The Sharingan Was A MISTAKE

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Edited with Love by: @RiddleMMD (facebook)

Outro Music:

Intro Music:
Yoshi Studio Music - Made In Japan

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#naruto #sharingan #sasuke

[Netherwolf]

Remember when the Sharingan and the Byakugan were supposed to be roughly equal in power and it was even stated the Byakugan was stronger? Good times. Good times.

[firehawkthechosen]

"Warps fucking reality, controls time, mind control"

Imagine fumbling with this modest skillset

[thelewsa]

"screw your magic eyes. we gonna run these hands" -Rock Lee probably..

[Lotiermo]

The Sharingan: does whatever the plot needs it to do.

[shinu_music]

I whole heartedly agree that the Sharingan is the most broken and inconsistent thing in Naruto. But i do still absolutely love it.

[twelfthknight]

Personally - like a lot of the audience - I thought the Sharigan was pretty cool for much of Naruto. Back then the Byakugan was set up as kind of rivalling it, and Rock Lee besting Sasuke during the Chunin Exam arc highlighted the kind of limitations the Sharingan could have. Then Shippuden came and Kishimoto just kept giving it more and more powers -- rewriting reality, altering people's entire personalities, omnipotent genjutsu with no counters. It felt very... Mary Sue-ish at that point, especially with the plot being almost entirely consumed by Uchiha.

[taiyo]

The limitations of the Sharingan are what made it interesting, just like any ninja ability in the story. Having it constantly evolve to let the Uchiha do whatever Kishimoto needed them to led it to be ultimately meaningless as an in-universe power, since it had essentially no rules or real weaknesses, and turned it into another clumsy plot device.

[foreighteen]

At the very least, the Susanoo should have been a Byakugan/Hyuuga jutsu. It would have been the next logical step to the Hyuuga's ability to expel chakra from all their pores and control it. Its properties don't fit the Sharingan at all.

[kevinbell]

The Sharingan wasn't a mistake. Constantly taking on more and more powers and buffs was.

[FIENDXIX]

The Sharingan was bearable when it was just “Extreme Perception” just the power to see tiny details and to have high reaction time. But from a writing standpoint it became a symbol of the writer making every nation other than the Leaf Village perpetually less and less important which ironically makes the world feel less and less important as more and more non-elemental KKG are being given as parts of Sharingan leaving one clan with lion share of ‘special powers’ that arnt just ‘element x + element y’ which ends up making the other nations feel hollow as the focus increasingly became ‘Behold the leaf village and its eternal reincarnating god battle’

[AHeru-ztqd]

The Sharingan was tool as it was first presented, as a tool in a ninja's toolbelt. It was great to see Kakashi use it and pay the price. It was cool to see Sasuke awaken and refine his. It lost all of its appeal to me when they ignored its more "mundane" abilities like mapping chakra systems, deciphering jutsu for later use, and genjutsu amplification and just made it the equivalent of the Sword of Omens from "Thundercats." Kishimoto has said himself that he got way too into the Uchihas and I fully believe that that obsession is what fueled a technique that was supposed to be "weaker than the Byakugan" ending up the equivalent of the Spirit Bomb from DBZ.

[ExileTwilight]

Weirdest part of the whole eye thing was how they popped them in and out of their sockets like there isn't a whole lot of severed and damaged nerves that would need to heal for the eye to.. you know.. work..

[MrkraZzz]

The worst thing Kishi did was making the Rinnegan evolution of the Sharingan. It ruined the character of Nagato for me. Kishi had to make it somehow related to the Uchihas. It couldn't remain its own thing unique to Nagato and the Sage of Six Paths.

[tripleh]

I personally liked the concept of the sharingan

At least as portrayed initially in the first arc
Where it was a trump card very heavy on chakra consumption that made user able to copy or slightly anticipate their opponents

The fight with zabusa in particular

We were fed the lore of the 3 ocular powers with the sharingan being ranked below the byakugan(they did not even had the whole seal to prevent theft) and a misterious 3rd power (the rinnegan) about which at the time we knew literally nothing

The problem is that the sharingan kept ammaiante insane power up and perks

Like controlling the tailed beast
Then we were introduced with itachi with the awakened sharingan
And from there pure insanity
Amaterasu a unstoppable ranged black flame cast by vision
Tsukuyomi a perfect illusory art
Sudano a weird giant armour than make the user nearly invulnerable and greatly extend their attack power
Perfect susanoo
A skyscraper like giant armour with the power to go fight on equal terms with failed beast and able to cut mountains

Izanami and izanagi
Basically a reset button to cheat death or able to imprison your opponent in a loop

At that point the only thing the sharingan could not do was preparing breakfast

[joshualayfield]

When Sasuke was able to see Kurama inside Naruto I was fed tf up.

[LXV-ed]

Way too op. It just did whatever the plot needed. I remember when Obito used Kamui to teleport from the afterlife and somehow give Kakashi the sharingan I said out loud “Wtf did I just watch?”

[Lupinemancer]

My personal issue with the Sharingan is how over-used it is. It started out as just an eye that could copy Jutsu, predict opponents moves and, to a limited extend, cast Genjutsu. Powerful, sure, but still limited.
Now it can evolve to a second level, giving access to broken, overpowered abilities like summoning a giant chakra warrior, create flames immune to water, teleport around the world and even brainwash entire nations. It was getting way too ridiculous, and all the other Dojutsus, like the Byakugan and the Rinnegan, where basically just cast aside, especially when it was also revealed that the Sharingan can turn into a Rinnegan.
I prefer the Sharingan as it was originally introduced.

