#the neji solo fight fucks me up to this day

[yazzdonut]

i love art, i love animation, i love my friends and being alive and- *just watched sasuke recovery mission arc again*

[wanyinchen]

(I may have accidentally deleted the ask and the post whoops sorry, anon!)  HOLY CRAP YES PLS OMG TALK TO ME MORE They literally are the best team ever? Like I am such a sucker for found family tropes you have no idea. The idea of these four people, so different from one another and are, in varying degrees, considered as outsiders found a bond with each other so strong  and I- AHHHH I CAN’T NOT LOVE THEM. I’ve always imagined them to be all orphans and then finally, they found these people who could and would always be their home, and where they could feel safe, loved and cared for, a family. I-I’m weak-*chokes back the tears* I have always had a hard time making friends in my younger years and I was a bit of a loner at childhood, and now as I am older and found friends who I could laugh with and keep secrets with, who I could be myself with and who I could always be with, I FELT THAT WITH TEAM GAI, OK? THEIR TEAMWORK AND CLOSENESS?? YEAH BABY! Sure I could relate on Nart or some other character but something clicked in me with Rock Lee and Gai. Like holy crap these are not the type of characters I usually love but there’s something about these two adorable bowl-cut, spandex wearing angels that compel me to them so much. Hardwork, effort, and dedication is something I very much value but not always “do”, they’ve become one of my inspirations to do better and be better and all around help me make good decisions with the question “would Lee and Gai be proud of me if I do this?” fuck I am such a loser but I just hecking love them so much. Rock Lee is the love of my life and I love him to bits, this kid is super precious and so sweet and so polite, like omg I want him, he literally is boyfriend material and I just super love him and whoever ended up with this sweetheart, I congratulate you, you have eyes more powerful than all the ‘-gans’ in the world and you have caught the greatest treasure. Neji is a complex character, a true genius but always considered to be inferior from the main Hyuuga family just because he was from the branch family, he was this happy kid and then was so jaded by his dad’s death, like I just want to hug him. He had such a compelling character arc and development, evolving from this bitter (and with reason!) and angry kid to this mature teen who empathizes and loves his team and cousin very much. He became somewhat more mellow, gentle, and approachable now that he found a true family with team gai. HE SHOULDN’T HAVE DIED, IT WAS A BS PLOT DESICION AND I WAS LIKE CRYING AND WHAT???? FOR WHAT?? IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE, HIASHI SHOULD’VE DIED INSTEAD FFS. And then there’s my queen Tenten, the one who aspired to be like Tsunade, the greatest medical nin and the strongest kunoichi, but along the way, with her DAD’S (Gai’s) help, she discovered that she just wanted to be a great and strong kunoichi at her own right and at her abilities(!!!). Despite her clear insecurities, hotheadedness, and not getting what she wanted at first, she still strived to be better, and perseveres to keep up with her team mates. And hello? Space time ninjutsu is super cool? Like summon a shit ton of weapons all at once out of mid air and heck?? How was this not exploited and utilized by Kishi?? Give me a solo Tenten sword fight with a powerful enemy?? She’s a weapon’s mistress FFS, how come Sasuke and Orochimaru gets sword fights when SHE, the thing she specialized on, didn’t get to have one?? Fuck what this is BS I swear AND HOLY ROCK LEE I need all of my kids to be legit taijutsu masters and is actually shown to be unparalleled at it compared to other nins and kids since its KING MAITO GAI himself teaching them taijutsu holy ass is that too much to ask for??? Wait, let me gush about Gai, he’s literally my favorite character. He’s the best dad, I want him to be my dad. I really love my father but I want Gai (and Dai) to be my dad, ya know what I mean?? He’s so supportive, loving, and he really just gives his all in caring for you. He’s forgiving and firm and crap I want a mentor like that. He’s such a excellent sensei and are one of the best adults in Naruto. He’s so unconventionally handsome and attractive?? He’s so confident?? He’s so amazing?? He’s so emotionally intelligent?? He defies the unjust expectations set by others and said “fuck you” to it?? And he’s super crazy strong? Like literally feared and famed, I bet enemy and rogue nin just tremble at the mention of his name, a peep about “The Noble Blue Beast of Konoha” would have enemies wetting their pants. He’s one of the elites and is one of the strongest in the Konoha? Heck the world?? He went from this below mediocre adorable runt to this feared and very powerful jonin?? And he did this without ninjutsu, hacks, and any kekei genkai?? Only through pure hardwork and dedication?? He developed the Strong Fist style?? Yeah break dem bones, my king!! I only stan legends. He is literally the light of my and Kakashi’s life. Whether you ship kakagai platonically or romantically, dude you better believe that Gai is one of the most precious people of Kakashi. Kakashi literally trusts no one more implicitly than Gai. Like this hella paranoid and self-sacrificing silver haired dog boi trusted Gai to watch his ex-anbu traumatized ass and be there for him at all times of trouble??? And Gai being there for Kakashi so unfailingly for all of their lives??? For all the dark times in their lives, they'll always have each other no questions?? They're each other's constant?? They love each other so much?? No one knows them like the other??? Uhh hello?? Like why do some writers write Gai as this weird ass buffoon idiot who goddamn annoys Kakashi 24/7? And then Kakashi doesn't even like him and pushes him away, super annoyed?? What. Are we talking about the same characters?? They are each other's best friend. Goddamned soulmates. Eternal rivals. They all have such untapped potential that I am breathing hard in frustration. I still stand by my claim that we should’ve had Team Gai as protagonists like fuck. This is the hill I will die on, I want them, I want to see their bond, I want their stories, I want to witness their development?? Like why nerf these beautiful characters I hate it here WHOOPS, HAHAHAHAA! That was rather ineloquent and vulgar, uuhh forgive me! I hope I could talk to you again, anon! Thank you for enabling me and helping me warm up my brain in answering my summative essays, I feel like writing again! And pls send asks, i wanna make new friends

