Naruto Chapter 429: Pain
Summary: Having learned Naruto's location, Pain decimates Konoha with a bomb-like blast. (Read 429 here)
Serenphoria Says:
I'm still in shock.
...
I was wholly unprepared for the blast - even though in retrospect retreating with a final blow was a very badguy-y thing to do. It just...whoa. Is Kishimoto over-stepping the rules of the Naruto-verse by allowing anyone that level of power? Even the tailed-beasts weren't that destructive. Or has Pain really reached demi-god status and it wasn't all just talk?
Plot-wise, perhaps that technique will wear out the Pains enough to give Naruto a fighting chance to survive, because I really don't see him outsmarting the collective Pains nor being successful even with his Tenacity Attack. The most likely scenario is that his Tenacity Attack will give the others time to find the real Pain.
Shizune!
And Oh My God, Sakura, don't you dare give up before you even try to save Kakashi! Go sic that giant magic slug on him! ... It was touching that she'd call out for Naruto (what a 360 for her character!), though I don't know what he could possibly do to make things better).
I'm starting to get seriously freaked. It feels like the dark before the dawn in a story...the protagonists are at their lowest low, digging up corpses from the rubble of their home, turn their grief and anger into righteous determination and regroups to take the battle to the enemy. Only, where does Danzou fit in? Reintroducing him in the fray has a purpose. How can he carry the story after the current Big Bad? I can postulate a few scenarios how he could be integrated into the story, but he's definitely an interesting loose end.
And what will Sasuke do when he arrives and finds Konoha already destroyed? (Curses! Foiled again!) Will seeing the consequence of a like-minded person's wish (You all don't understand pain until I deal it!) cause him to reflect? Will he have some life-changing epiphany and finally think of someone besides himself? If he does and tries to redeem himself, will anyone care enough to notice?
So many questions and moving parts and I really don't know how this is all going to shake out.
*mimble wimble*
posted by serenphoria @ 9:36 PM
11 Comments
11 Comments:
Yeah the Atomic Bomb no jutsu might have been just a little bit of an overkill here Kishi. Man I knew Konoha would come out worse for wear in this battle, but I didn't think 99% of it would be utterly destroyed.
Okay Madara's "revenge on Konoha" is really bugging me now. If he really wanted it so much he could of just ordered Pain to grab Naruto a long time ago and be done with it. Why Madara wants Sasuke so badly is now an even bigger mystery to me.
I liked when Sakura called out for Naruto too. And speaking of missing people what's taking team Gai so long? We really need some dynamic entry here people!
I don't think even Danzou knew this was going to happen, so I'm curious if he'll have a brief truce with Tsunade for the time being or just use this to make his bid for Hokage-ship. It's probably going to be the latter, though.
Naruto it's about time! I can't wait to see how he reacts to all of this. Also, everyone notice the scroll? It might have been necessary to bring him back, but I really hope Naruto inherited the summon scroll Jiraiya was always lugging around along with a cool new outfit. Seriously, all throughout the first half Naruto was dressed in that orange outfit of his and then in the second half wears orange outfit version 2.0
To end this on a light note, now we know what happened to Kiba's dad!
To avoid the sheer WTFery of the Atomic Bomb no jutsu (srsly, gais, your super sekrit godlike ninja power is to split the atom ZOMG? What-EVER, hax0rs. Turn the godmode off, and try again.) I'll just say that it would be totally awesome for Sasuke to come back with his thunder all stolen, just for some entertaining Flashbacks of I Didn't Mean I Wanted You Dead, I Still Like You and Stuff, I Just Wanted to Destroy You a Little! and some emo whining (and he would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those meddling Pains!).
Although, it would be completely, totally, and in all other ways awesome if the Atomic Bomb no jutsu was all in their heads. Sure, it would be a cop-out on some levels, but at least the ability to Jedi Mind Trick an entire population into believing that they've been atomized is more believable than the ability to TOTALLY BLOW THEM UP WITHOUT NITROGLYCERIN. Besides, I like the Matrix-style mind screwery. Although it's awesome that they (the collective Borg-Pains) made Orochimaru's attack look like a kid playing in a sandbox. That, little Orochimaru, is how you invade a country and totally destroy it to make your point. Are you taking notes? Oh, wait, you can't! You're dead, and you have no arms. That's because you suck!
Oh, and so help me, Kishimoto, if you made Kakashi dead from smush, and not Sakura, I will be unbelievably angry with you. It's bad enough that you did it to Obito, but seriously now, you can't just "Rocks fall, everyone dies" for important characters! He needs to at least gasp out a meaningful last monologue!
As for Danzou- hey, you want to be Hokage of the Konoha Crater? Knock yourself out, dude, because there's nothing else left. (Unless it's all in their minds. Then you'd need to reprogram the Matrix.)
There's really no point in calling shenanigans anymore, it's gone beyond that point. At least I want to know what happens in that "how many more cars are going to show up in this fifteen car pile up, anyway?" kind of way.
Is it just me, or did it look less like an explosion and more like the force field jutsu pushing things out of the way really quickly? He called it the same thing too.
Shizune! OMG! What horrible way to go! And all those people at the hospital? Are we to assume they're dead too?
Way to leave a cliffie Kishi! No Naruto till after the new year--Sheesh!
Hate to leave two posts in a row but I had some more thoughts.
Danzou. Root is (naturally) underground right now. He's planning a coup. He's going to have Tsunade killed while Naruto fights Pein in the crater (he's going to have a lot of room to work). Then, I think the likely outcome is that Danzou will become Hokage, and Konoha will become Ne-ga-kure in spirit.
