25 KiB
[RST][FF][HF] Team Anko - Chapter 2
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Author: u/eaglejarl *
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Score: 15
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Created: 2015-03-08T06:46:13
Post:
Comments:
u/liamash3 [+7] Mizu (2 hours later)
Mean~ I wanna know what the Daimyo is planning, and you just had to leave off the reveal, didn't you? :D
Interesting chapter, overall. A good summary of the political climate of the Naruto countries, as well as an explanation for their strange technology level - anything we'd consider beyond middle-ages in tech is imported from another country across the ocean, with a monopoly being held on goods from Lightning. Thus resulting in any goods being rare and very expensive, and thus not generally used in everything. Also could be taken as a valid explanation for the end of Naruto canon, where they get technology good enough for laptops and such.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (3 hours later)
Mean~ I wanna know what the Daimyo is planning, and you just had to leave off the reveal, didn't you? :D
Yep. :> Admit it, it was more engaging this way, wasn't it?
[tech / politics]
Yep, that's how I see it. I did a bunch of research to figure out what the tech level of the Republic needed to be; the main thing I learned is that tech advanced at a TERRIFYING pace between 1800 and ~1920. Which isn't to say it's slowed down since then, it's just that I was looking to place them somewhere in that window of time. I eventually just chose a point and decided that their tech development tree wasn't identical to the real world, so they have / don't have certain things we had at the time.
EDIT: typo
u/liamash3 [+3] Mizu (3 hours later)
Informative. And yeah, by no means am I telling you off for not revealing the Daimyo's plan; that was a good method of a cliffhanger! I just /really/ wanna know :D
Tech development really got going once we started up the scientific method for most things, I hear. Along with making computers, which just made it go faster. I mean, we may not have flying jetpacks for the average citizen now, but we've got /really/ fancy phones, Roomba, the Internet...lots of stuff people didn't think of just 30 or 40 years ago!
u/AugSphere [+4] Dark Lord of Corruption (7 hours later)
I wonder what Anko is going for with antagonising her genins. Whatever her goal is, the manipulation is pretty effective; I certainly wanted to punch her in the face several times. I just hope she is not wasting valuable training time for shitty reasons.
Killing intent dick measuring contests made me facepalm. You've perfectly captured the stupid-monkeyness inherent in human condition.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (9 hours later)
I just hope she is not wasting valuable training time for shitty reasons.
I promise she doesn't feel that she's wasting valuable training time. ;>
u/qznc [+1] Chaos Legion (2 days later)
The reason for not letting them know and prepare for the journey: Make sure nobody from the village follows them. A (potential) Lightning spy just saw them leave the village for a training session as usual. Maybe someone notices they did not return at the end of the day, but they tried hard not to leave traces where they were going.
u/AugSphere [+1] Dark Lord of Corruption (2 days later)
Oh yeah, I was not talking about that. I was more annoyed that she forced Naruto to waste his time doing dumb manual labour instead of training him. He's sure gonna be grateful he spent his time cleaning out that grease-trap when some Kage-level missing-nin comes for his head.
u/qznc [+1] Chaos Legion (2 days later)
Maybe she wanted to score some political points in the village, where everybody disses Naruto as well?
u/AugSphere [+1] Dark Lord of Corruption (2 days later)
I doubt it. It would not be consistent with her character, I think. That said, I don't really get what she wanted to achieve with that, other than pissing Naruto off. If it ends up as ye olde drill sergeant "make them unite against me" ploy, I'll be seriously disappointed in Anko.
u/SkyTroupe [+1] (3 days later)
Consequences must be upheld. She used cleaning the grease trap as an incentive to get them to go all out in not getting to the rooftop last. She got to see what they could pull out in their desperation.
If she did not follow through on that it would be much harder to enforce discipline upon them. I know they act more maturely but they are still JUST 12 years old. They're used to cushy academy training, not the real harsh world of ninjas.
Another reason to make Naruto do it so early would be to get him used to being unprepared. This ingrains the lesson with him and his teammates, especially with her little speech as they left the village so early with no gear. Certainly the best way to enforce that you should ALWAYS be prepared to go on a long mission would be to suffer through one after being unprepared. Especially since this probably won't go smoothly.
u/AugSphere [+1] Dark Lord of Corruption (3 days later)
That's one way to establish her pre-commitments as credible, I guess. But this particular method still seems like a maliciously suboptimal use of Naruto's time to me.
After Waves Arisen I just cringe at every wasted second. It feels like everyone is gonna die due to being underprepared for the challenges ahead.
u/SkyTroupe [+2] (3 days later)
Waves Arisen
Got a link for that?
I suppose you're right, but they didn't have any training planned for that hour ya know? She made sure she followed through and kept them training.
