Gold Knight's Ten Comments (Naruto 444)

Gold Knight · Apr 20, 2009

Don't cry, kid, my Comments are back!

Hello again guys.

Sorry about missing last week. It was one of these instances where I looked at a chapter and enjoyed it, but simply didn't have much luck thinking of much to say about it... at the time. So I took a break instead, and it was only yesterday that I finally felt talkative again enough to write a new review, luckily.

However, that does not mean Chapter 443 wasn't good enough to talk about... far from it! So I'll say a few things about it here first before getting to 444.

So, just for the record, I would have rated last week's chapter a 4.5. Kishimoto managed to supply an 'end' to a side-story that had been going on for a while with a few minor characters (Inoichi, Shikaku) while using the occasion to give us an extraordinary glimpse into Naruto's inner emotional conflicts. That was a nice touch.

Naruto's heated exchange with Inoichi both asserted his desire for vengeance and expressed his frustration at having to go that route. We're left highly curious and wondering what Naruto will do, which is always a good thing going into the next chapter. Because I don't think even Naruto knows yet. He's walking into the hideout of the enemy to try to find out if there's a way to break the "chain of hatred" that Jiraiya spoke of, while at the same time he's tempted by that very same emotion to start the cycle anew. Talk about suspense!

It was as a good a transitional chapter as you could get because it helped us appreciate Naruto's present dilemma a little better, didn't it? And now, Chapter 444. Thanks to Heiji-sama and [Ju-Ni]Vicissitude for the RAWs, Sakura, HisshouBuraiKen and cnet128 for the translations, and SleepyFans and Binktopia for the Edited Mangas. I'll be using Binky's scan for my images, and thanks to Fnuckale also for my header.

Feel free to comment on anything, and enjoy. =)

* * * Gold Knight's Ten Comments on Naruto Chapter 444: The Answer! * * *

Dumb question, huh?

1. How You've Wronged Me...! There's no doubt Kishimoto wanted us to study how Naruto reacted to finally seeing the one who had turned his world completely upside-down. Flashback for flashback, we saw how his face grimaced more, ever so slightly, to recalling each imagined memory of fatally injured loved ones (since we know he hasn't really seen Jiraiya's pierced body or Kakashi's slumped figure) and every scornful word that Pain had lectured at him.

I don't think Naruto was naive enough to think that he would be able to just shrug off seeing Nagato for the first time and attempt immediately towards working to find a peaceful resolution, but I think he was hopeful that he would be able to suppress his anger in meeting him at least.

Obviously, though, as soon as he laid eyes on Nagato and Konan, the memories of all the destruction and deaths Pain caused rolled in, distorting his face into a reflection of pure rage. Nagato's question in turn seemed almost unnecessary, but he was likely just being rhetorical.

You know Nagato had to be well aware of all the pain he's caused the young host of the Kyuubi, right?

That would explain Nagato's curiosity in Naruto's own thoughts on his theoretical "chain of hatred" binding the shinobi world together. He's seeing a reflection of his past self in Naruto - that little kid who witnessed the devastation of his village and the deaths of his loved ones. Could be that Nagato is trying to reassure himself that it was only natural and right for him to be heading down his current path by watching Naruto's own reactions?

I found it a little funny, by the way, that Konan tried to dissuade Naruto from attacking by criticizing revenge as meaningless. While Nagato may not have had revenge in mind when he destroyed Konohagakure, you could make a case that he was still indulging in a bit of vindictiveness. Konan might have sensed that was the case, however, so may have been against the idea for that reason, although I think she was more just concerned about Nagato's health at the time.

Don't tell me you're that happy to see Naruto, Nagato...

2. That Didn't Take Long! So much for my prediction last week that there wouldn't be any kind of physical confrontation, ha.

So that machine Nagato is sitting within is good for something other than just ambulatory reasons, huh? (Gotta wonder if Nagato can actually walk at all, by the way.)

Anyway, Nagato's hostility isn't THAT unexpected, but it's somewhat interesting to me how he resembled a snake here. He attacked not only with a viper's quickness, but also its usual modus operandi - he was trying to immobilize his prey. How nefarious.

And he even sounded a bit like Orochimaru afterwards - "Don't worry, I take care of my jinchuuriki..."

It's a good reminder that Nagato is no longer that "sympathetic child" we saw in Jiraiya's flashbacks but an antagonist in his own right and not one to be trifled around with.

