Orochimaru: Worst Change of Mind in Writing Ever

Orochimaru was Too Powerful

Orochimaru of Naruto Anime

For those who do not know what Naruto is,... well have you been under a rock?  Ok seriously.  Naruto is a Japanese anime.  It is a run away smash hit in Japan.  It is watched during prime time t.v. in Japan and entire families sit and watch it.  It had a brief airing in America.  But, due to the Americanization of the anime and the horrible,  HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE voice acting and script rewrites, it was nearly immediately ditched to overwhelming audience backlash.  In fact, while the American version of Naruto was completely shut out by fans, views of the Japanese version of the series nearly doubled.  Apparently anything Americans touch is crap, is the message I guess.  That aside, let's assume you are an avid watcher of the Japanese version of the anime.  We will be discussing the ultimate villain in any anime ever: Orochimaru.

The author of the series wrote Orochimaru to be the complete antithesis of Naruto.  Naruto is:

• kind
• believes in the goodness of everyone
• believes he can conquer even the worst self imposed demons he has
• believes he can conquer even the worst self imposed demons in others
• believes that everyone can be redeemed
• believes that one day everyone will recognize him as their leader and protector
• believes he can lead his village into peace and prosperity one day

So in the series, the author throws obstacle after obstacle at Naruto, which he overcomes.  He throws monstrous villains at Naruto, who either beats them up or gets them to recognize the goodness in their hearts.  Orochimaru was written to be the embodiment of complete malevolence.  His character has absolutely no redeeming qualities.

Orochimaru Evil Incarnate

Orochimaru Snake Master

Where Naruto is ultimate goodness, Orochimaru is ultimate evil.  But, Naruto isn't just a kid with ninja fighting training.  In true Japanese larger than life, earth shattering fashion, Naruto has a demon trapped inside of him, that is on par with a force of nature.  It is named the 9-tailed fox.  This demon has the power to annihilate entire cities with its roar.  It can smash mountains.  It can engulf whole forests in flame.  All of this is trapped inside of Naruto.

So Orochimaru, who was originally written to be opposite Naruto, had to be equally if not more powerful than a force of nature.  How could that be accomplished?  Easy!  Orochimaru was written as one of the 3 legendary ninjas of all time.  On top of that, he was more powerful than the other 2.  He knew every jutsu [ninja power and spell] ever known [even the forbidden jutsus] and invented more powers on his own.  So where Naruto was sheer brute force, and an awesome force indeed, Orochimaru was the equal and opposite power of the mind.

The Beginning of the End

The Nine Tailed Fox

It often happens in writing.  The author dreams up the ultimate villain or even just a really good villain, then he realizes that the hero of the story cannot overcome him, because he did not make the hero powerful enough.  So they then set out to detract on the villain.

This is exactly what happened in Naruto.  Instead of building Naruto up, the author decided that Orochimaru would not be the focus of being the arch nemesis to Naruto.

Why?  Because of the way he wrote the Naruto character.  Remember the list above?  All of this is housed inside a little boy.  Even when the anime progresses and naruto is now 12 years old instead of 6 years old, he still has little boy qualities.  These little boy qualities cannot overcome an Orochimaru character.

You would have a scenario where the two would come up against each other and Naruto would have to transform into this logical thinking character, with a penchant to utterly destroy Orochimaru, i.e. Orochimaru would have to be killed.  Why?  Because, Orochimaru has no redeeming qualities and therefore would not ever be remorseful of the things he has done, i.e. human experimentation, torture, murder, mass-murder, etc.  Naruto does not kill people.

So the Orochimaru character was written too perfectly, as a villain.  And, instead of going back on the Naruto character and making him into more of an adult, with the ability to straight up kill someone, the author took the low road and just emasculated Orochimaru.  All of a sudden other villain type characters were able to beat the Orochimaru character and virtually take him out of the picture.

The idiocy of this bad writing is apparent from anyone's perspective.  Here you have a villain so powerful that he can beat the other 2 legendary ninjas singlehandedly, but two teenagers on separate occassions beat him without effort?

I despise this vehemently.  It happens in movies a lot: The Jackal; most vampire movies.. etc [ I can't think of more off the top of my head ]  They always start out with a super villain, but by the end of the movie he cannot tie his shoelaces correctly and a fluffy bunny attacks his jugular and he dies in 3 seconds.

