56 KiB
[D] [DC] The Warring States Period (Naruto)
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Author: u/chaosattractor *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3cxtro/d_dc_the_warring_states_period_naruto/
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Score: 15
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Created: 2015-07-11T19:15:55
Post:
I'm writing a fanfiction set in the above era, partly because I have this idea for an epic and partly because I hate what most writers do with it (seriously. It's a warzone, not the Fluffy Bunny Period. Stop writing like it's set in Konoha). The first chapter is up but I don't want to link it because it has rather graphic and disturbing mature content.
So I thought I'd ask here for any logical ideas people have about the Warring States. Without giving away the plot, here are some I'm using:
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Butsuma and Tajima are not clan heads, at least not while Madara and Hashirama were meeting at the riverbank. It makes absolutely no sense for the clan head's heir to be regularly leaving camp without adult tails in an era when people would literally kill to have him as leverage.
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Despite appearances it is not, in fact, set in the Dark Ages. Just a few decades later people were working with DNA and had fridges, TVs and computers.
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The Senju and Uchiha aren't the only clans in the world. The rest of them were at war as well - with the Senju, with the Uchiha, with both, with neither. They don't spontaneously appear when it's time to found Konoha.
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The Senju are not good guys. Neither are they bad guys. Ditto for every other clan. And for the love of all things holy, the Uzumaki are not Naruto clones. They don't all like ramen, they don't all have verbal tics, and they're not all half brilliant and half oblivious.
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Yes, Hashirama is an idealistic visionary and lover of peace who has been fighting and killing adults and children since he was a child. He is a violent person. They all are. They live in a violent world. Speaking of which, being the only child with Wood Release in known history is not a solely positive experience. It's not easy to control. It has a high disaster potential. His chakra and cells are basically cancer to everyone else, so it doesn't make sense for him to be a medic either.
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Shinobi are not the only military force in the world. The samurai exist. The daimyou too must have military might of their own if even the ninja villages defer to them.
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Also, the Land of Fire is not the only country in the world. Like the clans, the other countries don't spontaneously spring into existence when it's time to found villages.
Creative use of the tailed beasts is a plus.
Thoughts?
Comments:
u/MadScientist14159 [+7] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (5 hours later)
My favourite explanation for the naruto tech level is that "The Era of Samurai" was actually modern Japan, but along comes Rabbit-sama and reduces everything that even vaguely threatens her to ash. And, like most dictators, immediately kills all the intellectuals to prevent uprisings.
This means that we have the scattered remains of modern technology and science, but no modern weapons (which Kaguya wasn't sure she would be perfectly safe from if she allowed them to exist), and no one who remembers how to build them because all the teachers, scientists, and engineers were culled.
Eventually, people start reverse engineering the principles of electronics from fridges and microwaves that Kaguya didn't destroy because they weren't threatening, and medical science has continued unimpeded (why would Kaguya fear the presence of doctors?), reaching a stage where genetics and cloning are much better understood than they are now, even if most of science has been lost and humanity hasn't quite recovered it yet.
u/chaosattractor [+5] (5 hours later)
I don't know, 1000 years is a bloody long time for people to have just come up to the level of electronics we had decades ago. The "no-one remembers how to build them" plotline doesn't really work in our world anymore, what with the Internet and books and even the level of education - a fairly intelligent high schooler could put together a working computer if given the tools. Intellectuals no longer hold all the knowledge in society.
Also their world didn't have a moon until Kaguya came along, so that's Earth pretty much ruled out. Besides, I think the Japanese would have noticed a giant ancient tree that bloomed and fruited only once every thousand years, no?
Personally I think the "schizo tech" is very simply explained by the fact that technology develops according to necessity. A society with people that can accurately diagnose you by passing their hands over your body will never develop an MRI. A society whose livelihood is built on secrets, deception and murder would balk at the idea of the Internet. And so on. There is also the problem of the minds who invented/discovered certain things just not being there.
u/Transfuturist [+1] Carthago delenda est. (21 hours later)
a fairly intelligent high schooler could put together a working computer if given the tools.
/r/talesfromtechsupport
A society whose livelihood is built on secrets, deception and murder would balk at the idea of the Internet.
ARPANET. There wouldn't be a global internet, but private communication systems.
u/chaosattractor [+1] (22 hours later)
/r/talesfromtechsupport
I'm seventeen. I've built every computer I own.
Science fairs, Maker Faire events, even on YouTube. Half the people you see working with Arduinos or Raspberry Pis or starter drone kits are teenagers.
These days everything comes in pre-soldered easy-to-snap-together parts. Motherboards usually come with a CPU. Graphics card, RAM, sound card, Ethernet chip, wireless module if you're so inclined, SSDs, et cetera - all of those come in PCIe cards. You quite literally slot the tab into the hole and that's it.
Parts. Manual. It's not that difficult. On the other hand, it's quite easy to slip into the "everyone is dumb but us" mentality.
ARPANET
I said the Internet. Since, apparently, pedantry is a given, the World Wide Web.
u/eaglejarl [+6] (2 days later)
There's a huge difference between "can snap together chips" and "computers can be built." You didn't build the chips in your computer -- that required a chip fab, which is at the top of a very large tech tree. If that tree exists then the Naruto-verse tech levels are hard to justify.