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (3 days later)
She woke him up in the middle of the night for no good reason. That's sabotage right there as far as I'm concerned. Compromising reaction times and cognitive ability of your ninja students really should not be done lightly. Then again, maybe I'm just not getting the tone of the setting yet. Not every interpretation of Naruto-verse is an endless brutal deathmatch.
u/SkyTroupe [+2] (3 days later)
Thanks!
I'm just trying to be optimistic. In a realistic setting I assume many ninja missions would have parameters with non-ideal settings and conditions. Let them get used to surprises and un-optimized settings so they're not totally thrown when the come up against a non-planned one. At least that's what I'd do.
u/SkyTroupe [+2] (3 days later)
HOLY SHIT THAT HINATA VS NEJI FIGHT
u/eaglejarl [+3] (28 seconds later)
Also check the Author's Note for vocab and map.
u/qznc [+4] Chaos Legion (4 hours later)
Also check it out for the challenge, I guess. Not as complex as HPMoR's "final exam", but I like it. Will this exam-style-at-chapter-end continue?
u/eaglejarl [+5] (4 hours later)
I hadn't really thought about it, but sure -- why not?
u/qznc [+3] Chaos Legion (a day later)
It makes the third point (according to sidebar) of rationalist fiction quite explicit: "The story is like a puzzle; readers can reach the same solution as the characters by using the information provided earlier in the story."
u/eaglejarl [+3] (a day later)
Good point. Okay, that's now the plan.
u/eltegid [+1] (a day later)
Ah, great. The map helps (Although your description in the text is good enough that I didn't feel I was missing information)
u/eltegid [+3] (10 hours later)
Very very nice chapter!
A possible typo/mistake: I believe you meant Yamanaka instead of Inuzaka here "It was possible that Shino had some Inuzaka blood, because he might have plucked the thought from her mind"
u/eaglejarl [+4] (13 hours later)
Grr. Yes, that's what I meant. I used it correctly earlier in the chapter but apparently had a braincramp here. Thanks for pointing it out. Fixed.
u/lsparrish [+3] (13 hours later)
Could they be planning a railroad? Or maybe a maglev type system using levitation seals?
u/eaglejarl [+2] (14 hours later)
Hasn't been stated in story yet, but I don't think it's much of a spoiler: the Elemental Nations have no railroads, and the Republic only developed them pretty recently -- they don't have a lot of track yet.
If they did have railroads though, this would be an excellent idea.
u/rumblestiltsken [+1] (2 days later)
I take it this is a divergence from canon? Land of snow has trains, airships and so on (chakra powered) in the first movie.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (3 days later)
I'm playing fairly fast and loose with canon, for a variety of reasons. So, yes. Divergence.
u/rumblestiltsken [+1] (3 days later)
Cool cool. Is it divergence (as in, one specific forking moment like hpmor is meant to be, not that I get when and what that moment was) or is it an AU?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (3 days later)
AU. My knowledge of canon, and the messiness of canon, make it hard to do AU.
HPMOR seems to have diverged when
u/rumblestiltsken [+1] (3 days later)
Yeah ...
u/eaglejarl [+1] (3 days later)
Hm, true. I was considering that more altered backstory as opposed to an actual plot-relevant deviation.
u/MadScientist14159 [+3] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (15 hours later)
I'm pretty sure that Shino is the heir to the Aburame clan, so Hinata's inner monologue about people not liking when you remind them you're higher rank than them doesn't really make sense: they're of equal rank.
Also, it's the land of Rice-paddies, not the land of Sound. Hidden Sound Village is located in the land of Rice-paddies.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (15 hours later)
[Shino is the heir]
Can you provide a citation for that? It isn't mentioned in his entry on the wiki, or the Aburame clan's entry, and his father isn't listed as the head of the clan -- just "the pride of" the clan. (Also, Shibi was sent on missions, which doesn't sound very clan-headish.)
Also, it's the land of Rice-paddies, not the land of Sound. Hidden Sound Village is located in the land of Rice-paddies.
EDIT: Fixed a link
u/MadScientist14159 [+2] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (15 hours later)
From Shibi's wiki page:
Occupation: Head of the Aburame Clan
Huh. So they renamed the land of Rice-paddies. That's interesting. Although it was still called Rice Paddies at that point in time.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (16 hours later)
[Shibi] Aha! Thank you, I missed that.
[Rice fields] Meh, I don't want to get involved in national renaming and make my readers keep track of whether it's Istanbul or Constantinople. It's just going to be Sound. Good pointer, though.
u/eltegid [+2] (a day later)
Well, the Hyuga clan is arguably much more important than the Aburame clan.
u/omgimpwned [+5] Sunshine Regiment (an hour later)
A solid chapter by all accounts, very solid indeed! I quite liked it. I found a lot of the hints you're beginning to lay out very interesting.
