2012-04-23, 11:58 | Link #81 | |
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Why did they willingly turn a blind eye toward him? You can argue he was needed since Danzou was doing a lot of dirty work for Konoha. Things Sandaime wouldn't do. He was following the ninja system and using ninja as tools for both Konoha's gain and his own. He didn't believe in the Will of Fire and that Konoha ninja were family. I would say Hiruzen even thought Danzou was a great asset on his own until he morphed into J. Edgar Hoover and was really running things. Remember, Hiruzen was the guy who still saw some good in Orochimaru and couldn't bring himself to kill him. Which ended up costing countless lives and Konoha dearly. He didn't have the best judgement. And what did Golden Boy Minato do about Danzou? He was Hokage for about two years and apparently didn't do anything about Danzou either. |
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2012-04-23, 13:11 | Link #82 |
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Sarutobi was always weak emotionally, he also spared Orochimaru because of his emotions. He tried to avoid conflict, to avoid people dying, since obviously he was neither a coward nor a weakling, so any conflict inside the village was not threatening him personally but his subordinates (ANBU, jounins, genins, everyone). Danzou was his childhood friend, so Danozu took full advantage of this and created his personal army and it seems he also was good at politics since he had the elders backing him even against the Uchiha clan.
I think calling these traits weaknesses is a matter of taste, i personally would definitely call these weaknesses because these later resulted in many tragedies (Orochimaru attacking Konoha, Danzou plotting against Konoha, etc.). It's like you save 100 lives today, but you risk that 1000 lives will be lost tomorrow. And it also leads to the corruption of the system to let people like Danzou live. As Orochimaru said to Sarutobi, he could have killed him 10 years before, when he discovered Orochi's treason, but as time passed Orochimaru became too strong. The same is true of Danzou, Sarutobi should have removed him from power or even killed him a long long time ago. Danzou had the time to create a strong army, and then killing Danzou became very risky, it would risk a civil war which the old hokage didn't want. Especially after the 4th hokage died, Sarutobi was too old to deal with both Danzou and the Uchiha, so he had to choose between the two. Minato himself was obviously under the influence of Sarutobi, and therefore in that short time that he was hokage he didn't think of getting rid of Danzou by force, despite that he was the only one who could have done it in a relatively painless way. But that was also Sarutobi's fault, to delay it until the 4th died and he was too old to do anything. But in defense of the 3rd and 4th hokages we must also see that these times were very hard war times, children like Obito had to be sent to the war. In such war times the leaders focus on external enemies, they try to use every resource of the village, for which they accept that some people like Danzou, who can be used in a war, will do bad things and will use this chance to grow stronger. In a war often one can choose only between bad and worse, and if the destruction of Konoha is the worse, than the leader has to choose the bad. |
2012-04-23, 20:31 | Link #83 | ||
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Every action has possible consequences, that includes acts of compassion, altuism and mercy. It's the basic M.O. of the heroes in Naruto to avoid hatred and paranoia but it doesn't always work out in the end (unless you're Naruto). Sarutobi letting Oro live is example of that. But just because sparing Oro had bad results, it doesn't mean taking the opposite approach is automatically the better decision. It's not like characters such as Hanzou, who deal with every possible threat with killing suffer better fates. Quote:
And Danzou exploited his authority horribly, but he never acted against the village until he started his Sharingan collection and saw a chance to grab the Hokage title from Tsunade. There was never any grounds to simply get rid of him, he had too much influence, knew too many secrets. It would be dangerous.
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2012-04-24, 00:51 | Link #84 | ||
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After the two clans reached an agreement and Hashirama became the leader Madara has changed his mind, but his own clan turned against him, so he left the village. That's the opposite of Danzou, Danzou had his own private army and he never left the village. Furthermore Hashirama had no emotional connection to Madara, we can safely assume that as a leader he acted rationally. We also know that he did fight Madara before the alliance, and Madara survived, which means Madara was not spared or something like that. My point was that the 3rd hokage was strong enough and had enough influence over his own vlllage and his ninja that he could have killed both Danzou and Orochimaru when it became clear that they are or will be a threat to the village, but he didn't do so because of his emotional connection to them. And a good leader must act rationally even if it means to have personally painful decisions. Of course there is the main character who is a "fool" that risks everything to save his friend Sasuke, that's definitely not a rationally good leader behavior But the author gets away easily with Naruto's actions because Naruto is not a grown up man who is a leader of a military organization and a lot of civilians, he is just a child who wants to save his friend. Quote:
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2012-04-24, 02:32 | Link #85 | |
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2012-04-24, 09:55 | Link #86 | |
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That's the funny thing about Danzou, he saw himself as an utilitarist who didn't care about the means as long as he reached a favorable outcome but the consequences of his actions were terrible for Konoha all the time. From his own perspective Danzou should have murdered himself for the sake of Konoha. Oh and Sabaku Kyu, the first time (that we know off) that Danzou acted against the village was when he made a secret deal with Hanzou in order to seize power from Sarutobi... And created Pain in the process. |
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2012-04-24, 20:32 | Link #89 | ||||
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2012-04-24, 23:55 | Link #90 | |
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But more seriously you're correct only up to a point : yes of course Danzou worked covertly but as I said it wasn't that much of a secret if Yamato knew about his method. If you remember none of the Kage trusted him and they saw him as the dark side of the ninja world which is telling when you think about what those guys have done themselves. I mean, just take the killing orphans thing, can you honestly say that such a known fact would be accepted as the price of doing business by Sandaime given what we know of his character? I think not. As often my point isn't to say that within the story Sandaime is supposed to be seen as a weak and ineffectual leader, it's that if you look at things logically it must be the case and since it doesn't seem to be the author's intent then there is a problem. Hence why I think that Danzou and Sarutobi should have been the same character : A man who looked like this perfect loving grand father and genuinely so for his own people but who also was the ruthless cold blooded warlord who had done terrible evils for the "greater good" of his village. |
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2012-04-25, 06:43 | Link #91 | ||
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That crystal ball causes so many plot holes...