Behold the power of the Frox!

3. Using the Kyuubi! It's worthwhile pointing out here that Naruto seemed to have actually walked into Nagato and Konan's hideout consciously relying on the Kyuubi to break any kind of "hold" that Nagato might attempt to impose over him.

It's not unlike when Killer Bee had used the Hachibi to break Sasuke's hypnosis over him. Can't control two separate entities at once, right?

But there's a difference. It was obvious from Killer Bee's conversation with the bijuu inside him that they had some kind of harmonious partnership going on, whereas you really can't say the same for Naruto and the Kyuubi. So what's going on here? Has Naruto been able to impose his own willpower over the Kyuubi now? Might his mastery over Sage Mode be helping him do just that?

Whatever the case might be, it's obvious Nagato didn't expect this turn of events at all. I don't think he had ever experienced battling a jinchuuriki that was able to work with (or control) its bijuu before, so he fully believed that his own domineering chakra would be the deciding factor here. Guess again, though!

He's so pissed, he's cross-eyed!

4. Temper, Temper! Of course, Naruto was just confirming what had already seemed to be a foregone conclusion here regarding his emotional state of mind in meeting Nagato. He was already seeming very unforgiving when he walked through Konan's paper boundary into the hideout... (speaking of which, I called it a few weeks ago, that was paper...!

)

What I found interesting was that Naruto had wanted to meet Nagato exactly for this reason - simply a face-to-face confrontation to see whether he could be able to rein in his anger or not in dealing with him or not.

But Naruto's the last kid you'd expect to be able to do that. He's all too human...! One of these scenes you'll probably be able to look back at and say that he resembled his fiery mother more than his calm father, huh? (I sure hope that we'll learn more about Kushina at a later point.)

Oh, yes. Guess I should mention what I think of these "fox-sage" eyes. I'll admit, I ridiculed them a bit at first. I even said that Kishimoto was trying to turn Naruto into the "second coming of Jesus" with these eyes.

But what the heck. If Sasuke's allowed to have some freaky star-shaped eyes, you might as well do something with Naruto's own eyes too, so they can have fun staring at each other into submission. And I do like these "fox-sage" eyes better than his regular "sage" pupils. Even so, though, there are some people who definitely like Naruto's normal and expressive eyes the best for dramatic scenes, and you can probably count me as one of them. So I was glad for that later in the chapter.

Puttin' on the brakes!

5. Anger Management! The only thing that kept Naruto back here from throttling his enemy was that he didn't want to sully the confidence that his mentor had put in him.

Additionally, he knew the best way to avenge Jiraiya wasn't to kill Nagato, but rather to correct him on the errors of his ways. Jiraiya didn't want Naruto to further exacerbate their animosity but rather to eradicate it altogether.

Because if the hatred didn't stop somewhere, there'd never be mutual understanding between men. And that was Jiraiya's dream.

But Naruto did indeed find out just how hard that was, as it probably took every fiber of his willpower to stop his own impulsive action. If he had been naive before about the hatred one can feel towards another, well, no longer. He's seen and felt it firsthand now.

And to his credit, he didn't succumb to it, but you can probably thank Jiraiya for that. If he did ever do wrong by Nagato, at least he didn't make the same mistakes as Naruto's teacher.

Hmm, well your eyes are freaky...

6. The Dark Side is Strong in This One! And now, we get the conversation, that is, the one that we had been expecting all this time between Naruto and Nagato. Cut the action, take five. Flashbacks time. Tea, anybody?

Of course, it wasn't too surprising to see Nagato pooh-poohing Jiraiya's words as nothing more than unrealistic idealism. Of course he would. He may have channeled his anger into achieving a mission to change the world to a peaceful one, but it's still anger.

Prior to this exchange, I had actually remained somewhat skeptical that Jiraiya had ever actually told anybody else but Naruto about what he hoped the world would one day become.

But it's becoming obvious Nagato and Konan heard it from him as well, because he certainly seemed familiar with Jiraiya's words here. Something obviously happened after Jiraiya left the three kids in Amegakure. My bet's still on Yahiko's death being the last straw.

Yay! Story-time!

7. All Gather Together And Sit Around! I only really wanted to mention a couple of things here.

First, it was amusing to me how Naruto almost seemed to give Nagato an answer to his question just now, "Do you really believe in Jiraiya's nonsense?" with a resounding YES.

