Everyone treats Itachi like this tragic hero or 4D chess-playing mastermind, but let’s be real, his entire arc is a mess of bad decisions wrapped in plot armor and edgy aesthetics.
The dude massacres his entire clan, including children and his own loving parents, to “prevent a civil war.” Yeah, because clearly the best way to stop violence is to commit genocide on your own people while working with a bunch of old war criminals in the shadows. Why didn’t he expose the coup? Why not rally allies? Why not talk to anyone? Nah, just murder everybody and traumatize your little brother. Big brain move.
Speaking of Sasuke: what kind of sociopath decides the best way to protect their younger sibling is by psychologically torturing them for years, encouraging them to become stronger through hate, and then throwing them at Orochimaru, a literal p-snake? He didn’t save Sasuke. He broke him.
And don’t even get me started on him joining Akatsuki. “Oh he was a double agent!” Bro was helping collect tailed beasts and directly caused chaos that led to thousands of deaths. But it’s okay because he cried one time and gave Naruto a bird in his mouth?
Itachi fans worship him like he’s some morally complex anti-hero when he’s really just a guy who made the worst possible choice at every fork in the road. His entire plan relies on an impossible amount of foresight, people reacting exactly how he expects, and zero accountability for his war crimes. But he’s “cool” and “tragic,” so that makes it deep, I guess.
TL;DR: Itachi isn’t a genius. He’s a war criminal with an emo filter, and his fanbase is in denial.
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Honestly I like him better when he was just a psychopath who killed his entire clan but had a soft spot for his little brother and spared him. If it was just to prevent a civil war then just kill the ringleaders why bother going after everybody in the clan
Tbh Naruto as a whole is pretty bad when it comes to characters development.
Its all cookie cutter nonsense and highly predictable. I knew right away from the first moment it showed itachi killed the Uchiha that he wasn’t evil and it was for some other reason.
It was like m night shayamalan levels of obvious
I kinda agree but I think “the dumbest genius characters ever written” is harsh.
His motivations do make sense but they could’ve been better-written. (I get the point you’re making. Like I said, I agree.)
Took me a bit to figure out what this was all about. Nardo isnt literature, and the characters arent complex or well rounded. It is serialized “im angy at my ninja dad/family/etc” taken to a higher level. Take it for what it is: check your brain at the door popcorn media. Nardo, Sasook, and Kahki Pants dont need to be thought of this hard. Just watch them do “ninja” shit and eat your noodles.
About paragraph 2:
The Leaf was in extremely high tensions with other nations, and was in a weak position on top of that. They couldn’t afford to look weak or divided because if they were actually attacked, they would have been decimated. Exposing the coup publicly would have been telling other nations that the Leaf was not united. It was a much more delicate situation than it seemed.
Despite all that, Itachi admits later that he should have asked for help.
Naruto is all around a mess. Cool fight scenes though.
Itachi was a cool villain until they decided that he was actually a tragic hero. Because yes, he is a very stupid person if his goal was what we’re told it was. A once in a lifetime super genius who already knew the villain was bad immediately jumped to do whatever the villain said and didn’t bother asking the homage he was serving under about any of it
I think it makes a lot of sense when you consider that he was only 13 when he did the massacre. Ninja prodigy or not, he was already a somewhat traumatised kid and being heavily manipulated by Danzo. Look at what real-world cults manage to manipulate people into. I don’t consider it out of the realm of possibility that an otherwise smart kid, way out of his depth but feeling an immense amount of responsibility:
There’s problems with the writing, of course. A lot of them, sure. But when you put aside whether any of Itachi’s decisions were the “right” one or not, I find it very believable that this particular person in these particular circumstances would come to the conclusions that he did.
>Why didn’t he expose the coup?
This is the genocide option with extra steps and more deaths lol. What do you think was gonna happen after the Uchiha are exposed?
>Why not rally allies? Why not talk to anyone?
To do what exactly?
I don’t think you quite understand that the leaf and the uchiha were fundamentally opposed to each other and were going to end up killing each other. Itachi could gather allies but then what? He’d have to strongarm the rest of the Uchiha or the leaf. The former is what he essentially chose to do.
I guess you could argue he should’ve gone for a less extreme measure, but the Uchiha would be end up mighty screwed regardless and would stop at nothing to seek vengeance on him and the rest of the leaf. Not to mention, he’d also have to somehow convince the rest of the leaf to not eradicate the Uchihas knowing what they were planning to do.
The latter plan meanwhile was impossible unless he did something like have the rest of the uchiha behind him. Wait a minute, that’s literally just the coup plan in the first place.
Meh, it was really impressive to the 13 year olds watching this show. Us adults should shut off our brains a little when watching
Well when you frame it like that, sure it doesn’t make sense. But there are a couple of things I think your framing missed.
The Akatsuki member all represent a radicalization of a value. Itachi’s was patriotism. He was a teenager manipulated into his murder spree for patriotism. Layer that was retconed to include Obito joining him. But I don’t actually have much issue with that.
His motivation was country (village) over his bloodline.
I mean you can introduce all kinds of scenarios that didn’t happen that you think might make sense. But that’s not the story that was told.
Also, on Sasuke, his entire ark was him gaining strength through his trauma and hate. His trauma was the catalyst to him growing stronger. That was juxtaposed Naruto growing his strength through friendship and love.
Sasuke grew stronger through breaking bonds and hating.
That is the entire plot device behind that character. So again, you can make up scenarios that make more sense to you, but his character arc dictates he needs to hate until Naruto gains enough strength through love and friendship to break the cycle of violence.
To be clear, I don’t have an issue with your view. I just think you’re kind of missing the point of the show. The show, character wise, is about Naruto and Sasuke. The supporting characters (including Itachi) need to work within that main storyline. And with that in mind, his motivations make sense.
The bird in the mouth line 💀
Any clan based around killing your best friend to obtain forbidden powers is an extreme and unreasonable danger to have around. Specially if they are unwilling to give up said power. I say it is extremely extremely easy to convince someone subject to such hateful social dynamics, specially a teen, to commit warcrimes for ideological reasons.
Now, I’m not an antiuchihite, some of my best friends are uchihas (?)… Bur good riddance.
A post with no solution only complaints on a world beloved form of art. Unpopular? More like your opinion is bland n missed the point of the story