I know it's a common fanfiction trope, but I'm finding it more and more likely that Naruto will be marked an enemy of the state and possibly exiled. Konoha proper might be reborn someday with him at it's head, but that wouldn't be soon.
Besides, I've always felt that Naruto had a greater destiny outside of Konoha, one that will see him a hero to all the shinobi nations (I just never expected it to happen this way).
I mean, it would certainly explain why he always makes friends outside Fire's borders.
Now another question, if the above happens, is it going to be just him that goes on this journey? Or him and a contingent of ninja loyal to him and Tsunade?
@Nemesis Jedi
I noticed that bit about Kiba's dad too! I instantly thought of 2 scenarios:
1. Kiba's dad hides from his wife and the comment was meant to be funny
2. Kiba's dad left the family and Kiba's in a single-parent family.
Never gave Kiba's dad much thought, so this very subtle comment was very interesting.
@Nibbles
I think we've always known that Naruto was a uniter, but I had always imagined the final encounter involved facing off with Sasuke and he has all the friends and allies he made to back him up.
What you suggest is interesting and a real possibility now that the scope of the conflict is so much greater. I never thought Naruto's ability to make friends across borders would ever be an explicit plot point, but his true strength is to unite people in their trust in him and I can already see him reaching out to Suna and finding an ally in Killerbee and his country. And I'm sure Wave Country, though not a military country, will offer support to Konoha.
I felt the last chapter really opened up the possibilities of where the series is headed, which is scary and exciting!
Wow... talk about overkill!!!! I thought Konoha was gonna get wrecked up a bit, NOT annihilated! Don't get me wrong, that ULTIMATE APOCALYPSE NO JUTSU WAS ON THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF AWESOMENESS,but it seemed a bit fake. This was the type of stuff you see in DBZ, not Naruto. It highly concerns me that kishi may be over-powering some characters (*cough* Sasuke *cough*).
I totally agree with Nemesis Jedi. If Madara Truly wanted Konoha destroyed he could have had Pain do it a long time ago. What are his true intentions? He always keeps me guessing.
Something good may come out of this. Some useless people may be dead, and that would be fine with me! But Sakura is still alive, so I doubt that the explosion will wipe out any un-important characters... Damn it! Sakura was probably able to survive that blast because of the slug that was protecting her and the fact that she wasn't even injured prior to the explosion. In Kakashi's case, he is laying out in the open with no protection and no way to evade or defend himself. (It pains me to say this and I know I'm gonna get hate for this comment but it has to be said)...If Kakashi wasn't dead before, he is definitely dead now!
I would have been completely over-joyed if Naruto had come back before the complete and utter destruction of Konoha, but it is WAY too late to enter the game now. It is absolutely pointless. There is not much he can do now. He’s is gonna come just in time to see the aftermath.
Orochimaru should have gotten a few tips and pointers from Pain before he left akatuski. It’s pretty sad that Pain was able to destroy konoha in less than a day, while orchimaru TRIED to destroy it with a highly effective strategy that probably took him months, or even years, to plan out.
Whats Sasuke gonna do now? He was supposed to destroy Konoha, but that’s been taken away from him. If he was really such a bad ass like he claims to be, he would finish off Konoha while it’s still weak. But knowing Sasuke, his bitch ass will probably go in a corner to cry about how he didn’t get to fufill his newest desire. Sasuke is Such an EMO.
For Sasuke being such an EMO, I doubt he'll show much emotion over this.
And fitting in with my earlier theory--this is the end of Konoha as we know it for a long damn time... Ne-ga-kure (in spirit) will rise from the ashes, and since it will likely be headed by Danzou. Someone who had a major hand in the Uchiha massacre, I don't think Sasuke will be pleased.
Other than that, I don't think Sasuke was telling the whole truth to Madara, and that he thinks he really is just using Akatsuki. He may even think Konoha (in part) deserved to be destroyed. But I think, he'll be even less happy about what rises from the destruction.
As for who I think might've been killed, possibly anyone without a slug on their shoulder... So the Inuzuka's and the Aburame's, plus other insignificant characters. The Aburame's were at least suspicious, so maybe their bugs saved them... And the Inu's have their dogs, but they weren't expecting it so I don't know... I don't think Tsunade was affected by the blast, I think she was on top of the buildings on top of the cliffs, so she's fine till Danzou (or his men) show up.
*speechless*
....
I really WAS NOT expecting the 'Atomic Bomb no Jutsu'.
But seriously, if that did happen and it wasn't some serious Genjutsu bleurgh...
....
Kishi just wiped out a whole bunch of main characters.
I dont know if anyone thought of this but, is it possible that Pain took Kakashi body and will use it as one of his six paths of pain? Think of how that would effect Naruto.
@Anonymous
Oh the angst that would cause!
And everyone, I'm pretty sure that it's just the center of the village that was blown up. Hopefullly everyone we cared about is up at Hokage tower or around the periphery (fingers crossed)
@ Anon
The Kakashi!Pein thing is something I thought would happen an issue or two ago, but I'm not sure how it could happen now. We saw the Peins evacuate with Konan before the jutsu--none were carrying a body. Not only that there were six plumes of smoke coming from the city center, one of which was the area that Kakashi was fighting in.
A lot of debris from the center seems to have been piled around the edges--so while it's more likely a person on the outer edge would survive, it's not a guarantee either.
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