Naruto Essay Chapter 429: Pain’s Shinra Tensei and Naruto’s Return

[zapenstap.livejournal.com]

Narutro Manga Chapter 429 Review

I suspect a lot of people will have something say about this chapter! I almost wrote a response on Thursday, but instead I let it simmer for awhile, in case my gut reaction changed after a few days. It didn’t.

Note: Chapter 429 is better understood if read consecutively from the last couple of chapters. I recommend doing this actually. It made me appreciate this whole arc more. This is what is happening:

In Naruto chapter 429, Pain learns where Naruto is training. This means there is no longer any need to be careful. Instead, Pain decides to clarify his agenda with an epic OMG jutsu

I would like to review the chapter, both what happened and what I think about it. I don’t expect what I have to say will be unique given the amount of conversation taking place, but I would like to touch on a few points for the benefit of anyone as obsessed with it as I am. These are as follows:

• Tsunade’s Confrontation with Pain in Naruto Chapter 428


• Naruto Chapter 429 Recap: Explanation and Review


• Speculations About Survivors


• About Pain’s Ideology


• Should Naruto Understand Pain?


• A Few Notes on Naruto and Sasuke

Naruto Chapter 428: Tsunade and Pain Confrontation

Last chapter (428), Pain and Tsunade had a confrontation where Pain tells Tsunade that he is the "God that will restore order." Pain communicates to Tsunade that he has almost all the Bijuu and that now that the balance of power between ninja villages has been upset, war will come. This isn’t presumptuous, since we know from elsewhere in Part 2 that Bijuu are responsible for a lot of the fighting between villages and were pivotal in the "great secret wars."

Only this time Akatsuki will be able to control the fighting, because they are the ones with the power, and unlike the great ninja villages, they are independent of country politics. As one of the great villages, Konoha can either fall into line (allow itself to be governed by Akatsuki, I guess) or resist and face the consequences.

Pain demands that Konoha hand over Naruto. Tsunade not only refuses, but rejects Pain entirely. She disagrees with Pain’s method of bringing peace to the world through terror, desolation, and death. She calls Pain a terrorist. Pain takes this as an insult. He also dismisses Tsunade as "haughty," with the implication that she is ignorant and/or foolish (possibly one of those prideful, "strong" people who hasn’t known pain sufficiently enough to understand that Pain’s way is the only path to peace). Tsunade responds that not everything Konoha has done is right, but that Pain’s way of doing things is unacceptable. Pain tells her to watch her mouth, and that this is the last warning from God.

Pain again asks for Naruto and Tsunade again rejects him. To make her stance clear, Tsunade digs in a personal hit by telling Pain that he won’t get what he wants most, no matter what he does, and that Naruto is strong.

I think Tsunade is communicating two things to Pain here. "What Pain wants most" is clearly not Naruto since Tsunade says it is not. This seems to indicate that what Pain really wants most isn’t power, or connectively, control over everyone. From what we know of Pain, we can speculate that what Pain wants is restoration of what doesn’t exist anymore—dead friends, dead family, a weeping country, etc. Tsunade is telling Pain that destroying everyone, scarring everyone, or just threatening everyone won’t bring back those that are lost. It also won’t restore order, usher in maturity, or bring real peace. Destruction brings destruction, not restoration. Pain brings pain, not maturity. War brings war, not peace. Furthermore, even if Pain was onto something, he won’t get it because Naruto is strong. Tsunade believes that Naruto will stop him.

It is at this moment, Pain learns where Naruto is.

Naruto Chapter 429 Recap: Explanation and Review

Naruto Chapter 429 begins with Pain detecting that Tsunade’s ANBU guard must have gathered information about his gravity jutsu since they have bolted themselves to the ground using chakra. This is relevant because of the contempt with which Pain views this method of "stopping" him. Even with the necessary intelligence, Konoha is no match for Pain’s power—and he’s about to prove it.

This is important. Pain is about to show Konoha by example how Konoha’s military strength makes other, lesser villages feel. In other words, according to Pain, it is because of military might like that in Konoha that wars exist. Pain postures that Konoha takes war in stride because Konoha is such a strong village (lots of people to sacrifice for one thing), but its position among the "untouchable" villages makes Konoha thoughtless and foolish. Konoha is locked forever in battle because of the people they have killed. Those people had loved ones who now hate Konoha, and so the cycle of violence will continue. Konoha can never think of itself as "safe."

