Naruto # 84 - a minute to minute reaction

[timepiececlock]

04:00 - ohmydear, chibi!Sasuke is adorable. And, it seems, the eternal Sasuke question has been answered: Yes, he's always had stupid hair.

05:45 - and he's sweet! a polite little child that actually smiles. how tragic.

07:08 - poor baby. this is going to be bad.

08:06 - Nooooo! ::hugs chibi!Sasuke and covers his eyes::

08:30 - He took off his shoes. He really *must* be in shock.

09:13 - Move... Move... No, wait, don't move! Don't open the door! You'll never be happy again if you open the door!

12:02 - Itachi needs to die. Evil child-torturing SOB needs to die.

14:52 - "Run. Run and cling to life." Oh Sasuke. ::sad sigh::

18:11 - Eww... is his skin supposed to peel like that?

19:24 - Oh SHIT! He did not just do that. HE DID NOT JUST DO THAT!

21:00 - Jeraiya! About time you showed up you irresponsible guardian. But good show old man.

The image of chibi!Sasuke running away and screaming "Don't kill me" was painful to watch. He's only eight years old, just a child.

That SOB needs to die. Go kill him Sasuke. We're right behind you.

---


To donna_c_punk, who is downloading episode 1 at this moment, you're in for a great ride, girl.

Edited to add: I bet breaking his wrist ::cringes again at thought:: is karma retribution for Sasuke torturing the Sound nin's arms in the chuunin exams.

And have I mentioned lately that I love the perspectives and visual direction used on the fights in this show? Better than the anime norm.

I'm still pretty surprised that Itachi showed Sasuke how he murdered the family. It wasn't enough that the little boy tripped over the bodies comming home and saw the brother he idolizes standing over the corpses of his parents... no, Itachi had to make him live it personally. No wonder Sasuke's so fucked up.

Comments

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

You think so?

Um... yeah? ::confused::

He seemed to be doing fine until Naruto's display of power and Itachi returning and Itachi forking his interest on Naruto instead of him, which is a pretty big blow to his - I supposed - ego.

Yep. Definitely an ego blow. One of the reasons I think Sasuke is not that likely to "revise his plans" when its pointed out to him that he's getting darker is that the older he gets the less I think he'll care about being more and more unstable or closer to becoming the devil.

Having Naruto present is a contradiction: in some ways Naruto is healing Sasuke, by teaching him about friendship, loyalty, duty, and integrity. Even Orochimaru noticed this. In other ways Naruto is a constant reminder to Sasuke of his own weakness as a fighter, which feeds his emotional downward spiral and heightens Sasuke's urgency to be strong enough to carry out his vengeance.

Again, I do agree that it is an ego blow that Itachi isn't even coming back for him, since Sasuke spends so much time thinking about Itachi. But I do firmly believe that Sasuke's primary motivation in episode 82 WAS fear for Naruto's life... when he's running and searching, he thinks that Naruto will be killed because he knows Naruto isn't strong enough. In this moment, Naruto becomes Sasuke's lost family. And Sasuke is driven to warn Naruto because he's faced with the chance of losing yet another person he cares about to Itachi.

And this episode's flashbacks only clarifies this element of fear-- Sasuke is always going to be running, away form Tiachi or to him, and even when he faces an opportunity to confront Itachi, as he does now, he's still so heavily controlled by the fear of the little 8 year old boy. Not the kind of fear that keeps him from fighting (he's too angry for that and displays no hesitation in attacking), but the kind of fear that makes him always hyper-aware of the danger Itachi presents to the people Sasuke is tied to.

I'm actually surpised in a way by this angle... I thought Sasuke's back story was going to be all about anger. But because he was so young it's equal parts anger and fear, and to me that is even more fascinating.

Itachi is pretty cruel, but there must be an emphasized point to why he would do that to a 9 yr old kid. The whole Uchiha massacre seems suspicious to me, too many holes to work with and not enough answer.

I believe that Itachi would just kill them all to see if he could-- from what we've seen he's a total sociopath. I can believe there's not anything more to it than that.

What I am most interested in is why he let Sasuke live. I don't believe it's that he's too apathetic to bother killing Sasuke... he went to the trouble to show Sasuke everything he did, and obviously planned the timing so that Sasuke would arrive after he'd killed everyone else. If he's this smart and planned it so meticulously (this doesn't seem like it was done on a whim) then he must have planned a reason to keep Sasuke alive. It's not love and it's not pity. I also don't at all think it's some twisted obligation to keep his clan alive.

It could be curiousity, to see what Sasuke could become, given enough motivation. It could be he wants to manipulate Sasuke later for some other purpose.