Because Naruto did make the effort to try to understand what made Nagato and Konan into what they are, despite being Jiraiya's students as well.

But funnily enough, I don't think Nagato realized it. He was so startled by Naruto's question, apparently, that he wasn't even thinking about Jiraiya's words anymore.

I WANT ANSWERS!

The other thing is that Naruto chose his words perfectly to actually pique Nagato's curiosity enough to get him to tell his tale.

Because if Naruto hadn't said that he would "give an answer," Nagato likely would have dismissed his query with something like, "you're somebody without an answer, you don't need to know anymore."

Nagato had already demanded Naruto for an answer once before, and in getting none, he had become disdainful of him. Naruto likely noticed that and realized he had to have an answer the next time they met.

He likely came up with one while he was traveling to the hideout, but still needed to hear Nagato's story first to see whether his answer would have any real consequences or not.

Should've listened to her, I guess.

8. Terrible Times! Personally, I would have preferred that Kishimoto skip over this little flashback about how Nagato lost his family, because we already knew that he did. But I suppose that episode was meaningful to Nagato, so there's no way getting around it...

I noticed Kishimoto drew this flashback a little differently than others, even Sasuke's own tragic past. There's much more of a contrast between blacks and whites in Nagato's flashback, which tends to remind me of this cover Kishimoto once did of Naruto.

Kishimoto must have liked the style that seemed to paint the scene as "dreamy", so went back to it here. He must have wanted to create a more nightmarish scene in doing so, but I'm not sure he succeeded all that well. Still, what the heck, if he had been in an experimental mood, he might as well go for it for a minor flashback like this...

I found this scene amusing, though...

Whoops!

...I mean, yeah, that's what you get for having your hair falling down all over your eyes, Nagato...

Sheesh.

Although I don't think this flashback had the same dramatic impact on me as, say, Sasuke's much more evocative and interesting tragedy, I did find it interesting that both their perspectives were likely very much the same, despite being from radically different backgrounds (Nagato's family being ordinary villagers and Sasuke's being a powerful can) - they both felt all too helpless as far as stopping what was to come.

Is this coming out of my paycheck!?

9. Nice Guys Finish Last! I don't know if this is worth mentioning, but I found it amusing that even back then, Kishimoto still portrayed Konoha shinobi as being pretty good guys, despite having just mistaken two villagers for enemy shinobi and killing them both instantly.

Immediately though, they were both remorseful and tried to calm Nagato, but of course that was useless. Nagato's parents were dead. And they had killed them.

Kishimoto still felt like he had to give them both an excuse though. They had gone three days without eating, they were likely tired and exhausted from days of endless chasing or fighting, and that was a pretty "dark" place if they couldn't even see Nagato's mother's face. And Nagato's father did run out right at them with desperate fury in his eyes.

You know, would it actually have been better for Nagato if they had actually been cold-blooded monsters, or did it hurt even more that they weren't? Oh well. At the time Nagato likely didn't care, all he knew was that his family had just been killed by shinobi with leaf-shaped symbols on their forehead protectors. Hate!

Whoa tiger!

10. The Rinnegan Cometh! One final thing, we found out here that Nagato activated his Rinnegan much earlier than we all thought. No, it wasn't when he had joined up with Yahiko, Konan, and had been taken under Jiraiya's wing, it was when his family had been killed.

Seems like Kishimoto really makes a point of making just about every doujutsu in the series manifest at a time of high emotional intensity, such as Sasuke's and Kakashi's Sharingan, and I also count Naruto's Kyuubified mode (even if his eyes then don't really count as doujutsu). Now the Rinnegan would seem to join that category. Not sure about the Byakugan, though.

Anyway, I had to comment on it. It's as though Kishimoto feels some abilities are more tragic than others.

RATING: 4 of 5 - The chapter was fine - just fine. I must admit I'm not as interested in this flashback as I am about finding out what happened to Yahiko, though, which I assume is coming next. Hopefully soon.

PREDICTIONS: More flashbacks next week... what else? I'm going to predict that Yahiko was probably killed by either 1) more Konoha shinobi or 2) Hanzo, the Great Salamander (leader of Amegakure) which would explain why Nagato decided to overthrow his government. I doubt very much that Nagato killed Yahiko, he cared too much about protecting his friends.

Maaan that kid is scary!
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wooticus · Apr 20, 2009