leafeater
Jōnin Strategist 🧠
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2008
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Introduction: The following is just my personal view on the war as written thus far by Kishi. I’m not here to complain as much as I’m here to criticize, and these are two very different things. When being critical, I’m trying to be an objective observer and look for flaws as well as positive things that I think contributed to peoples’ disappointment and enjoyment of the war to date, albeit I will concentrate on the former. Please feel free to raise any objection. In my threads I encourage free speech, so long as it’s constructive, and I have no problems with criticism or new ideas I didn’t come up with; rather I encourage this. I feel that the point of the thread starter is to provide the grounds for discussion upon which, bright minds can contribute their insight to topic as I clearly don’t have all the answers. 
P.S. I know it's long, so no need to solely post that, lol. xd
-Peace
Leafeater
Kishimoto and the 4th Great Ninja War
1.) The problem with the 4th great ninja war begins with the way it was constructed from the beginning with IWR. Kishi in my mind had the following problems… First, he had the noble goal to use IWR to bring back a bunch of fan favorites (Deidara, Sasori, Itachi, Nagato,...) for one last hurrah as well as introduce some lesser or unknown older historical figures (Kages, KinGin, Hanzou,...) to provide a bit background on the great ninja of days of old. As well, in some cases like Gaara’s produce a carthatic release that has been a lifetime in the making. While I find this a honorable intention, I also believe that Kishi set himself up to fail in his execution of this plan in general.
2.) The first problem was simply the number of characters that were resurrected by IWR given the time constraints he chose to place on the length of the war. By choosing to resurrect so many ET shinobi, Kishi gave himself very little time to detail the battles themselves as well as the relevant histories of the characters for which it was necessary. This led to drastically shortened battles, and even ET’s such as Deidara and Sasori who relied on resources outside of their body such as clay and puppets, that they were absent from to weaken them producing battle scenarios that would’ve never occurred while they were alive.
3.) As well, Kishi wanted a lot of the battles to have cathartic release, but at times he bungled this in my opinion. For example, the Hanzou vs. Mifune fight, which never became a fight at all really. Hanzou was so great that before their prime Jiriaya, Orochimaru, and Tsunade together were granted the title of Legendary Sannin for simply surviving against him by him. Then, Hanzou's ET form can't even make a damn hand seal because Mifune is that fast with his samurai sword technique, and Hanzou can't figure out a way to adapt at all even though he'd fought Mifune successfully before such as getting distance via body flicker or some other method? Eventually this led to Hanzou, having emotional insight into Mifune, breaking control of Kabuto and getting himself into a weekend position to be sealed, but there was no fight while Hanzou was built up by Jiraiya and via Pain’s destruction of him throughout the manga. Thus, many readers found ET Hanzou’s resurrection and purpose to be ridiculous and unclear. Why Hanzou for this purpose? Why not another ET, since Hanzou’s combat prowess was probably his most desired attribute to be seen, not necessarily his relation to Mifune, which could easily have been fulfilled with another character equally well.
4a.) As well, prior to the war, Naruto has always been written as 1 vs. 1 battles/groups vs. 1 with at most the splitting of groups into two parties. For example, Kishi has groups of two into 1 vs. 1 / groups vs. 1 battles with the examples of the separation of Sasori and Deidara, and the separation of Kakuzu and Hidan. However, with the advent of the 4th Great Ninja war, came something totally novel to the Naruto series, and thus something totally novel to Kishimoto, the concept of simultaneous battlefields, ally/axis HQ, training grounds, various other locations such as the housing of the feudal lords. All of a sudden Kishimoto had to go from a serial presentation with some alternation between two alternate scenes, for example Deidara and Sasori, to multiple battlefields and additional locations like ally/axis HQ, etc.
