Dissecting Sasuke Uchiha

ooh boy sasuke uchiha if the comments on my last video talking about him didn't indicate this already for you he's quite a controversial character to say the very least the fandom cannot come to a consensus about him with one chunk of it hating him one chunk of it worshipping him and the other chunk not really caring either way I'll do my best to keep personal biases out of this video since as many of you know I do really like Sasuke as a character but that might be a little easier said than done in a video of this format I will say right off the bat that I do think Sasuke is incredibly complex and well that's only based on my own interpretations of his actions and words I do think that at some point anyway kishimoto did intend for Sasuke to be one of the most grounded human and three-dimensional characters that the series had to offer now I can totally see why many people view Sasuke as a flat jerk as Gary stew who puts no thought into his action and acts unreasonably and completely haphazardly but at the same time I wholeheartedly disagree with the idea and I think that the people who do see him like this don't really understand his motivations or the way he thinks anyway enough opinions let's get into the actual meat of this video and start breaking Sasuke down the best place I can think to start with is Sasuke's relationship with his brother Itachi and how this relationship affected his motivations throughout the series at the beginning of the story Sokka is one and only goal was to kill Itachi and that was that it was such a major part of his character that we are introduced to him with this in mind now he doesn't specify who he's talking about when he tells Kakashi and the rest of team seven that he has a goal that involves killing somebody but it's very obvious that he's talking about Itachi here now understanding how this motivation affects the rest of his character is key to getting a grasp on who Sasuke is as a person well it's very easy to view his grudge against Itachi as a very generic revenge supply it's certainly a whole lot deeper than that SBU chi-ha clan Massacre has a whole lot of implied secondary psychological effects on Sasuke throughout the series it's shown to the audience through flashbacks that Sasuke was always a pretty quiet and nervous kid before his clan had been wiped out so losing everyone he'd ever cared about turned him into a full-blown introvert on top of that the annihilation of his clan created more than just a personal hatred towards his older brother as we can see through subtle bits of exposition that Sasuke doesn't just pay Itachi he hates everything that he taught she stands for there are many points in part one alone where Sasuke chooses not to do something solely because he sees it as something his brother would have done well it's not outright stated in all of these cases it's a very feasible explanation for most of them when Sasuke shielded Naruto from haku's needles for example he even says himself he has absolutely no idea why he did it but it's pretty likely that he did this because he thinks it would be too much like he taught you to just let a comrade die right in front of him after he breaks Rocco's arms using the power of the curse mark in the forest of death we see that Sasuke is genuinely afraid of himself as after realizing that he acted in such a barbaric and a heartless manner he probably instinctively compared himself to his brother he tells Naruto during the battle against Gaara that he's not willing to watch any more of his comrades die in front of him and prepares to continue fighting garland what is essentially a suicide mission all because he thinks the act of running away to preserve his own life when he could be saving the lives of his comrades it's too much of an Itachi like thing to do and he refuses to kill Naruto to gain the mangekyo sharingan solely because that's what his brother asked him to do Sasuke abused doing this as a way of validating the way his brother gained power and refuses to do it for this reason alone even by the end of part 1 it's made abundantly clear that Sasuke has created his own set of morals and that he is vehemently opposed to doing anything he thinks his brother might do not because of his own personal hatred towards Itachi but because he views him as the sole representation of everything that is wrong with the world he sees Itachi as pure evil and for good reason as at this point Itachi had made himself out to be an egomaniacal psychopath a pure evil man with no prior principles who was concerned with no one other than himself I think killing Itachi meant more than just getting revenge to Sasuke as he felt almost morally obligated to kill his brother for the sake of making the world a better place this is why at the beginning of Shahbuddin he seems like a completely different person than he is at his halfway point as in part one there are many instances in shipit' in rosovsky is clearly shown acting in a way that he believes his brother would not as with the exception of during his encounter with team seven sasuke makes it very clear that he doesn't believe in killing people or forcing them to do anything he asks them to when he recruits the members of heavy for example he doesn't force any of them to join him and instead only takes them along with him if they agree to come he also makes it a point not to kill anyone in his conquest to find Itachi unless a he sees them as just as bad as he taught she was in the first place like with Orochimaru or be it's in self-defense like with deidara there are also many small details throughout the series that support the idea that this is a moral conquest for Sasuke and not a selfish fulfillment of revenge he doesn't allow Sakura to come with him on his quest to kill Itachi because he believes it it'd be too dangerous for her he kills Orochimaru and expresses his disgust with him because of how similar he and Itachi are and he expresses to various characters throughout the series who quell them from his quest for revenge that they don't understand what he's trying to do and he outright refuses to allow anybody else to kill Itachi solely because he doesn't like the idea of somebody else shouldering what he believes to be his own moral burden I definitely believe his interactions with Orochimaru are the best pieces of evidence here for this being a moral crusade as opposed to self fulfillment initially he was willing to let Orochimaru take his body if that meant he was able to kill Itachi which does prove that he was willing to go to incredible lengths to ensure that Itachi was killed but after spending so much time with Hiroshi Maru he learns that Orochimaru is no better than Itachi was and that by giving him access to an uchi oz body he would just be gracing the world with a problem just as bad as Itachi was he doesn't even kill Orochimaru out of self-defense but because he believes it's just the right thing to do he doesn't outright say many of these things because as I've said before the annihilation of his clan turned him into an introvert so he doesn't feel the need to explain himself for the sake of the validation of others on top of that he even explains to Naruto that he doesn't think he and by extension most people would understand that they don't know what Sasuke knows Sasuke's introversion also made his result to kill Itachi that much stronger that's by breaking any emotional ties that he had with other people he was able to make the goal of killing Itachi all that he had to