Tsunade objects that Konoha has also suffered losses, and that she won’t accept such accusations, but Pain scoffs "don’t make me laugh" and tells Tsunade that he wants Konoha to "feel pain, think about pain, accept pain, and know pain". In other words, Pain blames the strong for the suffering of the weak. Until all of Konoha suffers like the weaker villages suffer, there cannot be peace.

Aside: The conversation between Pain and Tsunade about the strong and the weak is almost the exact conversation that takes place at the end of Gundam Wing (and maybe the other series too—I haven’t seen them all) between Milliardo Peacecraft (Zechs) and Relena. In Gundam Wing, Heero Yuy solves this problem by explaining to Milliardo (in combat of course) that he’s an idiot because all of humanity, including both of them—supposedly the strongest two people in the world—are just as weak as everybody else. "Strong people" is a misnomer. They may be good fighters, but all people are flawed. They have emotional needs. They do stupid things. They routinely fail—at missions, relationships, communication, everything. Zechs recognizes this as truth because he doesn’t have a God complex and realizes that his "I’m going to blow up Earth" ideology is exactly the kind of flawed thinking that makes him a weak person. Hearing Heero admit it first, and then to be beat by the self proclaimed "weak" guy, inspires him to change his mind. /end aside.

Pain leaps into the sky, giving Tsunade a scare when he proclaims prophetically that "those who don’t know pain can never know true peace."

A whole bunch of things happen at once.

Elsewhere, Shizune’s soul is ripped out (poor Shinuze! I liked her. She was one of the bright characters) just prior to Pain summoning his other bodies out of Konoha.

Meanwhile, Naruto and the frogs learn that the toad killed by Danzou is dead and conclude that something terrible must be happening in Konoha. Naruto prepares to return, once again only having half completed his training.

From the sky, Yahiko Pain appears to look down on the village as the other five zombie bodies are summoned into the forest outside of Konoha. Page 8 is confusing, but from Page 10, you can see that it is Konan who drops from the treetops and performs the actual summons. At least one of the bodies, possibly two, are down in Page 8 (definitely the one attacked by Kakashi and possibly the one attached by Konohamaru). Konan asks the Animal Pain body what is going on, and Pain replies (he is in every one of the bodies simultaneously since he is controlling them from elsewhere) that he is going to do "that." All around Konan, the five bodies drop dead. Konan confirms that Pain is Nagato when she objects that what he plans to do will shorten his life, but it is too late; Pain is determined. In a cross section (they are not able to see each other), the Yahiko Pain in the sky announces that he will give Konoha more Pain.

Several other things happened during this couple of seconds or minutes. We are shown that Kiba and his mom are alive (Kiba makes an amusing joke about his mother being so scary it ran his dad off) and that at least one of Tsunade’s slugs is attached to the wolf dog. The frogs link up just in time to perform a three-frog-strong mega-summons of some sort. Meanwhile, Ino, Ino’s dad, Shino, Shino’s dad, and the other two ninja with them (I forget who they are) are glomped by Tsunade’s slugs.

The frogs are performing the summons as Tsunade screams "Pain!" and Pain activates the Shinra Tensei jutsu (which I’ve heard is translated as the Bitter Voice of God—something like that).

Shinra Tensei is devastating. This is presumably the gravity jutsu Pain used before on Kakashi, but magnified to awesome proportions. Speculation insinuates that Pain consolidated his chakra from all 6 bodies (or four, if two were dead) to make a quadruple-sized gravity blast. Gravity is not an explosion. Pain’s technique pulls matter together and then shoves it away. I think it would be more like a blast of pressure that sends everyone and everything flying, leveling a portion of the village at the impact site, and shoving all the matter around that spot outward in a ring. At any rate, debris piles up all the way to Konoha’s outer wall. The faces in the mountain shake, but do not appear to have been eradicated.

Konan watches from the forest. Slugs are shown pulling their bodies out of the rubble. One of them is attached to Sakura and drags her to the surface. She is alive, but bewildered. Her shocked impulse is to scream for Naruto to save them. In the lower panels, a scroll appears with a piece of cloth fluttering under it. Some have speculated that the fluttering cloth is the hem of a flame coat, but it may just be the scroll’s own material unraveling. At any rate, Pain sees it and is surprised.

