naruto chapter

[askerian]

I don't want to do a page by page thing with the chapter because the scanlation I read is kind of clunky. (btw www.mangareader.net ) So this will just be impressions and a lot of flailing.



-first chapter in a VERY long while where I got that actual physical reaction where suddenly your chest feels tight and your eyes prickle. OH MY GOD SASUKE. T__T

*TWO PAGES OF FOREHEAD POKE AND BROTHERDEATH FLASHBACKS AND HUGE SASUKE EYES*

"You are Itachi, right??!"
itachi: *IGNORES*
Sasuke: *resorts to susanoo hand to grab itachi*
itachi: *counter-susanoos and keeps running lalala*
THIS is the confirmation he gets! *thwaps itachi*

itachi: can't stop not even for a hi or a hug too busy gotta go bye
sasuke: i don't care about that! (Itachi > war, revenge, etcetera) i have so many things to ask you! (please tell me wtf happened with your own goddamn mouth!)
itachi: nope.
sasuke: *angry bitching about eyes and "when you have the same eyes as me come to me OH HEY I HAVE YOUR EYES NOW SURELY THAT COUNTS RIGHT aaaaaaaaaaaa pay attention to meeeeeeee"*

blahblah i understand you that's why i'm fucking it up SO THERE! oh man it feels half I DID ALL THAT FOR YOU DO YOU LOVE ME YET and half YEAH WELL FUCK YOU SEE HOW I'M FUCKING EVERYTHING UP, THATS WHAT YOU GET FOR LEAVING HURTING ME.

"I should have died! you were supposed to kill me and our parents together! and yet..." "Why was I the only one?! Why was I the only one to survive?!"

oh god survivor's guilt. T____T And he's right, Itachi IS the one who utterly reshaped the person he used to be. Only he messed it up and Sasuke didn't come out as he was planning it. :/ Instead surprise! he's just a giant mess.

and then he flashbacks to tobidara telling him that for itachi his life was more important than the whole village and he asks again "why only me?" "why am I different from Father and Mother?" and oops i must have dust in my eyes. T___T

and then Itachi says:
1) you were a kid, it wasn't your fault and you knew nothing about what was going on (since he doesn't really have much left to make a WORSE impression, the fact that he's not mentioning the "you were MY brother" is kind of implying, i think, that at the time sasuke was the youngest uchiha. a nonpsycho itachi would have a hard time justifying killing toddlers or younger)
2) i didn't do it only for you, I hoped to be judged/punished by an Uchiha as atonement.

I accept that Itachi was badly fucked up by the life he led and the impossible orders he got and how much he must have wanted that, to be judged for his crimes and betrayal, but warping his little brother into fitting the role with all those "HAY HATE ME MORE *mindfuck mindfuck*" wasn't the best way to handle it. DX I'm glad he's acknowledging that he fucked it up and the only thing he managed to accomplish was to make sasuke into a criminal and leave the village.

... And then he goes on about how sasuke is walking the wrong path and that's bad and he should stop. And in one hand that's totally right, and in the other hand i can't decide if itachi is the one who has the most right to say that shit to sasuke, or the very, bottom of the barrel least.

At least Itachi approves of Naruto's courting friendship with Sasuke. >___> and i guess since he kept fucking it up he's being smart by admitting he only makes things worse and maybe it's time someone else tried their hand at it. but hn.

itachi: but anyway i'm dead and so i will stfu because it's the living's business to change things which is why i'm totally running around to get edo tensei shut down and kabutomaru kicked into the ground. because i'm dead and shouldn't interfere anymore. yep.
(okay, maybe he could lie and say this one's just a selfish wish to be returned to his grave already, but i so wouldn't believe it. XD)

sasuke: it's not fair when you were alive you poked my forehead and went not tonightday Sasuke and ran away and now you're dead and same thing! DX Damn it, stop running and stay back and talk to me!
itachi: whoops getting late for all those important things i have to do, better speed up. zzzoooom~

:/ :/ :/ oh god uchiha brothers. why. why. so much prettyangst that could have been avoided with basically one serious talk and a coupla well-placed hugs.


