Something is wrong with the sum of us That I can’t seem to erase
— “Naruto was crying today. I found him hunched over in the living room, in the dark, stifling his tears. When I asked him what was wrong, he wouldn’t say anything to me except ‘you wouldn’t understand,’ and then he asked to be left alone. “I’m scared for him.”
*** I’ve mostly been wanting to sketch, recently. So I just took the first thought that came to me from the song I was listening to–'Could I Be You’ by Matchbox 20–and ran with it. In this picture Naruto is terrified of himself, and the overwhelming things he’s been feeling for a certain friend. *cough* Sasuke *cough*
Anyway, he knows that whatever he chooses to do, whether he ignores or indulges these feelings, will devastate him in one way or another. He can’t win.
Today I’m thinking about how sad I am the Naruto manga is over. Already there’s the chilly feeling like the fandom’s shrinking rapidly. Everyone will move on from what used to be their beloved OTPs, will find other characters in other series that they’ll adore, and the community will dissipate. The series, and everything that lovingly sprung up around it, is folding quietly into the past.
I guess it’s probably happening to me, too. The Naruto heyday is over. There aren’t any more mysteries. We know what happens. Maybe I shouldn’t have read the manga, maybe I should have waited for the anime, so I could hold onto the delicious feeling of not knowing how things end for just a bit longer. The fact is, we won’t see any more, will we? There’s nothing more to hope for. Nothing to await with bated breath.
There could have been more. The characters–and especially Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura–still have a lot they need to work through. They still need to go through a lot of character growth. And they feel incomplete at the end, because they don’t grow enough. They don’t figure things out. Then, adding their children to the mix, that feeling is multiplied many times over! The children felt like a new beginning to the series, with their own mess of feelings and goals.
We see little attempts to rectify these feelings, insufficient tries at wrapping up different difficult aspects of the characters’ lives (see: like all of Naruto Gaiden). Like putting a band-aid on a broken bone, these attempts look like effort to help, but heal nothing in reality. I’m left wanting to know the struggles that these characters should have gone through, but those struggles have already been minimized and dispatched with carelessly, as if healing was effortless.
It’s unsatisfying, and I wish there was more. More was needed, more exploration of these characters that took so, so long to develop. They could have had some amazingly rich character growth at this point, going into adulthood. Instead, they were abandoned. All that work, all that time and effort to get them back together, to a point where they could finally begin to figure themselves out… and everything is dropped.
“I forgot my umbrella. Can I stay here for a bit?”
…Every day, without fail, Sasuke had an excuse to visit the Uzumaki household. Whenever Naruto saw him, no matter what he’d been feeling before, he couldn’t help but smile.
