How To Destroy A Story In One Episode

creation is more difficult than destruction good stories take years decades to be written but they can be destroyed in a single event this event of unparalleled literary destruction happened in Naruto with murderer being stabbed in the back by black zetsu out of nowhere this is the single worst scene in the history of manga by many reasons and today we're going to talk about one of those reasons black zetsu and how he destroyed Naruto in a single episode before we begin like this video And subscribe to this channel if you like my content zetsu has always been a mysterious dark character a member of the Akatsuki that was introduced in the very end of Naruto part 1. zetsu in the beginning was not a very important character whatsoever it was a plot device he was the information guy in the Akatsuki his ability was to essentially travel through the ground and relay information to the more important villains he also cleaned up after the Akatsuki we saw that he ate the body doubles that Itachi and kisama used to delay the leaf ninjas in the kazekagi rescue mission but his main goal was to serve as the information guy he was a spy he could infiltrate very difficult locations and see battles that were taking place it also served as an observer to many fights so that he could relay commentary to the audience this is most prominent in the Sasuke vs Hitachi fight where zetsu is watching and telling everything about the fight for the audience this is a very common Trope and Shonen manga slash anime where there is someone or even more than one person watching a fight and then they comment about the fight and therefore they give the information to the audience but that was pretty much it zetsu was not that important he had a nice design you know he was a black and white plant guy he cut your eye for sure and his personality was mostly dark can funny with white tattoo contrasting blacks at 2 but nothing much more than that he had a much bigger role in the war arc when white zetsu was used as an army to fight the Shinobi Alliance and black satsu served as a spy still traveling through the ground but we never really thought too much about zetsu I've never seen anyone saying that zetsu is their favorite Naruto character or that zetsu is even in their top 10 favorite Naruto characters he wasn't a bad character but he wasn't that important he wasn't very worked on fleshed out nothing major was done to zetsu even him being the army of the bad guys was essentially not very important because white setsus were fighter let's be real it wasn't as though we were fighting against a very powerful enemy sure they could transform into other people that they ate chakra from but still it's not a very big deal Naruto dealt with that very easily was kind of glossed over to be honest and I agree with that decision was by no means the more interesting villain in the work even Kabuto which I'm not a very big fan of was more interesting than him but zetsu still served his purpose in the narrative as I said before he is a plot device character and this isn't a problem really not every character needs to be Don curly own some characters can be a little one-dimensional if they're not too important if they have a nice design and a cold personality it's fine if they are not too fleshed out but then we have a big problem Kishimoto was forced by Shonen jump to kill the best villain in the entire series and introduced the worst villain in the entire series and I would argue in the entire history of manga so that they could have a sequel after that based on the family of sad villain and of course I'm talking about kaguya here the worst character ever made and she is obviously a very big problem for a multitude of reasons but this video is not about her this video is about her right-hand man quite literally so when kishimaru was forced to introduce kaguya he didn't have of a set up for that because he wasn't planning on doing that he also had barely any foreshadowing for kaglia mother mentioned her once and then one chapter before she showed up we have that shot of kaguya looking from above in the sky in the infinite and that's it that's the foreshadowing for kagi if you compare that to mother who was foreshadowed since Naruto vs Sasuke part 1 the valley of viennas for night and day this was a problem Kishimoto didn't really have a way of introducing kaguya that would work in the narrative anything Kishimoto would do to introduce kagbia would be unsatisfying because there was simply no space for a new powerful villain in the narrative murderer was the final boss who was the only other villain left in Naruto at that point of the story there was black zetsu so Kishimoto had no other choice other than using black zetsu to facilitate kagya's return Kishimoto had to pull some major writing contortionism for this plot point to make an ounce of sense in the Nar to universe and this is the main point of the video how zetsu ruined the entire Naruto story in a single episode so just having moderate dying and being replaced by the worst character ever written would have been a very very bad thing from the gecko of course but if that was the only thing that happened that would be bad but still the ending of Naruto would be ruined but not the rest of the story the rest story would be there it would be fine I mean you can watch the rest of the story and just skip over the kagiar part and it's fine this is what I do essentially every time I read through the manga you can forget that okay it's just the bad part let's skip over it the problem is that what Kishimoto did with zetsu changes the entire story destroying it in the process Kishimoto did a major retcon AKA retroactive continuity which is defined as a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events typically used to facilitate a dramatic make plot shift or account for an inconsistency in the story in the war Arc we found out about zetsu's backstory we saw that he was murderer's Will crystallized into a physical form that matara left behind before he died so that he could keep the world and Obito in check and make sure he would return and we