There's other problems too. For example, the outboard motor in the Wave arc -- Wave was a very poor country at the time, so how did they have this motor? Either they are very cheap, which implies mass production and another tall tech tree, or this was a rare and therefore expensive thing, so how did a random fisherman have one? Well, maybe the village clubbed up to buy the outboard. Okay, where does the gasoline come from? Why did they buy this thing in the first place? For sustenance-level small-village fishing, you don't need a motor. A sail and/or oars will do just fine.
Computers, cameras, digital read-outs, radio headsets, and something that looks like either a radar dish or, FSM forbid, a satellite dish. None of these things work for a civilization that has had its tech blown up a long time ago.
If you can get computers and networks, the Web is relatively easy, although bandwidth is problematic -- there's not going to be a lot of fibre optic cable around, so you're limited to copper, and it needs to be laid over long distances, or you need radio relays. Either way, not easy.
u/chaosattractor [+1] (2 days later)
Ummm...I'm not sure what exactly you're addressing? Because I never said the Narutoverse ever had its tech blown up or that it's in any way related to our Earth.
And what tech levels are hard to justify? Their world is almost entirely modern, apart from things ninja would shy away from (e.g. the Internet) or have no need for (advanced medical tech).
Edit: re the computer issue, those parts are available pre-fabricated in stores all across the world. Beyond that, every other home in the developed world already has a computer old or new lying around. So merely destroying a chip fab does not leave humanity thrown for a loop: unless Kaguya went across the world destroying every single store and every single warehouse and every single home that had a PC, computing tech wouldn't disappear. Sure there might be no more development, but the computers we have now work perfectly well, no?
u/eaglejarl [+3] (2 days later)
This sentence:
its tech blown up a long time ago
...was a conflation with a different post. Please ignore.
As to the 'what tech levels don't make sense'...any of them! Why do ninja fight with knives instead of guns? Why do ninja travel on foot instead of in railroads? Where are the chip fabs that those computers come from? Why are there computers and bluetooth-esque radio earpieces but no cars? Where does their electricity come from -- an electrical plant is a pretty big deal from a tech perspective? Also, I don't recall the answer to this one: did Konoha have any form of street lighting? If not, why not?
My questions about the outboard motor still stand.
The simple truth is that the Naruto-verse runs on Rule of Cool, and Kishimoto just makes stuff up as he goes along. I'm totally fine with that -- Rule of Cool makes for great stories. There just needs to be a spade named spade.
u/chaosattractor [+2] (2 days later)
Oh, okay then.
Why do ninja fight with knives instead of guns?
...because they can blow shit up by waving their hands around? Tech arises out of necessity, and it's absurd to think that the very particular circumstances and coincidences that resulted in our current technosphere would be replicated in any alternate universe, much less one with such a radical difference as chakra magic. We developed guns because human-propelled arrows and spears were eventually just not good enough. They never had that problem.
Why do ninja travel on foot instead of in railroads?
Same as above - because why would people who can cover dozens of miles at a flat-out sprint and some who can straight-up teleport ever feel the need to develop them?
Where are the chip fabs that those computers come from?
Konoha is not a country. It's a single military-base-esque city in a rather large country. Would you build a chip fab in Guantanamo Bay, or would a story set in Guantanamo Bay ever refer to a chip fab? Does that mean there are no chip fabs in the United States?
Why are there computers and bluetooth-esque radio earpieces but no cars?
There's a need for those devices: they provide solutions and significant value which their bodies alone have no or poor equivalents to. As covered before, there is (or was) no such need when it comes to transportation.
Where does their electricity come from
From power plants, like all mainstream public-use electricity comes from. See above about cities and countries.
Did Konoha have any form of street lighting?
Its architecture is drawn on traditional Japan. Illumination is largely provided by establishments, like it still is in parts of Japan
the outboard motor
I find nothing peculiar about it, other than that in this day and age people still think poverty = no tech whatsoever for ever and ever. I've lived next to some of the poorest peoples on the planet. Half the fishermen I know use motorized boats. Never mind that the Land of Waves' poverty was a recent development brought on by a corrupt magnate, there is no indication that it's [solely] a fishing boat, and its only seen purpose is ferrying people to and from the islands. Poor islanders still need to visit the mainland, no?
The simple truth is that the Naruto-verse runs on Rule of Cool
Or rather, that people assume so and then make no effort to see the sense that it makes.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (2 days later)
Oh, okay then.
Why do ninja fight with knives instead of guns?...because they can blow shit up by waving their hands around? Tech arises out of necessity, and it's absurd to think that the very particular circumstances and coincidences that resulted in our current technosphere would be replicated in any alternate universe, much less one with such a radical difference as chakra magic. We developed guns because human-propelled arrows and spears were eventually just not good enough. They never had that problem.
- Some ninja can blow shit up with their hands, sure. Not all. Certainly not genin.
- A Barret M82 rifle has an effective range of over a mile. I'm not aware of any jutsu that comes even close to that.
- Jutsu aren't usually suitable for sniping. Guns are great for that.