The final scan shows the impact of Pain’s Shinra Tensei jutsu—and what an impact! There is an inner circle that was once the heart of Konoha—it is completely leveled. It is unclear how wide this circle is (not all of Konoha), but beyond that is the rubble of the rest of Konoha, which has been flung all the way to the walls. Presumably, the mountains are behind Pain, still intact. In the center of the leveled bit—where there should be nothing—is a swirling bit of cloud and three shadowy figures. The sidebar says "Pain used his pain to crush Konoha. As the hatred continues, will Naruto finally....finally return?"

Speculation About Survivors

The devastation to the village is obvious, but given that these are ninja, it’s too early to say what the casualties will be like. It’s possible that everyone and everything in Konoha was wiped out except for some lucky survivors. It’s equally possible that Tsunade’s slugs saved everyone, or at least everyone outside the blast zone, since she says they were attached to everyone, and because Kishi specifically showed us slugs glomping onto the people we care most about just before the blast. It’s even marginally possible that there are survivors in the blast zone that were pushed down by the blast and covered up by earth (like a sandstorm), but not blown apart since Pain’s jutsu is not an explosion (also remember that it’s a manga). Survival-via-slug of some sort is represented by Sakura. It is also possible that most civilians were long evacuated to the caves behind the mountain faces during all the commotion in previous chapters and that everyone in those mountains is relatively safe (for now).

It is unclear where the blast took place. I’m not sure if Pain aimed it directly below where he shot off from (in which case Tsunade definitely would have taken the brunt of it—saved possibly only by her special technique that can heal anything) or not. It’s also been generally unclear where everyone else is located. Choji was sent back to his dad. The morgue might be one of the outer buildings quite a ways from the Hokage. Same with the hospital and wherever Kiba and his mother are at. People totally unaccounted for among the Rookie 9 are Shikamaru and Hinata. Gai’s Team is outside the village entirely and probably safe.

There is also a possibility that the frog summons Ma and Pa frog executed right before the blast isn’t a monster fighter, but some kind of rescue summons. I don’t know how that would work, but it’s possible. Ma saw the devastation and thought about acting immediately. She did not see the enemy, so it’s not unthinkable that her instinct was to save everyone and worry about the perpetrator later.

A Note on Kakashi: Kakashi was presumed dead or dying before Pain’s attack due to injury and overuse of chakra. If he survived it would be a happy miracle. Tsunade showed frustration and doubt as to Kakashi’s changes even before Pain’s attack. I could see Kakashi surviving against all odds and waking up to see Naruto having routed Pain and all the other enemies, but only because this would reflect Kakashi Gaiden when Kakashi thought he was dead and woke up to see Minato standing over him and the enemies "taken care of." Kishimoto has been having Kakashi repeat parts of his life since the beginning of the manga (copying Obito’s habit of being late and repeating things his old team said to him, etc) so it’s not unthinkable. I guess we’ll see.

Naruto’s Return: I’m not sure Naruto is among the three shadow figures in the impact, but I have no doubt that he will return to fight Pain. It will be interesting to see how Pain will fare since he genuinely seems to believe he is God, and therefore unable to see that he is also just a weak (and severely depressed) human. Will Naruto be able to convince him that he is wrong where Tsunade could not? If he does, will it make any difference, either for how Pain feels or what Naruto will do to him? Or will Naruto’s power be insufficient to stop Pain? After all, the "real" Pain isn’t the one that destroyed the city. And despite Ino’s thinking that the real Pain must be nearby, it’s possible he has a greater range of chakra than anyone guesses and is, in fact, still in the Village Hidden in the Rain.

About Pain’s Ideology

Pain’s desire is to destroy war by making sure everyone is too frightened, cowed, controlled, or injured/dead to fight each other is a flawed idea. It should be obvious that this kind of oppression isn’t actual peace, but I’ve heard a surprising number of people argue that Pain’s methodology would technically work, even if it isn’t savory. I don’t even think it would technically work.

Pain blames the "strong" for violence, stipulating that it is the strong that hurt the weak, which makes the weak hate, which causes them to lash out, which causes the strong to hurt them again, etc. Pain tells Tsunade that Konoha’s way of life exists because of this bond of hatred. Pain’s belief is that if you take power away from the strong (starting with Bijuu apparently) and give it all to an impartial third party that can threaten everyone with it equally (Pain will take this role) then war will cease because everyone will be too afraid or too hurt or take advantage of each other anymore. This is because they will fear God’s Judgment.

