If even half of the above is true ... holy shit.

 

That entire post killed my urge to read that fic

 

Spoiler tags exist for a reason.

 

To be frank my post probably paints a worse picture. But it is all that in a nutshell. The very concept of the fic is something I avoid and most people here find borderline offensive. So imagine my surprise when it came so recommended.

 

I know that, and I would have read it anyway but the list of achievements from the OC killed it.

Edit

Also how do you spoiler tag things

 

[ spoiler]insertspoilerhere[/spoiler]

 

Spoiler

foo bar baz quz[/spoiler]

 

100% behind you there. I was rather pissed, and didn't bother with Clarity for a while. That said, yes, it's finally back to what I want to see. There could definitely be a bunch of trimming...but I'd rather she wrote too much than too little, given what happened.

Probably.

Nope. Most is horribly out of context, quite a bit is wrong. In order:

Spoiler

Hiraishin: Yes, eventually. Cribbed from Minato's notes, not through some genius on her own - and she still isn't unbeatable. Yellow Flash she is not. Konan slaps the shit out of her even after she gets it. I'll bring this up later in the "is she S rank section", because she isn't.

Jounin at 15: Yes, after...what, 6-7 years as a ninja?

Influence: No. She's certainly closer to Kakashi and Yamato than Naruto, but that's because she works with them so much more than he does. Kakashi trained her since she was a kid, and she still saw work with that team while Naruto was off with Jiraiya. Not on the sand siblings either. Naruto still had his heart to heart with Gaara, and Gaara's interest in her is framed around the difference in relationship between Naruto and his sister vs him and his siblings. She gets along with Temari, sure, but...nothing comes of that? They had lunch. Were on a mission together.

...influence on Tsunade? Hell no. Tsunade flat out distrusts her at first - she recognizes Aiko's loyalty is to Naruto and she doesn't give too much of a fuck about Konoha, and iirc she draws a comparison between her extremely shallow loyalty and Orochimaru's. She gets over it, and sees some of herself in that drive for a younger sibling - but Naruto definitely comes first in Tsunade's eyes. He's still the one she came back for. She basically only gives a fuck about Aiko in the sense that Naruto gives a fuck about Aiko...and later because Aiko is a useful resource.

Sealing the Three-Tails: Nope. Jiraiya designs the seal, she applies it- and still almost fucks up and kills herself/asplodes the area. There were reasons for that too - part of which was that they wanted to make her seem a lot more badass than she was.

Defeats Yugito - Yes. It was a fun fight

Gains an S Rank - No. Nope. NOPE. You've missed the entire point of an arc and something that came up several times after that. She isn't an S rank - she's barely an A for a long while. And that's a problem, because she has a couple of excellent skills but in general is not at the level a combatant of that stature should be. Which is a problem, since between her and Naruto they have attracted the attention of those sort of combatants. Any actual S rank would tear her apart...and they do. She's really good in specific situations, and Hiraishin eventually helps a lot, but she's still an A rank ninja. Deidara demolishes her in like half a second despite not being taijutsu focused at all, that entire gambit was just to distract him while Gaara closed. Konan beats the shit out of her too after Aiko tries taking her 2v1 (Temari was there too, and gets equally pwned). Iirc, even Yamato pretty regularly kicked her ass in training.

She died fighting Pain. She just exploded herself when she did it, taking a path with her...he really surrendered because it turns out Tsunade, Jiraiya, and an ailing Sandaime fighting him together ain't nothing to fuck with, and combined with her taking a body (again, only after dying - and she was fighting it with anko and a jounin) they actually cause significant damage. She doesn't have Naruto's talk no Jutsu powers.

Even taking into account what was true from that list - she doesn't really come off as overpowered. Sure, we've seen her own a bunch of mooks, but that's just it. They were mooks. Any MC could have taken them. She's only overpowered in the sense that she's powerful enough to remain relevant, and everyone even vaguely relevant is considerably above mook level.

 

Well... it's worse than that.

Spoiler

There's more, she was in root - effectively became in charge of root too. I believe she killed Danzo herself. She improves the Hiraishin so that she can effectively teleport anywhere she wants at any time. She also has a good relationship with another kage (making three), and various other people.

