It’s been a while since i was last able to respond to comments, so instead of flooding the site with my own comments, i’m just gonna put my responses to the currently pending ones here ^_^;…
@shikome kido mi: It just sometimes seems to me that even kids the age of Naruto and the rest should be more aware of certain events. For instance, early on Sakura seemed strangely oblivious to the fact that Sasuke’s entire family was dead when she made her rather tasteless comment about Naruto being an orphan. The nature of the ‘uchiha massacre’ itself also creates questions, since an entire (presumably large) clan was slaughtered in a single night, including all of the people walking out on the street and going about their business, and nobody noticed that this was happening? That stretches credulity and says to me that there must have been a very comprehensive cover-up, and unless everybody in Konoha hated the Uchiha enough to wish them all dead, it seems to me that the ‘Truth’ should still be out there somewhere, in the hands of somebody other than Madara or Itachi…
@The Unicorn: In Suiren, the way ninja villages fit into the local politics of their ‘host’ countries varies from village to village and from country to country. The ‘Hidden Village System’ is quite young, having be created by the first Hokage, and in most countries it is overlaid atop an existing, much older feudal system. This has not worked out ’amicably’ in most cases; the Fire Country is the exception, not the rule, and it is partially for this reason that Konoha grew to become the ’strongest’ of the ninja villages.
The ‘traditional’ source of military power is the samurai class. Before the emergence of advanced bloodlines and the creation of a near-universal ‘hand seal’ system that could be used to mould chakra for use in ninjutsu and genjutsu, ‘ninja clans’ were simply lower-class samurai families that specialized in espionage/assassination techniques, rather than open combat. The developments mentioned above ‘changed the game,’ and eventually led to a schism between the ninja clans and the samurai class.
As matters stand in the current continuity of Suiren, the main distinction in combat ability between ninja and samurai would be that samurai, in general, have little or no ability to mould chakra for the purpose of creating most of the ‘magic-like’ effects that ninjutsu and genjutsu can produce. On the other hand, samurai tend to be far better at basic physical combat than ninja at an equivalent level of advancement.
Some of the more esoteric schools of samurai swordsmanship specialize in ‘elemental’ styles that make use of elemental chakra – though these tend more toward elemental ‘enhancement’ of physical attacks, rather than pure elemental attacks. Other schools have other specialties, and they all tend to be very insular. As a small spoiler, the man who struck Kurenai’s kagebunshi is a member of school in which students are taught to emit no detectable killing intent before attacks. Hopefully its easy to imagine why the Lord Haruno would want a man with such an ability as his personal bodyguard.
@The Unicorn: It is, however, an insult that Konoha can afford to make (whether it was intentional or not). Lord Haruno’s views are far from popular…
@The Unicorn: The Fire Country is enjoying a long era of relative peace. None of the more recent ‘ninja wars’ that the Konoha fought in actually took place within the Fire Country’s borders, and the Fire Country was not obliged to foot the bill for those wars because Konoha would have gone to war with our without the government’s consent.
Thus, for the Daimyo of the Fire Country, the Hidden Village (ninja mercenary) system is very much politically and economically preferable to supporting a bloated system of landless samurai who live only to fight and who are entitled to be supported (to some degree) but the state, whether or not there is any fighting to be done. Many of these samurai actually are inferior to ninja on the battlefield as well, though such a thing could not be said for the men serving directly under the Lord Haruno; Sakura’s grandfather is a hardliner and a hawk, and he trains his men to be ready to fight any opponent they might face.
