ziggy my heart

So I’m just gonna try to cover both of these in one post because otherwise there’s bound to be quite a bit of overlap and because ship analyses tend to take disproportionate amounts of time and brain power on my part.

A/Tsunade – there’s a ship I’ve been strangely intrigued by for a while now because I really like their dynamic in canon and how they butt heads in certain situations while cooperating smoothly in others.

Whether you look at the as individuals or as leaders of a Hidden Village there’s a lot of shared history between them. Their respective villages fought on opposing sides during at least two of the Shinobi World Wars and even outside of the wars Konoha and Kumo haven’t always been on the best of terms.

It’s not strictly Kishimoto canon but honestly, I’ll take whatever Kumo content they throw at us and I like going back to ep. 286/7 because it adds to A’s characterisation and also to A and Tsunade’s personal relationship, before they meet again during the Kage Summit in Kumo just before the Fourth Shinobi World War breaks out.

It never fails to amuse me how wonderfully bitter Tsunade still is about the Hyūga Incident. And what makes this even better:

A was fully expecting her to be. At this point in the Naruto timeline both, Tsunade and have long since made for themselves on an international level through their achievements in the various wars and from their interaction it becomes clear that they at the very least have heard from each other, but I actually prefer to think that they must have met at some point already, possibly while A was going on missions in Fire Country during the Third Shinobi World War, or possibly even earlier when the A-B Combo had just started operating or around the time Dan died. Anyway, regardless of when they met I’m fairly sure that Amai introducing A is more of a formality than and actual introduction. Well, that and from the way Amai speaks of Tsunade to A, the possibility that the two of them might know each other probably didn’t even occur to him – which is understandable for a young medical-nin from a different village meeting the legendary Tsunade must be like meeting a unicorn, of course he wouldn’t expect A to know her.

Then there’s also Tsunade’s reaction to having A introduced to her as Raikage.

It takes her a moment to process the information and then she immediately starts laughing. Combine that with the assumption that they have indeed met before and the scene where Tsunade teasingly calls him the Unruly Cloud Brat, and you get a bit of an inkling what kind of impression A left.

At this point, I might as well just take a small detour to that secret relationship aspect of one of the questions. I guess if a secret relationship between was ever on the table it probably would have taken place sometime during the Third Shinobi World War while Tsunade was travelling around and A frequently on the move due to missions. They might have crossed paths in a small border village or at an inn in the Land of Hot Water. A might have been undercover – I don’t see Tsunade knowingly getting involved with a Kumonin – not with how deep seated her grudge over past conflicts is. Tsunade never really gets over the loss of Dan and at this point in her life she’s not coping well at all, so love probably didn’t factor into that affair at all. Think of it as two forces of nature finding someone strong enough to match their strength clashing against each other and unleashing years worth of pent up anger, frustrations, grief in a short-lived whirlwind affair that moves too fast for comfort and ends as quickly as it started. Old wounds are torn open, walls broken down and in the end they walk their separate ways convinced they’ll never see each other again, perhaps a little more broken than before but with a whole new set of edges they’ll each use to claw their own way through life and anybody blocking their path.

Years pass, they forget about that chance encounter, but as fate would have it, their paths cross again, but this time they’ll have to learn to negotiate things on a factual level rather than on a purely emotional level.

I guess. Sorta. I dunno. This has been giving me a headache ever since I started working on it and I’m gonna speed things up a bit now because I’m running on about two hours of sleep, have had this tab opened for more than twelve hours now and have a lecture I need to get to in less than seven hours.

To summarise things, in terms of work, Tsunade/A would probably be a true power couple. They might be able to move literal mountains if they put their minds to it (and actually manage to agree on a course of action). It becomes apparent in ep. 222 when they’re discussing the possibility of having B train Naruto. They challenge and provoke each other, but ultimately their quite adept at figuring out how the other thinks. A nation lead by Tsunade and A would truly be a fearful thing – provided it doesn’t fall apart due to internal disputes.

Tsunade and A are both head-strong, accustomed to being in charge and have a short fuse, it’s only a matter of time until disagreements arise and when they do the following arguement might literally rattle the earth.

For the above reasons, I think a romantic relation ship could prove problematic at times. Fights would definitely be a regular thing and their effects would probably devastating for tableware, furniture, surrounding neighbourhoods and minor geographical landmarks (or conversely, their arguments might be responsible for the creation for a considerable number of geographical landmarks). A especially might hit a nerve with something that was said in a careless moment and Tsunade does not forgive easily.

Also, they’re competitive, about everything. Woe is the unsuspecting office worker who walks in at the wrong moment and gets pulled into an arguement over how to handle certain village affairs. There is no right answer to “So who do you think is right?” The only correct reaction is to take flight the moment an opportunity presents itself.