80. WHAT IS YOUR WAY OF THE NINJA? - A Student Uses Naruto To Overcome Existentialist Ennui

As the world edges closer and closer to a tragic parody of Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’  the desire to find meaning in a meaningless world has caused many people to come face to face with the futility of our current systems. Whether one retreats to simply scrolling past humanitarian tragedies as if they are another piece of the content machine, blindly devoting themselves to organised religion, committing themselves to a life of pure hedonistic greed or, unfortunately in many cases, joining an extremist organisation to find some sense of community or fulfilment – humanity seems to be in an existential limbo. And these were all problems before the COVID-19 crisis, a disaster that has only exacerbated existential fears as our retreats into what were once escapist fantasies become part of our routine, we are forced recognise the futility of the 40-hour work week, the uselessness of the classroom setting and the lack of substance behind previous qualifications that were lauded as necessary to one’s success. Now the question is, if we are simply stuck in a monotonous cycle of monotonous endeavours, what’s the point? I argue that this is where Naruto Uzumaki, anime protagonist and ninja from the hidden leaf village could give us some pointers. 

Before we delve into the existential elements of this popular Shonen anime first we must understand the anime itself. I’ll attempt to do this without spoiling the anime for those who might want to watch it after reading this, but the basic story is as follows. Naruto Uzumaki was born during a battle between the hidden leaf village and the nine tailed demon fox, in which the fourth ‘hokage’ (head ninja of the village) seals the demon into the body of Naruto, sacrificing himself in the process. The fears caused by the demon fox, who killed hundreds of villagers, however, lingers on but the target of that fear now becomes Naruto who holds the demon fox within him (yes while also being an existential piece of art Naruto also has entailments for the mind body problem) who becomes ridiculed and ostracised by the villagers due to the demon within him. Naruto, however, is unaware of this as his parents died during the battle with the demon fox and grows up alone and turns to pranking and becoming the class clown to gain attention from his peers. This leads Naruto to, despite holding one of the most powerful creatures within him, become a failing student as his focus on gaining recognition from the villagers and forcing them to accept him leads him into this continuous cycle of trying hard to achieve something, failing at it and then simply laughing it off as a joke in order to feel part of something larger. Ultimately, when we first meet Naruto, he is lonely and outcast from society, failing to live up to his potential and on the verge of being completely left behind as he fails his graduation exam from the ninja academy.

This element of loneliness is an important theme within the anime series and something we should understand before continuing on with how Naruto deals with this. The series not only presents loneliness as it is simply defined as being: “sadness because one has no friends or company” but it tackles with the psychological damage that loneliness can have one a person. Characters such as Sasuke, Gaara, Hinata and Neji each going into the different ways in which loneliness can manifest, whether that be through family betrayal, ostracization from birth or even in the case of Hinata and Neji be due to the familial expectations placed upon them to be heirs to their respective clans. Loneliness as defined psychologically is, while highly subjective, “the distressing experience that occurs when a person’s social relationships are perceived by that person to be less in quantity and especially in quality, than desired… where prolonged loneliness is associated with depression, poor social support, neuroticism and introversion”. For those of you who have watched Naruto then one characters will fit this definition perfectly: Gaara of the Sand. 

Gaara is not just outcast from his tribe, but ideals of how they should be are continuously reiterated to them, reinforced upon them until the point where they become the exact monster everyone feared they would be. This is what sociologists describe as a “self-fulfilling prophecy”: ‘a process through which an originally false expectation leads to its own confirmation’. It is revealed through the narrative that Gaara was specifically conceived to be a ninja without any human emotion but as a child they were very emotional and suffered greatly due to the fact that their own father was so afraid of their potential power that by the age of 6 he had ordered hundreds of assassination attempts onto him. Unable to fight against the reality that no matter what they did they would simply be seen as a threat, instead of fighting against the narrative that they were a monster they simply became one. Going from a child who only wanted to be loved to one of the deadliest ninjas from the nation of the sand. Now why even write about this? Does it simply end there? Should we just learn not to label people too early on and love each other? Well, that is part of it, but we have to also recognise that the limitations we impose on ourselves, the boxes we force each other to fit into and the ideals we chase are not stagnant and fixed but malleable to our own desires.

The main takeaway from Gaara’s story is in the climax with his fight with Naruto where he witnesses Naruto sacrificing himself to save his fellow ninjas, something that Gaara cannot understand at all. Continuously throughout their fight Gaara questions why Naruto would ever sacrifice his life for someone other than himself. The humanity that Naruto presents to Gaara is irrational and weak, something that a powerful ninja like Gaara would never commit themself to doing. Yet it is the undying persistence of Naruto to keep fighting in spite of the fact he could have just ran away and saved himself that forces Gaara to realise Naruto’s ‘way of the ninja’ – to never give up no matter what obstacle is put in front of him. As I said earlier, when we met Naruto, he was lonely, outcast and on the verge of being completely left behind but through his training with his sensei Kakashi he learnt that the views other have put onto him and the fears they hold towards him do not dictate his fate. He may not be a naturally born ninja genius like Sasuke or Neji, but he doesn’t have to be. He recognises that if he continues to try and please others in order to fit in then he will never realise his full power and potential and that getting others to recognise him (his true aim in the first arc of the anime) can come through developing genuine friendships with his comrades and not chasing power for the sake of it. He recognises his existential purpose through a development of positive reinforcement and growth with the help of others to guide him. 

The reason why Naruto resonates so much with me and audiences across the world is that we have all been in that dilemma of succumbing to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whether you’re the student who thinks they have to go into medicine, the adult who drops their dreams because they’re told they aren’t good enough or any one of the millions of people thinking they have to follow the “traditional route” because that’s just the way it’s done, we have all committed ourselves to some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy during our lives. Yet what Naruto teaches us is that the ideas others have of you or the person you’re meant to be is not inscribed within us at birth but something we grow into through a process of learning and discovering one’s own purpose – even if a demon fox is sealed within you. Gaara recognises after his battle with Naruto that theirs no reason to commit himself to a life of evil and murder just because others viewed him in this way, his life was his own to dictate. 

This notion of dictating one’s own life falls under the philosophical idea of existentialism where it is believed that while human beings may not be endowed with an innate higher purpose that it is one’s own responsibility to dictate their self-purpose and meaning. As Jean-Paul Sartre once stated, “existence precedes essence” but he also recognised that a lack of innate purpose doesn’t invalidate one’s self-determined purpose or in Naruto terms their own chosen ‘way of the ninja’. It doesn’t take a famous French philosopher for us to realise the fact that the COVID-19 crisis has undermined many of the self-fulfilling notions and institutions we once held as matters of fact in our pre-covid world. Yet as nearly all catastrophes’ do, we all have an opportunity, like Gaara did, to recognise that through both a personal persistence and collective empathy towards one another we can all overcome these prescribed obstacles and escape the existential limbo we have been suffering from. Naruto may be highlighted by incredible fights and intense battles but at it’s core it teaches kids and adults across the world an important lesson in determining ones’ own path and helping those around us through friendship and empathy with each other’s struggle to understand themselves. We all have the opportunity, even in the most turbulent times, to find our own way of the ninja!

Author: Mohammed Hassan, Student at King Edward VI Aston, Host of THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE podcast