yeah no, here we go

and then! suddenly kishimoto goes pro-state, dude's on the LDP party line, we jump to the arrival of itachi + jiraiya at the chuunin exams and the reveal of the uchiha massacre and how suddenly naruto's correct path is Not being anti-konoha, in fact, because going against konoha is Evil and the Dark Path, and jiraiya's the big noble hero for being a spy and soldier for konoha, yippee, will of fire! then you get shit like the waterfall of truth (naruto is aware that the system has been unjustly cruel to him but winning konoha's approval is depicted as logical and taking moral and narrative precedence), the creation of the akatsuki as an anti-imperialist movement initially just looking to protect and feed civilians in a wartorn region and eventually escalating to dismantle the system itself but when push comes to shove kishimoto makes it so talk no jutsu works on pein, the entire framing of sasuke being a bad person for deserting and itachi being a hero for massacring a marginalized and resistant ethnic group, kishimoto's interview where he says the narrative is based on his grandparents saying ww2 was based on "lingering grudges", the fact that kishimoto put the rising sun flag behind the sage of six paths when we get dojutsu origin backstory.... then after all the setup about obito and madara creating the crux of the struggle in shippuden as a concerted effort to destroy the shinobi system then suddenly kishimoto introduces kaguya as the ultimate seed of narrative conflict because haha hey it turns out that the massacred ethnic group is inherently genetically eeeevil haha isn't that a normal thing to write with no real world parallels

@isobud SUPER super grateful you mentioned this article and i can't believe i hadn't read it already!!

this came to me in a vision

(ref under the cut)