Hiruzen and Danzo are more complicated than people give them credit for
It says it all in the title.
Hiruzen and Danzo are among the most hated characters in all of Naruto, and Iām not entirely removed from that crowd of haters. Theyāre probably among the easiest characters you can argue are just bad people. Or, at minimum, people who did horrendous, unjustifiable things (or allowed them to happen in Hiruzenās case). However, I think that because people hate them so much, no one wants to take a closer look at their characters and the more complicated/human reasons why they make the choices they do.
Hiruzen is spineless and thatās a hill Iāll die on, but heās spineless in one of these most sympathetic and realistic ways Iāve seen depicted in media. Specifically, heās the walking talking representation of the fallibility of compassion. Hiruzen cares about so many people so deeply that he would rather stand by and let people get hurt than to hurt them himself. He ignores the fact Danzo keeps trying to kill him because he knows heāll likely have to execute him as retribution and he doesnāt want to kill his best friend, he turns a blind eye to Orochimaruās dark side because he doesnāt want to fight/kill his student, Tsunade isnāt labeled a rogue ninja because he doesnāt want to put a bounty on his student/mentorās granddaughterās head, he let the Hizashi situation and Uchiha Massacre happen because he didnāt want to risk subjecting his people to the horrors of war that he experienced, and he died because he couldnāt bring himself to go all out against his mentors (even if they were reanimated and emotionless versions) or student.
Iām not defending Hiruzenās actions or lack thereof. Obviously, this is a deeply flawed way to go about life, especially as a leader of a country where you have to regularly make difficult trolly-problem decisions. But Hiruzen is meant to be a deeply flawed individual. Heās like the family of an abuser that refuses to properly step in to stop the abuse because they love the abuser and donāt want to face the idea that the abuser is a bad person. Iām not saying Hiruzen is a good person or in the right, Iām just saying heās realistic.
If Hiruzen is āthe few over the manyā, then Danzo is āthe many over the fewā with a sprinkle of āthe ends always justify the meansā. Danzo is, at his core, someone who is always trying to do whatās best for the village. He turned Hanzo against the Akatsuki to keep the group from gaining too much power and becoming another threat to Konoha (keeping in mind that Amegakure is adjacent to the Land of Fire), he pushed for the Uchiha Massacre to keep a civil war from breaking out, he killed the messenger toad to keep Naruto away from Konoha and the nine tails out of Painās grasp. He created ROOT to make sure that Konoha had a back up fighting force that was highly trained, wouldnāt turn against the village, and were willing to do what even ninja wouldnāt. Even Danzoās choice to essentially turn on the village by trying to kill Hiruzen was motivated by him trying to do what he thought was best for the village. After all, he knew better than anyone how bad of a Hokage Hiruzen was.
A lot of people oversimplify Danzo into āthe selfish, corrupt assholeāāand while I can agree that heās selfish and corrupt, heās selfish and corrupt in very specific ways. The corruption is the most obvious and easiest to explain. Danzo is willing to do anything he thinks will benefit the village; that includes working with bad people and using backhanded tactics. As for his selfishness, it stems from one specific thing: Tobirama telling Hiruzen to become Hokage over him.
For a while I was confused why Danzo got a flashback flashbacked to this scene before he died. Now, I think Iāve settled on it being because the scene was at the core of Danzoās character and greatest character flaws because it was also his greatest regret. Itās pretty clear that Danzo wants to become Hokage and itās implied that heās had this dream for a long while. However, Tobiramaāhis mentor, the former Hokage, and one of the people to define what it meant to be Hokageāchose Hiruzen over him. Because Hiruzen was willing to sacrifice himself for his comrades while Danzo, who knew he shouldāve done the same, was too cowardly to offer himself up.
Then he never really grows out of that cowardice. Instead, he looks down on Hiruzen to cope with his own sense of inferiority, gives himself body modifications to become a stronger ninja more capable of defending the village, and obtains as much political power as he can. He remains a coward who prefers letting other people take the fall over fighting his own battles (setting up Hanzo to fight the Akatsuki, asking Orochimaru to kill Hiruzen, ordering Itachi to kill the Uchiha clan, etc.) right up until he uselessly āsacrificesā himself right before he was going to die anyways.
Most of Danzoās selfish actions come down to him not being able to accept his failure at becoming Hokage while also refusing to learn from his mentorās final lesson.
I honestly think that Naruto has some of the best representation of bad people simply because it consistently acknowledges two things about bad people: 1. People who do bad things usually do them because they grew up being taught that doing bad things were okay or necessary to survive (being abused, societal normalization, never being punished, early exposure to things like domestic violence, etc.) and 2. Even if they donāt necessarily think theyāre good people, the large majority of people donāt think theyāre bad or evil. Both Hiruzen and Danzo were raised by a generation haunted by war only to be thrust into two world wars themselves (one at a young age and one when they were older). This left them both traumatized and willing to do anything to avoid experiencing it again. And even if they acknowledge that theyāve made mistakes, they still donāt (seem to) see themselves as bad people, only people who are committing the lesser of two evils.
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