InNaruto, problems with its storytelling tend to bubble under the surface just out of sight, and one Kishimoto quote gives valuable insight into one of the series' biggest contradictions. As a series,Narutoprominently features the central village of Konoha, hometown of protagonist Naruto Uzumaki and his ninja pals. Konoha also has the unenviable responsibility of being the powerful nexus of the shinobi world, started long ago by Hashirama Senju, the first Hokage, in the name of peace and unity—an ideal that isn’t always lived up to,as the Amegakure orphans show.
Narutohas a notable tension between the depiction of Konoha and its ideals and the tragic backstories of its characters. One particular villain,Sasori, has always been beloved by fans, but the ways his backstory is an indictment of the shinobi world aren’t often considered. The way Kishimoto constructed Sasori’s backstory fulfills another motivation in writingNaruto, but in combination, Sasori is a character who undermines the conventional image of the Hidden Leaf Village and the shinobi world broadly.
Kishimoto Wanted To Write Villains With Tangible, Empathetic Origins
In Wanting To Depict The Stories Of People Whose Lives Aren’t “Normal”, Kishimoto Hits A Vital Snag
Kishimoto is a sensitive storyteller, and that’s a prominent feature ofNaruto. From the inner conflicts of the Hyuga clan, to the death of Naruto’s parents, to Sasuke’s brother Itachi, murderer of their clan, Kishimoto has always made an effort to depict complex situations toNaruto’s younger audience. In describing his approach to writing villains,Kishimoto says during an interview with Kanathat he tries to write empathetic villains with tangible origins:
In the first chapters of Naruto, I already talk about power struggles, politics and the main projects of the main Trio. But what interests me isn’t the end goal, but how they came to have that goal in the first place. How did they come to act like they do? I really dig this psychological process. I think the reader is like me: he wants to understand. So I talk about the place the characters grow up, the reasoning behind their acts. I try to make the reader feel empathy for a character who seems evil at first sight.
Because that’s the thing. In most shōnen manga, the enemy is the ultimate evil. He can’t be reasoned with. But countless manga do that already, and I didn’t want Naruto to be just a repeat of other stories.
[Corrected for grammar and readability]
At the same time, there’s a snag. Namely, when it comes to healing from psychic trauma and tragedy, Kishimoto admits that Naruto’s own approach of just moving past it is idealistic. RegardingNaruto’s overall sense of optimism, though, Kishimoto says thatshōnen manga have a responsibility to safeguard the hopeful idealismat the core of the series:
This manga talks a lot about not repeating the errors of the past. And to be completely honest, overcoming traumatic experiences like Naruto does seem a bit idealist and naive to me. Even so, this kind of utopic idealism has to be written and defended in shōnen manga. Shōnen manga must carry hope, above all.
These two quotations, put up against each other, show a fatal accident inNaruto’s storytelling. Kishimoto, in his good intentions, has erected a structure with an unresolvable tension at its core. On one hand, he wants the shinobi system (and characters like Naruto who uphold it) to champion a certain kind of idealism for shōnen readers. On the other hand, his desire to writevillains like Madara with realistic backstoriesshows the flaws and apparent gap between those ideals and their material consequences.
Sasori Exemplifies The Tension In Kishimoto’s Storytelling
Few characters inNarutoexemplify this contradiction better than Sasori. Sasori was an orphan whose parents were killed by the White Fang of the Hidden Leaf, Sasumo, equally well-known as the father of Kakashi. The casualties happened when Konoha was at war with the Hidden Sand village. It goes without saying, but war is war. Konoha’s not at fault for being at war, necessarily. However, the broader failure of the shinobi system to bring peace is ultimately what’s at fault.
Sasori is, indeed, a deeply empathetic villain. With the death of his parents, he was taken in by his grandmother, who taught him puppetry. An apparent prodigy, Sasori becomes an incredible puppet-master, and eventually even creates puppets of his parents to fill the gap they left behind. However, after realizing their inability to replace parental affection, he starts to become upset and experiment with the concept of immortality via puppetry.
“I Can’t Solve This”: Naruto’s Most Controversial Decision Was So Hard, It Made the Author Lose Sleep
Naruto’s Pain dilemma was so tough that creator and author Masashi Kishimoto lost no small amount of sleep and suffered no shortage of anxiety.
Much likehis Akatsuki partner Deidara, he saw his fledgling work as an art, aiming for immortal representation of its subjects. The puppet’s mute body also acts as a kind of psychological displacement for the traumatic vacancy left by his parents whose affections could no longer be spoken.Factors like these make black-and-white moral evaluation of his activities harder. Even as his skills in puppetry jutsu led him to become notorious, earning him the moniker “Sasori of the Red Sands” for the blood of his enemies coating the sands, he’s never concretely evil.
On the contrary, Sasori shows an inherent problem in Kishimoto’s approach to storytelling. While wishing to emphasize the inherent value of Konoha and the shinobi order, Kishimoto’s desire to have empathetic villains leads to characters like Sasori who interrupt his idealism. Sasori is a particularly interesting case because he’s the product of pure accident. Unlike, say, Sasuke or the Amegakure orphans, Sasori’s character development isn’t an indictment of Konoha’s policies per se, but the general inability of the shinobi order to bring meaningful peace toNaruto’s world.
Naruto
Naruto is a franchise spawned from the manga series penned by Masashi Kishimoto that began in 1999. Generating several tv series, games, movies, and more, Naruto follows the exploits of a young outcast ninja harboring the spirit of a demon fox who seeks to become the Hokage, the leader of his ninja village, to break the stigma against him. Upon the conclusion of the initial series, Naruto expanded into Boruto, following many series protagonists' children and returning faces.