- Chakra is a limited (albeit self-renewing) resource, and genin don't have a lot of it. Why not use guns? It lets you conserve chakra for when it counts. Basically, use the right tool for the job; shoot a guy when you just need him dead so you can use your chakra to call down a giant water dragon to blow the crap out of an entire company. I'm not saying that jutsu have no place in the military -- they absolutely do. There's simply no reason that they should be the military's only tool.
- Even if ninja don't use guns, why not anyone else? A company of samurai, or a village full of civilians, equipped with good rifles would give most ninja pause. Probably not the S-ranks, no, but genin? Low-level chunin? Sure.
Ninja use shuriken and kunai as projectile weapons. This is an excellent choice if you're on a stealth mission, but a lot of ninja combat seems to happen out in the open and involves no stealth at all. Not only would guns be useful for actual assault, but for battlefield control. During the first battle against Zabuza, suppose the genin had pulled an M240 out of a storage scroll and used it to deny certain parts of the battlefield to Zabuza, herding him into Kakashi's killbox? Is that a perfect tactic? No. Zabuza's clones would have been a problem, and there's others. The point is, it's an option, and it's one that came to me in literally two seconds, and I'm a civilian. Surely experienced ninja commanders could find a way to factor guns into their battle strategies?
Why do ninja travel on foot instead of in railroads?Same as above - because why would people who can cover dozens of miles at a flat-out sprint and some who can straight-up teleport ever feel the need to develop them?
- Again, why burn the chakra?
- A train can transport large amounts of people and cargo; a group of ninja can't.
- Serious question: how fast is a ninja? Can they outsprint a train? Can they outrun it over the long haul, over the course of several days? A train doesn't sleep, eat, or take bathroom breaks.
- Even if, for the sake of argument, ninja don't need trains...what about civilians? And samurai?
Shoot, the Land of Snow was considered unusually advanced because they had some of these things.
Where are the chip fabs that those computers come from?Konoha is not a country. It's a single military-base-esque city in a rather large country. Would you build a chip fab in Guantanamo Bay, or would a story set in Guantanamo Bay ever refer to a chip fab? Does that mean there are no chip fabs in the United States?
I didn't expect Konoha to have a chip fab. My question is: in canon what do we ever see that would constitute significant modern industry, much less something as sophisticated as laptop-building equipment?
the outboard motorI find nothing peculiar about it, other than that in this day and age people still think poverty = no tech whatsoever for ever and ever. I've lived next to some of the poorest peoples on the planet. Half the fishermen I know use motorized boats. Never mind that the Land of Waves' poverty was a recent development brought on by a corrupt magnate, there is no indication that it's [solely] a fishing boat, and its only seen purpose is ferrying people to and from the islands. Poor islanders still need to visit the mainland, no?
Given that literally a month ago I got back from living in Southeast Asia I'm quite in agreement that poverty allows for tech. My point is that the tech is inappropriately dispersed -- we see one outboard in Wave. Serious question, no snark: do we see any other piece of modern tech in Wave at all? Maybe it's there and I'm not remembering it -- can you point to a canon example? Either tech is scarce and that's why they have only one piece, or tech is common, in which case we should have seen electric lights or something. If it's scarce then that needs to be explained, and the question of 'why an outboard that requires gasoline?' comes up.
The simple truth is that the Naruto-verse runs on Rule of CoolOr rather, that people assume so and then make no effort to see the sense that it makes.
I guess my simple question is: before he started writing, Kishimoto undoubtedly sat down to do some worldbuilding. He probably figured out the bit about the Sage, and the Ten-Tails, and the One- through Nine-Tails and a bunch of the exciting ninja history. Do you really think, though, that he stopped to work out the economics? Shoot, the timeline doesn't even make sense. According to the wiki, Kakashi became a genin at four, graduated at five, became a chunin by six, was assigned to several teams, then got assigned to Obito / Rin / Minato's team, and then tested for genin.
It's much simpler to believe that Kishimoto made stuff up as he went along that to believe that it's all part of some carefully-woven, carefully-preplanned world. Don't get me wrong -- Naruto is a kickass story with a great world to play around in. It's got great powers, cool characters, exciting action. It doesn't seem to bear a lot of close scrutiny though, and that's okay. That's not the point of the story.
u/chaosattractor [+1] (2 days later)
Some ninja can blow shit up with their hands, sure. Not all. Certainly not genin.
There's this miraculous thing called an explosive seal tag. Also obligatory reminder that "genin" is a rank and not a measure of ability, that much of the cast were genin for over a third of the series, and that the main character was a genin as of the penultimate chapter in the series.
A Barret M82 rifle has an effective range of over a mile.
This is such an absurd argument - do you honestly not sense the hindsight bias dripping from it? You're waving a product honed and refined over a millennium of iterations as "proof" that its predecessors should have been invented. Let's talk about the earliest iteration of the gun - what's the effective range of a fire lance? How much power does it pack? How efficient are its ballistics? What significant advantage does it have in the hands of a sniper? Can you give me a single reason why ninja society would invent the fire lance - and this is proceeding on the massive assumption that circumstances were coincidentally similar enough for them to have discovered gunpowder in the first place?
And the rest of your argument equally ignores the proficiency with projectiles, stealth, silent killing, reflexes, durability bordering on the absurd, and extreme versatility that chakra confers and/or enhances, instead boiling down all of that to "giant water dragons". Because big flashy jutsu are the only thing chakra is used for.