However, as already covered, "strong people" is a false idea in the way Pain means it. Strength exists as a measure of spiritual and physical power in a given conflict (see the Ultimate Naruto Essay), but as a whole, people are always just going to be people. Konoha is made up of ordinary people—people that include "strong" fighters like Jiraiya who was a Sannin and still wasn’t strong enough to save Nagato and his friends from the world. There are only weak, flawed, humans with limited perspectives living in the world. Even if some God-like figure is physically there to punish all wrong acts, people will still be stupid, will still make mistakes, will still be selfish and tyrannical and self doubting, and will still fail each other from time to time (as Kakashi failed Obito and Rin). Pain may believe that suffering will teach people to be more mature, that pain is what drives humans to be empathetic, but I don’t personally believe that is true. I think strength and maturity come from our desire for goodness, from our relationships with others, and from personal effort. However, I have heard others agree with Pain in this fandom. For example, I have heard people say that Naruto can’t be strong or make any difference in the Shinobi world unless he has suffered what his enemies have suffered, with the implication that otherwise, his beliefs are meaningless.

I say that is false.

Maturity is different than strength, and neither comes from pain.

Experience leads to maturity, and hardships are experiences that can teach us (particularly if we are stubborn or selfish), but the truth about what it means to be mature, or a good person, or a strong person, or whatever, exists independent of the path to getting there. There are multiple paths. Pain is often arbitrary and meaningless. It is how we react to it that matters. Suffering can cause people to broaden their perspective. It can snap them out of selfishness. It can make them see things in new ways. But so can meeting a new person, trying a new activity, traveling to a new place, etc. Achievement, laughter, and friendship have just as much chance of maturing people as pain, fear, and loss. It is because the world changes that people change. Success and failure, happiness and sadness, love and loss, play equal roles. It is from new experiences—all experiences, not just sad ones—that change happens and growth occurs.

Besides which, experience—whether sad or happy—is not enough. There are plenty of people who refuse to change their thoughts, behaviors, expectations, or perspectives no matter what hardships or happiness comes their way. They don’t see anything beyond a limited existence—often manufactured from childish thoughts and expectations—and so never grow at all. Likewise, there are people who never recognize the suffering of others, not even if they are directly responsible for it or even if it directly reflects their own experience.

By living in a world where suffering exists, whether by natural causes (illness, weather, accident) or what people do unnecessarily to each other, people do mature, but they don’t mature because pain makes them smarter or kinder. Intelligence and kindness exist already. It is virtuous qualities that get us through suffering and not suffering that creates virtuous qualities. Trials merely bring out what is already inside us. It makes us realize what is most important, enough (if we are wise) to put the less important things (selfish things usually) aside in order to protect what is most valuable.

I hope you can see where I’m going with this. I don’t want to rewrite the entire Ultimate Naruto Essay. Suffice it to say that Naruto and Pain will have different ideas about what suffering is all about, what maturity is all about, and what strength is all about. Naruto believes that bonds—relationships—with people and the hopes people have in each other is worth the most—more even than peace (especially if peace is gained through death, fear, and oppression). Considering Tsunade’s assertion that Pain won’t get "what he wants most" Pain may, in fact, believe this too. This makes Pain a candidate for Naruto to "talk sense into."

However, getting to Pain, or even empathizing with him, won’t excuse him from what he’s done.

Even if everyone in Konoha miraculously survived (doubtful), I can’t see Naruto cutting Pain any slack for being the one to cause the devastation. Rather, I find it more likely that Naruto’s first goal will be to protect Konoha—which will mean killing Pain or ousting him from the country by any means necessary, most likely by destroying every last one of his Zombie Bodies (only one left technically). Naruto is particularly prepared to do this since his FRS (which may work in some fashion with Senjutsu) shreds the chakra network. This would effectively sever Pain’s ability to control dead bodies. Whether Naruto can destroy the real Pain with whatever power he’s got, I don’t know.

Should Naruto "Understand" Pain?

Blech on this question! I think it is complicated, and contradictory, and paradoxical, no matter how you look at it.

My answer is "sort of, yes" but I still think it’s moral to kill Pain. I don’t think understanding means that you have to excuse anyone. When Naruto empathized with Gaara, Naruto didn’t excuse or forgive him. Gaara put Konoha in danger. Naruto was all set to kill him until Gaara retreated. With Pain, I suspect Naruto will be thoroughly pissed—and rightly—and will want to cut Pain down for the horrible, devastating, unnecessary, selfish thing this megalomaniac has done to Konoha.

