I will be making two posts on this matter. This one will look at events from a
logical view, while the other will look at things from a
literary view.
Here are the parts of Mandra's store I find suspicious.
1. His brother willingly gave his eyes
Personally, I would think that trading eyes (thereby giving each person a single Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan) would have been a better solution. Assuming it was not possible, remember that the Mangekyou Sharingan requires you to kill your closest friend. Would someone who would kill their closest friend for power be the type to willingly give his eyes for another, or the type to take power for himself by force?
2. The Uchiha clan was marginalized and placed in an inferior role
The Uchiha are one of the founding clans of the village, and they wield an immense amount of military might. You see they are very well off with their own complex. Are we to seriously believe that they
could be marginalized? More likely there was some actions performed to balance the power of the clans (such as Uchiha being in the Police Force, but not the ANBU) which was interpreted by Mandara as marginalization, since he wants the Uchiha to reign supreme.
3. The Kyuubi attack 16 years ago was a complete coincidence
Mandara doesn’t like Konoha, he knows how to summon the Kyuubi, and people have mentioned that the Kyuubi appearing then looked suspicious. It’s circumstantial evidence, but it doesn’t look good to him.
4. Itachi was sent on an official mission to assassinate the entire Uchiha clan, which was done over the Hokage’s head
There are just way to many factors here. First, the Hokage couldn’t override an order to wipe out one of the major clans of the village and that he couldn’t or wouldn’t sabotage the attempt. Second, they expected one person to do it, a person who was part of the clan they wanted to wipe out, and that he wouldn’t fail, lose his nerve, or decide he’d rather kill his leaders than his own parents. Third, that killing an entire clan down to it’s last child is considered a reasonable response to the leadership planning a coup. Fourth, that Itachi would telegraph his attempt beforehand by getting into a fight with his clan members when he (presumably) doesn’t
want to kill them all.
What seems more likely is that, if an order was given at all it was given behind the Hokage’s back by the more extreme factions of Konoha with questionable legality (like Root). In addition, they must have some reason to believe that Itachi wouldn’t decide he’d rather not kill his parents that week. Combined with the fight and comments about “losing hope for this pathetic clan” and it’s likely that Itachi wasn’t as opposed to the order as Mandra made him out to be. Plus, there was no way Mandara could know of Itachi’s inner conflict unless Itachi told him, and Itachi just doesn’t seem like the type of person that talks about his feelings.
5. Itachi did everything for Sasuke out of love
It’s clear that Itachi has
some sort of master plan for Sasuke, and that master plan hinged upon Sasuke not listening to Mandara. It’s also possible that Itachi threw the fight against Sasuke, or that he was trying to win and only implanted the Mangekyou Sharingan when he knew he was going to die. In any case, Itachi wanted Sasuke to be strong.
It’s just that if Itachi was doing so out of love, any one of us could think of several dozen different ways he could have gone about it that would have been . . . less traumatizing. Remember, Mandara wouldn’t know about Itachi’s feelings unless Itachi tells him. He could be embellishing, guessing, or just making the reasons up.
Finally, it’s clear that Mandara has his own agenda in telling Sasuke what he did, and since Sasuke now wants to destroy Konoha we can be pretty sure what that agenda is. We also know he’s very good at fooling people (almost no one guessed that Tobi was the Akatsuki Leader before the reveal). Combined with the fact that he talks about things he shouldn’t know about (Konoha top secret missions and Itachi’s feelings) and I think we can conclude that his story is a distorted and biased version of the truth at best, and outright fabrications at worst.
Of course, logic and literature often don’t always go together. For example:
Hence, my next post will talk about the literary implications of Mandara’s story.
Author