thought oh okay that makes sense black satsu was really trying to make things happen for murderer yeah however this changed black satsu was now kaguya's will which is already a retcon but this is not a bad part if he was only caglia's will that would be bad because it's associated with kagu yeah therefore it's going to be bad anyway but it would still not have ruined the entire story the problem is that in order for kagya's return to make any sense whatsoever Kishimoto had to change the entire story he had to make black setsu the main character in the story at least as far as the universe in the Naruto world is concerned because black said support hold every single string since the beginning now that kagi is a thing black setsu is apparently what kept the story of the Shinobi world going he made sure that the Uchiha and the Sanju would fight each other for all eternity until he found a suitable candidate to be the vessel that would return kaguya to the world until he found murder which became his vessel he manipulated the Uchiha Clan the senju clan essentially every single character in the Naruto Series so that kaguya could return he even says that the entire Shinobi history led us to this moment where my mother has returned this is the major retcon zetsu was behind everything and I assure you that when Kishimoto wrote Naruto for the first time and up until very late in the story this wasn't in his mind first because there isn't any foreshadowing and second because it's simply a terrible thing for you to put in your story now retcons are not always bad they can work very well sometimes a very prominent example is Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker's father in the original Star Wars movie a new hope that wasn't a thing at all that wasn't in George Lucas's mind this was never supposed to be a thing in episode 4 of Star Wars but then when episode 5 came along they thought okay I think Darth Vader should have a more personal relationship with the main character how about Darth Vader's look Skywalker's father it can be justified I mean Obi-Wan could be like telling a white lie in episode 4 to Luke when he explained about his dad and we can just say it's this big reveal then and of course that in episode 5 up until the big reveal moment they foreshadowed the crap out of that plot point so even though that's a big retcon it works very well and that's arguably the most important plot point in the entire Star Wars Universe if Darth Vader wasn't Luke's father Star Wars would have been a very different story there's also another example and the Naruto series which is very much disputed no one will ever know for sure if this is a raccoon or not but many people claim that Itachi actually being a good guy was a rat con the Kishimoto came up with after he created Itachi and after he thought about the massacre of yuchiha Clan now they may or may not be the case but either way it worked very well for the story he gave Sasuke further motivation and it made the Naruto story more interesting so retcons are not necessarily a bad thing but they can be a terrible thing you may be asking me wait why is it so bad that black sets who was the main character in the story and he manipulated all the events in the story first of all black zetsu as I said before was not an important character he was a plot device meant to give information to the Akatsuki that was the character's function it was never foreshadow to be the Grand Master behind everything in the world sure he was mysterious but if you're gonna do something as grandiose is that you have to foreshadow that and to give Clues to the audience because pulling this out of nowhere is complete BS second of all zetsu takes away the agency from every single character in the universe except for himself what I mean by that is that the actions that the characters took during the entire story Naruto Sasuke Kakashi Sakura everyone every single Arc in the story was premeditated by zetsu because he was pulling the strings all along especially Naruto and Sasuke because they are related to the most important Clans the story The Clan sets definitely interfered with the most and sure Naruto is nuzumaki gonna send you but he is still the Incarnation of ashra and yeah the Incarnation thing is also a very bad thing that happens late in Naruto but still this is about zetsu now taking away a character's agency is very bad think about it oh the tuning exams Naruto is fighting gaura okay this was because that's who planned everything Naruto is coming after Sasuke because he wants to train and harochimaru never mind it was that so all along nobody cares the characters were acting exactly according to zetsu's Will and this is even worse for Modera because he was completely manipulated by black zetsu which is just I hate that storytelling 101 says that your characters must be active agents in your story and not passive agents active characters take action themselves in the story and they change the events that are unfolding passive characters wait for things to happen and they simply react active characters are more compelling because they have a will of their own now of course not every single character is going to be active all the time this is impossible essentially there are things that the characters are going to have to react to but as a rule of thumb you should make your characters more active rather than passive there are exceptions for that of course there are always exceptions in storytelling there can be interesting passive characters but in general you should should have more active characters than passive characters at least and making so that zetsu is The Mastermind behind everything takes away the agency from every single character in the story meaning that they essentially become passive characters reacting to zetsu's plan so that kagya can return the meaning of everything every remarkable event that has ever happened in the Naruto series that you've enjoyed watching slash reading thus far loses meaning because everything was done according to the plan of this minor character that no one really cares about zetsu a character that's not that