Sit-up on the issue of Naruto

When I was choosing which part of Kakashi's life I wanted to paint for this zine, I knew the exact moment I wanted to catch. That second of stillness after he opens Obito's eye for the first time.

The moment just before he pulls his father's tanto for the last time.

To kill a man.

Work in progress 🌱

In print ❤️

This was an excuse to draw elderly Mito but also I genuinely believe Mito becoming the jinchuuriki had….ramifications beyond what canon showed us

Like the tailed beasts were canonically free romaning prior to Madara and Hashirama’s gotta-catch-them-all Pokémon spree, you can’t be telling me people weren’t worshipping these giant chakra beasts as some kind of greater spirit or even god akin to yokai worship in Japan. Or at the very least, forces of nature that were something people fear to meddle with. Like in a “I don’t really practice [religion]”, but I’m not going to go desecrate the old shrine by the old tree, that’s bad luck kind of way

So. capturing the tailed beast within you. That’s unheard of. Insanity. Blasphemy. Is Mito still a human, can a human even contain a god? Or is she the fox now, wearing human skin? When her eyes turn red and slitted and she smiles a fox’s smile and her shadow belies something much older and angry and void of humanity, can anyone really trust that she is in control?

At least she had Hashirama, the god of shinobi to ‘contain’ her. And then she did not.

There has to be a section of people who believe Mito containing the Fox has cursed the land with the Fox’s vengeance. Uzushio, Konoha, the Senju grounds. And when early Konoha embroils itself in war and remembers Madara bringing the fox, or later Konoha experiences the fox Again, and Uzushio falls and so do the Senju,

isn’t that a logical conclusion?

Mito watching history pass her by, “blessed” with the Uzumaki’s long lifespan and whatever the fox dealt her. She married into the Senju, she belongs to that clan and not the Uzumaki anymore. But the Senju is gone and so is her husband and her brother in law, his body never recovered. Her natal clan is scattered to the winds and now she is princess of nothing. The survivors of Uzu, the diaspora that flees to Konoha, bitter over Konoha’s lack of action and claiming she has forgotten her roots, do not approach her.

The empty Senju compound rots around her and Uzushio becomes ruins she cannot return to, people grow up terrified and blaming her in equal breath for misfortune, for thinking that she deserved the power of a god. But what else is left for her now, but to continue living with the kyuubi sealed within her?

I don’t think the vitrol against jinchuuriki only started in naruto’s era, when the fox broke free of Kushina. I think it started much earlier from the very beginning.