An­a­lyz­ing Naruto & Sasuke’s “Friend­ship”

Some­times in fic­tion, re­la­tion­ships be­tween char­ac­ters in some cases fall flat. Their chem­istry is blandly told in­stead of cre­atively shown, so we’re ex­pected to feel a cer­tain way, but we  per­son­ally can­not feel it. Or per­haps we are ex­pected to be­lieve that their re­la­tion­ship has some type of ‘chem­istry.’  But this can be prob­lem­atic, es­pe­cially to­wards an au­di­ence who don’t know how strong and healthy re­la­tion­ships are sup­posed to be. And if peo­ple start to nor­mal­ize the neg­a­tive habits from peo­ple they call ‘fam­ily,’ then they will most likely nor­mal­ize be­hav­iors in fu­ture re­la­tion­ships. So in this ar­ti­cle, we’ll ex­am­ine the show, “Naruto” and how it de­picts the friend­ship be­tween Naruto and Sasuke.  

In case any­one is­n’t fa­mil­iar with Naruto, it’s about a boy who pos­sesses a nine-tailed fox which once at­tacked Naru­to’s vil­lage. Al­though it’s not his fault for the vil­lage’s de­struc­tion or for hav­ing the fox in his body, the vil­lage peo­ple blame and de­spise him. Or­phaned and alone, Naruto dreams to be­come the Hok­age, a leader for his vil­lage, so that he will gain the re­spect and at­ten­tion that he’s de­prived of. 

So now let’s dig into Naru­to’s re­la­tion­ship with Sasuke. They’re con­stantly re­ferred to as “friends” (and even as “broth­er’s” by its next show). But if we look at the be­gin­ning, the two are forced to work with each other. Naruto con­stantly tries to be bet­ter than Sasuke, while Sasuke finds Naruto be­low him, call­ing him a “loser.” 

It’s not un­til they have to go on their first mis­sion to­gether do they learn how to co­op­er­ate with each other. An ex­am­ple of this is when the two train for long hours to­gether, climb­ing trees. It’s at this mo­ment, Sasuke ac­knowl­edges Naru­to’s strength and even asks him for ad­vice. Set­ting their dif­fer­ences aside, their team­work flour­ishes. 

Snap­shot taken from anime-planet.com

How­ever, as much as they may have seemed to de­velop, their re­la­tion­ship is­n’t very healthy mov­ing for­ward. Be­cause by the sec­ond arc, Sasuke con­tin­ues to in­sult Naruto. Nei­ther of them are shown to spend time with each other ei­ther. If they were friends, they would have will­ingly made time to spend with each other. Be­cause re­al­is­ti­cally, friend­ship re­quires some type of ef­fort. Or else how can one de­velop a close friend­ship? Surely, there’s no deny­ing they are com­rades, but it’s doubt­ful to call them “friends.”

Adding on, their re­la­tion­ship starts to spi­ral down­ward due to Sasuke’s past trauma. His thirst for power is what keeps him stand­ing. And as Naruto grows with more strength, Sasuke feels in­fe­rior and starts to de­spise his com­rade. Now, in a friend­ship, find­ing one su­pe­rior than the other is not healthy. Es­pe­cially if the friend finds them­self be­ing overly jeal­ous. Friend­ship is sup­posed to be about ap­pre­ci­at­ing one an­other as equals. 

Even­tu­ally, Sasuke’s op­po­si­tion be­comes so strong, he chal­lenges Naruto. Naruto ac­cepts to fight, ig­nor­ing the cold non­ver­bals Sasuke was giv­ing off. Now, Naruto could have stopped Sasuke and ques­tioned his odd re­quest. Af­ter­all, if they were “friends,” could­n’t Naruto have found some­thing off with Sasuke? Could­n’t they have com­mu­ni­cated in­stead of re­sort­ing to a phys­i­cal fight? The fact that Naruto and Sasuke did­n’t do that proves that their re­la­tion­ship is less about friend­ship and more about power. 

Af­ter their fight, Naru­to’s other com­rade con­fesses that Sasuke’s men­tal state can spi­ral down fur­ther. In­ter­est­ingly, Naruto dis­misses her words stat­ing “he’s not like that” and com­pletely ig­nores their fight ear­lier. Which of course is­n’t the best idea, and once again goes to show how lit­tle they know about each other. Friends are sup­posed to com­mu­ni­cate with one an­other, which nei­ther of them do. Sasuke ends up cut­ting his ties with the vil­lage in pur­suit for more power. 

Upon hear­ing this, Naruto is shocked and chases af­ter him. Af­ter go­ing through many ob­sta­cles, he fi­nally catches up to Sasuke. It was also at this mo­ment, the view­ers re­al­ized what type of re­la­tion­ship Naruto and Sasuke had. Be­cause when Naruto ques­tions if Sasuke sees him as a com­rade, Sasuke replies, “To me you be­came my clos­est friend.” 

Snap­shot taken from Car­toonon­line.io

Snap­shot taken from Car­toonon­line.io

Ex­cept,  if we go back to the be­gin­ning of the show, their ‘friend­ship’ was over­shad­owed by their ri­valry. Their de­sire and con­stant need to one up one an­other, while hid­ing their feel­ings is not what a healthy friend­ship re­al­is­ti­cally is. Young view­ers who aren’t aware of healthy re­la­tion­ships may end up be­liev­ing that this “bick­er­ing” and “ri­val” type re­la­tion­ship is nor­mal in friend­ship, when it re­al­is­ti­cally is­n’t. 

Luck­ily, the show does touch on how prob­lem­atic Sasuke is, but it also tries to make the view­ers be­lieve that Naruto and Sasuke are close friends. For sure, as the au­di­ence, we are shown the sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween Sasuke and Naru­to’s painful child­hood. We see the lone­li­ness the two have to en­dure through, yet once more, the two don’t talk about it un­til Sasuke leaves the vil­lage. Once again, nei­ther Sasuke or Naruto are shown spend­ing time with one an­other, or en­joy­ing each oth­er’s com­pany. So how could they be then seen as close friends?

In sum­mary, Sasuke and Naru­to’s re­la­tion­ship is an ex­am­ple of how shows can ro­man­ti­cize neg­a­tive re­la­tion­ships for the view­ers. As the au­di­ence, it’s our duty to not fall for these por­tray­als. Now it’s not that we should­n’t watch shows any­more, rather we let us be aware of what’s be­ing shown to us and ac­knowl­edge its im­pact on our­selves and oth­ers.