Title: Team 7's Ascension
Author: Eilyfe
Rating: M
Genre: Adventure/Friendship
Chapters: 24
Words: 205,683
Updated: March 8, 2016
Published: December 23, 2013
Status: Complete
Fandom: Naruto
Pairings: None at the moment
Summary: To Kakashi, the Genin of Team 7 were morons of the highest order. Despite that, he still saw the potential in each of them and he'd be damned before he let it go to waste. Features a strong Kakashi, a less forgiving Sandaime, and three terrified Genin.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9948266/1/Team-7-s-Ascension

Despite the author's pension for cheesy chapter titles, this story has really captured my interest. At seven chapters and forty-five thousand words, Eilyfe is just now moving beyond the 'basic training' arc and moving into actual story territory.

The writing is well done and I did not notice any grammatical errors though grammar is not my strong suit.

As for the story itself? The characterizations are good, but not great. It is the bonding between Team 7 and Kakashi's character that really make this story shine.

All in all, I give it a 4/5 with a potential of 5/5 once the author starts taking us into canon territory with this improved Team 7. Please note however that when I say improved, it is in reference to being a team. Certainly the three genin are stronger than they were in canon at the end of chapter seven, but at no point in this story was I worried about them being overpowered. They might be the strongest genin Team in Konoha, but the story makes it very clear that they are all genin.



Eilyfe started the sequel:

Title: Team 7's Ascension: Lines in the Sand
Summary: After rescuing Kakashi, Team Seven thought things would be looking up. But life's never quite that simple, and lines in the sand don't hold for long when a squall comes along. The world rushing over the precipice of sanity, vigorously at that, doesn't make it any easier.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11830798/1/Team-7-s-Ascension-Lines-in-the-Sand


Checked by Minion, March 17, 2016
Added the sequel

 

Summary generic but interesting. Will read and rate.

 

Interesting read. Doesn't get bogged down in the details of the training and take thousands of words to cover a single day. Training set up stage of the fic appears to be done with.

Technical aspect is high. Author understands grammar and how to use it.

It'll be interesting to see how things unfold from the stage it's at, and how character interaction is handled. So far it has been mostly Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura with bits and pieces of Kakashi, and there hasn't been a great deal of direct conversation of any great length.

If you're looking for good Naruto fanfiction, read this fic.

 

I approve of this fic. The author has some very baffling problems with basic things like your-you're and knew-new, but otherwise his writing is surprisingly complex and well-crafted.
The plot itself has so far been good, with the creation of the team. The only reason why I'd be hesitant to rate this story as of yet is that the author may have trouble now that this arc of this plot is over and a new one begins.

3.5/5 for now, rounded to 4/5 for rating purposes. I think the OP should've waited at least one more chapter before putting it up for review though.

 

This is, basically, my opinion on this fic.

Although I must contest that 45k words is more than enough to put something up for review.

Otherwise Rep gets it right.

I do have one significant issue with the story.

Spoiler

Naruto's primary affinity is WATER. WAT. NO. NARUTO USES THE WIND. WTF YO. WTF.

 

This wouldn't be the first Naruto fic liked on this site that did that.

 

With that specific affinity or just with a different affinity? 'Cause I've seen the latter before (always fire) but never the former.

On the fic itself, I'm immediately put off by it essentially opening with Kakashi ripping into Sakura like a hundred other shitty fics. Ones that always over-exaggerate how bad she is. But it sounds like it gets better...

 

"Over-exaggerate?" Lolwut

 

People seem to forget that she's an average genin amongst extraordinary peers, especially Naruto and Sasuke. And weak enough that she'd lose against civilians? Really?

 

This is pretty much my response.

Most of what Kakashi said was true, for a certain definition of "true" (the majority of the issues he raised, for all three of them, do definitely exist but are not nearly as bad, or as detrimental, as he made them out to be), but it also shatters my SOD that he could ever become a successful teacher after that. You do not, cannot really, make your first impression as a teacher by tearing apart your students' sense of self-worth, berate them for their idiocy, then explain that you want absolutely nothing to do with them and would gladly watch them die.

You can't do it, the student-teacher bond withers and dies instantly. None of the three would take the teardown to heart (after all, to their minds, it's just a random stranger attacking them), they'd lose any sense of trust or respect for the man, and there'd be a constant undercurrent of suspicion toward anything he teaches them.

It shatters my suspension of disbelief hard enough to be physically painful to read.

Not to mention the glaring character issues. I had to stop halfway through the first chapter, when Naruto's first response to being torn down by a complete stranger was not "fuck that guy, he's just like practically everyone who's ever spoken to me and has no idea what he's talking about". Instead, Naruto gives up immediately and folds, something he's almost fundamentally incapable of in canon.

I'd have been able to deal with the latter problem easily enough, it's not like there's many Naruto fics that actually manage to get the character right (as sad as that is), but combined with the first one, I just couldn't keep going.