Huh, when you put it like that it sounds OP. I guess it happened so gradually and reasonably that I didn't really notice. Plus, none of those are abused before it ended dramatically - probably, because it ended.

HOLY CRAP, I nearly forgot the biggest thing near the end! She had exploding seals (that they didn't know about) on all kinds of people that she could trigger at any time that she wanted no matter where she was (a variation on her Hiraishin) including at least two kage! O.O

But yeah that is quite an achievement list, but don't forget it happens over 700k words. Still I don't think she was OP. Some of the reasons why I think this:

Spoiler

Earlier on she gets kidnapped by Akatsuki because a fight against another one didn't go so well. She loses the fight against Konan badly. There are other examples where she barely wins. Then at the end of the story, she still dies to one of the paths of pain. There are real consequences to her. For example Sakura dying (I think it was her fault) affected her badly. Her time in root had quite negative long-term consequences.

Edit: I agree with VanRopen's more detailed and contextual take on that list of achievements which shows why I never felt she was OP when I was reading the story. "She's only overpowered in the sense that she's just powerful enough to remain relevant" is what it felt like.

 

You helped put some context, but didn't really save anything. The majority of what he said is still true.

My biggest NOPE (besides the SI) is the Hiraishin. Only Naruto is allowed to have it in my eyes, and even then it is not a good idea, because it's such a hilariously overpowered skill that needs to be ridiculously nerfed to keep the character balanced.


I mean, I was never going to read that story. It's come up several times, and every time it does I cringe at the self-insert (and arguably Sue) and renew my vow to stay the fuck away from it but this time, as I said, holy shit.

 

Hah, forgot about those - probably because:

Spoiler

They were gone after Obito did his thing, right? The whole "Kamui snapping the connections" bit?

She isn't in charge of ROOT either iirc. Didnt Sai try to convince her too but she thought that was a terrible idea, and they've since gone to ground or reported to Tsunade?

I don't think she fought Danzo either. Didn't Tsunade actually get him? With poisoned tea? She just executed him in his cell, after he had his Sharingarm removed.

But yeah, definitely a reason for what happened at the end:

Spoiler

The author realized she needed those skills, but not until the war picked up. Of course, now she's presumably getting them back...so I actually am rather curious how she's gonna go from here.

 

I'm trying to understand why you are against this.

I've only watched Naruto up to the first season of the war breaking out (and Naruto joining the middle of it). But does Naruto learn Hiraishin? I find it difficult to imagine since it would be a complex technique and he is in the middle of actively fighting. As far as I know the story ends shortly after this arc. So the only other time is the intervening time to the epilogue. If it happens here I don't know why you would be so attached to only Naruto having it. It's very much a "tell not show" and barely relevant to anything.

Besides, in this story Aiko is legitimately Minato's daughter. Naruto gets the Kyuubi and Rasengan, and Aiko gets his other famous technique sounds fair to me. Otherwise, you're really biased against one of his children. Reminds me of the neglected brother trope used in HP fanfic

 

According to the manga the 2nd Hokage created Hiriashin 4th Hokage perfected it. Naruto never learns it and to be quite frank I think learning the Hiraishin is like the ultimate test to prove a prodigy. Naruto never learned the techninque and is not a prodigy.

 

Ah, it's been a while since I've read the story. You're right.

Spoiler

She may not have killed kill Danzo. I was confused in that she did kill someone at his house, but I don't remember who other than his bodyguards?

In terms of being in "effectively" charge of root I meant she could have taken control (because they thought she was the next designated commander, and multiple root members tried to contact her), but you're right she rejected it.

If I remember correctly some of the tags remained - I think only the old ones, so yeah the exploding ones are gone.

At this point, I'm just wondering if she'll get back her memories of being from another world. Although it won't have much plot relevance, it should break her connection to Obito which I never cared about in Clarity. (It was just horrible watching Aiko being brainwashed.)

 

*shrug* Fair enough. The Hiraishin is definitely OP, and compensating by having the weakness being the user will only last for so long. It's why I'm curious to see where she goes from here, since she's done a pretty good job of never making things too easy.

SI's are certainly tough to swallow, I've only ever seen three that weren't utter crap (not counting a couple one-shots). I'd argue the Sue point though - I don't think she ever takes the center stage in the greater narrative more than Naruto does, or anything like that. The story is just primarily from her perspective, so naturally we are following her and not Naruto.

