master rahool's ear spiders

its modern day destiny and nobody remembers who Naruto is. Enter our main actor: the spider

the spider begins collecting manga because he knows that any kind of pre-Golden Age paper publication is valuable. He doesn’t really read it he just sticks it in his vault and forgets about it  

The first to rediscover Naruto are the spider’s associates tasked with reading and archiving all of his shit. They start a book club about it.

Some absolute hero begins translating the entirety of Naruto into eliksni and leaks weekly chapters onto the internet (in space). spider catches wind of this and orders the culprit who is stealing his vault’s secrets to be hunted down.

Our nameless savior of anime narrowly escapes with their life and continues to release chapters of the manga to The People in hiding

The spider begins reading Naruto for himself to see what the fuss is about. He is inconsolable for several weeks.

Naruto spreads throughout the eliksni Houses and becomes a full blown cultural phenomenon. Dregs daydream about becoming hokage. Captains debate whether Rock Lee’s Springtime of Youth should be considered canon. The spider now accepts anime figurines and merch as tithe.  

At some point an enterprising wolf vandal brings naruto to the reef cryptarchy for archiving. It doesn’t have as much traction with the awoken, but maintains a cult following amongst academics

Naruto finally comes to the Last City through a quirk of cryptarchy politics. Fed up with Master Rahool’s endless requests for information, Master Ives sends him “a pre-Golden Age cultural artifact” in polite retaliation. Yes, it is an encryption of all 700+ Naruto chapters. 

The joke backfires. Master rahool is thrilled. He immediately writes a dissertation on shonen anime and pre-Golden Age imperialism. he becomes the secondmost authority on naruto

Important to note that the spider is still in possession of most copies of the manga and thus the Last City’s first introduction to Naruto is a translation of the eliksni translation. Some cultural shift did happen. Only the spider knows kishimoto’s original body of work and he takes pride in this fact

nobody else cares

the eliksni version of Naruto is better anyway

Naruto is now in the city cryptarchy’s public records, and after a newsstand picks up the story, it rises in popularity overnight. 

the Naruto renaissance begins in full. Since he shares a color palette, Naruto himself becomes an unofficial symbol of the vanguard. each class of guardian has a favorite character. jumpships and lockers are decorated with them like they’re patron saints.

several years later, crow mentions orochimaru’s cursed seal when explaining how the wrathborn work. the young wolf nods solemnly. they understand.