I'm not gonna rate, as I honestly didn't read far enough to feel I am justified in doing so, but if I had to rate what I'd read, I'd give it a 2/5. The technical skill is moderately good, even if the prose is kinda boring, but that's about all the good I can say about it.

 

Pretty sure Kakashi was talking about Taijutsu specifically. Can you Seriously imagine an Academy Sakura taking on a full grown Man Without jutsu?

 

Well, yeah. Even ninjas-in-training are physically superior to civilians. She may be average at taijutsu but I'd still expect her to have little trouble against most non-ninjas.

 

Well we disagree on that.

 

Well I read chapter 1 and I pretty much agree with Agayek so far. I've read a lot of fics that aimed to put team 7 in whatever the author thought was a training from hell right from the beginning. In fact there is a fairly long fic(can't recall the name) with the same premise: a vastly ooc Kakashi tears into the hopes and dreams of the trio and trains them so rigorously that he almost kills them on his six month program.
I also felt like Naruto would not take Kakashi's "criticism" without fighting back. Sasuke calling Kakashi an "eye thief"? I get that this is an au but come on.

Will read more of it later.

 

You're probably talking about The Best Laid Plans by arun2110.

I'm going to buck the trend and say I actually like this kind of story, ones where the Jonin establishes early on the vast difference in ability and training between himself/herself and the fresh Genin, motivates them with some tough love (emphasis on the 'tough'), and trains them into the ground. Nugar's Team Lie stories are more of this ilk. Pretty much all Anko-sensei stories follow this script as well.

These kids are being turned into killers for hire and have literally no choice but to do what their Jonin requires of them. And being disabused of delusions is pretty much a standard for such asymmetrical mentor-apprentice relationships in a field where one must be exceptional to survive. (I still do it myself as a mentor to establish expectations among my students and postdocs and my thesis advisor was pretty much the master of crushing the egos of whatever special snowflakes were unfortunate enough to cross his path.) Yeah, it sucks when you go through it, but one cannot deny that those who survive are better for it. And in a ninja village, survival is a pretty important thing.

The quality of writing is decent for the Naruto fandom (admittedly not the highest high bar) and I was less put off by the suiton affinity than some--tweaking Naruto's affinities is like putting Harry into another Hogwarts house. It's a bit of a tweak, but nothing so huge. That Naruto doesn't use shadow clones is a much bigger tweak.

My beef with putting this up for review is that we just haven't seen much by way of conflict. We've essentially been on a long training montage and nothing else. The fun--and the ability to determine whether this is story is going to be good or meh--won't start until Team Seven actually does something, interacts with another team or two, rocks the Chunin exam, starts to take on some of the Big Bads the story revolves around, something besides getting beat down by Kakashi.

In the end, training is just there to justify whatever cool shit is going to happen later on and to set the table with the characters. But until they actually do something, it's basically the same thing we've seen in a thousand other stories: hard training to a Rocky theme. The Best Laid Plans works because the training then justifies a badass Team Seven later on and lets us suspend disbelief later as they completely and totally kick ass.

3/5 for now with the possibility of going higher or lower depending on how the story pans out. It's too early to tell, unfortunately.

 

Wrong. 1000% wrong.

First, at no point does Kakashi say that he'd gladly watch them die.

As for the rest...this is exactly what the do in the military.

They systematically tear you down from day one.. and then build you back up. Drill Sergeants will get in your face and call you the most vile, worthless pukes to ever walk the face of the planet, the most pathetic disgraces to ever bear the name 'soldier'. The will push you and push you until you shout and scream (and cry) from the pain of the stress on your muscles and your psyche.

Then they'll do it again. And again. until you are so used to the pressure and stress that you can survive in it, that you can function under the mental and emotional weight of the harsh living conditions and realities they force you to deal with day in and day out.

Then they build you back up. They turn that weak, pathetic, worthless, arrogant, soft civilian into a strong, dependable, disciplined soldier.

By the end of Basic Training you worship the ground those men walk on. You respect them for their leadership, for sticking with you when you were weak, and for pushing you through the crucible that has strengthened you.

Oh, sure, some fail out, some don't make it. But those are the weak, or the unfortunate. The strong? Those destined to be able to function and act during the rigors of combat, of life and death experiences?

They struggle, they fight, they suffer, but they persevere.

Take your blanket-hugging, gold-star-giving, carebear psychobabble and apply it somewhere else. Our current school system is a great example of that sort of thinking. 'Oh, coddle the poor dears, that will fix alllll their problems.' And then you end up with a bunch of spoilt brats who expect the world to be nice and forgiving and fair to them.

In civilian life, that's fine. You probably won't die or get someone else killed (or horribly maimed for life) because you're a spoilt brat. But in combat the lives of you and your entire squad (or more, depending on your role) can depend on how well you can function under pressure and the harsh, terrible realities of life-and-death combat. Fuck up and you're likely to end up either with a brand new shiny gravestone, or standing in front of the brand new shiny gravestone of someone who was depending on you.

