Just like that, Obito’s officially down for the count, and what we get is a chapter that essentially culminates his role in this fight. It’s been a long time coming—arguably too long in the eyes of some—but we’re finally here, and considering all the positives and negatives that’ve come in the past few hundred chapters, I feel like it ended up quite decent.

Because as much as we can hate/dislike Obito for the foolish choices he made, the fact remains that a lot of his choices were powered by the fact he never received the same amount of support Naruto did. Sure, some of his decisions made it hard for others to support him (and he arguably never put in the same kind of genuine effort our main character did), but the only sources of guidance he had passed away, and in some ways, you can’t really blame him for the path he chose. Considering also that his method was theoretically a viable way of “salvation,” and it’s just like, he had some good intent—even if it was misguided.

Maybe I’m just sympathizing a bit now that it’s all finally over, but yeah, I can’t help but feel a bit sorry for the guy at this point. And it’s something that makes the whole Naruto you can go on and seal Madara while Obito, Kakashi, and I talk it over thing a fitting end to it all. We can argue all day about how things could’ve/should’ve happened differently, but it doesn’t change the fact that we got what we got, and so the important question remains: was this the best way to put the Obito portion of the story to a close given the circumstances? And to this, I’d say yes. Because not only does it give Obito his send off, it also gives the two people who were closest him the chance to culminate their respective roles in this fight too. Many of us were wondering just how Kakashi would end up getting back in the picture as well, and there are just few ways it could’ve been done better than how they did it here. At least, that’s how I feel.

The question now though, is what exactly Madara has in store. After asking this question for what seems like forever, it looks like we’ll finally get our answer next week. The problem? The next issue is the last one we’ll get this year, as Naruto will then go on hiatus until the first issue of the new year. Epic cliffhanger incoming? Probably. Just par for the course—for better and for worse.

46 Comments

  1. At last…I see the end in sight. I will save my emotional speech for when that time comes. This chapter I liked the most out of this month because it kept it real. Kakashi saying that it’s true that Naruto might fail, even on his path, but the chances of him failing are less than that of Obito’s who had no one supporting him the whole way.

    Of course Obito’s Rin repetition is annoying, but I guess this chapter is is the last we hear of it…..Nah, but one can dream, right?

    Last chapter of the year? Or just hiatus for one week? I’m hearing so many different things, but you can’t leave off on a cliffhanger like this and leave it at that for more than a month! Esepcially with the end in sight

    swordhack4
  2. I think Kishi should have had Madara interfere and take over before Obito had the Juubi pulled out of him and dismantled. Madara’s plan somehow was to replace Obito before the 15 minutes completed now unless Sharigan has a rewind time feature I don’t see that happening. Obito could have gone down as the guy who gets killed by the main bad guy just as he realized how wrong he was.

    gawrshness
      1. Indeed,and for that I’m surprised Sasuke just let Kakashi deal with him.I was expecting him to insist on finishing Obita off or something.I swear his character these days is so random.

        MgMaster
    1. lol that’s not a random reason. even if sasuke saw naruto & obito’s little mind convo which i don’t think he did.. he would have plenty of his own reason to kill him. not the least of which he was his enemy & trying to kill him 2 minutes ago.. plus he knows obito was going to ‘give’ sasuke to kabuto when the war was over. i can’t remember if he still thinks the kyuubi attacking the village 16 yrs ago was random like obito told him (which was the final straw that sealed the uchiha’s fate) or obito’s fault but that would be enough of a reason for sasuke.

      kessa
  3. Madara is currently in a zombie body. How do we kill zombie bodies? The only way is using the Sage technique that Obito used that nullifies jutsu. But who else can use this technique? I bet my lunch that Naruto becomes the jinchuuriki for all of the tailed beats, becoming a new sage of the six paths, and thus able to use that jutsu to end Madara.

    1. Not really, perhaps they select “temp” Hosts, and will Help Naruto. Perhaps Kakashi will receive one, just for the Finish. Because for not a Real Host Body, it can end in Dead to hold them in

      Germanguy
  4. Please… someone Edo Tensei Rin’s soul back so Obito can find closure and we can be done with it.

    On side note, Minato finally acknowledges that as a teacher, he was never there when his students needed help and the team fell apart.

