Title: The Broken Tool
Author: Jonohex
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Romance
Status: Complete
Length: 169,172
Pairings: Haku/OC
Summary: Haku is alive, barely, after the battle at the bridge. With his master, Zabuza, dead and a team of vengeful hunter ninja close on his trail can he hope to last long? Haku X female OC. Please read & review, all comments and advice are appreciated.
Link: FF.net
Sequel: Kirigakure's Shore

Not your typical Naruto-centric fic or even one focused on Konoha ninja at all as this is one of the few stories to use Haku as a main character and the only one I've read with him as the main character.

It's based more on the anime where Haku's less graphic death provides an excuse for his survival. Horribly wounded, he's rescued from his own burial and receives medical treatment that saves his life. This forces him to live without Zabuza who he had obediently served for most of his life with little independence. So he has a rather drastic change in lifestyle as he finds himself living with his rescuer's large, poor family and figuring out what to do with himself now that he has lost his purpose.

Jonohex's Haku has basically become how I envision his character. A history of trained violence tempered by a naturally kind heart, an eloquent speaker with a habit of being melodramatic (to his own regret), a preference for women's fashion and an extraordinary affinity for wind, water and ice.

The story covers two main plot lines. One is a team of Kirigakure's hunter-nin searching for Haku after they discover that he hadn't died with Zabuza, essentially threatening his new life with the sins of his past. The other is a powerful man who invested in the Land of Waves now that it had become a place of interest after Gatou's demise which unfortunately means nothing good for its people.

Naturally, the setting means that there are only a few canon characters i.e. Haku, Tazuna and Inari but it does a decent job of creating its cast of original characters, particularly the mist-ninja. Jutsu and chakra aren't quite as formulaic as usually depicted and are treated more spiritually or mystically, likely since it's old enough that the rules weren't as set in stone.

On the negative side, the romance is as cookie cutter as it gets and the climax drags on for longer than you'd expect. It was like reading a manga where the final battle is covered over several chapters except in written format; not necessarily boring but it does go on and on.

Still, it makes a refreshing change from reading about Naruto (or Team Seven) all the time.

4/5

 

I read this ages ago and it honestly has been too long for me to remember anything about it outside the fact that I did read it and did like it. Now, me not remembering any amazing scenes or moments does say to me that it probably didn't have either (or it might but I generally remember those) but I do recall that this is at least worth checking out.

Can't really rate it, might give it a reread one of these days.

 

I'm not going to actually rate this story because I only read like a third of it before jumping ship, but don't let that deter you because the parts that I read were actually pretty good. Not incredible, but definitely still worth giving a shot if the story premise catches your attention.

My major complaints are:

1) I don't think that the story paces its OC development very well in the beginning. This is really my primary complaint, and in this case the whole is definitely less than the sum of its parts. There are multiple different "factions" in the story with their own interests, and they all come with their own band of OCs. I am only just introduced to multiple new characters, and before I can get invested in them, before they can undergo any character development (or heck, before I can even learn anything about them beyond just their names and some minor descriptions), all of a sudden I'm cutting to a completely different faction and having to figure out who these other new characters are before I can even commit to memory who any of the old OCs are. The fact that there are so many new characters competing for my attention without anything to focus me at the start of the story just means that ultimately I'm less invested in all of the characters.

2) There are some moments in the story that sort of broke my immersion. Mostly moments where the author references things that make me think things such as "That idiom is from the 'real world' and is based on 'real history'. A character in a fantasy world would never say such a thing." or "Does the Naruto world actually have army surplus stores?" This is somewhat of a minor issue, because you can still "get" what the author is trying to say, but it really ruins the flow of the story for me in some places because it takes you out of the fantasy for a brief moment.

Now in terms of things that I liked, given what I've read so far:

1) The writing for the story is technically sound, which is an instant plus in my book, because it's something that a lot of fanfictions struggle with. Beyond the nitpick that I mentioned above, there is really nothing that is holding you back from just enjoying the story.

2) The plot line is relatively intriguing, especially given its focus on not-Konoha. It's really hard to writing things that are too far removed from canon and still have it remain interesting. There is so little source material to go off of that the author doesn't have old familiar patterns to fall back on as a crutch.

 

Had to completely reread this to see if it was as good as I remember and it really was. The biggest deal to me is that I can scarcely believe this was written in 07-08 much like the HP fandom the Naruto fandom has always been a little too obsessed with its main character, often at the expense of all others. To get a full length fic focusing on a minor character, along with a cast of mostly decent OCs, and then use those characters to explore parts of the universe that aren't usually touched? It blew me away back in the day and it has held up pretty well.

I'd argue that the author is a bit addicted to his thesaurus at times, but he tends to keep it to Haku who makes a bit more sense speaking in a more stilted and formal way. The focus on the history of conflict in Mist as a driving element for so many of the main characters is just beautiful, it ties them together and provides realistic motivations for them even in the land of Wave.

This is honestly a pretty great story. 4/5

 

Now this is what fan fiction is for.

It takes the toys and the sandbox Kishi left behind and uses them to play an entirely new game. The cat-and-mouse game of the hunter-nin squad zeroing in on Haku's location is only one small part of the story, but good God do I want more of that in the Naruto fandom. More than that, though, I loved the multiple POVs and how each one got something across.

I loved Haku twisting in the wind over what will become of him now that he can no longer serve Zabuza and how he has to ask himself what it really means to be a ninja. I dug the worm's eye view Mari and her family brought to the table as citizens of Wave, the poverty and the desperation walking hand-in-hand with stubbornness and a strong family bond that allows them to weather it all. I enjoyed Toru the huter-nin captain assessing himself on his better days as a simple law man hunting the scum of the Earth like Zabuza, and admitting to himself in his grimmer moments that a system as broken as Mist -- capable of producing enough monsters to keep hunter-nin like him employed for the last thirty years -- may not be worth fighting for at all.

There are so many moving parts here, so many chances to get it all wrong. And even on top of all of those smaller, more personal stories, the author poses the question of what will become of Wave now that Gato is gone and just how many sharks and schemers are trying to move in to fill the power vacuum he left behind.

This story has so little fat on it. Even the four hunter-nin under Toru's command would have been easy to write off as career leg breakers, but the author goes above and beyond to give each of them some character beats. Eiji is the straight up combat specialist of the group, cocky and aggressive with his belief that his natural athleticism and killer instinct will see him through. Aya the new girl tries to pass her shy and under confident nature off as a stoic professionalism. She's painfully aware that she's not really cut out for the hunter-nin life, but she's too valuable as a medic-nin and tracker for Toru not to keep her around so she tries to make the best of the situation. And so on.

This story does everything right. Is it in the same tier as my all-time favorites like SilverShine's The Girl from Whirlpool or Eilyfe's Monkey Business? I want to say yes, but I may be biased because I finished this story just last week. It's still fresh on my mind.

It is too soon to say if it will make my top ten, but it has more than earned a 5/5.

(Of course, I'm tempted to give it a 5/5 for the sole reason that it keeps Haku male.)