Originally Posted by
blackjack612
The big sticking point for a lot of readers seems to be Obito's motivations and I wanted to provide a counterpoint. I don't think Obito is any bit more or less selfish than any of the characters in the manga. From our point of view, any dream world he creates would be an illusion, but we're reading the manga as near-omniscient readers.
From Obito's perspective, that new reality would supplant this one and has built in it a mechanism for creating the broadest base of happiness. No war. No loss. No failure. It'd be a world debatablely better than one that turns children into soldiers and where non-stop murder is not the norm.
The question is: does this make him selfish? I'd argue no, or at least not any more selfish than the myriad other characters who would put their own views and philosophies above other and force them on the war. Naruto definitely falls within this category and we only accept it as readers because we feel empathy towards him as a main character. But from the perspective of other characters, and as has been shown in the manga, Naruto's philosophies are half-baked and naive no matter how good his intentions.
Obito is delusional, without a doubt, but all leaders are generally delusional. That's what it takes to believes that you can decide the course of a peoples. To that end Naruto, the Raikage, Gaara, Hiruzen, Madara, Orochimaru, and the rest of the big power houses are delusional because they've at times stuck obstinately to their vision of what the world is or should be.
Yet Obito sincerely believes his course is one that helps the greater good. It's not just Rin that'd be revived from the dead. Everyone would have a shot at lasting peace, at living without the spectre of war or death chasing behind them. When you look at classic villains, the ones that last in literature are often the ones that think that they are the hero of the story.
Now of course, as with all art, your mileage may vary. It's easy to dismiss a character we feel above (especially because we're coming in with greater knowledge than the characters) or whom we don't understand because his motivations seem foreign to anything we've experienced ourselves. But I'd argue that while the execution has been sloppy, the underpinnings of Obito are very sound.
Obito believed in three things: Rin, his trust in Kakashi, and the village, in that order. One moment of terrible trauma took it away and he had a psychotic break. That's something I can actually buy into and so I recognize that he is as a character committing these terrible acts, not as a mentally healthy individual, but as someone dangerously detached from reality. He's so far gone down the rabbit hole that he doesn't realize how deep he's gone.
To what degree can you define evil. What backstory could possibly justify anything Orochimaru, Madara, Zabuza, Nagato, or Itachi did? None really. We shouldn't be looking for justification, but understanding, clarity.
Madara grew up in an era of war that was in danger of becoming obsolete. Paranoid, sociopathic, and arrogant, he set about rectifying a situation that never was only to end up responsible for the future he feared.
Orochimaru is just as sociopathic as the rest, but his detachment comes from years of growing up in war without any attachment. His parents gone, Hiruzen was the only one he really had, but any gains made there were undone with each atrocity he witnessed on the battlefield: unfair genetic advantages, war orphans, Tsunade's relations always inevitably leading to death and heartbreak.
Itachi grew up the same way but chose loyalty to the village and to the goal of preventing greater bloodshed and chaos no matter how great the cost.
Zabuza was used and as a bullied pawn became a bully that used others himself, a very real phenomenon.
Nagato was idealistic, lost, and confused and latched on to whatever answers he could find.
Each of these characters has a central relationship whose failures motivated them to some degree and I don't see how we as readers can dismiss them and yet look past the fact that the heroes of Naruto are motivated by relationships just as simple.
Naruto has a desire to prove himself but wouldn't be there without the validation of Iruka, Hiruzen, and Kakashi. Sakura has her teammates. Each of the rookie teams and senseis have their bonds with each other. The only difference between the heroes and villains is that the heroes were able to weather their traumas, and oft time through sheer timing and luck.
Just my two cents.
But from his perspective, their net suffering will be erased and then some if he succeeds. So long as his plan goes off, there is no evil deed he can't commit that he can atone for. If everyone is dreaming and no one is aware that they're in the dreamworld, then for all intents and purposes, the dream world becomes the new reality.
Oh, and one more last thing...
Just to nitpick, Obito would be closer to the architect than Agent Smith. Agent Smith had no love lost to humanity, whereas the architect created a system by which the machines and humans could mutually survive, which says a lot because the machines could just have easily decimated the last remnants of humanity. Obito has contempt for loss and death, but seems to desire a world in which everyone can genuinely coexist, even if it's just an illusion with some set rules (no war, no dying) hard coded into it.
In the movies, Agent Smith is almost unquestionably evil, but the Architects and machines can't be so easily classified because the situation depends upon the perspective you see the machine/human war from. They do some bad things for the sake of what could be good.
