it is an au story, with ooc characters, after all.

 

Right. And that's why we should drop this pointless discussion.

 

This is a great story.
When it was first started, I just assumed it was going to be horrible, because Naruto-with-special-chakra is such a red flag in a story.
I was wrong this time.

Good characterization, nice hooks that keep you engaged and interesting, not confusing fight scenes.
Quite well rounded and therefore 5/5 from me.

Only problem for me: the ninjas seem slightly too kill-happy for the tone of the story. It's mostly relatively light-hearted, but a lot of corpses seem to pile up at the feet of Team 7.

 

I know why indoctrinated teenagers might not question the setting.

This is more about me as a reader. If you don't justify the killing with self-defense or have the enemy cross the moral event horizon first, I will care less about the main characters. I can't really cheer for a Dexter-like character. Killing a 'normal guy' from the other side should be more of a tragedy. (See Haku in canon for instance.)

I don't really want this to become "The fun adventures of Naruto the mercenary, who kills people for a living".
Obviously it isn't that bad yet (although the murder of the cultists was pretty bad), but I fear the story going more into that direction.

There are stories with that darker tone to it and I enjoy some of them, but I want this story to be more in the direction of Adventure/Friendship instead.

 

That's a pretty big plus for me actually, I mean ninja are meant to be assassins, they are meant to kill people. Whilst in Naruto the ninja tend to be on the loud, flashy and not-very-silent-assassiney side of things, any setting where people chuck around sharp things, mini natural disasters and various other things that blows stuff up should probably have a significant amount of death in there.

 

^ Yup. This.
Menace has been doing an awesome job so far in any of the metrics that one might use to objectively judge a story. If the story ain't (or ceases to be) your cup of tea...move along.

 

I didn't intend to come across as demanding.

Obviously Menace can take this story into any direction he likes.

It's just that I will stop to care about characters that I see as immoral. I wasn't sure whether or not that effect was intended, but I saw the murder of those cultists as pretty evil. If it wasn't intended to come across as such, it maybe should have been justified more. Show them doing some human sacrifices or something like that.

If you have a different view, that's fine too. This was only my reaction.

 

Why are you holding the characters to such high moral standards?

As far as in-universe morality goes, Naruto is pretty high up on the moral standards which should be the metric you go by - not modern day standards that clearly don't fit.

 

Naruto and co are all shinobi and must do any mission they receive - even murdering children. This is their ultimate sacrifice for Konoha. Just look at Itachi in canon.

 

You do know they are paid killers right?

 

They are ninjas in a shõnen manga. That's not the same thing.
Pirates search for treasure in mangas. (One Piece)
Ninjas protect people in mangas. (Naruto)

Obviously you can take the basic setup in a far more serious direction in fanfiction and I'm fine with that. But that changes the tone of the story for me. The original has a lot of lighthearted fun. (At least before the current clusterfuck.)

If you treat the setup more seriously, but keep the lighthearted fun and friendship themes at the same time, I experience value dissonance.

So for me it's either dark drama/tragedy with paid killers, or a fun adventure about friendship with 'ninjas' who play the part of police with magical combat powers.


Still, Menace can take the story into any direction he likes. This has become slightly off-topic by now.

 

Ninjas also massacre their own family, mentally torture their little siblings, and go around killing people just to maintain their cover. And that's just Itachi.

Danzou spent his life brainwashing child soldiers and taking utterly ruthless measures to safeguard his village.

Minato slaughtered hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men without any hesitation.

Orochimaru has conducted heinous experiments on children for all sorts of nefarious reasons. He's also a parasite obsessed with immortality, and a traitor.

Basically, even in canon, Naruto is full of rather unsavoury characters, who do a whole lot more than just 'protect people'. And that doesn't just apply to villains. Minato and Itachi were both 'good guys'.