With regard to Kurenai’s noticing the motion blur of Gin’s attack, there is much to be said for the ‘early warning system’ that most ninja rely upon. Kurenai sensed no ‘killing intent,’ so while she may normally have been able to avoid the attack with just that small visual cue, in this case she could not react fast enough – or at least that’s my justification for it ^_^;. Gin is incidentally also much, much faster than she is…
@The Unicorn: if you mean ‘prodigy,’ then yes, they do seem to get that word confused with ‘genius’ quite a bit. And yes, due to the endless power escalation of shounen manga/anime, any ‘unstoppable’ attack will probably not remain that way for very long…
@The Unicorn;@paranoid android;@The Unicorn;@shikome kido mi;@The Unicorn;@ArjunaAnja: As popular shounen stories go, Naruto is pretty bad for blatantly breaking/forgetting/making up random exceptions to ‘rules’ that have previously been ‘explained.’ At the moment, i’m inclined to say that any high-speed combat technique (such as the Lotus or the Chidori) is perfectly usable without any doujutsu such as the Sharingan or the Byakugan. All that the doujutsu ‘eye of insight’ does is allow the user to ’shortcut’ the years of training it would normally take to read and react to counterattacks at that that speed, because both the Sharingan and the Byakugan allow the user to see the motion of an enemy’s chakra before the physical attack motion even begins.
@shikome kido mi: You are indeed correct; here, have a cookie! ^_^…
@Black-Petal: Those are some interesting conjectures; hopefully you’ll find how the Kitsune-Tsuki actually works to be at least as interesting – and hopefully logical, reasonable and not overpowered as well. I can dream, can’t i? The technique will be explained within the next few chapters; Kurenai is a genjutsu master (as opposed to a totally self-taught neophyte like Sakura or a medical nin who has never really needed to know too much about genjutsu, like Yoshinari), and you can bet that she is very concerned about the trouble Sakura’s ‘rogue technique’ could potentially cause for her mission.
Quote: As a small spoiler, the man who struck Kurenai’s kagebunshi is a member of school in which students are taught to emit no detectable killing intent before attacks. Hopefully its easy to imagine why the Lord Haruno would want a man with such an ability as his personal bodyguard.
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Actually, while I could see employing someone like that as an assassin, I’m not quite sure you need him as a bodyguard. Lord Haruno must have some very stringent background checking and loyalty testing because otherwise, it seems like he’d have to be worried all the time about the possibility of dying before he even knows it to his own bodyguard.
He also could be thinking outside the box.
Who better to have as a quard than than a person who thinks like a would-be attacker.
Mmm. Cookie… I have earned this tasty treat with the fruits of my mad brilliance (and utterly lack of humility).
Very intresting responses and they’ve reassured me that the world you’re building is logical and well thought out. I’d like to clarify what I meant as you seem to have misunderstood some of the things I previously posted:
-Insults: I was answering another poster explaining why I saw Lord Harrano’s reaction perfectly reasonable, not criticizing your description of Kohona’s attitude.
-Beheading: I did not mean to suggest Kurenai could avoid the blow, however she would try to do so which since actually beheading a person with a sword requires the sword and person be almost perfectly positioned while her jerk of movement in response would not be enough to prevent her clone’s dispelling it would be enough to prevent her from feeling the sensation of being beheaded. Not that I’d expect her to find the sensation of having a sword chopping into the side of her neck, or cutting her throat or severing her spine , etc… much more enjoyable.
Speaking of shortcuts, I have thought of an expansion of my earlier idea that the shunshin technique is used because it’s easier to learn, despite being far more limited, than physical highspeed movement.
Gai and Lee’s training schedules are clearly viewed as abnormal even among ninja. They’re shown as devoting a lot of time to improving and even just maintaining their body. This becomes an issue when you consider all the things ninja have to know: not just taijutsu, ninjutsu, and genjutsu but also stealth, traps, tracking, codes, poisons, and so on. When you consider that they also have to eat, sleep, and go on missions, most ninja would probably take the faster route so they might have a little time to do something unrelated to their job (like read [usually porn it seems] or talk to their friends).
That’s logical although not reasonable since it’s based on the very unreasonable assumption that shunshin is merely a high speed technique and nothing more. If that’s all it was then the swirl of leaves/sand/other stuff would be pointless and if it could be used in such precision as to get into/out of a room with a closed door it could be used extremely effectively in combat.