And I am also very happy that you made the thoroughly sensible choice to stay far, far away from anything related to Wave and pursue your own, more interesting plot line. And it does sound very interesting - not quite like anything I've seen before. And I liked your versions of shadow clones. However, you've not nerfed them particularly hard, it appears, in the purest combat sense. I trust Naruto won't inexplicably forget that he can spawn an army at will, like he does in canon - he really is quite powerful, already.
I have to say, my previously expressed worries regarding character expression and humour have been somewhat alleviated by this chapter. Anko's scene with Naruto definitely had me giggling at a few points. The Hokage felt like the bloody Hokage. There wasn't a single thing that I considered objectionable. Perhaps, it was more the unique flavour of 2YE that made it like that. This looks like you're turning over a promising new leaf (heh) so far, anyway.
I think your Naruto is quite, well, off-flavour from the original (stupid) canon character - but I also trust this is intentional. I'm honestly not going to complain - canon Naruto is just horrible most of the time, until later in the series when he grows up a little bit. Your Naruto feels more like a more intelligent/less actively dumb version of late-Shippuuden Naruto than it does the dattebayo-spurting dimwit from early canon.
I do have a few minor quibbles, though I'm not in a hurry to have them addressed. As you promised, I trust you've got some twists in mind to explain away the worst inconsistencies.
My most major quibble, really, is that the characters don't really act like twelve year olds. They act like young adults (14-18) - who are generally much more interesting characters to write about. Don't get me wrong - I think trying hard to make them act like actual twelve year olds would be a horrible mistake. I just prefer to be able to also picture them as young adults in my head, when emotionally and narratively, that's what they feel like. It's not that big a deal, I guess, and perhaps changing the ages was too big a change, since you're playing canon mostly straight so far.
I also still can't think of an explanation for how the puny numbers of ninja matches up with country-to-country warfare. It sounded like your Land of Fire was about a quarter to half the size of France, which implies a population at the very least well into the millions at this technology level, unless it's just barren forests and supports a far smaller population than one might think, for some reason.
Considering how canon ninja match up to normal civilians, it seems unlikely that "normals" can match the power of even a few ninja by fielding regular armies. So either you must have thoroughly nerfed the more powerful ninja (so Kisame couldn't casually destroy an arbitrarily large army of normals with a moving sea, for example), or the fact is that ninja really are so overpowered that only they truly can wage open war, even though they are so few in number.
And I might be convinced of the truth of this if ninja were portrayed as being such an incredibly important elite, but they're not. Academy training appears to be appallingly lacking and the Konoha Academy is, at the very least, not the ultra elite super star academy it ought to be in such a case, and ninja are not, so far as I know, treated as the ultimate saviours and guardians of the nation, nor as their all-powerful all-dominating tyrants.
There must be some balance of power that prevents any slightly ruthless Kage from simply deposing their nation's daimyo or turning them into political figureheads for the people. It's not like anyone can do anything to stop a ninja anyway, unless they are one. Wealth only gets you so far, and ninja don't appear to be incredibly wealthy, either, so that's not the balancing factor.
Ninja have been around for a while. If the village-daimyo system has been around for a while (long enough to be stable across multiple generations) and is practically universal, as you imply in your map post, there must be some incentive to keep it that way, and to have made it that way in the first place.
I can't for the life of me think how that works out at all with things as currently portrayed, but I shall keep my mind open.
As a last aside note, I see you're doing the "technology advanced far-off country" thing as well. Good move - it does go a long way to explain some of the worse technological quirks of the universe. That's a big part of the reason I decided to do it myself.
(Worse, you made it a bloody republic, too. Are you reading my mind?)
Eh, I ramble again.
TL;DR - good job! I've a few worries and some things puzzle me, but I'm more speculating out loud than actively complaining, right now. I genuinely look forward to reading more.
u/eaglejarl [+6] (an hour later)
Meh. I had a long post here, but the details don't matter. It all boils down to "I think you should reread, because you are misunderstanding several things and making a lot of assumptions that are not supported (or are contradicted) in the text."
As to IFF and appropriating your ideas / reading your mind -- definitely not deliberately. I read IFF a long time ago and then skimmed it again after your mega-review on 2YE. Very little of it has stuck, so there's certainly no deliberate theft going on. I suspect that a lot of the points of congruence are simply because the ideas are pretty obvious -- canon!Konoha has no revealed tech base that would support radio headsets and satellite dishes, so they must be coming from elsewhere. The tech is rare, which probably means expensive, which probably means the source is a long way away. What kind of country would have a higher tech base? One that didn't have chakra, so had to focus on tech. What government structure best supports tech development in the real world? Democracies / republics.
u/omgimpwned [+2] Sunshine Regiment (2 hours later)
I think you should reread, because you are misunderstanding several things and making a lot of assumptions that are not supported (or are contradicted) in the text.
