We’ll all come home, Naruto chapter 511

bowl · Sep 26, 2010

Introduction

Hello there as you can probable see I’m new. So for now you can just think of me as a reviewer in training. Feel free to give me any advice as to how I can improve my future reviews.

Chapter 511 We’ll all come home

Chapter Layout.

This chapter can pretty much be broken down into two parts. The first which I will start with is Konan and how the readers should feel sympathy/happiness as she goes on a journey to reunite with her dear friends or shall I say family. Second part is Madara as he goes towards the next step towards his ambitions.

The Orphans flashback (Journey into your hearts)

How does one make the readers care about imaginary characters? So that when they’re happy, you’ll feel happy for them or vice versa. In Kishimoto’s case he picked the tough life but happy growing up family approach. During these 10 or so pages we see Konan, Nagato and Yahiko as children as Jiraiya takes the role of the father figure. We get orphans dress as frogs, Children learning how to take care of themselves, The fatherly figure leaving the teens to grow up into adults, The teens facing the harsh world and a little romance thanks to Nagato

. Overall this flashback had no negative emotions. No murder, no take over the world and most importantly it ends with an implied “Hey readers these teens will have a bright future ahead of them”.

For me this flashback succeeded in making me care for these character. The moment I saw Konan smiling at Yahiko with Nagato looking at her in curiosity in frog suits :glomp

made it impossible for me to say anything bad about them.

Journey of symbolism

Let’s be frank here. There was a lot of symbolism in this chapter from red origami paper to all of the flowers in the abandon house to name a few. Just to make sure that we are all in the same ship, the planks in the house have two sides. The red side signifies that your "home" and the frog side mean that you are out for the moment. Konan’s part in the story ends with the Origami paper stained in her blood covering her plank which has the picture of the frog. This symbolizes that Konan, Nagato and Yahiko are now all together as well as Jiraiya since his plank is red.

My first time through this page was bitter sweet. They are death but at least they are now together is what I first thought. But now I feel bitter since this is starting to feel more like a satire or a tragedy. With edo tensei in the plot Nagato is technically not “home” but inside some coffin. At the same time what will happen to Amegakura now that it has lost its leader? Will it fall into civil war now that God (pain) and God’s angel (Konan) have disappeared? We can only hope that this military village will turn democratic and elect a new leader peacefully under this confusion.

Madara’s Bad Day

This has been a bad day for Madara. Let’s not forget that this is a person who is arrogant and prideful. If you’re not a senju or an Uchiha than he will not respect you (unless if you hurt him in which case he will congratulate you in a satirical way) and think little of you (even if you’re a kage). Having lost his arm and an eye in trying to defeat someone who neither a kage nor a senju must have been quite an embarrassment for him as he thinks “what a hassel time to go”. Although I have to give Madara credit that he took Nagato’s entire body with him instead of just taking his eyes. Had it been me I would have gone after just the eyes and probable trigger some booby trap kind of how Gai got ahead of himself and opened the scroll that belonged to a certain shinobi and ended up with an all too happy shark.

Madara 3.0

First let’s talk about the evolution of Madara’s masks. With the exception of the third mask what the two of them had in common is that they only revealed the right eye. The first mask had black lines that looked as if they were being pulled into the right eye (http://www.mangareader.net/93-55464-11/naruto/chapter-502.html) kind of like the beginning of a whirlpool. During this time Madara controlled the village hidden within the mist from the shadows. The second mask was orange and had swirls or a whirlpool design that centered on the right eye. This was when Madara controlled akatsuki from the shadows.

Now that Madara can no longer hide within the shadows of some organization his mask has had a radical new design. Instead of the whirlpool theme it’s the Rinnegan with three tomoes and two eye sockets that look like tomoes. In this case one could say that the whirlpool that sucked things into darkness (itachi, sasuke, nagato, kisame, ect) has become a ripple (Rinnegan) of hatred (sharingan or better yet the Uchiha hatred).

Now as for what this mask says about Madara’s fighting capabilities is really anyone’s guess. The whirlpool design masks looked like Madara’s absorption and teleportation jutsu. With this new mask we might be actually be seeing what Madara has done with Nagato’s Rinnegan in that he now has tomoes on the Rinnegan. Also this mask has no mouth piece so it makes me wonder if Madara will be able to use his war fan to power up any fire jutsus (with the exception of amaterasu).

Final thoughts

The art was ok as in it did not blow my mind but it did not break my immersion. Now that I have read this chapter I do think that it complements Konan’s death since the last chapter made it almost impossible for anyone to feel any sadness towards Konan’s thanks to all of the fireworks (6 hundred billion fireworks to be exact). At the same time I belief that this chapter signifies the death of Akatsuki. Konan, Nagato and Yahiko were the only real members of Akatsuki (that we know the name of). We see this in that in death they are all still wearing their akatsuki cloak. Now no one except for maybe Zetsu is wearing the cloak (I kind of wish that kishimoto showed what Zetsu was wearing in this chapter to make this point a little more solid). Overall it was a good read although some parts felt a little cheap to me like Nagato not technically being “home” or Madara saying it’s time to capture the nine tails when he want sasuke (Uchiha) to beat naruto (Senju/uzumaki).

My god I did not expect this review to end up being 90% of it with me talking a little bit about the symbolism of the chapter. Hopefully in my next review I will be able to make a little smaller and figure out how to put in pictures.