[kelasparmak]

Naruto for 001?

Favorite character: Kakashi

Least Favorite character: Probably the Sandaime? Like, at least most of the villains are upfront about it, but I felt like Hiruzen made a lot of bad choices that he treated as if they were ~a necessary evil~ but they were really not necessary; I think he very deliberately decided ‘there’s nothing I can do about this’ when there were things he could have done and he was just too cowardly to do them.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): Gai and Kakashi, of course! I’m also pretty invested in Ino and Sakura, Naruto and Gaara, Kakashi and Yamato, and Anko and Kurenai. I am also big into team triads, which would in practice probably not be a good idea, but which I imagine would in reality happen a lot and would at least be definitely healthier as a team dynamic than love triangles. (Out of these, I’m probably most invested in poly Team 8, but poly Team Gai is also very close to my heart.)

Character I find most attractive: I feel a little weird thinking about Naruto characters in these terms, I guess because I went from being the same age as or younger than the child characters when I started reading it to almost as old as the adult characters initially were now. I’m pretty sure Anko is the most attractive to me personally, but I think if we assumed age-appropriateness Neji and Temari would also be contenders since I had pretty big crushes on both when I was a kid.

Character I would marry: I mean, it would be an odd relationship no matter who it was, but thinking about I guess I’d probably most like to marry Kurenai and help her raise Mirai? But also there are so many characters I’d be happy marrying, so.

Character I would be best friends with: I would love to be best friends with Anko, but probably Shiho, the ditzy code-breaking nerd lady.

A random thought: I think a lot about how fucked up it is that even in Konoha (which IIRC in canon has a reputation for being the bleeding heart softie village? I might be wrong) up until recently it was apparently normal for kids to make genin and chuunin super young. Like, idk if Kishimoto wasn’t thinking about how dark it was and just wanted to emphasise that Kakashi and Gai are super talented, but according to the databooks didn’t they make genin at 5 and 6 respectively? And when Kakashi puts Team 7 up for the chuunin exams he tells Iruka he made chuunin at half their age (which was either 12 or 13, so yeah, he’d have been six). Like, just thinking about what being a genin requires in terms of mental and physical discipline, let alone the kind of risk involved in going on missions, that is super fucked up, and it is absolutely impossible that they were well-prepared enough after a maximum of two possible years of education. Maybe it was because it was wartime but it’s still like… wow. Goes double for Kakashi making chuunin the year after making genin. Shit’s fucked. Also it adds a new level of hypocrisy to the Sandaime acting like a friendly old grandpa to Naruto and Iruka, and acting appalled when he found out about Root, when not long before he’d presumably been personally sending a 6 year old the same age as his son off to kill or be killed. Like it’s bad enough sending a 12 year old off to do that, but at least by that point they’d been in training for it (in terms of physical training, knowledge and probably most importantly psychological/emotional training) for longer than Kakashi had been alive when he graduated the Academy. Like, yikes.

