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The Blessed Realm	By : susanna Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male > Naruto/Sasuke Views: 1746 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: Naruto, his friends and the world he lives in don't belong to me but to Masashi Kishimoto. I write this story only for my pleasure and I don't make any money with it.

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Chapter
Eighty-Four: A Story for Children

It
was still Sasuke, not Naruto, who read the newspapers of Music Town
on a regular basis, and so it was him, not Naruto, who found and
collected the reviews of the Gutsy Ninja as they appeared in the
various papers. They were all rather critical, condemning the book as
naive and praising the editors for persuading Jiraiya to change from
preachy adventure stories to erotic romances that did not touch any
deep, philosophical questions but were just about pairing the right
boy with the right girl. Sasuke hesitated to give the reviews to
Naruto as he knew how much he would be hurt by them, and the problem
was worsened by the fact that he had no idea how to comfort Naruto
(and he knew that Naruto would be in need of comfort) as he silently
agreed to the critics: Jiraiya's ideas about peace had been naive,
and his solutions of the story's conflict unsatisfactory, a fact that
was hardly patched up by the love scene at the end of the book.

When
he had cut out the fourth review from the last remaining serious
newspaper and put it into a folder with the other three he decided
that he could no longer keep the reviews from Naruto: He had a right
to them, and if he discovered them by himself, finding out that
Sasuke had collected and hidden them, he'd direct his disappointment
not against the critics but against him, Sasuke. (Sasuke also
remembered the advice the head of the police had given him: tell him
the truth.) So one morning, after some love-making and a late
breakfast, Sasuke got the reviews from the shelf and presented them
to Naruto.

“I've
collected them for you”, he said. “They're complete now:
Reviews of the Gutsy Ninja from all the major newspapers of Music
Town. I thought you might be interested in them. They are not very
favorable, however. Do you still want to read them?”

Naruto
looked at him for some seconds before he answered. “You don't
need to protect me.”

Sasuke
passed him the reviews and sat down next to him, ready to comfort him
when Naruto had finished reading. (Nonregarding Naruto's words he was
still convinced that Naruto would be in need of some comfort.)
Together they began to read the first review.

Last
year the fans of erotic romance had to mourn the death of Jiraiya,
one of the genre's most prominent authors. His passing means the end
of Icha-Icha, a series that has accompanied them for more than ten
years now and that has become one of the finest example of romance,
exploring the complications of relationships between the two sexes in
a way that was both humorous and clear-sighted, yet always
respectful, opening our eyes to the follies of both men and women,
that is our own, yet never despising or condemning them.

Due
to Jiraiya's death we won't be able to read another sequel of
Icha-Icha, but to do the fans a favour, the publishing house together
with Jiraiya's heir, Uzumaki Naruto, have decided to publish a new
edition of Jiraiya's first novel, the Gutsy Ninja. It's not an early
version of Icha-Icha, however, not even set in its universe, but an
adventure story about a young ninja who fights for the woman he loves
and for her country against some bad guys, and in the end he and his
companions prevail, and he is allowed to marry the woman he loves.
The plot is quite clichéd, and one would consider it a book
for children if it were not for a quite explicite love scene at the
end of the book, announcing love and fulfilment for the hero.

It's
not the love scene, however, that's makes the book stand out from the
bulk of adventure stories for preteen boys that are published every
year. What would make me consider buying the book for my nephew is
mainly the protagonist himself, who is quite different from the
standard hero we get in that kind of adventure stories. First, he
never fights for himself, or his own country, but always only for the
woman he loves, and even this love seems completely selfless and also
curiously sexless, and it's only after she insists on having her in
her bed that he is ready to show off his talents as a lover, which
are all the more remarkable when one considers that he has been out
of practice for several years.

Also,
the hero is not the typical young adventurer, confident or even
overconfident of his fighting prowess, eager to meet danger and test
himself against some true villains. He has survived the destruction
of his home country and seen the death of a lot of friends and
relatives, and often he's brought down by the burden of these losses.
Still he refuses to give up: instead he forces himself to see the
death of his loved ones as an incentive to work for true, lasting
peace.

Children
will be confronted with a hero for whom there are more important
things than coming out first and emerging as victor from every fight
he enters. They will have to cope with a sense of loss and a slight
melancholia that permeates the whole book, and at least some of them
will also have to overcome their frustration in not being allowed to
smite their enemies. Children can learn a lot from the book,
particularly those who usually avoid the more serious, more realistic
books and only read ninja adventure stories.

Grown-ups,
however, at whom the story is ultimately aimed, will end up with a
feeling of dissatisfaction. The peace offered at the end of the story
seems more an outcry for peace than a vision Jiraiya actually
believed in. His suggestions what peace might look like and how it
can be achieved are hardly convincing: you forgive your enemies, they
see the error of their ways and regret that they ever attacked you
(in that order. The hero first forgives, and then his enemies
repent.) There's no reason given why people who were first depicted
as ruthless and evil, attacking a country just because they think its
young princess too weak to defend it and committing countless
atrocities against civilians during the war suddenly turn into good
people, ready to recognize the protagonist's moral superiority. My
first thought when I read this was that they must be faking this
change of mind, hoping to be spared from punishment and then planning
the next war when they have recovered from their defeat.