Admittedly, this situation is different than what Naruto has experienced before. Talking sense into Pain won’t prevent disaster. The damage is already done. Now the question is who is going to answer for it? And how are they going to answer? What point is there to understanding somebody who has already made a choice like Pain’s? And yet, what does retaliating without understanding mean about the cycle of hate? What would that make Naruto?

There might be a parallel drawn between this situation and Sasuke’s. Sasuke suffered because of what Itachi did to his family. It makes sense that Sasuke wanted to kill his brother to right that wrong. His rage and pain make sense, and so does his vengeance. But I don’t want Naruto to become like Sasuke. Would there have been a point to Sasuke trying to understand why Itachi did what he did? As it turns out, yes! If Sasuke had understood the real reason why the Uchiha Clan was murdered, would he have elected not to kill Itachi? I think Itachi feared he might not. In fact, that may have been one reason why he kept the truth from his brother. Itachi wanted Sasuke to kill him. He wanted justice to make sense. But maybe justice doesn’t always make sense. Of course, that situation is unique and not like the situation between Naruto and Pain, but even so, there may justification for understanding Pain, even if the end result is still killing him. Isn’t that what trials and laws and court systems are theoretically supposed to be for? To determine the truth of a situation and deliver justice according to the law?

But Naruto is not an impartial judge in this affair. This is personal, just as Sasuke’s vendetta with Itachi was personal. They both have reasons to hate. But should they? The question remains: should Naruto try to kill Pain in vengeance or try to understand him?

I think this is a common way to think of it, but not the only way to think of it. Hate and justice are different things. Hating evil isn’t the same as hating a person, and righteous anger isn’t wrong. Naruto can hate Pain for what he has done, to be contemptuous and damning of his whole ideology, think he should die for it, and even kill him for it, without being immoral or losing yourself to reflecting those feelings. But when it’s personal, that takes extraordinary will power and sense of self. Can Naruto battle Pain among the debris of Konoha without becoming a part of the cycle of hate? Just how strong is he?

Regardless, someone has to answer for what Pain has done, and the whole village is starting to believe in Naruto. I would like to see Pain pummeled by Naruto, but I would like Naruto to be strong enough to do this without eclipsing everything else he has worked to become. I think there is a solution, and possibly a very inspiring one. I don’t know exactly what Kishimoto’s answer will be in the context of this story, but I think it will have something to do with Naruto being the kind of person who keeps looking forward.

A Few Notes on Naruto and Sasuke

After all is said and done, it may be that the rage Naruto feels from this experience will be similar to what has been tearing Sasuke apart. Anger and suffering won’t make Naruto "more mature" (as already discussed), but working through it may enable the maturity Naruto already has to shine through in a way that influences how Naruto next faces off with Sasuke.

If, in fact, Sasuke still intends to attack Konoha after hearing about this. I don’t know how Sasuke will feel about Konoha’s destruction. He has abandoned the Leaf Village, but I don’t think he really wished for its annihilation (if he does, he has turned a corner into a very deep darkness that is incontestably immoral). Besides which, without knowing if there are any survivors, including the elders, I’m not sure attacking the village makes sense anymore.

Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if Danzou survived. Danzou was probably underground when he was shown marshalling ANBU’s Root force to overthrow Tsunade. If Tsunade dies, either from the blast itself, as a result of using too much chakra, or from aging too fast, Danzou will be in an even better position to take over Konoha!

Naruto would be unlikely to recognize someone like Danzou as Hokage, of course (even Hokage of a pile of rubble…not that the village and its buildings is really what Konoha is), but what if Naruto is compromised or too exhausted after training endlessly and then fighting Pain? What if Naruto fails to destroy Pain and is handed over to Akatsuki for Bijuu extraction?!?!?! For all we know (and this is very speculative and unlikely), by the time Sasuke swoops down on Konoha, he might actually be unintentionally doing the village a favor.

Now that would be a weird twist.

PS: I doubt that last bit will happen, but if it does, it wouldn’t be a "Sasuke is a hero" arc. It would be something along the lines of Sasuke killing Danzou and compromising Root only to be compromised himself by the remaining members of the Rookie Nine.


Please comment! Please friend me! Link to this Naruto chapter 429 essay. Read other essays. Read my Naruto fanfic. Lol. I like everything and everybody!

Comments

[zapenstap.livejournal.com]

you are welcome! Thank you so much for reading.