An unpopular opinion: I don’t know if it’s unpopular per se, but I don’t think I really like either Naruto or Kakashi being Hokage. From what we see of Naruto as Hokage he doesn’t really change anything and I think it is actually a relatively popular opinion that that’s disappointing. I would have preferred it if he’d never become Hokage at all and had changed the world as a hermit not affiliated with any village and helping everyone he could to believe in the Power of Friendship instead. Or if that’s too naive even for a shonen manga, started his own village with a hugely different system or something. And I don’t think Kakashi should have been Hokage either - he didn’t want to be, and while obviously he is intelligent and all, I think he’s much better as a solo operative than as someone with that kind of responsibility; as far as I’m concerned he wasn’t even cut out to be a teacher, he was way too fucked up and it’s canon that he didn’t sign up for it voluntarily. I don’t think he did a terrible job, but I think if Team 7 had been led by someone who knew how to be a human and interact with humans and had experience of being a normal twelve year old, things might have worked out a lot more happily. He could (and should!) still have been in their lives, but like… not with that level of responsibility, it wasn’t any good for them or for him and there’s no way the Sandaime could have reasonably expected it to be.

My canon OTP: I mean, Kakashi and Gai basically are canon at this point, for which I am eternally grateful. I guess out of the canon pairings that are explicitly romantic, I liked the bits we saw of Minato and Kushina’s dynamic, which looked like it was mostly Kushina beating people up (especially Jiraiya) while Minato watches dreamily with big heart eyes and his chin in his hands, going ‘that’s my wife’, and everyone around is mildly horrified by her violent fury. Also the housework sharing (feat. Minato in a pink apron) in the canon AU where they lived, which ought to be a basic requirement but is actually unusual enough to stand out.

Non-canon OTP: Ino/Sakura, I think. I know I always think things are ~obviously gay~ when they’re not meant to be, but even leaving romance out of it their rivalry over boys was very clearly demonstrated in the chuunin exam arc to be a way of them proving their worth to each other despite their insecurities. Not a smart or healthy way, but it was made clear that their competition over Sasuke was about their relationship to each other more than about Sasuke himself. Even if they never got together, I would fight to the death for my lesbian Ino headcanon.

Most badass character: A lot of the characters are way more badass in their potential than in canon, which maybe goes in part with it being a shonen manga (and a lot of the badassery comes from things that wuld actually be way too dark for kids) and partly just from it being a very big cast. In terms of canon though, I guess I’d probably say Gai or Tsunade.

Pairing I am not a fan of: Kakashi/Iruka, which I don’t have a problem with per se, I just don’t get it really. It doesn’t seem to be as prominent these days as when it used to be everywhere, but I just don’t really feel like it would work out very well as a relationship. I also really don’t like the idea that Rin, after watching from the afterlife as Obito murdered so many people, including Minato and Kushina, ~in her honour~, would go ‘aww! look how much you loved me! as a reward for turning back to the light side in the end, we are now in love’. Like, she was a medic, and she was one of the sweetest characters in the manga and stubborn as hell when it came to her principles - she wouldn’t see that as a sign of how much he cared about her, she’d be horrified.

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): I mean, pretty much all of them. Yamato in particular was screwed over more than screwed up, and Anko too - I think Kishimoto just forgot about them both. As for actively screwing a character up, I think Sakura probably? I don’t mind the idea of a lot of the ninjas retiring relatively early and raising kids, because a) it’s the kind of job where you and your body would get worn out pretty fuckin quick so early retirement ought to be the norm since even with specialised medical care and constant training you’d lose your edge by 40 most likely and losing your edge means dying, b) if you’re gonna have kids at least one parent needs to retire from active duty to raise them on account of the hours and the high death rate. But at the end of the Shinobi War arc Sakura was just coming into her own as a hugely talented combat medic and I don’t think it was in-character for her to settle down yet, especially since Sasuke wasn’t ready to or made to. I’d have been happy with her settling down and leaving active duty for a high-profile medical position once Sasuke was done adventuring, but I honestly can’t see her being satisfied with giving all that up so young, given her drive throughout the series up until then to prove herself as a combat medic.

Favourite friendship: I mean. Kakashi and Gai. Again. Their dynamic is so good and they understand each other so well and they support each other so much (Gai in particular stands out, especialy because he’s the most vocal about it and lbr Kakashi is a mess all the way through the series and so he’s the one we see needing support most often, but it is a mutual thing). But in the interest of variety I’ll pick one I haven’t mentioned yet, and say the Sandsibs. Even while they were terrified of Gaara and he kept going on about how much he hated them, they clearly did also care about him, and all of the flashbacks to them as children are heartbreaking. And after the chuunin exam arc when he decides to let them in, they’re always so sweet and they love each other so much.