Split from this thread: [link].

To discuss: How would ninjas in the Naruto universe react to death and killing?

One thing I'm curious about is there a whole shindig about them killing? I hate those stories that try to go all psychologist on the characters with the Jounin giving some big morality speech after Naruto or whoever kills some bandits.

 

You mean a responsible, reasonable commander addressing the completely realistic and utterly predictable consequences inflicted on 12 year old minds which had just been submerged in bloody, chunky, ruthless slaughter?

Newsflash, smart fart, being responsible for the death of another is an incredibly traumatic event for the vast majority of the adult population, let alone children. You can get used to feeling like some sort of monster but if it ever stops hurting, stops twisting you up inside each time you take a life, you're broken. You're done. It's over. Nothing will ever be the same because you've lost something precious and once it's gone it never returns.

Personally, I prefer the characters I read about retain that spark of precious humanity. Reading about people who have become immune to human suffering is just depressing.

 

You're projecting our sensibilities on a society that glorifies violence. They've grown up in a village where the highest honour is to be a assassin of immense power. Killing a few bandits wouldn't fucking traumatise them.

 

You have to experience something regularly in order to get used to it, and even Konoha is not a place where the kids see other humans casually slaughtered in front of them every day. They probably get the mindset imparted in them in the academy that killing is necessary and how do it but that's different from actually doing it themselves.

 

I'd say Naruto is fairly Shounen in mindset compared to most of the other ninja of the world. He only gets away with not killing anyone by being the MC.

 

He killed Yura, that undercover spy from Suna/Sand, in the Rescue Gaara arc. Narutopedia says he's the only one, though.

 

We don't see much casual killing in canon from Team 7.

Sasuke goes out of his way to not kill any of the 100 shinobi Orochimaru makes him fight at once, doesn't actually kill Deidara, repeatedly tells him to surrender and tells him he doesn't want to fight, kind of kills Itachi, and then finally kills a bunch of mook Samurai when attacks the summit, which is supposed to signify how dark he's become. Even then he warns them he's in a bad mood and he won't go easy on them. Then he kills Danzo, which is probably the most justified death in the manga (up there with Nagato killing Hanzo, though it's not really shown) and then a bunch of Zetsu. It's questionable whether the Zetsu are really people, though.

Naruto doesn't kill anyone except the clone!Itachi that possesses Yura, Sakura helps kill Sasori doesn't, IIRC, land the killing blow.

 

The entire point of the series was a tale of how the cycle of violence was a cancer upon the world and that peace should be given a chance. This cycle of violence being the one that has either broken or traumatised all of the most powerful ninja in the world. Is it any surprise that the ones hailed as child geniuses, who spent most of their childhood on the front lines of one war or another, were essentially broken by their experiences there?

Itachi, Kakashi, Jiraiya. The three most powerful of their generations, all of whom had been traumatised by war and the pain it brought.

So no, I don't think death is trivialised in Naruto. I think it's one of the central themes.

 

Aekiel

Beautiful point. In many ways Naruto deconstructs the stone cold badass trope: Itachi, Madara, Tobi, Kakashi, even Orochimaru-- they all appear to be stoic, cold, super skilled and cool, but their backstories reveal they've all suffered immensely in the past.

Sasuke is in many ways at his peak badass when he's super cold and cruel: think of his effortless takedown of the samurai at the summit, facing multiple Kage, etc. But he's most broken inside at those points.

 

One of the first story arcs is all about Zabuza and Haku, and their trauma from growing up in a culture that takes violence to an extreme. From the beginning of the series, there is clearly a theme about how killing twists people's minds/behavior and makes them worse off.