4b.) Naturally, in a war, a battle will not proceed in a serial fashion from battlefield 1 to completion and then to battlefield 2, etc. Rather, they proceed in parallel. However, the main consequence of the way that this was written was essentially lost data and overly shortened battles. For example, regarding lost data, no one knows how the battle with Dan went down or how he got sealed, and the most egregious of these was Kakashi going on a rampage of which we saw the very beginning and the very end. Regarding shortening of battles, that part is self-explanatory when some of the most powerful enemies are able to be downed in a matter of a couple of chapters. Granted there are some legitimate explanations to ameliorate this. The main one being that as dead shinobi, the ET have had their secrets revealed over time, and thus counters to their techniques are known; however, the primary reason for the shortness of the battle likely goes back to the main problem of there being too many ET in the first place and the need to proceed with the storyline, so the battles were likely simply written to end prematurely.
5.) Now, IWR has likely made the 4th Great Ninja War dramatically more interesting than the alliance fighting endless waves of White Zetsu’s in addition to whatever Tobi had originally formulated, granted we don't know the original plans. Further, I think it’s terrific to see the 5 Kage united to fight ET EMS/Rinnegan Madara, and I can’t wait for that to be seen. As well, I think one of the greatest moments in the war so far has been Gaara’s fight with his father, and we learned about his background, his Shukaku control of the sand, and the love of his mother infused into his sand. There have been some great storylines, and I don’t think it’s all been bad, nor do I think that that should be the take home message. I think the take home message is that it could’ve been better.
Conclusion:
I suppose hindsight is 20/20, and that is something to be remembered in this thread. As we look back, it’s easy to criticize, but let’s not forget the difficulty in creation. I’m not an author, I’m a scientist; thus, I do not pretend to grasp the difficulty of having to churn out a new chapter nearly every week and having some grand plan to write towards while still being able to focus on the details each week and every panel. That’s not where my talent lies. I have a feeling that if Kishimoto had simply decided to distill the 4th Great Ninja War into fewer ET’s and concentrate and elaborate on the ones that had stronger emotional valence and/or combat interest and focus less on the ones that didn’t battles may have been even more significant to the reader. As well, I wish that Kishi had elaborated a little bit more at times on certain battlefields rather than simply showing the outcome, as I think that disappointed many readers. Overall though, I've enjoyed the war, I suppose, granted I don't really have anything to compare it to. However, it seems that the more in depth battles have been the more satisfying ones, which has been somewhat of a driving force of this thread. Again, however, this is just my view, and I make no pretension that it's shared by others, unless otherwise stated, albeit I'm curious as to your input. As always in my longer posts, my apologies.
Peace
P.S. I know it's long, so no need to solely post that, lol. xd
-Peace
Leafeater
Kishimoto and the 4th Great Ninja War
1.) The problem with the 4th great ninja war begins with the way it was constructed from the beginning with IWR. Kishi in my mind had the following problems… First, he had the noble goal to use IWR to bring back a bunch of fan favorites (Deidara, Sasori, Itachi, Nagato,...) for one last hurrah as well as introduce some lesser or unknown older historical figures (Kages, KinGin, Hanzou,...) to provide a bit background on the great ninja of days of old. As well, in some cases like Gaara’s produce a carthatic release that has been a lifetime in the making. While I find this a honorable intention, I also believe that Kishi set himself up to fail in his execution of this plan in general.
2.) The first problem was simply the number of characters that were resurrected by IWR given the time constraints he chose to place on the length of the war. By choosing to resurrect so many ET shinobi, Kishi gave himself very little time to detail the battles themselves as well as the relevant histories of the characters for which it was necessary. This led to drastically shortened battles, and even ET’s such as Deidara and Sasori who relied on resources outside of their body such as clay and puppets, that they were absent from to weaken them producing battle scenarios that would’ve never occurred while they were alive.
