Ninja dying out is retarded though. All it takes is one monster, and there will always be people pursuing that kind of power. It's a bit like nuclear weapons - now that it is known to be possible, the genie can't be put back in the bottle.

 

I personally liked the idea of the collapse of the entire shinobi system for there to be even the possibility of peace. It was possible as the Juubi came into being because it wanted to take back the chakra that was stolen from it.
In short the ten-tails wins, is reconverted into a tree and humanity loses its ability to use chakra. Shinobi system collapses and boom we have a chance for peace.

 

I thought it was mentioned in canon that everyone ninja, animals, and civilians alike had integrated with chakra over many generations and that if they lost it they would die.
So chakra returning to the tree means extinction of all life.

 

Was it now? I don't remember it. But that wasn't my point anyway. I was just suggesting one of the ways it could have gone that wouldn't feel like a cop-out. Hell Naruto could have made the decision of returning the chakra and thereby fulfilling his role as the 'child of prophecy' and bringing peace to the world.
All he did in canon was being dumb-muscle and fight a megalomaniac and then a goddess.

 

Summary till now:

1). That whole storing-jutsu-for-later is a retarded concept that was, well, retarded even years before canon introduced it.

2). Peace is a lie. There is only pass- wait what, anyways, basic point is that the peace that Naruto's generation have brought is a fickle one i.e. it not lasting forever, but barely surviving for a generation or two at max.

3). Boruto is a bitchy kid.

4). Hinata had a mastectomy, and all females are in risk of doing so. Except Tsunade, that won't happen.

Up for debate:

1). Did Hashirama do better than Naruto in regards to the fact that he changed the Warring Clan's Period to a Village per Country system.

2). Should Naruto have given chakra back to the Juubi, finally achieving true peace?

3). Argument to No.2 is that it would have killed all life as chakra has been integrated into life over millenia.

Stay tuned for more.

 

I maintain that Hashirama did worse, though it's no fault of his that the love of his life - sorry, his rival - was fifty shades of batshit. He's largely responsible for the jinchuuriki system and a good deal of the bijuu's hatred, his actions set the stage for world-level conflict, and he didn't listen to Tobirama enough (he really, really should've killed Madara on that battlefield). I think a better way of putting it is that he created worse.

And yes, I consider it a serious mark against him that there have been three world wars in the past half century or so. The scale of conflict is completely different. Look at world history; there was probably always a war going on somewhere up until the late 19th/early 20th century, but you can't compare that to World War I and II. Not to mention the Senju and Uchiha in particular were always at war because of their thousand-year grudge match; I highly doubt every single other clan even in the Fire Country dragged themselves into their shit.

Also about the age of war: it's not just about literal traditional on the battlefield war, he wanted a world where children took age-appropriate missions. Yet even in the village he left behind there are no checks to prevent kids from being thrust into the ninja world too quickly (I'm being exceedingly generous here and allowing 12 as a reasonable age for a genin). They pit kids against each other to the death for...ah...exam purposes? Not to mention the ideology of shinobi as tools never went away, for all the will of fire was worth.

I dunno. It's hard to put in words: he effected a humongous amount of change, yes, but somehow he managed to leave an incredibly vicious world as his legacy. He didn't actually change any hearts. (You could argue that Naruto didn't either, but it's clear the manga wants us to believe he did)

Point 3 is accurate as far as I know. Extracting chakra or even sufficient messing with the chakra network kills, as chakra exhaustion and jinchuuriki extraction show. Kaguya's Shin: Jukai Kotan circumvents this by using her, well, body as life support, but what sort of life is that? I for one don't want to be a White Zetsu for eternity.

And giving chakra back would not in fact create peace. I mean, we've managed to fuck ourselves in the ass enough without a trace of magical ninja ability. The series itself alludes to that fact: Kaguya didn't create war, she came to a world that was already steeped in war and brought peace for a period.

I have this headcanon that chakra is slowly thinning out though. The average ninja gets less and less powerful, until someday it's considered a great feat to create a lighter-sized flame.

