Quote:Hm. Lemme 'splain: Kabuto is, officially, a Genin. As far as most of the Leaf is aware, his actual skills -are- higher than that, say, upper Chuunin level. Shino didn't know that he was anything more than a senior Genin - he picked up the lie because his kikai smelled the subtle alterations in Kabuto's scent, in much the same way that a polygraph measures involutary alterations in the conductivity of a subject's skin.
Kabuto's either as rotten (but in a different way) as he was or is playing a deeper game since hiding in plain site as a Jounin seems to be a helluva lot harder to. And Shino almost (excuse the pun) flying off the handle seems uncharacteristically rash, as what he thought he could do against a guy of Kabuto's caliber is beyond even him when he thought about it.
For a deep cover agent, Kabuto's a surprisingly bad actor - we've -seen- how he reacts when he thinks his cover's blown, when Orochimaru was taunting him during the Chuunin exam... he goes all still and tense and basically gets ready to, ah, terminate the potential leak. Until he did that, Shino thought that they were about the same level, and he -also- thought that this guy he had greatly respected had basically betrayed his brother to his death.
Quote:*nodnod* It makes sense to me.
The Hyuuga are from Lightning? Cool. That explains why the Cloud were so torqued to get their hands on the Byakugan as to kidnap the heir from a house filled with people who can see almost 360' degrees.
Quote:I reiterate: Kakashi's an idiot.
This is a nice little show of discipline, a far cry from the "everyone runs around and does their own thing" form of group fighting in Naruto.
Quote:The ninja that we seen in canon are all warriors - in a metatextual sense, they're all playing to the crowd, trying to make things look better. Which, y'know, makes sense.
Whoa. You aren't kidding with the Anyone Can Die schtick are you. You blew up Zabuza with the first opening he gave. Decisive stuff. I'd also like to compliment you on your fight scenes. Their brisk, tight, and visual. Great job.
Neshan wants to win in the quickest and most efficient manner possible, and he's passing it on to the kids.
Quote:I've noticed this too, yeah. My take on it is that the three southern main villages were destroyed a bit over a century ago by an invasion from the non-ninja empire to the south of the area where all of our action takes place... This was possible because Konoha's about the same size as, say, Colorado, and the Jade Empire is best compared to China. Eventually, that emperor died and his heir took a look at the casualty ratios and gave it up as a bad job and went home.
See, this is one of the problems I have with Naruto. Nothing what you said was bad, quite the opposite this is a fresh and original take on a subject that is skirted over at best. But in canon, the Hidden Villages are ridiculously young. Sarutobi the Third was a kid when the First was still reletively young, and he was supposed to have founded the village. So that makes the village 100 to 120 years old tops. And according to the most recent manga, Sand's no different. And there's constant talk about how some of the clans are so old and have been around forever, so unless the office of Kage is a new innovation in the Ninja world, there's some timeline issues imbedded in the series. But that's a personal pet peeve and doesn't detract me from enjoying this story any.
This'll probably come up sometime in the Volcano Country mission - another five or six chapters or so.
Ja, -n
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."