focus on due to the moral code he created for himself I really don't think Sasuke thought ignoring Itachi's presence in the world was something he could do and still be in the right like I've said many times I think she thought of it as a duty and felt morally obligated to kill Itachi to make the world a better place upholding his own morals was more important to him than anything else which is why he prioritized killing Itachi over his own happiness and also why at many points he prioritized the lives of others over his own this was a selfish conquest for revenge Sasuke just flat-out would not have risked his own life as many times as he did and certainly not for the sake of other people and now this is where we come to one of the most interesting character moments in the entire series and what I personally believe to be one of the most interest character moments and all of Shonen when Sasuke learns the truth about Itachi from Obito hopefully I have established by now that Sasuke's entire code of morals was built around the idea that Itachi was an evil person this means that everything about Sasuke is a person the entire way that he's lived his life needs to be redefined his entire life was focused on the goal of killing Itachi that is what he lived every day in pursuit of and what he modeled his entire life around after finding out that he was wrong and that he actually didn't know anything about Itachi Sasuke goes through an existential crisis and has an on-screen mental breakdown this is more than just Sasuke reacting in a fit of denial he's having a full-blown panic attack he digs his nails into his hair sweat begins to drip from his body like crazy his pupils dilute and he starts screaming it Obito that everything he's saying is a flat-out lie if there's one single scene in the entire series that lends credence to everything I've said in this video so far it is this one right here it is one of the best animated scenes in the entire series and the attention to detail here is magnificent the animators at Studio pareil took great care and ensuring that Sasuke's trauma would be communicated to the audience here as he really begins to question who he is and what he's supposed to do with his life now we even see him later what must have been hours after the conversation with Obito fully dressed and recovered standing in a completely different location still bawling his eyes out from the realization that he taught he was a good person this realisation causes Sasuke's character to pull a complete 180 as the previous perspective that he had on the world and everybody and it was shattered and replaced with a cynical outlook on life that made everybody seem like they couldn't be trusted killing people is no longer an off the table option for him now since both Itachi who he believed to be a good person now and the leaf village that he used to believe was full of good people had done it on plenty of occasions he makes the admittedly foolish leap in logic if they can do it why can't I this is like he kills so many samurai at the five Kage summit without remorse at this point he believes that warning somebody he will kill them if they don't get out of his way is enough to keep him on the moral high ground as he moves tirelessly towards his new goal of destroy the hidden leaf village many people see this as a very weird haphazard jump for his character to make and while I do sort of agree that Sasuke was acting a bit out of character during the like a summit arc it does make a whole lot of sense for him to act this way considering again he's having what essentially amounts to an existential crisis many people criticize Sasuke for constantly changing his philosophical view on the world but he only does this when he was presented with loads and loads of new information many people seem to be under the impression that as soon as Sasuke found out that he taught he was a good person he and Itachi began to share the same outlook on the world this just isn't the case that's like I said before hostage killing Itachi was what he believed to be doing the world of Justice it was a very small-scale goal and wasn't something that he thought would make a whole lot of a difference but it was still something that he was in pursuit of tirelessly when he finds out that he thought he wasn't actually the bad guy in this situation Sasuke decides that he needs somewhere else to direct his anger there is somebody that absolutely ruined his life and the idea of letting whoever that was completely off the hook just doesn't sit right with him now in the heat of the moment Sasuke does struggle to figure out who it is that needs to be punished of course this ends up being the hidden leaf village which he now believes to be just as evil as he originally thought Itachi was however as he finds out more and more information about what led to the annihilation of the yuichi hock clan in the first place the target for his anger becomes much more broad as he learns more and more about the history of the shinobi world he's forced to direct his anger at more and more people at once which is why he goes from simply hating Itachi to hating the entire leaf village to wanting to reform the entire shinobi world there's a gradual escalation in his train of thought Itachi only killed the members of the Uchiha clan because Danzo asked him to do it but Danzo only took shisui's eye and ended up forcing you taught you to do this because the leaf village was in such a sorry state the only reason the leaf village was in such a bad state is because Obito had attacked it with the nine tails 17 years earlier the only reason Obito attacked the leaf village with the nine tails 17 years earlier is because of the fact that Kakashi killed Rin the only reason Kakashi was forced to kill Rin is because of the failed shinobi system that's been in place for so long which is why Sasuke eventually comes to the conclusion that the entire world is in need of reform even after learning that he touch he was a good person Sasuke doesn't simply decide oh okay well I guess I'll just let everything go and go back to living in Konoha because he wants to figure out what it was that caused him so much pain and at least make a little bit of a dent in the world large enough to prevent the same thing that happened to him from happening to anybody else like him as he learns more and more about what led to the ug ha clan secure the size of the dent that he needs to make seems to become larger and larger which as a result causes his ambitions to become greater and greater at first the solution to this is kill Itachi but it eventually escalates to destroy the hidden leaf village and then further to I need to reform the entire shinobi world as we know it so hopefully this video has given you at least a little bit of insight into the psyche of Sasuke Uchiha I had a lot of fun making this video and I'd love to hear what you guys have to say about what I think as always if you're new here and you want to see more videos like this in the future make sure you subscribe to get updates on when I upload new content and if you enjoyed the video maybe make sure you leave a like as always thank you guys for watching the video all the way to the end I appreciate it so so much leave a comment below with any ideas for future video topics you want me to cover and if I like it enough I'll definitely make sure to tackle it in the future hope you guys have a fantastic day hope to see you in my next video and I'll talk to you later so I hug a bye [Music] ah

