it's possible to live

We already know Hokazono draws his inspiration from Kishimoto's Naruto for his writing on Kagurabachi, and I've been very fond of those two characters equally that I cannot unsee the analogies. Bare with me on this one.

1. The eyes — this is the most obvious one.

The concentric rings around the pupils might not represent the same thing for these characters, but I still found it interesting if summed up with all the other points.

Pain's Rinnegan matches with a specific god-like power, the most powerful ocular innate ability in the universe of Naruto. It is also linked to the concept of Samsara, representing the endless circle of fate and suffering in Buddhism.

I think Yura's eyes look like that because of his overuse of Datenseki's power on his own body, like as a body mutation that came with him reaching higher and darker levels of his ability in sorcery. And Pain's eyes look like that because Rinnegan is a result of a mutation of the Sharingan, which we know to be another powerful ocular innate ability. And these mutations manifest as a consequence of an intense emotional trauma. So basically on both instances there must've been a triggering factor behind these mutations, wether it's inherently biological or not. But i digress.

If we're taking Yura's eyes into consideration exclusively for the looks, they may also appear as a reflection his controlling and manipulative nature, which allowed him to start his own criminal organization: the Hishaku sorcerers. He's the one who spread lies across the nation about the Seitei war to weaken the Kamunabi, the government's own army of defence sorcerers, all while exploiting Seiichi Samura and lying to his face about their goals aligning, after all.

Manipulative nature you say? Didn't Pain Nagato also try to manipulate Naruto into agreeing with his view on war and peace etc etc? Yeah, much to think about.

2. The Hishaku and the Akatsuki.

Yura and Pain Nagato collected allies with the intention of overthrowing their nation and the people that ruled them, expoloiting weapons of mass destruction:

The Shinuichi blade. It is tool of mass extermination which was pivotal for the outcome of the Seitei war, with the mass murder of 200.000 civilians. It's so powerful and destructive that the government along with the Kamunabi had to seal it in their headquarters, under extreme surveilance. Until Yura arrives, of course. His plan is to wield the Shinuichi, and finally make "good use of it" by establishing a new order.

And then we have the tailed beasts, one of them being Kurama the nine tailed fox that was sealed in Naruto's body. Nagato wants to gather and merge all of them into one singular beast, the ten tailed beast which has the power of wiping out entire nations alone. The world needed peace, and peace could not be reached without annihilating the entire shinobi system basically. The plan was later taken up by Obito Uchiha, which played a crucial role in the evolution of Nagato's pursuit of his goals. Obito finally collected Nagato's fruits after his death by sacrifice (all thanks to Naruto's talk no jutsu, making him the ultimate master manipulator of the entire shonen genre lmao), took his Rinnegan and almost reached his ultimate goal of awakening the Infinite Tsukuyomi, temporarily trapping the world in an alternate reality where there's no more place for death and pain, only world peace. To sum up in a few words and like I just said in the case of Yura, the common goal is to establish a new order within their world/nation.

3. The Seitei war and the third great ninja war.

Both characters are war survivors. The theories regarding Yura coming from the Mikaboshi's island seem to be true. Through a brief flashback, it is suggested that the chaos following Japan's war on the little nation's aftermath caused Yura's fiance's death and ultimately him losing his faith in the nation and the "heroes" that failed to protect the weak such as the regular civilians just like Yura and his lover.

Nagato is a war orphan, he saw the atrocities and knows first hand how violent and corrupt the shinobi system is. He comes from the small village known for being the battle ground for numerous conflicts due to its strategic position. He has known war, destruction and suffering from his earlier days of life and wants everyone to know what Pain is like.

4. Yura becoming a "ghost" vs Pain being, in fact, a corpse.

The japanese kanji for Yura is "幽", which can also be translated with 'ghost'.

I've been thinking a lot about how Yura's appearance and nature changed since his flashback from his life before losing his wife. He might have aged but there's still something off with his eyes, they look lifeless and sinister. There's tiny bits in the manga where he seems to be quite indulgent with the youngest Hishaku members, and we also see him have a full crashout when confronting Chihiro during the Kamunabi assaul, like of course he was going to lose his composure at some point. He appears quite eccentric as well, like he's the one on a phone call plotting his revenge while sitting on a spring ride. But that's exceptional and rather than that, he's cold and cruel for the most part. It's almost like who we're seeing in current Yura is just a "shell" since he's been deprived of his humanity and emotion. The man's deeefinitely dead inside (and i like that).

Pain is simply Yahiko, Nagato's friend, or rather his body that's been recovered by Nagato himself. It served as a puppet controlled by chakra thanks to Nagato's innate ocular ability. Pretty self explanatory.

But it could also mean nothing.

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Idk maybe I just like these two in a not so normal amount. However I'd be cool to hear other people's opinion on this, I'm up for discussion!