    BraveSong
  5. Can someone more versed in the Naruto universe than I tell me why Obito didn’t die after having not just one, but seven tailed beasts extracted from him? Didn’t Kushina (Naruto’s mom) die after the Kyuubi was extracted from her – by Obito coincidentally.

    That’s something I never considered – Minato is going on about how how it’s partially his fault that Obito turned out this way, all while facing the person who murdered his wife (let me repeat that – “murdered his wife”), has caused countless deaths (probably in the tens of thousands), and inflicted terrible suffering directly and indirectly to everyone in the ninja world. They are a lot more forgiving than I would be. Just sayin’.

    7godeohs
    1. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

      But I do have to agree with you on Obito. It’s pretty clear by this point (if it wasn’t so obvious earlier on) that he doesn’t really care THAT much about “the world” and “the system” and whatnot as he plays it off to, and never really believed in the Moon’s Eye Plan (its actual purpose anyway) as a whole, but only went along with it because of his own selfish feelings over Rin. He’s only really going along with the Moon’s Eye Plan for the purpose of thinking it will “fix things” involving Rin, but otherwise, doesn’t seem to care what else happens as a result as long as he “gets Rin back”. (And if he really does care so much about the world and the system, it’s not being conveyed very well.)

      The big problem, still, is that, as talked about pretty often chapters ago, is that it’s still hard to sympathize with Obito because WE STILL DON’T “KNOW” RIN. (Or Obito, really.) We’re supposed to feel bad for him and understand him because of the cliche sob story of losing a loved one driving him down the path of darkness, and while that in itself may garner a little sympathy in general, how are the readers supposed to REALLY care about that person’s death and how much it REALLY affected the other person if we know so very little about either of them?

      The lack of bringing up in-universe on how such a thing probably happened to countless others before and after such people in some way also bugs me a bit. Such people (Sasuke, Nagato, Obito, etc.) seem to think they’re SO special/unique in having such bad things happen to them that the whole world must stop and constantly cry for them. I may be sorry that such bad things happened to them, but I’m sure they weren’t the first to have such bad things happen to them, and they surely won’t be the last, yet they’re willing to have everyone around them suffer because of essentially throwing tantrums at everyone over it. (As Danzo put it with Sasuke and his anger.)

      They showed it pretty well with Naruto vs. Sasuke at the Valley of the End, with Sasuke yelling at Naruto about how he couldn’t possibly understand his feelings because Naruto never had a family when he grew up, yet Naruto was able to counter that, while he may not understand specifically how Sasuke felt, he DOES understand on SOME level in terms of the loneliness and such.

      HalfDemonInuyasha
      1. The lack of bringing up in-universe on how such a thing probably happened to countless others before and after such people in some way also bugs me a bit. Such people (Sasuke, Nagato, Obito, etc.) seem to think they’re SO special/unique in having such bad things happen to them that the whole world must stop and constantly cry for them. I may be sorry that such bad things happened to them, but I’m sure they weren’t the first to have such bad things happen to them, and they surely won’t be the last, yet they’re willing to have everyone around them suffer because of essentially throwing tantrums at everyone over it.

        While I agree that Rin needed to be developed to fully show the weight of why Obito’s mentality hinged so much on his feelings for her, I think that’s an unfair generalization and I disagree on the idea that Nagato was given the same sob-story-bad-guy treatment as if Kishi is just repeating himself here. With Nagato, he found that his “pain” actually made him enlightened (hence why he proclaimed himself a god), and as a war orphan who suffered through many painful tragedies, he felt that the world can only be taught the same way that he learned to become a man (that is through “pain”). Explanation =/= excuse, and the resolution between Nagato and Naruto wasn’t about excusing the villain. If anything, it just showed how strong Nagato’s conviction was in terms of how he adopted his mentality on war and suffering, which is why Jiraiya’s book needed to be brought up to counter his argument regarding how one should never falter when establishing their goals (“If the hero changes, then the story will be different”).