It's really funny that you can't see how mind-numbingly coincidental the discoveries and inventions humanity prides itself on are. It's even funnier that you expect those coincidences to extend themselves to an alternate universe and somehow believe that would be in rational in any way.
Again, why burn the chakra? A train can transport large amounts of people and cargo; a group of ninja can't.
Did you read/watch the same series? The one where you can summon things across continents or seal them in scrolls that fit in your pocket, or was that just me?
And the rest of the train argument does the same as the gun one: flatly ignoring the aspects of the series that contradict your point. Because the very first arc of the series definitely didn't include people availing themselves of motorized transport, the technology of which I'm completely sure was limited to that one boat. Also ninjas are not obsessed with secrecy or clandestine work and would clearly be better served by traveling on documented, public transport rather than untraceable means, plus they'd certainly not object to having railroad lines laid to all their secret locations. They really don't have any interest in keeping the landscape uncharted to anyone but themselves, do they?
Also what the hell is a Land of Snow and why am I supposed to care about it?
I didn't expect Konoha to have a chip fab. My question is: in canon what do we ever see that would constitute significant modern industry, much less something as sophisticated as laptop-building equipment?
I don't know, I thought the fast foods, TVs, electric power, VCRs, wireless technology, and the computers they were using were a clue. But then again perhaps that's just me, I like to infer things from the details I'm given and I thought the existence of a computer industry was glaringly obvious from the fact that there was a laptop there.
My point is that the tech is inappropriately dispersed
What connection is there between (a) tiny outboard, which runs on fuel that can be purchased or pilfered when needed and can be rowed the rest of the time, and (b) electric lights that depend on (usually government-owned) extensive infrastructure and attract potentially exorbitant bills and taxes? That's about the worst example you could have given. What tech were you expecting to see?
Do you really think, though, that he stopped to work out the economics?
So basically because he's a comic book artist he's not conscientious or smart enough to plan out his world? Because he's writing a story for preteens he couldn't think of what elements surround that story, or work out what its world was going to be like?
I didn't know the wiki was named "Masashi Kishimoto", "Shounen Jump" or even "Studio Pierrot". Also I didn't know playing fast and loose with your plot over fifteen years of weekly serialized writing meant you never give a thought to its setting. Did I say it was carefully woven or carefully preplanned? I said it makes sense, which is something any author worth their salt (and Kishimoto is no less an author for being a mangaka) ensures in their writing.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (2 days later)
This is getting rather more confrontational than I want to keep engaging with. You've got some good points, although I think you're not giving the counter arguments a fair shake.
In any case, good luck with your story; once you've gotten more of it written be sure to post it here.
u/Transfuturist [+5] Carthago delenda est. (21 hours later)
Link it, please.
u/ToaKraka [+3] https://i.imgur.com/OQGHleQ.png (45 minutes later)
I can't call myself imaginative, but:
The Senju and Uchiha aren't the only clans in the world.
Maybe some filler-only clans could be featured? The ones who could turn into smoke, from Tenzou's flashback--the genjutsu-specializing Kurama clan (no relation to the Kyuubi)--the precursors of the Village of Artisans...
u/chaosattractor [+4] (an hour later)
OH GOD, NOT THE SMOKE CLAN. Anything but the smoke clan, anything!
I'd almost completely forgotten about the Kurama clan! I can't remember her name but I know she could kill people with her paintings. That was such a cool ability. And now my mind is in overdrive trying to think of a plausible connection between them and the Kyuubi - it's too much of a coincidence to pass up, and it's been done in canon before (with the Kaguya clan).
But even beyond filler, it's so disorienting when there's no mention of the Hyuuga, Sarutobi, Nara, etc. for thousands of words and then suddenly they're all happily trooping in to this village built by a man they've never had any dealings with apparently.
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+7] Roll the Dice on Fate (an hour later)
On the subject of the Nara, my favourite headcanon is that the Nara aren't actually lazy, they're napping all the time because they are tired. Why are they tired? Because they train every dawn and dusk because those are the optimal times for long shadows for their clan techniques. You'd nap during the day too if you were missing that much sleep.
u/chaosattractor [+3] (2 hours later)
True! Why fight/train at noon when there aren't any shadows?
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (21 hours later)
u/chaosattractor [+2] (22 hours later)
To you it doesn't, perhaps. That doesn't mean other minds can't make sense of it.
Why on Earth wouldn't they train when they are weakest to shore up their weaknesses?
For one thing, you train when you can actually train. Just like animals hunt when they can actually hunt. Or do you ask why nocturnal creatures don't "train" during the day so they could hunt better at night? Or do you read in the dark so that you can see better in the light?
If a short shadow is really such a trouble to them then shouldn't they be making sure it is as small a liability as possible?
Short shadows aren't liabilities, because their jutsu literally extends shadows. It's a matter of convenience and practicality. You go where your element is. Or should the water-inclined clans migrate to the desert so that they can overcome the liability of not being near water?
How would they get hired for missions if they weren't able to fight in the daytime?