3.) As well, Kishi wanted a lot of the battles to have cathartic release, but at times he bungled this in my opinion. For example, the Hanzou vs. Mifune fight, which never became a fight at all really. Hanzou was so great that before their prime Jiriaya, Orochimaru, and Tsunade together were granted the title of Legendary Sannin for simply surviving against him by him. Then, Hanzou's ET form can't even make a damn hand seal because Mifune is that fast with his samurai sword technique, and Hanzou can't figure out a way to adapt at all even though he'd fought Mifune successfully before such as getting distance via body flicker or some other method? Eventually this led to Hanzou, having emotional insight into Mifune, breaking control of Kabuto and getting himself into a weekend position to be sealed, but there was no fight while Hanzou was built up by Jiraiya and via Pain’s destruction of him throughout the manga. Thus, many readers found ET Hanzou’s resurrection and purpose to be ridiculous and unclear. Why Hanzou for this purpose? Why not another ET, since Hanzou’s combat prowess was probably his most desired attribute to be seen, not necessarily his relation to Mifune, which could easily have been fulfilled with another character equally well.
4a.) As well, prior to the war, Naruto has always been written as 1 vs. 1 battles/groups vs. 1 with at most the splitting of groups into two parties. For example, Kishi has groups of two into 1 vs. 1 / groups vs. 1 battles with the examples of the separation of Sasori and Deidara, and the separation of Kakuzu and Hidan. However, with the advent of the 4th Great Ninja war, came something totally novel to the Naruto series, and thus something totally novel to Kishimoto, the concept of simultaneous battlefields, ally/axis HQ, training grounds, various other locations such as the housing of the feudal lords. All of a sudden Kishimoto had to go from a serial presentation with some alternation between two alternate scenes, for example Deidara and Sasori, to multiple battlefields and additional locations like ally/axis HQ, etc.
4b.) Naturally, in a war, a battle will not proceed in a serial fashion from battlefield 1 to completion and then to battlefield 2, etc. Rather, they proceed in parallel. However, the main consequence of the way that this was written was essentially lost data and overly shortened battles. For example, regarding lost data, no one knows how the battle with Dan went down or how he got sealed, and the most egregious of these was Kakashi going on a rampage of which we saw the very beginning and the very end. Regarding shortening of battles, that part is self-explanatory when some of the most powerful enemies are able to be downed in a matter of a couple of chapters. Granted there are some legitimate explanations to ameliorate this. The main one being that as dead shinobi, the ET have had their secrets revealed over time, and thus counters to their techniques are known; however, the primary reason for the shortness of the battle likely goes back to the main problem of there being too many ET in the first place and the need to proceed with the storyline, so the battles were likely simply written to end prematurely.
5.) Now, IWR has likely made the 4th Great Ninja War dramatically more interesting than the alliance fighting endless waves of White Zetsu’s in addition to whatever Tobi had originally formulated, granted we don't know the original plans. Further, I think it’s terrific to see the 5 Kage united to fight ET EMS/Rinnegan Madara, and I can’t wait for that to be seen. As well, I think one of the greatest moments in the war so far has been Gaara’s fight with his father, and we learned about his background, his Shukaku control of the sand, and the love of his mother infused into his sand. There have been some great storylines, and I don’t think it’s all been bad, nor do I think that that should be the take home message. I think the take home message is that it could’ve been better.
Conclusion:
I suppose hindsight is 20/20, and that is something to be remembered in this thread. As we look back, it’s easy to criticize, but let’s not forget the difficulty in creation. I’m not an author, I’m a scientist; thus, I do not pretend to grasp the difficulty of having to churn out a new chapter nearly every week and having some grand plan to write towards while still being able to focus on the details each week and every panel. That’s not where my talent lies. I have a feeling that if Kishimoto had simply decided to distill the 4th Great Ninja War into fewer ET’s and concentrate and elaborate on the ones that had stronger emotional valence and/or combat interest and focus less on the ones that didn’t battles may have been even more significant to the reader. As well, I wish that Kishi had elaborated a little bit more at times on certain battlefields rather than simply showing the outcome, as I think that disappointed many readers. Overall though, I've enjoyed the war, I suppose, granted I don't really have anything to compare it to. However, it seems that the more in depth battles have been the more satisfying ones, which has been somewhat of a driving force of this thread. Again, however, this is just my view, and I make no pretension that it's shared by others, unless otherwise stated, albeit I'm curious as to your input. As always in my longer posts, my apologies.
Peace