Assumptions regarding what? The population issues? I think I read it fairly carefully, and I even read your glossary of terms, and I still can't make it work out inside my head.
I'm not going to do a reread immediately, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn't obvious to me, though I'm perfectly willing to admit that I could be wrong, or have missed it.
If you could point me at the general gist of the misunderstanding, I could probably do the rest of the inference work myself, without any need for you to write a long and detailed outline. I am honestly curious.
u/eaglejarl [+8] (4 hours later)
(We actually just discussed all this on Skype, but for everyone else's benefit I'll put it here as well.)
Things I haven't covered yet:
- How many ninja there are
- What warfare looks like in this world
- Why the political situation (Kage + Daimyo) works the way it does
And you're right, the genin don't act like 12-year-olds. For a lot of history, kids were apprenticed at 8, married at 13, and had kids by 14. Also, these are child soldiers who grew up with adult ninja as role models. They are mentally much older than an equivalent modern Western 12-year-old would be.
As to nerfing shadow clones -- in some ways I gave them a boost, by saying that you can make them human-solid. On the other hand, I nerfed them by saying:
- They don't give you their memories when they pop, so they don't provide parallel processing for thinking or training. That's the big one right there.
- They aren't fanatically loyal / obedient, so they won't do anything you wouldn't be willing to do (unless you make them really stupid, anyway; the ones with the IQ of a dog will happily dive in the septic tank for you, but they lack any ability to think their way around unexpected events). If you make them as smart as you are, they may go off and have a barbecue instead of doing your hunting for you.
u/None [-5] (an hour later)
[removed]
u/eaglejarl [+2] (2 hours later)
?
u/eaglejarl [+2] (4 hours later)
I just realized that the forums were all set to "Read-Only Access", meaning that all posts were going to moderation. Sorry about; it should be fixed now.
u/actually_just_idiot [+2] (16 hours later)
So ninja have storage seals, and they are apparently cheap enough that they can use them for storing spare supplies. Why aren't storage seals used for transporting goods? A ninja with movement-focused abilities could go way faster than a wagon.
I'm not seeing how wagons relate to the revelation at the end of the chapter, either.
u/eaglejarl [+5] (18 hours later)
Storage scrolls are mass- and volume- limited, which is why they aren't used for shipping machinery. In addition,
u/None [+1] (6 hours later)
[deleted]
u/eaglejarl [+2] (21 hours later)
Or at the very least, kami-sama.
Thanks, will fix.
are there other ninja schools? wot
Yep.
Anko pretending that "being overwhelmed by a superior opponent" is somehow reason enough when the opponent is just their Jonin teacher is dumb.
u/None [+0] (21 hours later)
[deleted]
u/eaglejarl [+2] (21 hours later)
Being proactive in this case means protecting your teammate unless you were explicitly told to stand down.
u/None [-1] (21 hours later)
[deleted]
u/LordSwedish [+1] Q Continuum (a day later)
It doesn't matter if them just standing there was the wrong thing to do or not, now they will be on the ball and try to figure out what to do even if they don't receive orders and the idea that they should always protect their teammates is cemented.
She never intended them to "succeed" there and the punishment is to make them better, not because they did something wrong.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (22 hours later)
As with most authors, I don't necessarily agree with the opinions of my characters. If you're not familiar with Anko's background, google it.
u/None [-4] (22 hours later)
[deleted]
u/eaglejarl [+0] (22 hours later)
I'm glad you think she's being unreasonable then.
Don't make assumptions. I'm simply saying that telling me that something is weak reasoning doesn't necessarily follow from what the characters are doing.
u/None [-4] (23 hours later)
[deleted]
u/eaglejarl [+3] (23 hours later)
Let me phrase it differently:
Your opinion is noted.
u/WriterBen01 [+1] (a day later)
Very interesting story :) Will be following eagerly for new chapters.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
Thank you. They drop every Sunday, so you'll know when to look.
u/SkyTroupe [+1] (3 days later)
So how often are you going to update? I just read the first two chapters in one go. I really enjoyed it! Like the way you got Shino to lose his cool.
Are we going to find out what the limit of Naruto's chakra capacity is? I feel like it is a HUGE advantage.
Also, they gonna work on inventing jutsu?
u/eaglejarl [+2] (3 days later)
Weekly on Sundays; thank you; I've defined and am tracking it, but I don't have specific plans to exhaust it; it is; not for a while. Respectively. ;>
u/SkyTroupe [+1] (3 days later)
Thanks! =D