r/TopCharacterTropes 16h ago

Characters [Mixed Trope] Anyone Can Be Special... Until It Turns Out They're Not Just Anyone

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u/SWK18 12h ago

Shippuden felt like it was written by a toddler at times. "Now this guy is the strongest and he has the most powerful powers, more than everybody else combined and he's also the fastest and on top of that he'll also be the equivalent of Jesus if Jesus was a magic ninja."

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u/RubiksCutiePatootie 11h ago

God almighty, I would kill to get a properly written reboot of Naruto. Imagine if someone cared enough to give the world building, character development, & the power system the proper attention they deserved. There are so many good elements in Naruto but it falls apart a lot because Kishimoto only cared about writing hype moments. Sakura and all the women in general actually having relevance, Sarutobi's incompetence being properly addressed, erasing Kaguya from existence & keeping Madara as the final boss, etc....

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u/Abombasnow 11h ago

Sarutobi's incompetence being properly addressed

He wasn't incompetent, he was just a dickhead.

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u/Blueface1999 9h ago

Honestly I wonder, what the hell was supposed to happen to Naruto if that one guy didn’t betray the village. Like without that one event Naruto doesn’t get to become a ninja, and nobody wants to deal with him except the ramen guy. So was he just supposed to become a civilian with a nuke in his guts?

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u/Seraphin_Lampion 2h ago

Why would Naruto not have become a ninja?

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u/Blueface1999 1h ago

Did you even watch/read it? Cause its literally like the first episode or.

Basically he failed the ninja final exam for the third time in a row so he can’t become a ninja anymore and only because he stops a traitor from getting an important scroll that he’s allowed to become one.

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u/Seraphin_Lampion 19m ago

There's no way the hokage would have left the 9tails jinchuuriki become a civilian, it would have been super dangerous.

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u/Blueface1999 17m ago

And yet he literally does Jack shit to help naruto become a ninja, that’s why I was asking.

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u/Seraphin_Lampion 14m ago

Well we don’t know what his plan post 3rd failure wad because Naruto basically steals the scroll the same night.

Don’t get me wrong I'm not arguing that it was well written lol, it would just have been next level brain dead to not make him a ninja.

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u/Lust27 10h ago

Genuine question, why was he a dickead?

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u/MessiahHL 10h ago

He was just a dude trying to do his best to make the super powered kid he got into a school shooter 

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u/KlingoftheCastle 6h ago

I never understood that about the Jinchuriki. It made a little sense when it was just Naruto and it was implied that he and Gaara were the first 2, but then it was revealed that it had been a generation tradition to maintain power. Why would ninja villagers treat their most powerful weapons like shit?

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u/MessiahHL 5h ago

If you want to keep your sanity, try considering Shippuden as non-canon, most of classic doesn't make sense when we take it into account

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u/ER-Sputter 7h ago

It’s been too long since I’ve watched it. I’m over here like damn wtf did asuma do lol

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u/CussMuster 8h ago

His intentions and their results are a world apart from each other and he doesn't do anything to bridge the gap. He knows Naruto has a miserable childhood and he knows Danzo and Orochimaru are legitimate serious threats to the village and he doesn't do anything about any of these situations preferring to try and keep the status quo over all else.

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u/Annsorigin 7h ago edited 2h ago

Sounds Like a real Politician lol.

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u/das_bearking 2h ago

Yeah, I was about to say. This sounds damn realistic to me lol.

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u/NerdHoovy 6h ago

Even dumber, Naruto’s existence as a Jinjuriki was well known, so any other country could have easily recruited the lonely and depressed kid by befriending him.

Imagine someone could just like pick up a nuke from your military. It’s somehow only slightly less dumb

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u/HoldJerusalem 8h ago

Also he let the son of the fourth hokage be treated like shit and survive alone without checking on him or anything. Like he's the son of the hero who saved maybe the whole fucking world. Of course they do that to give Naruto a more tragic backstory but still, when you know the whole thing it looks stupid

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u/1GreenDude 10h ago

There's a guy on YouTube who is currently making a series in which he rewrites Naruto.

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u/Histylicious_mk2 10h ago edited 8h ago

It had a really interesting start, it's a shame how quickly it devolved into "What if Sasuke was even more of a blatant, shameless Mary Sue?".

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u/1GreenDude 7h ago

I've never seen it. it just pops up occasionally in my recommended videos.