 

A slight modification of the giving back chakra thing. If people were left with just enough chakra to survive as civilians and lacking any ability to use ninjutsu... Well that would work just as well.
Granted giving chakra back won't ensure peace. People will find new ways to kill each other. But taking it away would certainly be a start. It would definitely give the world some much needed breathing room.
Chakra was meant to bring peace to the world and it did... For a while, due to the teachings of the Sage of the Six Paths. But overtime it became a weapon of war and that's why it needs to be taken out of the equation.

 

The analogy doesn't really hold water. Not only was the creation of the village system not equivalent to the increased ability to kill on an industrial scale that made WW1 and WW2 so devastating, but even if you do argue it increased the lethality of ninja you're not supposed to be comparing "war in some places" to "world war". It was "war everywhere basically all the time" to "world war".

The jinchuuriki...so what? Not a noteworthy negative, nevermind that it should be a step down compared to the rampages of unrestrained Bijuu.

Yeah. They get till 12, and even then don't get dumped straight into the deep end. There is a mission ranking system, no? On the other hand, they used to get till, what, six? And were probably split between work and conflict? Concrete change.

Nor is the Chunin Exam some particularly egregious thing: consider how low the agerage overall casualty rates must have been, and that most competitors were older.

Oh, he left behind a very vicious system - but he started with one that was even MORE vicious.

Naruto didn't create anything less vicious than what he started with, which is really the most disappointing thing. He was just personally a deterrant against force.

 

She's now a proud breast cancer survivor.

 

The Hashirama discussion reminds me of the 'eye for an eye' system. Today it's seen as unnecessarily vicious we are told it 'makes the whole world blind', which, fair enough, but when it was introduced, the Hammurabic Code was an improvement on the previous system which just involved constantly escalating cycles of violence and revenge.

Yes, the Villages were involved in nasty shit and given things like the Hyuuga kidnapping, the Uchicha massacre and Danzo's and Orochimaru's experiments, it's still a very fucked up system (and that's just in Konoha, never mind the likes of Kiri), but the point is repeatedly made that the Warring Clans Era was far, far worse, especially if you look back at the ages Hashirama, Tobirama, Madara and Izuna were when they first met, by which point they had already lost siblings to war. Hinata's attempted kidnapping was clearly an aberration, while the deaths of children in combat earlier was the natural order of things. I'd say Hashirama is revered for a very good reason.

 

I'm probably totally alone in this regard, but I actually really like Boruto. I like shitty characters with chips on their shoulders who grow past who they were. I like the fact that he's competent, and not a stupid type of mc like Naruto was. I'm going to bet he becomes a missing-nin at some point. Also Hinata is cute. CUTE! I like the short hair style. I'm actually pretty curious as to where this goes and I hope it doesn't go as bad as Korra did.

 

It's the bolded that I severely disagree with. Like I've already said, not everyone was invested in the Senju-Uchiha grudge match.

Blame Kishimoto for his fucked timeline, then. Whether you think it's a retcon or not, the bijuu canonically drew the bulk of their hatred from human exploitation, and humans could not exploit giant chakra monsters until the establishment of the jinchuuriki system. Even the "rampages" are ultimately revealed to be the work of humans instead of the "natural disaster" they were claimed to be in chapter one.

The end of the manga reveals that the bijuu had homes that, from their names, were pretty far out from human civilization. Even Kurama was chilling in his wherever-it-was cave when Madara showed up to monologue about how perfect the Sharingan is. Semi-canonically Isobu retreats to his lake when he reforms outside the clutches of humans, and canonically in all the glimpses into their heads that we get they're bitter because they're sealed. It's pretty telling that Kurama's self-narration of hatred begins with Madara.

You completely misread me. I'm allowing 12 as a reasonable age for graduating from the academy (though even that is ridiculous), and pointing at the fact that literally everyone (major) we know that's not from Naruto's generation was a chuunin at that age. The Sannin's graduation age is given as six, and that was within Hashirama's lifetime/shortly after his death. I won't even touch the clusterfuck that is Itachi and Kakashi. Not to mention that even in the present timeline, they're sent off for promotion at the same 12/13. Totally not throwing off the deep end though.