Askerian: http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m00zuyko1R1rqyipko1_500.gif
my heart just broke.
shewhoflies: ♥
shewhoflies: and here I thought it would be sommething sad.
Askerian: it wasn't??? D:
Askerian: HEARTLESS.
Askerian: sasuke is daydreaming about his brother poking him so much he has to poke himself XDDDD
Askerian: okay, summarized like that it's kinda silly.


-Madara's mancrush on Hashirama = oh god. Stop being so obvious, man. Also get off Tsunade's tits for a bit. :/ "OMG YOU ARE A DISGRACE TO THE SENJU FAMILY BECAUSE YOURE NOT A STU LIKE YOUR GRANDFATHER WHO WAS BTW AWESOME, SO IMMA GONNA KILL YOU FOR OFFENDING MY DELICATE SENSIBILITIES. it is in no way because i resent you for being the living proof that he chose to bone someone who wasn't me."

-re: tsunade, that last panel of her was AWESOME? both visually (angle and facial expression were v. pretty) and for the character herself. But oh god manga. Why do u haev to bring up the "i may be a woman (which means I automatically come with a huge disadvantage and should gtfo), but" and drive it home with several references to it.

On one hand I like that Kishimoto, while writing a manga for boys about friendship between boys and brotherhoods between brothers who are in fact both boys, still manage to slip in some girls doing strong/important/relevant things sometimes, AND that he acknowledges the sexism inherent in that world. He's not just going "no, this world is not sexist at all, women just inherently suck at battles/strong willpower/courage/etcetera and that's the way it is, no bigotry here".

On the other hand the clumsy way he handles it really feels like "umm i KNOW it's an issue but I have no idea how to resolve it so I'll... sort of... allude to it from time to time to acknowledge that the issue exists in-universe and then, um, go back to boys being boys and having boy adventures while the girls motivate them from the background. Which IS the theme of this manga and i'm sorry, I don't feel up to tackling this issue I know very little about."

Oh well, at least he MENTIONS it, and in a way that acknowledges it's problematic, not like many other manga out there... Still, I'm a bit wary that we'll see Tsunade give a motivating speech of courage and then Gaara and BlackKage deal the kickassery and OldManKage does the self-sacrifice finishing move. And Tsunade will. Heal them. And rant. And Mei will watch from the background and sometimes provide a jutsu that leaves her wiping white stuff from her sexy lips sexily. (mei is v. sexy.)


but anyway. kickass tsunade picture was nice, and OMG SASUKE BREAK MY HEART SOME MORE = yesssss ;____;

Comments

[killua]

Ohmygod what even don't make me go back to Naruto but the BROTHERSSSSSS /sobsobsob how many chapters do I even have to catch up on but those two break my heart so much and

also that gif

okay it broke my heart and then I read the rest of your chat and AHAHAHAHA through my tears

[askerian]

I don't know how many chapters! D: but so far it's just like a chapter of brotherness but i doubt sasuke will decide to wander off -- likely he'll puppy-chase itachi until itachi gets himself put back in the ground, so hopefully we'll have some more. unless itachi does something underhanded like teleport out of range. i hope not. ;__; sasuke looks so SANE when he's talking with him, even if it's an enraged/hurting sane! it's not cackling bwahaha. ;__; plz itachi hang around longerrrrr aaaaa.

but anyway it might be better to wait a bit and red em all in one go. Tastes better that way, I think XD the pacing sucks way less.

Sniffle.

[loveandallthat.livejournal.com]

I love your homoerotic thoughts on these scenes.

Pretty sure there wouldn't be enough pages in the world to cover everything I want these two brothers to say to each other, but I am so begging for more right now. Holy crap. I desperately wanted Itachi to just go "okay, I have to go, so here is a giant summary of all my feelings in about 30 seconds." And then some love.

I know for the whole Naruto/Sasuke final fight thing to work out in some sort of happy okay way, Sasuke will have to (last minute, probably) decide that he wants things to be happy okay too, and I wonder if this semi-decent (NOT NEARLY SATISFYING ENOUGH FOR ME) conversation with Itachi is enough to tip scales. Hm hm hm. We're sure getting way too much to think about.