People
who are ultimately evil normally don't suddenly change their ways and
begin to believe in any kind of morality beyond the one that claims
that might makes right. To make his vision of peace more realistic,
Jiraiya would have needed to create some more realistic villains who
are not the embodiment of evil. On the other hand, some thoroughly
evil villains were needed to justify the hero's fighting activities,
which would otherwise contradict his alleged desire for peace.
Jiraiya had to make clear that the hero is forced to fight by evil
people who are inaccessible to negotiations or compromises or even
invocations of reason and rational self-interest. Every pain the hero
inflicts on them, every breach of the rules of fair fighting, is
unavoidable and the villains have not deserved better. (It helps that
the bad guys are just a bunch of men without any associated women and
children.)

However
even though Jiraiya tries to paint his bad guys as thoroughly evil he
still can't avoid giving them some motives
and making their actions plausible. We get glimpses into their sense
of disenfranchisement which in their eyes give them the right to
attack a small country led by a young woman who somehow is on the
side of those who oppressed them. We learn why they aren't connected
to any women or children, and occasionally we are asked to feel pity
for them. It may be asked whether except in these small moments we
are not just presented the perspective of the Gutsy Ninja and the
woman he loves, and whether only from their perspective the villains
all evil, and the only ones responsible for the conflict.

Maybe
if we saw the conflict more from the bad guys' perspective we would
learn more about the reasons why they are fighting, and they'd become
better understandable to us, and maybe the atrocities committed by
the good guys would appear less inevitable and well-deserved. The
story's hero would appear less perfect and ideal, meaning that
grown-up people would find him more accessible, while children would
have more difficulties to accept him as a role model.

Most
of all, however, the peace achieved in the end of the story would be
more believable if the enemies had not been presented as purely evil,
but as ordinary guys who have reasons to attack the country which
seem perfectly valid from their own point of view. With ordinary
people it gets plausible that they're able to understand where they
crossed a line in their fight for justice, so that their repentance
becomes credible and their acceptance of forgiveness more than a
trick to avoid punishment. From such a perspective, however, the
hero's lover would not just have been an innocent woman and helpless
victim, and he himself not perfectly wise and selfless. He would not
have been able to convert his enemies to see the world from his own
point of view, but would have had to overthink his own attitudes too.

Maybe
Jiraiya's inexperience as an author will excuse him: His hero is
obviously an idealized version of himself, meaning that he could not
bring himself to add any flaws to his character, or make him commit
some errors of judgement or make some tragic mistakes resulting in
the death of someone who should not have died. Few people die at all,
another indication that the book belongs to the children's sections
of book stores, if it were not for the sex scene at the end. The
publishing house and Jiraiya's heir should consider cutting the
scene, ensuring the book's lasting success among twelve-year-olds, to
whom it may still present an emotional and intellectual challenge.

We
have to be grateful, however, that the original version included the
love scene, as it made clear where Jiraiya's true talents lay.
Icha-Icha shows everything the Gutsy Ninja lacks: humour, flawed
heroes, complex relationships between men and women. Jiraiya will
remain in our hearts as an author who has raised the genre of erotic
romance above the level or mere entertainment. His most devoted fans
will of course desire to have the Gutsy Ninja on their bookshelf,
together with every line ever written by their favorite author –
for the rest of us there remains the consolation that there's still
Icha-Icha, waiting for us in bookstores, libraries and our own
shelves to be read and reread again and again.

After
reading the review Naruto was silent for a few minutes. Sasuke
interpreted this as a sign of sadness and laid his arm around him.

“That's
these scholars here with all their complicated theories”, he
said. “They can't understand a man as Jiraiya who simply gave
us a vision of peace, a dream that one day there will be sustainable
peace and people will stop fighting. He compares Jiraiy's visions to
his own theories and thinks they are naive and belong to the
children's section. He does not understand that for a ninja as
Jiraiya it's a major step to dream of peace at all, and to suggest
this to his fellow ninja who's never experienced anything but
fighting.”

Naruto
took a while before he answered. He seemed lost in thoughts, and
against Sasuke's expectations he did not seek the support of his
shoulder.

“He
did not say that Jiraiya's dream of peace is naive”, he said.
“He just thought that Jiraiya's ideas how to achieve peace
don't work.”

“He
thinks that Jiraiya's idea of conflict is naive”, Sasuke said.

“We
can seek him out and talk to him”, Naruto continued. “He
lives in Music Town, probably.”

A/N:
Thanks again for your reviews and your plusses! You can find my
answers at
http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=14965
.It is now possible to access the thread without registration at the
forums.
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