[ChefNarrative]

I always thought it was weird that the sharingan was introduced to us as the user having the ability to copy any jutsu and I could be wrong but it seems like kakashi was the only one doing that and even eventually stopped doing it 😂 I always wanted to use awakening in the video games and have access to the opponent’s jutsu lol

[Hozagen]

And you didn't even talk about the Sharingan's original abilities the story forgot as soon as MS appeared.

[AimDelta]

Going back 10 years or so, the general belief on many of the forums was that the sharingan was being inflated by the publisher influence. The way I always interpreted the sharingan was that it was an eye which could see high amounts of detail without needing to adjust focus and which was just faster in terms of reaction speed. That it allowed for some powerful genjutsu if you looked into it was a bit kooky, but eyes can be seen as captivating and a window into the soul, so, it worked.

When it started getting weird was when it stopped being an advanced eye and started to become green rocks that allowed for invoking the gods. This seemed to be the influence of the publishers/editors, who initially wanted the sasuke/naruto rivalry and who thus wanted more sharingan merchandising deals.

Narratively, you could basically replace Sasuke with Neji and you'd have a similar plot up through the chuunin arc with the b-line being actual interaction between Naruto and Hinata.

This was an extremely obvious point to me when I was looking at the concept art for the series. Sasuke was not in the picture and both Hinata and Neji appeared. Sakura was not in the picture, either. The entire arc up to the chuunin exams, as Kishimoto envisioned it, was one where the rivalry was between Neji and Naruto. The editors really, really wanted a showdown between Naruto and Sasuke for that arc, but Kishimoto wrote Naruto swearing over Hinata's blood and beating the natural genius - restoring order to a troubled family.
The fan service was the rest of the fluff that followed was fluff.

Neji: a natural prodigy with a crazy set of eyes who is bitter toward his younger cousin because his father was executed over some political ordeal, there's a cursed mark to control him, and he believes his uncle was the one to orchestrate the death of his father.

Sasuke: a child prodigy with crazy eyes who is bitter toward his brother for killing everyone in his clan and believes said brother orchestrated everything.

O how similar those stories turn out.

Hinata: a shy girl who feels inferior to both her younger sister and older cousin, timid, and unfit to assume the role as the eldest of the head family. Takes inspiration from Naruto's successes in rising up despite his status and standing.

Sakura: supposedly a smart, aspiring young girl who is beautiful and wanted by all the guys, except sasuke, who ignores her. Generally exists as a reason to spark the rivalry between Sasuke and Naruto.

Contrast the alternate universe storyline - rather than Naruto getting upset because Saukura keeps fawning after Sasuke, we get a storyline where Naruto takes notice of Hinata's lack of hatred for him. The various flashback scenes likely become core plot mechanics that push a bit of a romeo/juliet or lady&the tramp setup where Naruto takes note of and issue with Neji's treatment of Hinata and the rivalry sets off, to fully mature at the chuunin exams, where Hinata embraces Naruto's ethos and enrages Neji to the point of murder - which then gets our blood oath.

Rather than a team of naruto-sasuke-sakura, we probably get naruto-kiba-hinata as a sort of force recon element where Naruto can be the blunt instrument. His shadow clone ability is also not that much different from shino's insects. Shino seems to exist in order to round out an otherwise well developed team chemistry. Kurenai is, also, overdeveloped relative to characters like Asuna. Kakashi as a guest trainer/assistant with Kurenai as the main team lead balances things back out. The wave arc plays out much the same, and the forest of death also plays out similarly - just with orochimaru after Hinata's eyes because she doesn't have the cursed seal. Thus putting the whole plot with Neji's father front and center.

Rather than sasuke being captured, it is Hinata who must be rescued. Perhaps she does end up desiring power and goes with orochimaru - though that's a bit speculative. Thus, we have the setup for shipuuden.
Although - that could have been the conclusion, Hinata is rescued, Naruto has become a hero who saved the pricess from orochimaru, and the family in turmoil is on the path to healing.

Shipuuden could then be an alternate timeline where Hinata lusted after power - or perhaps her injury from Neji needs to be healed and Kabuto/Orochimaru plan to do that. However, the core plot of shipuuden revolves around the resurrection of an ancient god. Without all the distractions from the sharingan, we jump strate to the legend of kaguya and the fruit being the source of all ninjutsu and her son being the sage of six paths who sealed her and divided her power into the tailed beasts. The twist is that the uzumaki are the original shamanistic tribe skilled in the sealing arts who maintained the chakra tree and the sage of six paths was the son of kaguya and one of these tribesmen - which gives rise to the rinnegan.
This is where Nagato comes from and his significance - a child between an uzumaki clan and hyuuga clan member.

We merge obito and nagato's stories and arcs together to get most of the storyline we got. We get some amusing drama because the whole cloud nation ordeal that was central to the events of the chuunin arc come full circle in the defense of Bee.

The power of the tailed beasts is collected and then we get "The Last" ... sort of - because Hinata is the chosen vessel to hold the resurrected goddess/power.
Naruto saves the day, either by preventing Hinata being taken over by kaguya or by his relationship with Hinata subverting the whole idea - quelling the anger of the sealed goddess, or something.