It doesn't matter that most children would move to incapacitate rather than kill their opponent. He and his brother sat down and designed an exam where "you, child, kill this other child" was ever even an option. Personally I don't have that much of a problem with it, but for someone whose apparent motivation was that he didn't want children to have to die...

And low casualty rates? Gaara eviscerated like half a dozen people all by his lonesome and the examiners didn't bat an eye. It wasn't a special occurrence.

Except the part where he helped fix the conflict between giant chakra nuke monsters and humanity. Except the part where he's (this is more of Kakashi really) actually managed to achieve an inter-village alliance based on goodwill and the power of talking your opponents through their childhood issues after beating them up. Except the part where the individual villages are no longer as isolated, and currently share a great deal. The world currently is totally just as vicious as the one where no village trusted the other and an ancient maniac was manipulating everyone and their dog somehow.

(Also I get the feeling you've read none of the light novels)

Although maybe it's just me, but I actually prefer inaction to half-baked, poorly thought-out action.

 

Tbh you're giving Naruto too little credit. Yeah, he didn't create a new system, but he did change things. In his era, the world was at peace, something completely unprecedented.

Naruto set a precedent. He proved that, through sheer force of will, world peace IS possible. That if the Kage and the villages band together, unity is not only feasible but also prosperous.

No matter what depths of darkness everything falls back into after Naruto is gone, the world now knows peace isn't just a dream.

 

As Tony Stark once said, 'Peace means having a bigger stick than the other guy.'
What Naruto did can't be said to be anything better than Hashirama, who ensured peace during his lifetime due to his power and his ability to control the biju. He literally forced the world to evolve before it all just went to shit anyway.
In the end nothing changed.
Naruto did the same. He was responsible for getting the villages to cooperate during his lifetime. But things went to their usual place as soon as he is out of the picture.

 

...that's crazy. They would have been torn apart by their neighbors in that case, unless those neighbors were in similar circumstances to prevent them from capitalizing on their relative weakness.

Hell, why would they call it the warring states period otherwise? The history of the entire world is the history of Fire Country?

Sure!

Mhm.

Of course, you see the problem in them having their fearsome reputations in the first place, then? They've been sealed less then 75 years, been deployed as functional jinchuuriki for notably less then that.

This out of a history that goes back something like a dozen centuries, if not millennia?

I'm not counting "geniuses", obviously. Kakashi graduated at 6, but Rin and Obito didn't. If you're talking about the system in general you don't start with the outliers.

Hashirama and Tobirama didn't create the Chunnin Exams. Minato apparently did - they only began after the Third War, presumably his attempt at forestalling the Fourth.

Yes, low casualty rates. Over 150 kids signed up for the exam we see - how many died? A dozen, maybe? And that with Gaara, who was at least somewhat unique in his ability to slaughter without retaliation even if we say his willingness to fight with lethal force wasn't at all unique.

Yep, and good on him. That doesn't actually make the world more peaceful though. Jinchuuriki only contributed so much to conflict, Villages could and did fight without them.

That's the entire point, he didn't solve anything - it's the same system as before, with the hope that personal friendships and trade will stop any future disruptive forces. That's...what will stop competing factions from feuding going forward? Friendships and connections and marriages are great, but a casual glance at history should tell you those doesn't actually themselves prevent or resolve conflict.

Hashirama didn't solve anything either, but your dismissal of what he did accomplish is apparently based on making things out to be less bad than they were in the first place.

Maybe. Sure, things are better. For now. It kinda happened beyond Naruto though - beatstick aside, extending a hand to Gaara might actually have been the most impactful single event.

Hell, if you wanna get really crazy you can argue that by providing them the external enemy that made this all possible, Madara (Zetsu? Kaguya? Whateverthefuck.) played a larger role in getting them together, xP

 

Not really. Sure, it was the external enemy that initially united them, but it was the unanimous trust of the new Kage generation in Naruto that kept the peace going and stopped things from escalating again.