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I dunno. Just taking up the time... there's no chapter this week right? Golden week?
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Last edited by Sabaku Kyu; 2012-04-25 at 07:05. |
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2012-04-25, 13:56 | Link #92 | |||
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Also it seems to me that we are talking about a different thing: i was referring to what makes someone a good and rational leader, one can be a good leader even if he is not a "good" guy. Before the villages were created it was mostly chaos, clans were fighting against each other constantly. In these circumstances Madara can't be defined as evil by someone who does the same thing for his own clan. Of course if someone were inside the clan, from his viewpoint Madara is evil, because he forced them to kill each other to gain the MS/EMS eyes. Hashirama was doing the logical thing, end the constant fighting between the two top clans before they kill each other and vanish. The situation would have been similar if Madara secretly took control over his clan and began acting on his own will and at some point Hashirama would notice it but not do anything. But this never happened. Quote:
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Now, i'm not saying that Sarutobi was a bad leader, i was just saying that he was not a perfect leader, he had his weakness just like every other leader has. |
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2012-04-25, 18:11 | Link #93 | |||
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Flip side-- Hiruzen either failed to see Danzou's true nature or recognized it but still saw Danzou's potential to serve the village. This idea that he was too emotionally weak to kill Danzou for the good of Konoha because he hesitated when he had the chance to kill Oro doesn't make sense to me. Danzou never openly acted against the village. He wasn't a named spy or traitor. There might've been suspicions, but Sarutobi wasn't going to kill Danzou out of mistrust or fear. Quote:
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But yeah, I can agree. All the things we're finding out about Danzou do make it seem like Sandaime let him get away with everything.
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2012-04-26, 12:27 | Link #96 | ||
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2012-04-26, 15:56 | Link #97 | |
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i also agree that sarutobi was a pacifist to a fault and was endlessly trying to ally with people who were nonredeemable like orochi and the false kazekage (before he was revealed to be orochi) even though it doesn't fit in with the preferred ideology of the series, danzo's way was much more suitable for realistic ninjas, making emotionless killing machines who carry out missions at any cost and protect the village at any cost. depending on the daimyo's leadership qualities, he may very well prefer this methodology to sarutobi, kakashi's or naruto's compassion. its not very ninja like, however much we like them. but of course danzo would have had a hard time explaining the outcome of the summit where he made enemies out of every village in an arrogant and stupid fashion |
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2012-04-26, 18:52 | Link #98 | ||
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Think of it this way: Imagine a mother who has terminally ill child in a coma on life support. On her own, she might never make the decision to end her child's life. But if doctors and nurses tell her there's no chance of recovery, that the child will be suffering and that if he were to die his organs could save the lives of other kids... then she might make the decision to let go and allow them to pull the plug. It would be hard, but really there isn't much alternative. When I say Sarutobi allowed the Hyuuga and Uchiha incidents to happen I'm saying he was convinced he was left with no other choice but to heed the consul of others and allow what needed to be done to be done. I can't explain it any further than that. Really, I see where you're coming from. Because I used to believe Sarutobi's actions in these matters was very cold, but it made more sense after more was revealed about what happened. Quote:
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Last edited by Sabaku Kyu; 2012-04-26 at 19:02. |
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2012-04-26, 19:16 | Link #99 | |
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And I can't help but notice you carefully never adressed the fact that Danzou brainwashed and butchered war orphans to build his private army (which is something known by the characters and not just the readers) so I will ask again : how do you reconcile this with Sarutobi's character? Do you think he also "let that be carried out because he knew what was at stake"? |
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weekly spoiler discussion |
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