Well, that’s assuming that the swirl of leaves isn’t just a wind effect from high speed movement in a forest village known for having lots of them.
Also, if it is teleportation the Yellow Flash’s techniques look pretty useless, unless his advantage was not needing to make handseals or something like that.
As for doors: You may be right. I really do not want to go back through the series and check every use of shunshin indoors to see if the room contained a handy already open door or window (since as ninjas windows are always a viable exit regardless of floor) so they may or may not be able to open them. If they can? Plot hole.
But maybe the can’t.
As for why nobody noticed the massacre I think an explanation might the achitecturial. Not that I’ve ever seen a plan drawing of where the Uchiha’s lives, however I’ve heard it reffered to as the Uchiha district and once saw a documentary about asian (chinese?) architecture that showed the district/palace where the empereor and his family lived. The area where the clan lived was pretty much it’s own mini-community seperated from the rest of the community (both figurately and physically), with restricted entrace and leaving. I think this might also hold true for other less mighty clans.
If the Uchiha’s had a similar setup then the streets we see in the massacre scenes might have been inside this enclosed district. If everyone inside this isolated zone (including non-clan members and servants) was murdered and Sasuke out cold, then it would’nt be so suprising that it might not be noticed until the morning.
What I find much more unrealistic is that every single Uchiha (and carriers of the bloodline) except Sasuke was in the village, much less the same area at the same time. I don’t know how many they were, but they are refered to as a big clan. That must surley mean 50 people pluss? Even if they had some sort of clan gathering that evening/night it’s unrealistic that not at least one Uchiha was on a mission or police duty and/or out of Itachi’s reach that night. It would have been more realistic that he would have had to hunt them down over a period of time (or had help…) And even if all the village elders was in on it there should have been some unknown individuals carrying the bloodline that survived (illegimate children, outcasts living elsewhere ect.)
It wouldn’t suprise me if it turns out that Sai is a Uchiha bastard (a real ‘Teme’ XD)
If it’s true that the village was behind the massacre it would probably have been kept ’somewhat’ quiet.
Canon Sakura might not have have known about it since her parent’s are civilians (as far as I know) that might not know much about it. and it’s unlikely that that’s a theme they would discuss all that much at least in front of their young child. She was also bullied/ an outcast as a child and might not have had much contacts with other kids than Ino who knew and/or was willing to tell her.
Actually now that I think about it we don’t even know if Sakura was born in the village, she and her family might have moved there later on. We only that she took classes, was bullied and met Ino there when she was what? Five? Six? How old was she/Sasuke when the massacre happened? It was also probably an old topic and seldom talked about by the time she took an interest in Sasuke. She might have it mentioned but not the specifics and not made the connection. Who knows?
I went over the Tsunade fight again.
I think she lost less to Kabuto than to her own crippling emotional problems and then beat everyone else up after she got (at least partly) over those, so she’s not necessarily as weak as you were saying.
It’s still probably part of Naruto’s misogyny that it’s the female Sannin that has those issues, though.
There’s also the irony in that she was a medic that was afraid of blood…-_-’ though that’s only after the death of both the brother and lover…that kinda sucks…
Then there’s the whole: snake beats toad, toad beats snail, and snail beats snake thingy…i totally forget where i heard that saying…if Kabuto was snake mans chosen right-hand man he’s got to be skilled in his abilities…
But ya if they’re suppose to be the legendary trio it sort of sucks that the girl in the group has stereotypically very emotional problems…
Black-Petal: Sakura was already living in the village during the massacre because Sasuke was around 8 at the time and already in the academy…but the indecent was probably hushed up to the civilian population at the time and only bits of information probably got to them. Sakura’s parents probably also didn’t want to say anything to her about it…though i don’t see how they made sakura totally forget that sasuke was an orphan when she was talking about Naruto in the beginning of the series…she would have still heard about it during her classes…*sighs* who knows…-_-