        Also while I agree that Obito’s motive feels a bit haphazard with the lack of proper showcasing of Rin, it’s a bit unfair to say that Kishi is quickly excusing him for his actions considering the amount of evident verbal punishment that the guy is getting. Kakashi nearly killed him just then, and in the end, he pretty much downplayed Obito in favor of Naruto by literally telling him that Obito held zero charisma and trust towards others unlike Naruto (ouch) which is why he failed.

        ronri
      2. I mostly agree with what you’re saying about Obito’s character arc and motivations, but the thing is that we don’t have to know who Rin is in order to feel sympathy for Obitio. It’s like how we don’t have to know that much about Dan to feel sympathy for Tsunade, we just need to know enough about them to understand how much of an impact. We don’t need to know a great deal of a lot of backstory characters to “know them as a person” so long as you get the gist of their role. Sadly, Rin’s role is to be this plot device and that she doesn’t seem to get mentioned that often by Kakashi (like seriously, we only see Rin through Obito’s eyes, but Kakashi the other presumed friend doesn’t show his opinion of Rin that much to counter Obito’s).

        But I think the real deal with Obito’s thing is that suddenly we’re brought up with this notion that he loves Rin so much to the point that she is basically the only one important to him, and because of that you get Kakashi telling Obito that he didn’t have that wide support network of friends to help him out of it. And it’s only recently do we even know what’s Obito’s state of life was, which was that apparently he doesn’t have a lot of people caring about him (like, his parents or mentors outside of Minato and whatnot). At least Naruto had Iruka and the Hokage to be around to sorta mentor him and be guardians.

        It’s hard to feel bad about Obito, for me personally, is that all of his motivations stem from one person, and it’s like… he really doesn’t have a life. His Tobi mask is really him being myopic. I guess it’s symbolic but it’s the most ham-fisted rationalization for villainy that it makes me long for the days of super psycho Gaara, really.

        The Truth is in the Axe
      1. Haha, while that wouldn’t be good for my OTP, it would be rather ironic. Never watched much Pokemon beyond bits of the first season when I was a kid, but I thought Ash was basically asexual…

        Hochmeister
  6. The moon being covered by a floating cloud, the star-cross effect on the top of the Tree of Life . . . something makes me think that a Sharingan asspull completes the Eye of the Moon plan for the cliffhanger.

    Flaiboy
  7. Perhaps Madara will, somehow, end up truly bringing the Jubi back. We can’t forget that, up to this point, the Jubi was missing at least 16.5 tails worth of power (only having a portion of Gyuki and Kurama’s chakra in order to bring it back as it was), so we have yet to see what it could do at its full power, thus Obito wasn’t nearly as powerful as he “should’ve been” with the Jubi in him. (Wishful thinking anyway.)

    Though, I do wonder why he didn’t just die instantly after having 7.5 tailed beasts forcefully extracted when it’s been shown that just ONE getting extracted, even by an experienced Jinchuriki, kills them instantly. Only reason Kushina didn’t die instantly was because of Uzumaki longevity and “special chakra”.

    And whatever happened to the whole story about the Jubi’s physical body being sealed IN the moon with the Chibaku Tensei while its chakra was split up into the Biju (since it was just TOO powerful to completely destroy)? It’s like that plot point was just dropped and Kishi suddenly decided to make the Gedo Statue the actual body with no explanation.

    HalfDemonInuyasha
  8. Maybe Madara’s trump card is just Izanagi. He can change the outcome of reality. Or, Madaras own Sharingan skill. He never really showed it. If Itachi has Amaterasu, Sasuke has inferno style, Obito has his teleportation, what about Madara?

    SinTei
    1. Eh, a Sharingan skill would be a bit redundant by this point for Madara since he has a full Rinnegan (not merely transplanted), so maybe the Banbutsu Sōzō/Creation of All Things (what Izanagi is a watered down version of) or some other Rinnegan technique we know (very little) of or something new.

      HalfDemonInuyasha
      1. Also, it’s hard to say what unique Mangekyo Sharingan skill correlates to each person besides Obito with Kamui, and Shisui with his uber-Genjutsu.

