Naruto: A Story About Love
“When an Uchiha writhes in agony over the loss of a great love, a unique chakra reacts with the optic nerves and changes that person’s eyes. It’s called the Sharingan, the eyes that reflect the heart” — Tobirama Senju
Naruto is one of my favorite Shonen series of all time. It’s a story of a ninja, Naruto Uzumaki, and his desire to become the head of his village — the Hokage. The story has been with me since grade school. Not long ago, they celebrated their 20th anniversary. As I started to reminisce about the story, I started to see a different point of view towards the story in my current adult age. Back then, I see the story as a cool ninja tale filled with ninjutsu and tailed beasts. But now, I started to see an overarching theme in Naruto. I believe… Naruto is a story about love.
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains details of Naruto series
Brotherly Love
The greatest love I’ve seen so far in the series is the brotherly love from Itachi towards his brother, Sasuke. Itachi had a mission to slaughter his entire clan. He killed his parents, his lover, his elder — and yet, he can’t get himself to kill his little brother. For him, Sasuke is more precious than the village.
There are other instances of brotherly love in the series. We have Madara and Hashirama, also Sai and his brother Shin.
Parental Love
Another love being explored in the series is parental. Not only limited to blood-related families, this love also depicted a teacher-like relationship. The most famous one is involving our own MC and his father/mentor-like figure, Jiraiya. Jiraiya loves Naruto as his student, but also like his own grandson. Never would’ve thought that a popsicle can make me cry in this lifetime 😢
There are also parental love between Asuma and Shikamaru, or Might Guy and Rock Lee. One thing for sure about parental love which the Naruto series has taught me is that… it doesn’t have to be bonded by blood. But that doesn’t mean there are no parental blood bonds in the series. One that stood out is the love from Karura towards his son, Gaara.
Romantic Love
In a series where the theme is about love, I highly doubt that they won’t explore romantic love. A very prominent one that the fans are introduced to is of course the love from Sakura for Sasuke.
At first, it looks like it is just a child’s fling. But as the story progresses, we started to realize that Sakura’s love for Sasuke is the real deal. She stills love him even after Sasuke was trying to kill her… Twice! I know some of the fans are mad at her cause of this stupid behavior. But if we look at it, it just displays how big her love is. Love is blind everybody…
At the end of the series, all the major characters ended up with love interests. We got Shikamaru and Temari, Sai and Ino, and Choji and Karui.
Naruto’s Love
And of course, all these three types of love are reflected in our very own main character.
Brotherly love is explored between Naruto and Sasuke. They started as rivals, then in the finale… they care for each other. Sasuke lost his way, but Naruto never give up on him. They ended up supporting each other at the end of the series as the Hokage and the Shadow Hokage.
Naruto received parental love from many people. Non-blood related ones like Iruka Sensei, Kakashi, and Jiraiya. But I must say, parental love from Minato and Kushina is at the top. Naruto’s parents sacrifice themselves in order for Naruto to live. They throw their bodies at the claw of the nine-tails without any hesitations.
And lastly, the number one groupies of Naruto, and also the romantic interest, the one who always loves Naruto from the very start, Hinata Hyuga. Hinata is the one who always cares for Naruto. The one who gave him ointment for healing in the Chuunin exam, the one who step up to fight Pain, the one who keep Naruto straight after Neji died. There is even a movie, dedicated just only for their romantic story.
The Hate From Love
Just as the series explores love, it also explores the idea of hate. Love breeds hate, they’re two sides of the same coin. As Tobirama said, the Uchiha clan that we’ve always perceived as a hateful clan, turns out to be the most loving one. The hate from Uchiha comes from the repressed emotion of love and will flush out when one’s lost their love. Sharingan, the “eyes that reflect the heart”.
In fact, all of the major villains in Naruto are the products of the lost love that we’ve just talked about. Madara’s love for his brother is what breeds hatred within him towards the Senju clan. Even though Hashirama is willing to die for him, Madara only sees that he’s alone with no brother while Tobirama is still alive and well.
Even Nagato shares the pain of losing a brother when he lost Yahiko. On top of that, he also lost his parents in the great war of shinobi. Those two losses are enough to drive him to become Pain, the leader of Akatsuki.
Orochimaru obsession with eternal life is also rooted in the loss of his parents.
Obito’s hatred comes when he sees Rin die in front of his eyes. Obito has always loved Rin. He loves her so much that he doesn’t want a world without her, and tries to put everyone in the Infinite Tsukuyomi, a dream world.
So… can you see it now? It is very clear to me that Naruto is a story about love. It’s a story of love that can breed hatred. In a story of ninjas where we expect stealthy, dark settings — we instead got a theme of… love.
