Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-12509038-20141124214040/@comment-26023629-20150121063201

@Gemnist- On the whole prophecy thing: I only bring it up because the introduction of a mystical prophecy that guarantees that Naruto will succeed in the end and save the world from hatred just sort of trivializes the efforts of the other characters. It's why Might Guy couldn't kill Madara: it had to be Naruto. Plus it just further waters down his dogma about work ethic, as it demonstrates that his great successes have less to do with working hard and keeping his promises and more to do with being a predetermined hero. Hell, Hagoromo just straight-up gives Naruto the power he needed to win against Madara and Kaguya. But I do see your point about the general accuracy of these prophetic predictions. As for the subject of realism, I couldn't agree more. Death cop-outs in stories like this are lame, especially if it's used more than just once or twice. It's just an easy way of raising the stakes without actually creating any meaningful issues for the characters. While we're on the subject of death, I have to say Neji's sucked. Not the death itself, but the way that Naruto and Obito just used it as a strawman argument for their respective dogmas and then forgot about it until the epilogue (and even then it was more a token gesture to appease the fans than anything else).