Channel: Swagkage

Views: 1,907,918

Keywords: naruto, naruto shippuden, naruto explained, sasuke naruto, sasuke uchiha explained, sasuke uchiha, dissecting sasuke uchiha, kekkei genkai, naruto shippuden explained, chakra natures, naruto anime, swagkage, edo tensei, reanimation jutsu, sage mode explained, rinnegan, rinnegan explained, eight gates explained, fire release, water release, earth release, lightning release, wind release, sharingan, wood release, particle style, dust release naruto

Id: huFWCLgELQo

Length: 12min 18sec (738 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 29 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/irishsaltytuna]

SwagKage's editing and disposition in his videos are a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of the 'first reaction' and disorganised reviews I see with a lot of other anime YouTubers.

[u/sukesa]

I loved the bit about Sasuke's breakdown, because I feel as if people sort of disregarded that part entirely when it came to his actions afterward. Sasuke's decisions at the Kage Summit were irrational, and it's pretty difficult to argue otherwise. But like... of course they were?

He just found out that his entire life revolves around a lie. All the choices he made and that "little dent" he made in the world don't actually mean shit. He has all this anger (not just anger over his clan, but over Itachi aka "evil personified") but no longer knows what to do with it. So being quite unstable, plus the huge amount of influence Itachi has over his life, plus some manipulation on Obito's part ends up creating what we saw at the Kage Summit.

Sasuke always acts out when he's near the target of his rage. As soon as he found out Itachi was nearby in Part 1, he literally did the same thing he did during the Kage Summit: charged in and almost got himself killed. Who gave a fuck if another Akatsuki member was present? He certainly didn't. The same thing happened in the Kage Summit, except to a much greater extent. Danzo's close? Then let me kill him. Danzo's surrounded by four other Kage plus bodyguards plus samurai? I'll kill them, too. And while I do see him acting a bit out of character, we have to remember that this is something he's done before.

AND HE'S SO MUCH FUNNN like holy shit I haven't looked at the comments but I'm certain it's 45% unconditional hate, 45% unconditional love, and 10% kinda in the middle. It's almost amazing how he does it.

[u/Knoxxyjohnville]

I've always been pretty indifferent about Sasuke, never thought his character arc was as bad as some said or as godly as some thought. But this video presents some interesting ideas behind Sasukes motivations and philosophies throughout his and definitely got me thinking about his character more than I had done in the past.

[u/[deleted]]

Swagkage is my spirit animal

[u/njandersen97]

Swagkage is the only youtuber anymore that I will stop what I'm doing and watch his latest episode when I get the alert. His editing and just overall content is amazing.

[u/[deleted]]

good or bad, he's definitely a polarizing character. i don't think i've met a person who's just neutral about him. it's either love or hate

[u/HDMBas]

I honestly still think that no matter all the hate, Sasuke is still a really good character. Definitely if you look really good at his actions/mental state. Unlike Sakura... ugh... i mean she does some thing... right?

[u/djghostface292]

All the people who hate Sasuke's character are honestly just being ignorant. Even my fucking mom fully understands Sasuke's motivations and says that people who say "oh he's just emo", and "he went from wanting to destroy the village, to wanting to protect the village, to wanting to destroy it again.", just aren't paying any attention to his character at all.

[u/[deleted]]

Whoever commented on this that wasn't the OP, you're shadowbanned and we can't see your comment