Because all missions ever must be executed in the daytime. Because there's no advantage whatsoever to operating while your enemies are asleep or otherwise at their most vulnerable. Because there's no benefit whatsoever in being perhaps the only clan that's optimised to work at night. /s
Not to mention that Nara would then not be tired during winter.
Oh yes I forgot, there are no shadows cast between December and February in the Northern Hemisphere. And the Land of Fire is such an arctic, snow-covered wasteland.
u/chaosmosis [+4] and with strange aeons, even death may die (a day later)
I think you're making good arguments in a slightly more confrontational tone than is a good idea. As someone who loves being confrontational, I sympathize with your motives, but please try to be a little nicer.
u/chaosattractor [+2] (a day later)
:( I got a bit defensive, I guess. The comment I replied you seemed rather dismissive and it got my hackles up. Thanks.
u/Transfuturist [+0] Carthago delenda est. (a day later)
To you it doesn't, perhaps. That doesn't mean other minds can't make sense of it.
Today, we feature the flavor of salt.
For one thing, you train when you can actually train.
Luckily the Nara have no trouble making shadows in daylight.
Or do you ask why nocturnal creatures don't "train" during the day so they could hunt better at night?
And ninjas are supposed to carry out missions in dawn and dusk only, forgive me.
Short shadows aren't liabilities, because their jutsu literally extends shadows. It's a matter of convenience and practicality.
Yes, and even though chakra control and jutsu proficiency is commonly accepted to be bettered when challenged, instead of doing what is convenient, that makes total sense to train when it is easiest.
Or should the water-inclined clans migrate to the desert so that they can overcome the liability of not being near water?
That certainly sounds like something they should have a plan for. However, as shadows are present only when given light to contrast with (otherwise a Nara would be able to control anyone outside at night), that really isn't a problem here, let alone relevant. You're retreading ground.
Because there's no advantage whatsoever to operating while your enemies are asleep or otherwise at their most vulnerable.
Even though Nara are not suited to work at night.
perhaps the only clan that's optimised to work at night.
Yes, because being able to control anyone outside at night is a reasonable and effective constraint on character power, and because there are no other kekkei genkai that help nighttime operations.
Oh yes I forgot, there are no shadows cast between December and February in the Northern Hemisphere. And the Land of Fire is such an arctic, snow-covered wasteland.
No, I'm fairly certain they would not be tired because the OP claimed that they were adjusting their sleep schedules to dawn and dusk, which would be a much more relaxed schedule in the winter.
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (21 hours later)
Why on Earth wouldn't they train when they are weakest to shore up their weaknesses? If a short shadow is really such a trouble to them then shouldn't they be making sure it is as small a liability as possible? How would they get hired for missions if they weren't able to fight in the daytime? Not to mention that Nara would then not be tired during winter.
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+1] Roll the Dice on Fate (a day later)
If it takes more chakra to move/create the shadows at midday, then it could be the difference between 2 hours of practice or 30 minutes before you run out of juice. More practice means more skill. Canonically the Nara are very much weaker at midday, and there's a great deal of time spent on clever ploys to overcome this limitation.
Note I didn't said that they would never train at midday. There's only so much you can really do to overcome a hardwired genetic limitation though.
u/ToaKraka [+1] https://i.imgur.com/OQGHleQ.png (an hour later)
I can't remember her name
u/chaosattractor [+1] (2 hours later)
Thanks!
u/Transfuturist [+0] Carthago delenda est. (21 hours later)
trying to think of a plausible connection between them and the Kyuubi
Please don't.
u/chaosattractor [+1] (22 hours later)
Okay, I'll be sure not to do things because you said so.
u/Transfuturist [+0] Carthago delenda est. (a day later)
Oh, was I commanding you? I wasn't aware, what with the 'please' and all.
u/nerdguy1138 [+2] GNU Terry Pratchett (an hour later)
How would the Shinobi world even advance that far? They are in nearly constant, highly destructive war with each other. Knowledge would keep getting lost.
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+3] Roll the Dice on Fate (14 hours later)
One story explained it as them using a random-ish-object fuunijutsu summoning spell to trawl the multiverse for useful things. Most of it was junk and old boots but occasionally they got a radio or something.
It's not perfect but eh.
u/ToaKraka [+2] https://i.imgur.com/OQGHleQ.png (21 hours later)
That story was Chunin Exam Day. Some details are in this chapter:
"All of the technology we use is summoned, then we use it until it breaks. It all comes out of parallel dimensions or stuff, like your giant toads. No one knows how to create those things, and we don't exactly have good control over what we get, either. We just try to make do with what does arrive. Asking for reliable large-scale equipment networks made out of the patchwork stuff that does arrive is out of the question. About the best we can do is keep our batteries charged. Heck, half of what we summon is mismatched socks!"
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (21 hours later)
no relation to the Kyuubi
Thank fucking God.
u/KZLightning [+2] (an hour later)
One of my questions is the reason behind the warfare. Is this set in an alternate universe version of Japan? If so, then many of the drivers behind that feudal warfare must also exist. If not, then why exactly are they fighting each other?
They cannot be fighting because "we have always fought" or because "we hate them". Those reasons would simply not sustain the fighting. People would get tired of war and stop fighting. So there needs to be some reason behind all of this.