interesting and that had no development in the story do you see the problem here do you see how this retcon destroyed the entire series because now every time a cool moment happens Naruto is being taken over by the nine tails of chakra you're gonna remember zetsu is behind that that's not very interesting anymore more this isn't so much as retractive continuity but retroactive destruction of a story which is very disheartening the only alternative you have is to essentially exclude this point of the story in your own head canon in which black setsu was never The Mastermind of the story and kagi ever never existed because that's another problem entirely if you don't do that and if you have that knowledge reading back then you're just not going to enjoy Naruto as much as the first time you read it and this wasn't a thing now I've heard counter Arguments for this retcon not even being a retcon and it is it is very much a retcon because it's information we never received before that changes the entire understanding of the story so that a plot Point can be introduced in the middle of the story out of nowhere this is the definition of a retcon do not argue about that because you're gonna look stupid and I've seen other people saying that Obito slash Toby being the leader of the Akatsuki was a retcon just like zetsu and no Toby slash Obito being the leader of the Akatsuki is not a retcon it's blatantly obvious that Kishimoto intended that to be the case since the beginning of part one essentially Toby being the leader of the Akatsuki and zetsu being The Mastermind behind the entire world are two very different things let me explain why when Kishimoto introduced the Akatsuki in the very ending of part one it didn't show Toby because Toby technically wasn't in the Akatsuki at the time he introduced Toby in the first Arc of Naruto Shippuden remember that in the manga in the original story this introduction of Toby was done after we saw Obito's backstory with him being crushed by the rock and all that in the manga that happens between Parts one and two of the series so when Toby is introduced people could already puzzle things together and say hey hold on this Toby guy has a hand it's very similar to Obito's he also has only one hole in his mask and coincidentally it's on the right side this guy could be Obito and yes people were figuring that out everyone knew that Toby was Obito before he got unmasked and most people already knew that way before the war Arc so yeah it was very much foreshadowed that Toby was Obito now you may say oh no but he wasn't foreshadow to be the leader of the accounts and no he definitely was foreshadow to be the leader of the Akatsuki yes Toby acted like a goofball and then after he quote unquote dies from dangerous explosion we get the reveal that he is the de facto leader of the akats and one of the coolest scenes in Shipton when he says I am Madara Uchiha with a lightning in the background and all that Toby before the grand revealed that he is moderate was essentially comic relief for the story Naruto is a Shonen manga it never really had characters that were solely focused on coming relief yes there are jokes everywhere essentially but no single character is simply done for the sake of being a joke and Toby was that character it was very dissonant he was the only character who was pure and simple comic relief at face value Toby had no purpose in the story whatsoever he was only there to be funny and this raises questions well there's maybe more to him than we might know storytelling 101 never include things in your story that have no purpose now sure you could argue that Toby's purpose was to be funny but this wasn't really what Naruto was known for characters should have a bigger purpose and if Toby was just comic relief and he had just died in dangerous explosion there that would have been just very weird because think about it he would have had no purpose in the story whatsoever except for being a funny guy of course Kishimoto had something in mind for him ever since his introduction ever since the Obito flashbacks held ever since the first episode probably when Kakashi said the words that people who betray their friends are worse than scum quoting Obito in the Bell test that was the setup already Kishimoto already knew that Obito was the leader of the Akatsuki by that point and when Toby was revealed to be moderate matara had been foreshadowed a lot in the story and by that point in the story we're supposed to believe that he was moderate anyway so yeah that works too because damn moderate is the actual leader of the Akatsuki the guy from the statues the guy that everybody's been mentioning this legendary ninja it's nothing like the zetsu retcon it's not even a retcon you could call it a plot twist because yeah we didn't technically know that Toby was the leader of the Akatsuki and was quote unquote moderate when he was the funny guy but Kishimoto definitely planned for that zetsu on the other hand he has no development as to him being The Mastermind behind the entire Shinobi history and he only became that because he was required to By plot and if you don't take that fact off your mind when you are reading or watching Naruto again you essentially will stop yourself from enjoying the series so I do recommend you to take that away from your head Canon if you want to see these problems with the Naruto story fixed watch my rewriting Naruto Series right here subscribe to this Channel and like this video for more content like this thanks for watching

Channel: DygoKnight

Views: 756,976

Keywords: how to destroy a story in one episode, the zetsu retcon, zetsu, zetsu naruto, zetsu madara, zetsu stabs madara, naruto, naruto shippuden, dygoknight, zetsu naruto shippuden, zetsu akatsuki, zetsu war arc, zetsu kills madara, zetsu betrays madara, kaguya naruto, kaguya war arc, kaguya otsutsuki, zetsu kaguya, kaguya zetsu, zetsu brings kaguya, zetsu revive kaguya, naruto war arc, black zetsu, white zetsu, zetsu and kaguya, kaguya and black zetsu, black zetsu and kaguya

Id: kMBIWuu5zmY

Length: 18min 30sec (1110 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 27 2022