Title: The Uzumaki's Peace
Author: Inert aka Dr. Snakes
Rating: T
Genre: Drama
Status: Complete
Length: 2,890
Summary: The end of the Fourth Shinobi World War was the herald of greatness, and an era of peace and prosperity was ushered in on the shoulders of a legend. In the world of shinobi, however, nothing is ever as it seems. And five years later, all is not well.
Link: FF.net

I'm not typically a fan of Inert's work - they just don't capture my interest until much too late into the narrative - but this one-shot is straight up poetry. Metaphorically, that is.

It's not hard to see how Naruto's victory in the Fourth Shinobi World War could lead to the world described here, with a darker spin on its peace simply because a world controlled by the fundamentally flawed system of shinobi can only achieve an equally flawed peace. And finally knowing how the original series ends makes its contrast with Inert's version all the more apparent.

Yet there's nothing necessarily wrong with 'the Uzumaki's peace'. It is far better than the great wars - and threat of great wars - that had plagued them before as well as the scenarios that Nagato and Madara were planning to force upon everyone.

It's just that there are two interpretations of what life has become; one where the leaders have understood what needs to be done and work together to avoid future wars, and one where they only act to maintain peace out of fear of what would happen to them if the defied the world's strongest shinobi. Since we only encounter two characters in the one-shot - each one sharing the exact opposite viewpoints - you can't really know which one is true. Or rather, how true each one is.

Only that Naruto is clearly powerful enough to do whatever he wants to do.

5/5

 

Agreed, it's a pretty powerful take on the concept and while it is also the very proof why a longer story with that level of power would be boring, it works perfectly for a one shot. The exploration of the different viewpoints and the clash of them by those two was handled really well and yeah, worth reading.

4/5

 

It's good stuff. I read this story a while back, never thought about putting it up for review because I assumed it was already in the Library. Inert allows for two contrasting viewpoints to play out between two men with very strong wills. A's point makes sense - after all from a certain point of view, it is more than possible that everyone is simply terrified of Naruto, and there likely people that are. I also doubt that Naruto is just making up bullshit either, no doubt a great deal of the people he has doing what he wants are doing it because they're good friends and think his ideas are good.

It's an excellent take on a totalitarian dictatorship, wherein the ruling class is benevolent, yet still supreme. Naruto is taking people's freedom away, that's for certain, but is it worth it for the people's safety, and to prevent war? For A, that was an obvious no. And it's hard not to sympathize with him either, since he comes off as something of a freedom fighter. For the common folk of the setting, I imagine that civilians have it pretty good, while various ninja may be ticked, but cowed into doing nothing since they're ruled by what basically is a god - not in name, but in stature. Given how easily Naruto takes care of A, one of the strongest shinobi in the series, it is doubtful that anyone could even remotely pose a threat to him.

In short, A is arguing that Naruto has simply become a subtler version of Pain.

 

This was pretty interesting. I really dig the idea behind this fic, and for once, I don't think we needed anything more to demonstrate it. The writing was mediocre, however, and riddled with something I absolutely despise - the constant use of bad descriptors to tag characters: "the blonde" "the man" "his guest" etc as a shitty way of avoiding directly referencing the character. It's perfectly legible, but holds this oneshot back from being as good as it could be,

4/5

 

After reading this, my biggest problem was the aforementioned epithet issue. It's written in limited 3rd POV, but Ei would never refer to himself as the "the man", which abruptly shifts the POV to omniscient 3rd. In fact, the writing style is omniscient 3rd, but it's got the limited perspective---something that doesn't gel very well. It's a shame, too, because the "hide the characters behind ambiguous epithets" is something I wish fanfiction would largely abandon. Works are tagged with characters, and the writer is clearly good enough to characterize Naruto's speaking into being instantly recognizable as him, so there isn't much of a point in being ambiguous.

Other than that, I like the idea of Naruto being somewhat of a benevolent dictator and even going so far as to semi-deluding himself into believing that he isn't. Towards the end, he seems to come to terms with this and accept it as necessary and even good, but I like that Ei points it out only for Naruto to reject the idea entirely, as if he either hadn't thought about it before or he never wanted to think about it.

Because of the failed assassination attempt, I feel like the implication of it could've been expanded upon. Now that Naruto's cemented himself in this position, what would happen if he were suddenly removed? How destabilizing would that be to the recovering Elemental Countries? Ei seems very concerned about the ramifications of Naruto's ascent to power, but the story doesn't say whether he considered what Naruto's abrupt death would do, had he succeeded.

Overall, I'd give it a 4/5. It's a one-shot, and gets in and out quickly. While I would've liked the writing style to be more consistent and the ideas explored a little more, it's good for what it is.