That moment when you're like :| because there was a canon power that you didn't add to your app, but then you read on and it's unique to a different character entirely.

Like I said the other day: Respected by everyone but chunks of the fanbase and Kishimoto.

Just closes her eyes and maps out a secret passage without setting foot in it.

I wonder what it says about the Ninja Academy's educational prowess when Sasuke, an ~elite prodigy~ doesn't know what a constellation is.

Or a zodiac sign.

The Naruto books aren't great, the writing's dry and the translation's sometimes questionable, but it does at least give me more info about the world/how things work.

the academy isn't ... great for doing anything but producing cannon fodder and arguably that it hasn't completely fucked those kids over is on their instructors and maybe sarutobi's half-hearted willingness to listen when said instructors complain. maybe. sarutobi is a centrist tho and refuses to believe he has as much power to change things as he does

unless he's yelling at someone else for trying to change literally anything for the better without his approval first, that is

Tsunade didn't do much better, but that's because she was stuck either cleaning up the Third's messes or dealing with, y'know. The war.

I want to like Hiruzen, but he basically let himself get outmaneuvered whenever it was possible. Dude should've stayed retired.

He was kinda stuck in that same mindset as the previous generations that lead to, y'know. The three other ninja wars.

tsunade had to staunch a lot of bleeding, literally and otherwise

Tsunade: We've been doing this ninja village thing for decades now, how am I the only one to think that we should send medics out with our teams?

sarutobi also thought he was doing that but had also so effectively ruined his own position and abilities as hokage he effectively demolished his ability to fix anything he couldn't, also, make worse by compromising over in the process

Honestly, he should have known that he needed to change things up when Danzo managed the Uchiha massacre right under his nose.

you would have thought. but /looks at reality, looks at sarutobi

sounds really plausible, to me, that he never figured out what he did wrong, there,

Blinded by his need to compromise. He just wasn't coming up with a way to keep the Uchiha from rebelling while also thinking that a fanatic like Danzo would wait as long as possibe.

"I don't know what a constellation is, but I figured out evolution in, like, five seconds."