My other question is why we are supposing that countries exist at all? If various clans are all fighting each other, how could a country exist without immediately being attacked by the ninja within it? If they are not attacking it, then why do they permit such fighting to occur? It makes far more sense if the countries do not exist at all (or only in embryonic form).
u/chaosattractor [+3] (2 hours later)
All that's been explained in the manga.
The major clans in the Land of Fire fight because of their ancestors' feud. Sure no-one alive knew exactly why the fighting started, but by then there was enough pain on both sides to support the wars without a reason.
Also, shinobi are a small population of the countries they live in. The countries were established long, long before the villages, possibly even before the first human gained chakra (that's also covered). The villages are astonishingly new - Konoha, the first of them, was formed only about sixty or so years before the current time - and they were the ones to align themselves with the countries and not the other way round. For instance the daimyou demands that they select a representative for him to deal with, and that's how the Hokage seat was born.
Civilians had already been using shinobi clans to fight their own wars for years, and that too was an element of the Warring States (IIRC someone even said that if one faction hired the Senju, the other would hire the Uchiha), so that too played a part in the constant wars. They were pitted against each other by outside forces, and they all preemptively tried to destroy each other to remain top military dog and ensure they were hired.
u/KZLightning [+3] (2 hours later)
That does answer some questions, but creates others. A feud could create problems between clans, but historical examples of feuds show that they do not actually last very long. The Hatfields and McCoys lasted from the Civil War to the 1890's and similar feuds in history lasted for a similar length of time. If the feuding added an ideological element, then it might be able to last longer, but ordinary feuds that last from the mists of history are not realistic.
New villages do explain their relationship to the world, but if chakra allows for supermen to exist, then they will automatically rule the world. The daimyou may "rule" them, but it seems more likely that such a rule is both limited and ceremonial. If he has access to his own chakra users then that calculus can change, but not by very much unless he actually has a significantly large private army of them.
In a state of constant war, the danger is that the daimyou may hire an enemy if you fail to do what he requests. On the other hand, he is also in danger of dying if he requests too much. The ninja may not wish to rule because of the demands of training, but if the benefits are greater than the costs, they will rule anyway. In that case, they would replace the daimyou with their clan. The daimyou will know this and insure that the costs of replacing him are too great - probably by paying the ninja well enough and hiring his own bodyguards from a separate source.
It is possible to use shinobi to fight your wars, but remember that it is much easier to kill the enemy civilians than the enemy army. So any war between the two groups would mean that the army to act first would target the civilians. The modern idea of rights and rules of war is out of place here.
Any hiring of ninja during the era of Warring States would have to take these possibilities into account. So while it would be possible to temporarily hire ninja for a limited objective, general hiring would be much different. You might claim that all ninja were hired for short-term temporary assignments. But the problem is that this would very quickly change. The first country to hire ninja permanently would gain a huge advantage. Therefore, assuming no one is holding an idiot ball, everyone would have hired people permanently.
u/chaosattractor [+1] (3 hours later)
Oh believe me, this feud was not your regular feud. This was your Zeus-and-Poseidon-are-fighting sort of feud. Literally. [What we would call] gods are involved, and demigods and reincarnations too.
And no, they don't automatically rule the world. Everyone (and every living thing, really) has chakra - shinobi just use it in a particular way. Samurai use it in another. The monks at the Fire Temple use it in yet another. And so on, and so forth. Plus the world is far more technologically advanced than most realize, and not every shinobi is as elite as the ones the story focuses on for narrative purposes. Even if they were the only ones who had fighting power, their lifestyle revolves around missions that are provided and paid for by wealthy clients. Sure they could just kill everyone and take their money, but that's an obviously very stupid choice economically. Kill the daimyou? And then what? They have neither the time nor the training necessary to run a country, businesses, etc. etc. And no one clan can arbitrarily impose itself as rulers of the several dozen other clans in the country, who wouldn't hesitate to team up just to tear the pretenders apart for their presumption.
Killing the enemy civilians is...rather pointless actually. It's not going to win you the war. And you'd be wasting time and resources that are better served elsewhere (and unlike modern warfare, said resources are your actual bodies) as well as leaving yourself and your strongholds open to the enemy shinobi who don't care about the civilians you're killing because they're mercenaries for hire.
And you can't hire ninja permanently because they're not lapdogs and free market forces are at work. There will always be a higher bidder, and the clans themselves will always fight to grab the interest of that highest bidder. A permanently hired clan would forever be fighting off other clans trying to take its place, as well as the usual slew of clans with grudges and so on. And its employer would forever be suffering loses thanks to the shinobi in-fighting, as well as having to pay the clan year-round even if there's no actual work to be done. Permanent employment only worked when stable enough clan alliances formed that the five blocs could mutually agree to keep to their own turfs, and even then there have been four wars in sixty years of village history.
The long and short of it is that shinobi are very much like the Marines. Sure the average Marine is physically more dangerous than 99.9% of the population, sure the average Marine could off any world leader in six different ways before breakfast, but the Marines aren't trying to take over the world are they?
u/KZLightning [+4] (5 hours later)
Reincarnations might explain some elements of the feud, assuming that they are aware of their own status and remember their previous life. I don't know how gods or demigods are supposed to explain the continuance of a feud though. Also, ideological elements really are needed unless the reincarnated remember themselves. (I mention this last part because often cases of reincarnation end up with the "person" reincarnated being very different.)