This is what was done to this character Orochimaru.  Instead of making the series really interesting and making a coming of age story, i.e. we watch naruto grow up, train and become more powerful than the most powerful legendary ninja, Naruto instead, is kept acting like an imbecile and can barely beat Star Trek red shirts.  It is just plain awful.

Orochimaru: Best Villain Ever

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Anime Rant: Why I Hate the Writers of Naruto Punking Orochimaru

Creating the Fall Guy

In America, because Americans are all children and have the brains of infants, Hollywood tests and tests and tests and come up with the same result, "the bad guy can never win." Regardless that congress rapes us daily. Regardless that Wall Street pillages the land of tax payer dollars and we take it, day in and day out, we can never be presented with even the hint of reality in a movie. Test groups can't even tolerate the bad guy even getting the upper hand during the movie. They are so childlike that it is enough that you say "this is the bad guy" and then proceed with the movie.



In Asia it is no problem to present a movie where the bad guy walks away scott free. However their reality is quite different. Over there bad guys don't get away with it. So to see a bad guy win, IS the fantasy. Over here, we are surrounded by incompetent police incompetent leaders, incompetent military. They lock up regular citizens and give the excuse that they broke the law. The actuality is that 75% of the time the law was an infraction that is so inconsequential that locking a citizen up for it, IS the crime. But, they do that to hide their own incompetence, their own inability to stop real crime.

For 50 years they have claimed they needed to lock up 20 times the Americans they used to lock up, all in the name of our safety. When in fact 90% of those they locked up were no evil to begin with and the real criminals are free to do whatever they please. The police know they can't get to them. The criminals know the police are incompetent, and no one can change that.

Knowing this then, why can't Americans tolerate seeing a bad guy win? Because they are children and can't handle the truth. The people they pay to keep them safe have failed and they do not want to be reminded of it. And, the powers that be will not show it to them and avoid it, al all costs.

So what's my anime rant about? In Naruto they presented the ultimate bad guy as Orochimaruo. Orochimaru was the most powerful ninja. He knew every jutsu there ever was. He even invented his own. He even knew the forbidden jutsu. He used to belong to the all powerful band of outlaw nijas known as the Akatsuki. In fact he was so beyond them that he left them and truely went on his own. He was so powerful that he attacked a country, with his army, all by himself, something normally a whole country would have to do, to even be assured of success. He also was and is one of the 3 legendary ninja in all of the world of Naruto.

With all of that said why oh why would they all of a sudden make him look like a chump? I mean, the guy can bring people back to life. The guy discovered the immortality jutsu. His own retainer even said he could literally take over the entire Naruto world.

Now my problem isn't that the author wants to all of a sudden go with a different bad guy. My problem is, don't build up Orochimaru to not just be a powerful bad guy, but build him up to be a god and then make the new bad guy just have an illusion power.

The problem is they already explained in the series that one illusion user cannot ensnare another illusion user. One would have to be superiorly more powerful to best another illusion user. Now, under normal circumstances that wouldn't be impossible, but we're talking about Orochimaru vs and Uchiha.

Yes, it's great that the Uchiha have an illusion power, but Orochimaru is now on his 3rd body. The other 2 legendary ninja are also facing the ravages of time. The female legendary ninja, now the leader of the Hidden Leaf Village, has been shown to use potions to keep herself looking young well beyond her years. So all 3 of them have lived probably 2 generations of a normal human, if not 3. Also, Orochimaru put an entire country under his illusions. He defeated ninja leaders of multiple countries, all at the same time, single handedly. So excuse me if I think it's ridiculous that some 20 year old and his younger brother, 14 years old, put the legendary ninja Orochimaru under an illusion. It's like Hitler or George W Bush fighting Jesus. I mean, they're both bad guys and super powerful, but ... come on, it's Jesus we're talking about.

I thought the Japanese wouldn't fall for the "the bad guy loses" shtick. First of all we're talking a world filled with nothing but ninjas. None of them are "good guys" in any objective sense. There are countless ways to write out and all powerful character anyway. They could simply say he got bored of the world and went somewhere else. Isn't that what gurus do anyway?

Just stop it with the "Bram Stoker's all powerful Dracula is killed by a toothpick from some 3rd rate cop that can barely read". The world doesn't work like that and don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

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