        Technically, the “blaze/inferno style” is not much more than simply manipulating Amaterasu and combining it into attacks with Susano’o and such, so not exactly “unique”, so Sasuke really hasn’t shown anything purely of his own Mangekyo Sharingan yet that we know of, and who knows which technique of Itachi’s Mangekyo Sharingan was unique. Susano’o is out since Madara has shown to be able to use it (and Itachi implies that any Uchiha with a Mangekyo Sharingan in both eyes had the potential to awaken it), which leaves Amaterasu or Tsukuyomi. Or, quite possibly, the Totsuka no Tsurugi of his Susano’o could be the uniqueness (we have yet to see it mentioned when Sasuke or Madara used Susano’o, or see its effects take place.

        Heck, the only reason Sasuke can use Amaterasu and (a weaker) Tsukuyomi, and even Susano’o right now, is due to Itachi “transferring his ocular powers” into him just before he died after their fight, so this whole time, Sasuke has really just been using Itachi’s Mangekyo Sharingan powers and not “his own”.

        HalfDemonInuyasha
  9. I really hope we can finally get off this whole “try to make us feel bad for Obito” arc that Kishi seems to be trying to force down our throats. Obito is probably the worst villain in the Naruto series imo when it comes to having a believable/relate-able motivation. Every other villain in this series (yes even Orchimaru) has suffered more than Obito. I love how when he was fighting with Kakashi he stated “If you think I’m doing all this because of you and Rin, you are just kidding yourselves”.

    Yet who exactly has Obito been talking about for almost 4 STRAIGHT CHAPTERS? Rin, oh Rin, Rin you are are the light of my life…………(gags)

    Honestly speaking Obito was just a selfish bastard and covered his obsession with Rin and reasons for murdering thousands with a silly notion that he was going it for the sake of mankind. At least with Nagato it’s understandable how he ended up because of all the terrible stuff he went through. Does it make what Nagato did right? No. But his motivations and actions are a HELL OF A LOT more understandable than Obito’s.

    Sasuke was right to try to end obito. It’s fine that he finally stopped lying to himself……that’s fine. But he STILL needs to pay for his actions. I mean does Naruto REALLY THINK that everyone is going to just forgive Obito just because he feels bad about what he’s done? Well in that case why didn’t we just walk up to Hitler and give him a giant friendship hug and forgive him for everything he did?

    Obito was responsible for the death of Naruto’s parents (for those of you saying he wasn’t who exactly do you think it was who summoned the kyuubi? It doesn’t matter if he didn’t directly kill them because in the end he was still responsible for it) and i find it hard to believe that even Minato forgave him for killing his wife. But i guess if anyone had any right to stop Kakanshi from killing him it would be Minato since he was their sensei. I don’t like the fact he blamed himself though. There isn’t much he could have done. He was a jonin and had to go on missions like clockwork and couldn’t always watch over them like he may have wished too. It’s not his fault at all if you ask me.

    leatherhead333
    1. I think, the After time, when Rin died. Was Important, in how he turned up. Perhaps there where no one, that saw his Darken Heart, after Rin’s Dead. So his Sorrow overcome him. Perhaps that is what Minato means, he was not there to help

      Germanguy
    2. Nailed it. I think that’s the worst part about Obito in comparison to other big villains like Nagato. He preached and preached how was doing it for mankind and how he wants to bring peace, but in reality he was just in denial and believed otherwise (unlike Nagato who really thought that what he was doing was truly the right thing to do when he embarked on his path as “Pain”). The worst part is how all of Obito’s motivation hinges on one thing, and that is Rin, and it really makes him seem so petty since he doesn’t even believe in what he preaches and is just masking his feelings for Rin by making up excuses.

      ronri
    3. Considering the s*** other characters have been through it’s hard to feel sorry for Obito. Heck, he even had Kakashi and Minato who would have helped him if he had just talked with them after she died. I didn’t have a problem with Rin being the thing that drove him to Madara’s side, but there really should have been more to his motivations.

      Hochmeister
      1. If I remember correctly, Obito saw Kakashi kill Rin. It was because she asked him to I know, but from Obito’s perspective he just saw his best friend kill the girl he loves. And that was after Madara had saved him with the zetsu clone. I guess after witnessing that, he must’ve figured that he’d rather trust the random creepy guy that saved his life than his best friend that took the thing he cared for the most. I’m not trying to justify his actions or anything, but after going through all that he mustve not wanted anything to do with Kakashi, and Konoha by extension.

        Sain92787

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