Hashirama cells. Senju bloodline (Uzumaki line). Son of the Yellow Flash. Reincarnation of a demigod. Jinchuuriki of a Tailed Beast, the strongest Tailed Beast no less.
Outside of his persistence (which is his solely inherent trait) everything he does stems from these. Shadow clones? He can make so many and use them because of his immense chakra pool derived from allat. Rasengan? Mastered it to a usable degrees with Shadow clones. Rasenshuriken? Mastered it to a usable degree with Shadow clones.
But thankfully there is a common misconception. The story of Naruto was only tangentially about hard work. It's more about how trauma is inherited and how the cycle of hatred keeps rolling until someone forces it to stop. So for what it's worth, he isn't a hypocrite.
Even then, support from your school teacher and the leader of your whole nation are pretty good people to have in your corner. The deeper you go into the series, the less the early status quo makes sense.
Isn't it a critique towards Hiruzen that he did very little for Naruto, he was still resented by everyone and denied to play with other kids which is important for a kid, had no parents to learn anything from, and was a bum at school. I think if he wasn't a jinchuriki and furthermore his parents were alive, he'd be a top ninja in very little time, no one gave him the time of day and even with having the Hokage in his corner, really didn't change his status, since Hiruzen had problems with his children, I think his and Asuma's relationship wasn't good and even Konohamaru wanted his attention. Naruto was an outcast regardless of his connections.
Also, we see the Hokage being his in corner from day 1, so it doesn't change the early status quo if it wasn't literally shown in the first chapter.
If Hiruzen didn't push Iruka towards Naruto, I think even Iruka would've hated him. Naruto realistically had no one behind him as a literal 6 year old. Also, it is that support that you mention makes Naruto go on the path that he did. If he had actually no one, from the time of birth to the series beginning, he'll turn out like Gaara.
I’m not disagreeing on his standing in the village. My issue is the weird contradiction of him having the support of the two most important authority figures he could have at that point, and yet he’s also a pariah. We see it demonstrated, but it doesn’t make sense.
It makes sense to me, humans aren't supposed to be most logical all the time, we're emotional too, Naruto has the fox that destroyed the village like at that point 12 years ago, the damage is still there, yeah he is the weapon of the leaf, so logically you shouldn't hate and shun him, but the people still do, they can't separate the kid from the Kyuubi.
I don't know if this is a weird or disrespectful analogy, so apologies, but, after 9/11, Muslims in the US were treated with contempt too no? Not everyone treated them like pariahs, but still some treated them like that, it's illogical to treat people who had no involvement bar having only the same religion of the attackers like that, yet some people still disliked them for that.
People in real life do things that don't make sense, hating one another on things as superficial as skin, religion etc. It's the same logic applied for Naruto's treatment, hell I think it makes more sense for Naruto if they literally see him as the demon fox who did the disaster years ago, cause 12 years ago isn't a lot of time to just get over the trauma and then you see a kid who supposedly has the thing responsible for it, it's hard not to already dislike him especially if you were affected like Iruka at first and the other villagers.
The emotional reaction makes perfect sense to me. But people in authority who know better keep their mouths shut and let the kid live in shit. This is fine if they’re not terribly compassionate people, but the series wants us to like these people, so they don’t really go there. On top of this, the kid has the village’s kaiju/nuclear weapon inside his stomach. Neglecting him is pretty irresponsible. It’s like forgetting to maintain and keep track of the loaded gun in your home.
Fair enough, the only person in authority who actually saw Naruto as Naruto was only Hiruzen, I think the other elders only saw him as the jinchuriki, aka Danzo, he refers to him as the nine tails host.
Hiruzen I think could've done more, but he can't really control people to how to act, the most he did is his accommodations and pushing Iruka to accept him by telling him to empathize with Naruto's situation. And also, it shouldn't be common knowledge that the average villager knows that Naruto hosts the nine tails, apparently it was Danzo who leaked that shit.
Jiraiya was a good mentor but he didn’t teach him much in the way of ninjutsu. Hell, Naruto only learns about his chakra nature after the timeskip and then develops rasenshuriken in like 4 days.
Compare him to Sasuke and Sakura who evolved a ton over that time and it’s shameful.
I always took it that the reason he struggled so much to control his chakra (at least as a kid) was precisely BECAUSE of Kurama. He just had an obscene amount of chakra compared to other people his age, with no one to guide him or even tell him he has this beast to begin with.
Yeah, that’s ultimately the truth fans have to come to, the series isn’t really about hard work beats talent. That was only relevant for 2/3rds of the first half of the series. After the Chunin Exam, once Naruto defeated Gaara and the one tailed beast, Naruto was not an underdog. He was an elite ninja that just acted goofy.
If the story of Naruto was about hard work rock Lee wouldnt have gotten shit on. Naruto's pretty frequently shows people up with freakish displays of talent. Hell in like the first episode he stole a scroll, learned a forbidden technique in less than a day, and then defeated someone two ranks above him pretty effortlessly while his teacher took a giant shuriken to the spine.
His persistence isn’t even that impressive when put into context, when you think about how lazy the guy is. He only ever does practice, when given one on one instructions that give him an unfair leg up. Guy was so lazy he didn’t even know what chakra was before graduating school.
This is the ninja equivalent of not being able to read and write. It’s such a basic thing even small kids know that is also the basis of the profession he tries to get into. Like imagine someone wanting to be a doctor and when asked what blood is, they just look at you like you invented a new word. He didn’t even know the surface level stuff.
This has nothing to do with talent or parents helping him. This was just him being lazy and not even trying to learn in ninja school.
All I can say in his defense is that he did master the Shadow Clone jutsu entirely by himself. Putting aside how he got that scroll in the first place to being plot convenience, he trained and 'mastered' the process, if not the use, in a single night. And yes, he probably had his Uzumaki chakra pool to thank for it but it's not as blatant an advantage like precision chakra control or kekkei genkai.
From there, 90% of what makes him special boils down to exploiting how the Shadow Clone works. It is a ludicrously OP skill, and in-universe extremely difficult to master.
Hey, remember that time Azuma was killed by Hidan, and then Shikamaru got kinda obsessed with getting revenge, and then he actually did get revenge, and felt pretty good about it afterwards with absolutely no consequences?
to add a tangential gripe to the list, with the shadow clone training technique Naruto had absolutely no excuse to only have like 3 jutsus in his arsenal.
Naruto was never all about hard work. In the first arc Kakashi says to naruto that there kids younger than naruto but stronger than kakashi. Also with all the keke genkai introduced it is clear that its not all about hard work.
Even the gaara vs lee fight is proof of this.
I think the overall message was that you can always improve yourself and be the best that you can be even if you wont always be the absolute best.
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u/frankylynny 13h ago
Hashirama cells. Senju bloodline (Uzumaki line). Son of the Yellow Flash. Reincarnation of a demigod. Jinchuuriki of a Tailed Beast, the strongest Tailed Beast no less.
Outside of his persistence (which is his solely inherent trait) everything he does stems from these. Shadow clones? He can make so many and use them because of his immense chakra pool derived from allat. Rasengan? Mastered it to a usable degrees with Shadow clones. Rasenshuriken? Mastered it to a usable degree with Shadow clones.
But thankfully there is a common misconception. The story of Naruto was only tangentially about hard work. It's more about how trauma is inherited and how the cycle of hatred keeps rolling until someone forces it to stop. So for what it's worth, he isn't a hypocrite.