As for ninja, you claim that there are many other chakra users - monks, samurai and others. Sure, that situation might allow for a balance of forces. The problem is that it is not clear that they do allow that. Monks are presumably separate - unless monks participate in the military as religious forces. Samurai might fight and protect their country, but then they would have to form a large military contingent. In that case, why do the ninja take jobs and not the samurai? What advantage do the ninja provide that the samurai do not? There needs to be an answer here otherwise there is simply no reason to hire ninja at all. Depending on the reason, samurai might provide no true balance of power against ninja.
Assuming that the clan has no true ability to run the country is rather unlikely. Clan leaders must be govern fairly large families (otherwise they could not sustain large causalities). They must hire themselves out to others, maintain training programs, govern their own business (because hiring oneself out is a business) and supply all of their logistics needs. While a country is larger and does have other needs, it is not so different that a clan leader would lack the ability to govern.
I admit that if several clans lived in the same country, then governing that country would not be feasible. But it is still possible to govern a section of that country - such as a state or province or a local town.
Killing enemy civilians will win the war. The ninja need to get paid. If you kill the people who pay them, then they receive no money. It is much easier to kill such people than to kill the enemy ninja. Many wars have been won by destroying the logistics rather than killing the men. This should be fairly basic.
Hiring ninja permanently does not mean they are lapdogs. Hiring a ninja permanently simply means that a continuous contract is in effect for the individuals involved. If the relations between the two parties change, the contract can be terminated. Naturally, both parties try to join their interests so that this does not happen. Furthermore, always choosing the higher bidder is either irrational or impossible. It is irrational if the person bidding cannot actually pay what they are bidding. It is impossible if there is no such person. But there will be some situations where it is simply impossible for a real person to pay more. They might be able to pay more later, or perhaps if circumstances were different, but at that time no person could.
As for losses of permanent ninja, you are not considering the loss due to outside factors. Ninja that attack a clan simply because it has a permanent contract will incur a loss of men. That loss could only be justified if it led to gaining a contract of their own. But there is no reason to believe that it would. You can have hatred in your world, but I do not see how your parties are acting rationally.
In fact ninja are not like Marines. Marines are funded by the government and obey the government as citizens. They do not conduct private wars against the Navy or the Army. They do not determine their own training and pay as a self-selected group. They are not a family organization. They do not act as a private army at all. So whether ninja would take over countries has nothing at all to do with Marines. (Plus ninja are much more physically dangerous than Marines. I would say that in the case of a Marine with weapons is equal to a ninja with weapons, but a Marine without weapons will be killed by a ninja nine times out of ten.)
I should note that the question of what canonically occurs in Naruto in the Warring States period and what is actually reasonable for such period given canonical powers and current political arrangements are not at all the same. I do not think that the canonical Warring States period is at all likely or even plausible given what follows.
u/chaosattractor [+1] (6 hours later)
I don't know how gods or demigods are supposed to explain the continuance of a feud though.
I honestly can't explain anymore unless you want spoilers. Though if you don't follow the series anymore maybe that would be okay.
In that case, why do the ninja take jobs and not the samurai?
Why does the Navy take certain jobs and not the Army? Why does the CIA take certain jobs and not the FBI? You don't send a full-armoured clanking samurai with a code of honour to go assassinate a rival.
Also, there is a country run by samurai, and at least one instance in known village history where ninja and samurai fought.
Clan leaders must be govern fairly large families (otherwise they could not sustain large causalities). They must hire themselves out to others, maintain training programs, govern their own business (because hiring oneself out is a business) and supply all of their logistics needs.
Leaving aside the family (because we don't have such large families anymore), the average boarding school principal or president of a university can do all that and more. Would you hand the average principal the keys to the Oval Office? Or back to the family, do you think Don Corleone for instance would make a good president?
Killing enemy civilians will win the war. The ninja need to get paid. If you kill the people who pay them, then they receive no money. It is much easier to kill such people than to kill the enemy ninja. Many wars have been won by destroying the logistics rather than killing the men. This should be fairly basic.
It seems basic and obvious in theory, but it's laughably wrong in practice as anyone who has been touched by war will tell you.
More than two million Biafran civilians starved to death in the Nigerian Civil War. The secessionist government gave exactly zero fucks. The war continued.
Little Boy and Fat Man were far from the first bombs the U.S. dropped on civilian Japan. Hundreds of thousands were killed and a million people displaced in Tokyo alone. The Japanese government gave exactly zero fucks. The war continued. Even after the atomic bombings there were people who clamored for the war to continue.
I could keep giving examples, but you probably get the point. And this was in recent fairly democratic history, not a feudal-style system where 99% of the population might as well have not existed for all the nobles cared. Killing civilians would not stop the hired military from getting paid because the civilians you're killing aren't the ones who hold the money. And the clans are intelligent enough to guard the ones who do hold the money - the daimyou and noble houses. Even if you did manage to off the daimyou, another would rise in his place and the enemy clan would still get paid, because they would still want the money. They don't stop needing it because completely replaceable civilians are dead.
All this doesn't even count for the fact that elite ninja are a very, very tiny subset of the population.