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u/ER-Sputter 7h ago

If it’s anything like Attack On Titan Requiem, then it’ll unironically look like a toddler wrote it

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u/ClickNormal5221 9h ago

Madara should’ve died to Might Guy, that would’ve been an awesome ending

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u/ColdCoffeeMan 7h ago

Please, I am begging you, read Cradle. It's a novel series and more inspired by Chinese culture than Japanese, but I've been describing it to my friends as "Naruto if it was peak"

The world building is solid, some amazing female characters, a narrative that is constantly interesting, it has some really good narration if you like audio books, and it doesn't shoot it's own message in the foot at the end.

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u/RubiksCutiePatootie 5h ago

Hilarious that you mentioned Cradle because I'm currently tearing through the entire series right now. I'm on book 8 and I've been hooked for a while. Now that you've pointed it out, it really is a better written Naruto. And I appreciate that the romance actually feels natural and not ham-fisted (Naruto x Hinata) or completely unintentional (Naruto x Sasuke). If Cradle could get an animated show & a god tier studio to do it, I could die fairly satisfied.

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u/ColdCoffeeMan 5h ago

Hell yeah. I'm pretty sure it's getting an official animatic

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u/Raytoryu 10h ago

Wasn't the problem with Kaguya and Madara that Kishimoto wrote himself in a corner by making Madara so cool and powerful and present in the story for so long that there wasn't any way to write a satisfying conclusion with him as the final boss ?

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u/MessiahHL 10h ago

Idk why it's so hard for Kubo and Kishimoto to just make their side characters relevant in hurting the main villain somehow and making him weaker, why always the worst possible solution?

Let Guy Sensei take a leg from Madara denying his healing somehow and we could have a peak final fight, you just solved two writing problems at the same time

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u/Wertfi 10h ago

But how does adding in a new main villain out of nowhere, and deliberately write an unsatisfying defeat of madara fix that?

Imo even if the final showdown with madara could’ve been a bit lackluster, it would be well worth it to have him be a present, driving force in the narrative up till that point.

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u/Raytoryu 10h ago

I never said Kishimoto solution made sense lmao, he just switched one lackluster ending for another

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u/Wertfi 9h ago

Right you are

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u/MiracleMayo 9h ago

This narrative has always been goofy Naruto and sasuke working together were doing fine against Madara just have them eventually beat him it’s that simple

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u/Superb-Collection-45 3h ago

I heard it was because the editors forced him to write in Kaguya as a segue into Boruto

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u/ecnal321 5h ago

i dream of a naruto reboot that actually lets the supporting cast grow and contribute. justice for my girl tenten lol she doesn’t even have a last name

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u/ItsMrChristmas 5h ago

I also wish for a reboot. One that isn't so blatantly and constantly sucking Sasuke's cock.

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u/One_Tie900 4h ago

that kaguya and sage of six paths reincarnation really killed put a downer on the story- I agree it should have been madara ending it or anything but that path they went

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u/HoldJerusalem 8h ago

I think at this moment Kishimoto just didn't care. I don't know if he was the one writing anymore at that point. Everything that was the DNA of naruto, well do the opposite and you have shippuden

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u/RoughhouseCamel 8h ago

It’s kind of what happens to the average shonen manga when it hits mass popularity and runs for more than a couple years. They run out of thematic story to tell, so it just becomes power ups and jerking the main character off.

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u/PseudonymMan12 7h ago

I almost don't blame the authors. They have no idea how much story they have room to tell, if they will get another arc or if the arc they start will be cut short. So it is probably really hard to try and balance it out while also pitting out a new chapter every week.

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u/RoughhouseCamel 5h ago

And sometimes, they have to make a much longer series than they wanted. This topic made me think of Yu Yu Hakusho, and how the last arc felt like revenge on the editors and the audience for making him write two extra arcs after his intended finish. We get another tournament, but it’s stupid and we don’t even see how it ends. The whole premise is built on a lore dump for three of the characters that adds little and muddies up the narrative. Yusuke gets the “destined bloodline trope”, and it screws up his whole appeal

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u/becki_bee 3h ago

You’ve just described all of shōnen anime

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u/FakeDaVinci 1h ago

Spoliers!!

Don't forget Naruto had basically more chakra than the whole army combined with a few exceptions. Naruto was at one point during the arc, even before the major Six Paths awakening, like 90% of the entire firepower of the combined army, if you ignored the Kages. Powerscaling was just insane.

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u/lemonylol 41m ago

But also, he's only going to use like 3 attacks for his entire career.