed after using Amaterasu? I think so far in every instance in part 2 Amaterasu caused an eye bleed.

[Artimus_Prime]

Originally Posted by itachi-san314

i agree with this. i dont see why i have to repeat myself so much with some people... neither i nor the character of itachi nor hiruzen thinks it was the right thing to do. and despite itachi placing the burden on naruto, it was still itachi who wound up 'turning sasuke around' ... again if you prefer. naruto hasn't done anything to change sasuke's mind

Just curious....is it possible that naruto not giving up on sasuke had just a smidgen of influence especially after hearing that hashirama sorta kinda gave up on Madara (killing him)

[itachi-san314]

Originally Posted by Artimus_Prime

Just curious....is it possible that naruto not giving up on sasuke had just a smidgen of influence especially after hearing that hashirama sorta kinda gave up on Madara (killing him)

i would say no. kishi provided a 2 page spread of sasuke's decision making just before he made up his mind and it was 100% thoughts about itachi. hashirama spurred that decision and caused sasuke's mass reflection, but it was all itachi

[Hunter]

No it wasn't. Itachi's absolute commitment to Konoha even in death made him question his goal and seek answers but the one who convinced Sasuke where Itachi couldn't was Hashirama.
Of course Sasuke thought of his brother when taking his decision, Itachi has replaced his clan as the sole fuel for his quest for a long time now and Sasuke couldn't let all the interactions forming his one cherished bound go to naught.
Neither Itachi nor Naruto ever managed to make Sasuke changes his course for revenge, even Obito only succeeded to nudge him slightly toward new targets and that was thanks to the fact that he told him almost all the truth.

Hashirama succeeded because he didn't try to convince Sasuke to do something, he just told him what's what and let him decide for himself. The next step will be for Sasuke not to succumb to his demon like Madara did before him and this one will probably be Naruto's job I suppose.

[itachi-san314]

I disagree. Itachi ended his time with sasuke by doing exactly what you're saying. he stopped trying to convince sasuke of anything and said he would love him no matter what. sasuke then dropped the revenge act and sought out answers from the hokages. hashirama then reinforced itachi's last words by letting sasuke make up his own mind again, during which time he only thought about itachi.