Hoshigaki

Bonus: The Research Paper

All quoted sentences can be found on the Naruto Wiki.  

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Orochimaru's a fuck and Hiruzen's a shitty Hokage. Here's why.

In the first paragraph of the Naruto Wikipedia it states, in the second sentence, that "with a life-ambition to learn all of the world's secrets, Orochimaru seeks immortality so that he might live all of the lives necessary to accomplish his task."—which means he wants to live long enough to conduct every single experiment he put his mind to. He "...[performs] unethical experiments on his fellow citizens for the sake of immortality..." which I still don't understand what the big deal is for villains in story lines. For Orochimaru, he's scared of death when he's surrounded by it every day and is also the one inflicting it on others whose time clearly hadn't come. In theory, it should've made him more comfortable with it, but I suppose people will always be complicated in the way one person will never fully understand another. He's scared that he's going to die, but he's selfish. Selfish, selfish, selfish. He had no right to kill for the sake of himself and I still don't know why he thought he was so entitled to do so.

After he's caught red-handed for his crimes, literally red-handed, he escapes and makes one of his goals to "...[seek] the village's destruction in order to take revenge and demonstrate what he had learned." So instead of growing up in a profession that literally has 'death' in its hazard list, he decides to act like a child put in time out and seeks revenge because he got caught doing something he knew was wrong. Boo-hoo. Sorry they want to put your dumbass in prison because you thought kidnapping children was okay.

But, it turns out he's actually always been this way. "According to Tsunade, Orochimaru had a twisted personality even as a child." Uh, no red flags? No motion to put him under a psyche evaluation? No thought that 'hey, maybe this kid's unstable and maybe we shouldn't teach him how to kill people and break things so that he doesn't grow up to kill our people and break our things?' That's only another flaw in testament to Konoha's Shinobi System, or any other Shinobi System in general.

Why are children with obvious traumas and crippling shortcomings allowed to become shinobi in the first place?

(Not to mention the whole child soldiers thing that encompasses the entirety of the Naruto series, but that's a discussion for another time.)

"His sadistic attitude was presumably due to the death of his parents," says the wiki. So he's bitter. It's still not an excuse. "At some point after losing them, Orochimaru found a white snake near his parents' grave, with Hiruzen's explanation of it representing fortune and rebirth inspiring Orochimaru to study kinjutsu and obtain knowledge of all techniques, (Naruto Chapter 344, Page 16). Jiraiya theorised that Orochimaru went down this path in an attempt to forget his painful memories."

In an attempt to forget his painful memories. So Hiruzen and Jiraiya and Tsunade, all people who had to be within close distance with Orochimaru whether they liked him or not, noticed all these things about him. They noticed he was suffering from the loss of his parents and they noticed that there was something very clearly wrong with him. If his memories were so painful, he should've gotten help, not been given a knife and a duty to protect his village at what, ten, twelve years old? He's still a kid, prodigy or not. And even if he's a genius, or someone whose "...talents, knowledge, and determination were considered by Hiruzen to be that of a prodigy seen only once in a generation." (Naruto Chapter 122, Page 7). Orochimaru was kept as a shinobi because he was rare and useful, his questionable sanity and obvious need for help pushed aside.

Orochimaru was a complex character, I'm not denying that, with "... his horror for Tsunade losing Nawaki and later shedding tears when she lost Dan, implies that Orochimaru grew to disdain the fragility of human life and how it affected those still living, which led him to desire immortality. To that end, the primary purpose of Orochimaru's human experimentation is to test what modifications the human body can endure and harness a subject's unique abilities for himself. Once accomplishing this goal, Orochimaru had hoped to be worthy of the title of "ultimate being", unable to die and able to achieve his secondary goal to learn every ninja technique in the world, which would normally take many lifetimes to obtain." But with being ever-so complex he developed a complex of his own, according to Sasuke: "... becoming cruel with any good he had as a member of Team Hiruzen gone, Orochimaru's agenda made him develop a god complex and valued himself while delighting in striking terror in his first impressions."