The self-forehead-poke nearly killed me, btw. So THANKS. :D

[garmiet.livejournal.com]

(okay, maybe he could lie and say this one's just a selfish wish to be returned to his grave already, but i so wouldn't believe it. XD)

XDD Sounds like he wants to get rid of Kabutomaru so he can go home and get some sleep.


I didn't really imagine one meeting with Sasuke and Itachi would fix things. Sasuke's fighting every step of the way to be a pain. And trust Itachi to start talking philosophy and metaphors, which can be interpreted differently than he wanted. I love Itachi, but ... honestly; he's kind of a klutz with communicating to Sasuke. 9_9


It was kind of funny, when Sasuke pointed out the literal version of "when you have the same eyes as me". Um, no that's not it, Sasuke.


The only thing about the Madara/Kage interaction that caught my interest was his line: "Weak people are ugly. And weak Senju are even more ugly."

I was like ... wat. How old are we?

[phoenix-melody.livejournal.com]

I still call bull on Itachi. Or rather, I call bull on Kishimoto's justification for Itachi.

I find that a lot of people really just don't get demographics and population age structures. Even with Japan's rapidly aging population, a full 13.3% of citizens currently living and breathing in that country are between birth and 14 years of age.

The Uchiha clan was implied to be enormous. Large enough that they had enough non-full-time ninja members to almost completely singlehandedly serve as the police force for a hidden village of several thousand, if not tens of thousands, civilians and shinobi. Large enough of a force that they posed a credible threat and were in the midst of planning a coup. (You can't tell me that the other clans couldn't have handled them if the Uchiha were few--when the Sharingan was apparently rare, and every Hyuuga has the Byakugan, and there are the Inuzuka, and the Nara, and at least a dozen other confirmed clans and an unknown amount of others.)

Based on current Japanese demographics, and assuming that all of Konoha could be patrolled, around the clock, by a police force totalling fifty people; assuming that every single Uchiha between the ages of 15 and 64 were part of the police force and nothing else (64% of the clan); and assuming that everyone in the entire clan except Sasuke was somehow culpable in the planning of the coup, we still ought to have roughly nine other kids age 14 or under besides Sasuke.

And all of them were somehow conveniently older than Sasuke and in on the coup. Because everyone knows that kids between the ages of eight and fourteen are totally the first people to go to when you want to overthrow your government and might need to keep it a secret.

There is no way that the Uchiha clan numbered under a hundred people. Absolutely no way. (I have over a hundred people on my mom's side of the family that I can name across four generations.) There ought to be dozens of kids under the age of fourteen and a handful of fertile women who were pregnant at the time of the massacre. And unless the Uchiha put a nine-year moratorium on knocking boots, there should be just as many kids in that age group younger than Sasuke than older.

Total bull. Kishimoto is trying to give Itachi a lame excuse when his background worldbuilding completely makes it impossible.

[ellenel13.livejournal.com]

I do believe that the Uchiha clan's plan wasn't to directly attack Konoha, but to leave it weak so that outside forces could invade it and then they could . . . sweep in and take over? IDK It's not exactly explained well. I agree that the numbers don't stand to scrutiny but I was able to shrug it off and suspend my disbelief.

That being said, I never thought that Itachi could have just pulled off the massacre by himself (or even with Tobi's help, they were just two people!)

The only thing that I will give Kishimoto credit for is that he realizes that RL coups are sometimes carried out by ridic low numbers. Maybe the Uchiha clan really was small, Konoha itself had an unusually low crime rate, and they old planned some stealth shit to take over. Or maybe they were delusional and it never would have worked.

I think this is an example of the "writers have no sense of scale" trope. Worst part is, Kishimoto's not even the worst offender. J. K. Rowling's numbers were even worse, lol.

[mezzo-marinaio.livejournal.com]

Because everyone knows that kids between the ages of eight and fourteen are totally the first people to go to when you want to overthrow your government and might need to keep it a secret.