Kakashi acts like a leader of those whom he must lead into life and death situations that simply are not ready and are pathetic in their current state compared to what they need to be.

He does it to Sasuke and Naruto too. He's harsh to all of them, not just Sakura. So that trope/cliche is averted.

 

WalkingDisaster, I think the issue is that although ninja in Naruto are a military unit, they are closer to the mythology of Asian martial and philosophical schooling. Drill Sergeants definitely aren't Samurai. Students of the blade are disciplined from an early age and don't need the radical psychological rigors of a drill sergeant, or if they do, the instructor teaches them through constant hardwork and philosophical puzzle, it's a much longer process than "boot camp". The skills you need to be a ninja or samurai differ vastly from the modern warrior, you can't "boot camp" ninja, ninja training is a lifelong process where you aren't even "proficient" at it until several years of study and practice.

Of course, in Naruto, ninja are inexplicably underage minors with very little discpline or wisdom beat into them. There's an ineffectual mass education system for ninja and then they get thrown into the reality of combat. I can see a western author embracing the idea of a drill sergeant, but you have to admit the mythology I describe above is something that is less jarring for a Naruto story and maybe more what people expect from fanction.

 

He doesn't say it directly, but it's pretty strongly implied by his general attitude, and it's not helped along any by him directly stating:

No. Just... no. At all of this. You've completely missed the entire point of what I was saying.

In training, he absolutely can and should tear them apart to the most base level and build them up. Taking an approach very similar to this is pretty much exactly what I would expect, and it's the kind of thing Naruto, at the very least, really needs to become a serious ninja. The Wave mission kinda-sorta served the role of that in canon.

The problem is not that he brought up those points and hammered them home. The problem is both a) how he did it, and b) when he did it.

Kakashi is not a drill instructor, not in the sense you're thinking of. He's not going to be molding them for 6-8 weeks before they ship off to their own units. That's what the Academy is (supposed to be) for. He is their unit. This is roughly analogous to the CO of your new squad, on your very first day after boot camp, taking a dump in your breakfast and telling you that, if he didn't have direct orders to the contrary, he'd see you drummed out of the service.

You said it yourself, you need to be able to rely on every member of your squad or you're going to come back in a box. But you cannot build unit cohesion and trust with an approach like Kakashi's taking. You can't depend on someone who's explicitly said that the only reason they tolerate your presence is because they are forced to.

While they are actively training, I would fully expect Kakashi to point out every single flaw they have, to go through and beat their own inadequacies and failures into their heads by whatever means necessary. When he does that as his introduction, when forming the only first impression he will ever be able to make on them, is not the time to do that though. Come across as cold, sure, as doubtful of their abilities, sure, but actively antagonistic?

That's just retarded.

Edit: Also, a good portion of what Chime said.

 

Sure Kakashi was hard on them, but it worked for what he was going for. It's pointed out in the story that Kakashi knows they may never see him as any thing other than a demonic asshole who tortured them while they were genin, but he doesn't care. As long as they become Legendary Kakashi doesn't give two fucks. Sure he would like if they accepted him into what he forged them into, and there are hints that they will going from the last chapter, but so long as they develop into a team at the same status as the Sanin he will be content.

As for the other parts of the story I rather enjoyed the training montage, which is a first. Having Naruto learn politics is something I've never seen this early in a fic, and never in an original way. Most fics just have him do paperwork with the Hokage and make a decision to push the plot along. Plus I rather enjoy suiton as an affinity for Naruto, because the Second Hokage is a personal favorite of mine.

Sasuke slowly opening up to them was also pretty well written. He gradually starts to notice that they're not useless and that causes him to let his guard down. Sure some parts were a little cheesy but a cheesy Sasuke is ok in small doses to make him a little more human. His change from the beginning til the current part is one of the better characterizations I've seen of his character. Plus Madara armor for the win, cause shocking the Third is pretty funny.

Sakura in this fic is my favorite version of her by far in the Naruto fandom. The Civilian Council parents cliche was nicely played in my opinion. Her father has power, and probably made a fuss at how she was treated for reputation, but he really doesn't care about her. He lost his wife and parents to shinobi so Sakura wanted to be one killed her in his eyes as well. Of course this also gives Sakura a goal besides the normal wanting to be Sasuke's wife. A pretty original goal compared to most of the fics she's in. Genjutsu is pretty cliche for Sakura's in fics but what the hell, at least it's not just instantly becoming Tsunade's apprentice and then left at that.

I give it a 4/5, with an extra .5 for having a competent Third Hokage, which never seems to happen in fics anymore.

 

The problem is that it worked solely because the author decided 'I'm going to have Kakashi do this, and this is going to be their response'. He didn't write the sequence and then think how Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura would actually respond if they were written in character. And if you're willing to overlook that - which depressingly is nearly a requirement for reading anything on FF.net - then fair enough, but for me it's just too much.