Naruto is a TERRIBLE role model
My word, Sakura. My word.
Like, look, guys. I know that Naruto is the main protagonist of the series, and we are supposed to root for him, however...
The older I become, the more I realize that, maybe Sakura had a point in repeatedly punching him, and treating him like a rag doll. As morbid as it sounds to some. I am tired of pretending, as an adult, I find Sakura to be the ONLY character in the story now, that doesn't actively make me want to kick something in frustration. And Shippuden really upped the ante on making Naruto the equivalent to nails on chalkboard. At least, in Part 1, Naruto was far more than just "Sasuke this, Sasuke that", he had layers. But once Shippuden entered the endgame, he turned from a character, into a caricature.
He is "mental illness, without the meds" INCARNATE. And I don't mean that in a deregatory way. All of his habits, are just so damned troubling to see. And as an adult, with parental instincts, I just see images like this...
His room is always a mess
Hyperventilating, because he wants to make everyone's problems HIS problem, for a guy that tried to kill him, GAZILLION times
Clinging his entire being, self-worth and goal onto the same person, who doesn't even really see him as a friend, or a brother, in the same way that he does
Being willing to harm his so-called "brother", putting him through potential career-ending injuries, just to make a point about "you're my friend"
Calling a literal serial killer "the coolest guy, ever", as the entire world burns down around him, knowing full well, he is the reason why he is an orphan to begin with
Naruto repeatedly appropriating Sasuke's suffering, because in his deluded mind, "they are one and the same", when the core source of their problems are completely different
And before you misunderstand, I am not trying to say that there ain't merit to Naruto's mentality, sometimes, you just need that certain stubbornness to make someone see reason, but in the context of Sasuke and everybody else, it's all completely misplaced. So I will gladly repeat it for the last person named Larry, that still won't get the core issue here:
He needed someone to listen to him. Nobody was even willing to give him a chance to explain himself, when he began acting like an actual shinobi. You know, being literally trained to assassinate other shinobi, there is no moral highground to have here, he was doing his job, like everybody else, even if it was under a criminal organization, but the series paints his "heel-turn" as such a "emotional tragedy", when all he did was acting, like every other sane person would act, once they learn that they have been fucking LIED to, since day one. Random samurai getting killed, and that is enough to have everyone declare Sasuke as an "international criminal", while Orochimaru gets away with a mild slap on the wrist...
...How in the hell did nobody start dropping the series by this point? Everyone keels over, because ONE. SINGLE. GUY. Kills a war criminal. Even now, I am in awe at how ridiculous this is. I can't take this seriously, anymore. And you can't say "oh, because Sasuke operated under a criminal organization", but then you remember how the Cloud village had a weird obsession with kidnapping young girls like Kushina and Hinata, when they were mere kids. So, don't give me morality lectures here. The moral sharing, is not even here.
For me, it really hit rock-bottom for me, once he met his mom within his own subconscious.
And she tells him everything about how the Leaf village, you know, HIS HOME, had essentially treated her no differently from him: Being more weapon, than human. And made it even worse by how, after learning all of this, what does Naruto do, afterwards?
Does he ask Kakashi, if he knew Kushina?
Does he ask Tsunade or Iruka, if they knew Kushina, and his father?
Does he ask, "uhhh, why did you guys never tell me, who my parents were? You were literally closest to them, when they were still alive, why did you not tell me?"?
Does he grow suspicious of Konoha, and its elders?
Much less of all, HIRUZEN?!?!
None of that happens. He just keeps on smiling, and clinging to the delusion that, if he reforms everything, then all of their problems will be solved in the end. Not even daring to wonder more about the harder-hitting questions like, "Is this even going to work? They treated my mother no differently from me, and she was a famous shinobi, just like myself?". No, gotta punch Sasuke, because "we do NOT need radical changes".
And going back to my previous points, I cannot even begin to tell you, how, as I was revisiting the later episodes of Shippuden, often I was yelling at the screen to tell Naruto:
HAVE SOME BACKBONE, ALREADY! GET PISSED! GET MAD! GRIEVE! LET IT ALL OUT, MAN! YOU CAN'T SAVE EVERYONE! IT'S LITERALLY HUMANLY IMPOSSIBLE! DON'T LET THESE ASSHOLES BULLY YOU LIKE THIS! YOU CAN'T WIN, BY BEING A PEOPLE-PLEASER! YOUR SAVIOR COMPLEX IS NOT HELPING ANYBODY, LEAST OF ALL YOURSELF! SAM RAIMI'S SPIDERMAN DID THE EXACT SAME THING, AND IN THE END, IT NEARLY DESTROYED HIM!
But nobody stops him. Nobody criticizes Naruto for his savior complex. All of his bad and self-destructive habits, get ZERO flack from anybody, least of the fanbase. And I can tell you right now, Naruto frustrates me beyond belief, whenever I see him being everybody's personal greeting carpet. Everybody stomps all over him, because he wants to stop the "cycle of hatred", by frankly being a fucking PUSSY.
He never confronts his own problems
He never bothers changing for the better (training and narrative bias don't count)
He never changes his mentality to something more healthy and grounded
He repeatedly lets everybody walk all over him
He always represses his own needs, and makes him smaller, just to be having a social point for personal involvement
He prefers to rot all by himself, carrying the burden of everybody, and never having a voice or opinion for himself
He says that he cares, but ultimately, he just wants attention AT ALL COSTS, even if it means sacrificing his personal life
He never asks questions about his own heritage, because "who cares, it's all in the past, we need to move on", while repeatedly tying all of his past failures to Sasuke, who clearly disagrees with him, but he gets his way in the end
He claims to have a dream in being Hokage, but he never once comes to the realization that, this dream was forced onto him since childhood, by Hiruzen, making that dream entirely vapid and pointless
He is so lacking in self-respect, that he has no issue making a complete fool of himself, because he is able to forgive everybody, except HIMSELF, even if they had done nothing but make his life a living hell, but all is forgiven, because he hates conflict
He claims to understand, but really, he just wants to be involved, because he sees no value in himself beyond being a literal weapon, so much so that he GASLIGHTS himself into always involving himself with people like Gaara or Obito, despite them clearly being awful people (Gaara, initially, not later)
You could lie to him for years on end, you could scam him out of his inheritence money, he won't care, because he loves you regardless, even if you actively contributed to his suffering, and you never apologized for it, because who needs healthy boundaries, right?
All of this. Is NOT. HEALTHY. Brother! Naruto is strictly speaking, not a good role model, because, what does he teach us, as the main character? That you can only get far in life, if you are the living equivalent to a trash can, eating all of the garbage that's being flung at you, because "that's better, than the silence that follows"? So you have to make noise, just to be seen and respected?
This is so self-destructive and toxic to oneself, I almost feel like laughing. What the hell? And the fact that everyone just enables this is just depressing me. Does anyone REALLY care about Naruto, if all of these points go completely unaddressed?
...Yup. I can now see why Sakura would want to open up a mental clinic after the war. Because her blond teammate is a living case study on how mental illness, that goes unaddressed for years on end, can truly manifest itself in how it shapes ones personality. She should have forced his ass into therapy, not letting him become Hokage.