 

Look, the difference between a Sue and a Main Character is that the Sue doesn't have any flaws. Things go the Sue's way simply because she's the Sue. That doesn't happen in this story. Everything Aiko has can be reasonably explained by the circumstances that led up to it and she has to struggle to achieve these things. Things don't go her way all the time and, while she does have some powerful jutsu, it's offset by the fact that she's fighting people who are way above her level.

Pretty much everyone in Akatsuki can and does wreck her shit whenever she goes up against them, and I wouldn't be too worried about her taking down Jinchuuriki. She has a few tricks that basically make her their worst enemy. It's one of the things that artificially inflates peoples' opinions of her abilities to S-Rank.

So really, what I'm trying to say is that despite how bad it sounds when you list all of her achievements like that, they all make sense in the context of the story. She's powerful, yes, but we see her built up from child to jounin in a believable and interesting manner. None of her achievements have come from a vacuum and have relied upon the connections she's made with other characters to make them possible.

It's a good story, SI notwithstanding, and you're missing out if you skip it based solely on a couple of aspects.

 

It makes sense that Naruto never learned it. He was never the academic type and that is exactly what sealing seems to be.

Vapors:

Spoiler

It also makes sense that Aiko did learn the Hiraishin because she had a solid education from her old world and could pass as being a prodigy in an academic area like sealing. Her approach to understanding, experimenting and improving it was based on the knowledge of the scientific method, knowledge of her world and her own education. Meh, a story-innovation that such things would help but it was reasonable in the story.

 

Spoiler

I think it was a partner, or something? Someone she worked with, who she stabbed in the back while getting clear. Don't remember exactly, it wasn't super important.

Mhm, I think it was old tags that were carved into stuff that survived - all the ones made of chakra snapped. Since she inlaid the explosive portions in chakra, they broke too.

Seriously, fucking Obito. I've hated this entire memory premise, even if I get why the author did it and the fact it was executed pretty well for what it was. Not sure about getting the SI memories back, as I guess that's another way to keep her from getting out of control...but even with just her memories as Aiko, I want to see her kick the shit out of him. He tried to get her to murder her fucking brother after all.

 

Meh, for all that's being said about SI being a drawback, I actually kind of like some fics because they're SI. For example:

(This is also a rec for Quality Naruto Fics.)

This story has been mentioned like once, in passing, on DLP but is one of the best SI's I've seen. Rather than being a wish fullfilment fic, or just a fic about an interesting OC, it manages to keep some focus on the differences caused by being reincarnated into a child's body in a different reality. So it actually takes what is, to me, an interesting concept - being reborn into a fictional world - and looks into it, making the story better by being SI.

And hell, here's one that takes the "being reborn in another world" concept and makes it the strongest part of the fic:

The best part of this fic is reading about the culture, and consequent culture clash, created by the reincarnation. The plot itself has been merely ok, but I've enjoyed the world building that stemmed directly from being a SI story.

(Oh, and I'd probably have posted this in Almost Recommended, but I guess that's what this thread is now or something?)

So maybe I'm just weird, but it kind of bugs me when "SI = bad" pops up.

 

I did say that my post paints a worse picture. That being said,

Spoiler

You gotta admit she has had a greater influence on the series than Naruto. Sai is another example I overlooked. But even if I ignore that, Vapors commits the cardinal sin of completely bypassing the Naruto vs Pain fight. That was the high-point of the series. Pain gives up because she commits suicide to save her village?
Come on!
If that isn't proof of her being more important than Naruto in the grand scheme of things I don't know what is.
Using an OC as a main character is fine but not when you start using them to change things about the canon you've come to love.
She may not be a 'true' S-ranker, but she is still placed in the bingo-book as one.
I'm also pretty sure there is a part where she escapes the puppet master when she had no access to her chakra and was tied up.
I skimmed through it so I may be wrong. The author does a good job of showing a gradual progression of skills I'll give you that, but to e it was never about power. The author should have left a few things untouched, that's what I felt at the end of it.
Because if your original character ends up becoming more essential to the original story than the main one, I'm afraid you've created a Sue despite arguments to the contrary.