Don't forget how Itachi is painted as a hero for having accepted the elders' delusional vision of a ruthless Pax Konohae - but little kids of about the same age agreeing with their families' decision to rebel against the government apparently deserve only to be mercilessly slaughtered in their sleep.

Herod would be so proud.

Total bull. Kishimoto is trying to give Itachi a lame excuse when his background worldbuilding completely makes it impossible.

Kishimoto's claims ever since he decided to dub Itachi a 'hero' instead of a misguided criminal have gone against both logic and basic human decency so many times I find myself almost desensitized to them.

I mean, first we're supposed to think that Itachi went along with the massacre because he didn't want to see any more people slaughtered in cold blood during a war. But people slaughtered in cold blood during their sleep are a-okay, apparently.

Then we're told that Itachi went against the elders' decision in order to spare his little brother... which means that the elders had told him to kill everyone, down to the very last child. However, this somehow didn't lead him to wonder about the rightness of his own choice or to suspect the elders' motives.

But wait! Apparently he did suspect their motives, because after the death of the Third he came back to Konoha specifically as a warning so that the elders would not try to kill Sasuke! Which of course... contradicts his own stated desire that Sasuke become a hero of the village and live happily without knowing the whole truth. Unless Itachi is okay with him going back to Konoha and then getting murdered in his sleep like all his other clansmen before him?

Then in this very chapter, Itachi claims that one of the reasons he left Sasuke alive is so that he could punish him for 'his crime'... implying that AT THE TIME HE COMMITTED IT, he already knew it was a crime. But he still did it. Because 'he had no other choice' and therefore NO ONE CAN BLAME HIM FOR HIS DECISION (Kishimoto Ipse Dixit).

This is followed by him going all Wise!Mode at Sasuke and saying that "He has to decide the path he wants to walk"... which goes along WONDERFULLY with his little magic crow stunt in the last few chapters. Brainwashing is the new freedom, donchaknow.

Finally, he implies that there's something more about the massacre that he's not telling... and why is he not telling? Because Sasuke has already decided on his own path and so wouldn't listen to him anyway. Yeeeeeeah... how about giving it a chance all the same, instead of giving up before even trying, Mr. Suffering Hero?

In the end, instead of learning from his mistakes and finally trying to be honest with his brother, it seems that his mentality simply progressed from 'I'll leave you totally in the dark about the truth and just manipulate you into living out my wishes' to 'I'll leave you totally in the dark about the truth and just leave Naruto to manipulate you into living out my wishes'.

And this, Kishimoto appears to present as character progression.

Lovely.

[luvsanime02.livejournal.com]

OMG, I love love /love/ reading your response to this chapter. Mine was much more simple.

1. OMG, Sasuke following Itachi, still wanting his approval and love so much my heart breaks ;__;

2. Heh, SasuNaru <3

3. Stop fangirling over Hashirama, Madara, and get on with the battle!!

4. OMG, still on Sasuke, and the way he races after Itachi desperately, and OMGItachistopandfuckingtalktoyourlittlebrotheralready!! ;_____;

[bunnynumber13.livejournal.com]

Pretty much in agreement here. I wasn't exactly as moved as I probably should have been but I blame the fact it was a dodgy translation and I kept being distracted by the awkward wording. I'm feeling bad for both Uchiha brothers here because they are SO bad at emotional communication like WHOA. There were a lot of things that could been done differently and a lot of choices that could have been made instead. Neither is completely innocent nor is either completely guilty. Itachi is doing what he can with the chance he has to do the right thing. Sasuke hopefully will follow a similiar path soon and realize he doesn't have to be a victim of his environment.

It really is amazing how all they need to do is have one heart to heart conversation that might clear a lot of this crap up. XD

I'm whatever on the sexism issue. Once upon a time I used to complain about it but now I'm past the point of caring about it with this manga. If I want me some strong kick-ass females I'll read me some American comic books or anime that concentrates on females-kicking-ass-and-doing-it-well. Besides this manga is sexist when it comes to the men too: apparently they are complete morons when it comes to the matters of the heart. Sakura and Hinata know exactly how they feel when it comes to who they like but Naruto and Sasuke don't seem to have the first clue, nor do many of the other boys seem to either. (The adults of both sexes are the exceptions).