The peace that came to be -and last- is Naruto's achievement, pride and joy. Proof that everything he ever preached is true, against all odds.

 

Upon actually reading this first chapter, I can say with certainty that this will be a completely uncontroversial installment in the Naruto franchise. It's going to be really well-loved and universally accepted as canon, just like Dragonball GT.

 

Or they could have pacts and periods of peace since they are not, in fact, fuelled by a thousand year grudge. Contrary to popular opinion, even empire-building states rarely cart around a "rule the entire world" mentality. You do realize that even the historical Sengoku Jidai did not involve military conflict in every single province at all times?

What problem? Nuclear warheads have been around for less than 75 years, and have been used in large-scale conflict exactly twice. I don't see anybody arguing that it's too short a period of time for people to come to fear them.

On the other hand bijuu have been breaking through their seals and attacking their villages on the regular, to the point that Kumogakure had to form a task force dedicated to subduing and resealing Gyuuki. Konoha's relatively stable jinchuuriki system is the exception, not the rule, and even there it's made quite clear that the villagers' hatred of Naruto (and Kurama by proxy) stems from the recent attack, not any longterm grudges against the fox.

It's not about the graduation date, it's the fact that they were chuunin by the age that we've somewhat agreed kids should be taking simple chore missions (i.e. 12). The fact that some of them became chuunin even earlier than that is just icing on the cake.

Minato didn't create the Chuunin Exams, he made it an international collaboration. Prior to that each village held its own exams, like the exams Minato's own team entered for when he was still a jounin and obviously not in a position to make any great policy changes.

I tend to count casualty rates from the people who, you know, actually did the fighting. Just like in real life we count casualties from the boots on the ground and not the conscripts who were never sent to the battlefield.

I pointed to the Gaara incident because it's not treated as anything particularly out of the norm for a chuunin exam. It's accepted that kids are gonna kill kids and oh well, that's the ninja way. Again, Hashirama didn't succeed in changing any hearts.

Where have I dismissed Hashirama's accomplishments? It's like you're not even reading my comments.

And fixing the jinchuuriki problem is fixing one of the issues Hashirama created. Villages have never actually fought without jinchuuriki in reserve, that was the whole point of the first meeting of the five kage. What Naruto has done is essentially create the UN, but judging from your comments you're probably the type who thinks the UN is a useless organization. He didn't resolve conflict because of marriages, he resolved it (temporarily or not) because for perhaps the first time ever truly open discourse exists between ninja societies. You know, the whole "look into each other's guts" thing?

Well obviously things happened beyond Naruto. It's not just his story, it's Sasuke's story as well, and Sakura's, and Kakashi's, and the rest of the Konoha 11, and the Sannin, and the rest of the Kage, and so on. It's absurd how people on the one hand complain that the resolution is unrealistic, and then turn around and expect Naruto to have fixed the world all by his lonesome. Bonds have always been the theme of the manga.

 

Back to the Naruto anime for a moment. It looks like next weeks episode is going to be the "History of Kaguya" filler. Personally I hope that they do a good job on it.

 

The scroll shooters are definitely poorly implemented, which is a shame. I've been putting around the idea for a while of what the Narutoverse could accomplish using techniques performed by sealwork, at a point that fantasy becomes scifi.

Consider: using the Tsuchikage's anti-grav technique to provide lift and artificial gravity. A railgun that teleports the projectile back to the start of the barrel until it gains enough speed, uses the Akimichi technique to increase its mass, and has an onboard Kage Bunshin guidance system to direct its Hiraishin ability to change direction as needed, so you don't even have to point the gun at the enemy. Reverse summoning teleporters, sealing scroll heat sinks, Dust technique nukes, sand/gold dust-based shields (or just that four-corners thing the Sound Four did during the Chuunin exams).

Lots of possibilities, but no. Let's make a gun.