Hiring a ninja permanently simply means that a continuous contract is in effect for the individuals involved.
When you're a mercenary, continuous contracts are not something you get into because they offer you no benefit. A day will come when someone will offer you an incentive to turn on your employer, and on that day said contract would be worth less than toilet paper. Also, for the contract to mean anything the clan would have to be on permament call to one employer, which isn't an economically sound decision unless said employer is the daimyou or someone equally as powerful. And that still depends on the employer's willingness to put their longterm trust in people whose very job description is deception and assassination.
As for losses of permanent ninja, you are not considering the loss due to outside factors. Ninja that attack a clan simply because it has a permanent contract will incur a loss of men. That loss could only be justified if it led to gaining a contract of their own. But there is no reason to believe that it would. You can have hatred in your world, but I do not see how your parties are acting rationally.
Of course they're not attacking a clan simply because it has a permanent contract. They would attack the clan in a show of military might. They would attack the clan to weaken their opposition. They would attack the clan because its employers have something they want. They would attack the clan because they're paid to. In short, when a clan permanently attaches itself to one employer it assumes responsibility for all said employer's problems, and loses its ability to wash its hands of those problems it's not interested in. And vice versa - it's a cycle, which is evident in the manga now that the villages are permanently employed by their countries' governments. The daimyou became targets in a conflict that really had nothing at all to do with them, and the villages had to devote precious manpower into hiding and protecting them.
There is also the fact that shinobi are secretive by nature, and by permanently attaching yourself to one employer you might as well be handing out calling cards to your enemies.
In fact ninja are not like Marines.
I was referring to the physical danger part. Ninja do not exist in our universe, so they're irrelevant to the fact that probably none of us here would take our chances in a ring with a Marine. And all those things you list them as not doing, they do not do by choice, much like the shinobi village system. Not just the Marines - the Armed Forces as a whole are only beholden to the government by choice, because as has been proven time and time again in coup after coup that the civilian government would (physically) not stand a chance if the armed forces did decide to disobey orders. They could take their funds by force, they could reject the government's rule, they already do determine their own training and standards, they could sell themselves to the highest bidder, and we all would be powerless to stop them...but for the most part they don't. Because for the most part they're intelligent enough to foresee the damage it would do, and because they already exist in a positively symbiotic relationship with the civilian government. Just like the villages and the Great Countries.
I do not think that the canonical Warring States period is at all likely or even plausible given what follows.
Have you completed the series? Because that's an odd assessment to make if you haven't.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (2 days later)
Actually, this could work really well to explain the schizo tech -- there's a limited number of production facilities left and everyone is fighting to control them. It's basically the Battletech model.
u/KZLightning [+2] (2 days later)
That explanation could work. We do have to wonder why there are no cars or guns but there are TV's and refrigerators. It would also imply that the population either does not understand how the tech works or experts are in really short supply.
u/ancientcampus [+2] juggling kittens (6 hours later)
I'd be curious as to the relationship between governments and ninja clans. Are there feudal lords, as in the canon time period? What sort of military do they employ? Do they fight their own wars parallel to the ninja wars?
u/chaosattractor [+5] (7 hours later)
In my fic?
Yes, there are feudal lords. They have several choices in military forces: there are samurai, monks, classically trained ninja (in clans), and miscellaneous groups who use powers that aren't readily classifiable. The samurai form the bulk of the standing military. The ninja clans are essentially mercenaries for hire and their numbers are tiny next to the general population. The monks have taken a pacifist stance, but they impart their techniques to anyone who comes to their temples with an open mind and heart (don't try attacking them though. Seriously. It will not end well). The miscellaneous groups mostly cause trouble, though there is a faction that tries to stand up for the lower classes who've been constantly screwed over by the wars.
The countries do fight their own wars, sometimes in parallel and sometimes not. When the wars aren't parallel it's a tense time for all. In my fic's very recent past one such conflict of interest led to a civil war - ninja against the government - in the Land of Wind, which has left them extremely weak. The Land of Earth wants to use the chance to overwhelm the country, but the Land of Fire's daimyou is sympathetic because his son is married to Wind's princess (and also he has a vested interest in the cuts he gets from Wind's gold mines). But most of Fire's clans are currently too busy clawing at each other to notice or care, and he can't compensate for their absence by deploying more samurai because the country would be open to possible invasion by Lightning or Water.
...yeah, this is why I loved this period in the first place. So many possibilities.
u/ancientcampus [+3] juggling kittens (23 hours later)
I'd be interested to see the political ramifications where moderately-sized countries and some individual ninja clans are equal-sized players on the world field. How does this affect boarders and the like? If the Uchia clan is neutral to you, but lives inside your country, how do you arrange your army? It pretty much gives you an entire new front to defend. I'd expect powerful clans or alliances like Ino-Shika-Cho to act like geographical borders - two neighboring countries might draw their lines with some third ninja clan in the middle.
So much of our political theory is built on several constants in the human condition, like "any single ruler can be assassinated" and the fact no one can oppress a nation solely on their own - you normally need armies for that. These break down in settings like Naruto.
u/mitskilvrrr [+1] (8 years later)
are you still writing? this fic sounds really interesting and i’d love to read it if you have it uploaded somewhere 🙏