[yuuko-uchiha.livejournal.com]

... And then he goes on about how sasuke is walking the wrong path and that's bad and he should stop. And in one hand that's totally right, and in the other hand i can't decide if itachi is the one who has the most right to say that shit to sasuke, or the very, bottom of the barrel least.
THIS
I was like "y u no stop and talk to your brother?" for 5 minutes dammit! I think Sasuke deserves it, it almost broke my hearts to see those flashbacks, it's been a lot time since Sasuke looked like a kid, I almost saw him moving his arms up and down calling for his brother :(

[questofdreams.livejournal.com]

but warping his little brother into fitting the role with all those "HAY HATE ME MORE *mindfuck mindfuck*" wasn't the best way to handle it

Pretty much the entire reason why, when everyone's going on about Itachi love and HE HAD SUCH A HARD LIFE, I'm like 'yeah, but he mindfucked Sasuke into a mentally and emotionally unstable crazysuke.' Not to say that I don't like Itachi, b/c I do and his character is all kinds of interesting, but I just have a hard time sympathizing with him.

I don't remember the self-forehead-poking-thing o___o But awww... (and lol).

[sara-the-lazy.livejournal.com]

This entry has made the awesome experience of this chapter complete. *flails happily*

[venia.livejournal.com]

Heeh ^__^ Ok, I may not have liked the chapter but your entry, omg. I'm reading it a second time, just because it's made of awesome.

[kohikari.livejournal.com]

bunnynumber13:
I'm feeling bad for both Uchiha brothers here because they are SO bad at emotional communication like WHOA. There were a lot of things that could been done differently and a lot of choices that could have been made instead. 

askerian
:/ :/ :/ oh god uchiha brothers. why. why. so much prettyangst that could have been avoided with basically one serious talk and a coupla well-placed hugs.

Someone needs to write this AR!  Not the "woohoo there are no politickings in Konoha we are at peace~" AU that I've seen around, but an alternate reality where everything else is exactly the same, plotting and all, and the only difference is in how the Uchiha brothers deal with each other.  It could be titled "Wherein Itachi and Sasuke Properly Communicate" (or Why Kohikari Doesn't Title Things).  I would really love to see something like that.

In other news, Asuka ramble/recap posts have been my only window into Naruto canon for about three years now.  It's a bit like hearing news of your ex from an old friend: sometimes heart-warming, sometimes wistful, sometimes reminiscent of exactly why they're an "ex" now.  XD;  Oh well, I'm happy being monogamous with D.Gray~ ♥ 

[askerian]

book_people: XD
book_people: It would be over in, like, four to five chapters


aww hon. ♥

[(Anonymous)]

You aren't the only one who doesn't like the translation; almost every discussion site I visit from tvtropes to somethingawful all really dislike it, and apparently that group is refusing to take on editors who can fix that sort of thing.

[askerian]

uh wow, thanks guys. :/ :/ :/ I understand being a bit miffed because the scanlation was already a lot of effort and now people are complaining it wasn't good enough, but if people have offered their help and they've refused it...

[dragon695.livejournal.com]

Computer Science masters student (grad school) here. I have edited a number of papers for both scientific conferences and journals. I also have taken 5 years of Japanese language studies. I offered my free time and services as merely a spot-check/proofreader to both groups who are doing Naruto post-MangaStream. I was very polite, but the response I received was quite discouraging. Apparently, new groups have extremely thin skins these days and take offense at even the slightest criticism. I suspect that some of the groups are entirely composed of members where English is a second or even third language. This is not to say it couldn't work like that, but when it is patently clear that nobody in the group is even close to being partially fluent in English, the results are not surprising. I really hate the idea of being stuck with Viz translations because, while their English is correct, they heavily edit things they think are "bad" (smoking, drinking, homosexuality, etc) as well as using some of the most absurd idioms. I should probably just start reading the raws directly, but they won't be nice and clean. Or, I could just wait for tankoubon, but that means being weeks behind and no color pages. >_