The way of a ninja - It's how they work it.

Naruto is a Japanese animation television series which came out in 1999 in Japan. It is a show which depicts Japanese values through ninja characters. It is a long running and popular show, pushing into somewhere around two hundred episodes. It is even very popular in America, where it has been showing on Cartoon Network. It is an action and adventure kind of show with comedy thrown in, where the ninjas go on missions and, in essence, try to protect their lives, their values, and the values of their villages.

The clip of Naruto which I chose to analyze is one where the titular character of Naruto and his team of ninjas, led by his sensei Kakashi, go on their first real mission to protect a bridge builder and protect him until he is done building his bridge. They end up fighting a dangerous criminal named Zabuza, who has a little protégé name Haku. Both are high level criminals who the team eventually ends up getting the upper hand on and, for the most part, beat them. Haku dies protecting Zabuza just a little bit before the clip starts. After that, the rich businessman, who was paying Zabuza to keep the bridge from being built in order to prevent free trade, shows up with an army of thugs to take care of Zabuza and Naruto’s team. Zabuza had just lost use of his arms from the fight, and so he asks Naruto for a Kunai, which he uses with his mouth. Zabuza ends up killing off the sleazy businessman and dying himself from being stabbed by the thugs. Zabuza then ends up dying, hallucinating up an image of Haku in his last few seconds.

I am going to look at this clip from two different perspectives. The first one is looking at it in terms of the cliché good and evil with an added heaven and hell aspect to it. Zabuza is, right before the clip, an evil sort of person, defending his evil boss, the rich businessman. Then he changes his to a good person when he realizes the error of his ways through the death of Haku. He stands with the good people, and rips off his bandages, which hid his true good character underneath. He uses the weapon of the good guys, the kunai and tears through a crowd of evil thugs to reach the most evil person, the rich businessman. Zabuza, bearing his evil nature, kills the businessman and thereafter, his repented soul is carried into death, the memory of Haku bringing him to repentance.

Another way of looking at this clip is as a battle between the classes. Zabuza, being a criminal with an unclean appearance and slang ridden speech, is a great example of someone who is lower class. The rich businessman is an example of someone of the higher class, who attempts to manipulate those lower than him. They are not quite at the lower class level in terms of how they live, but they are not of high class living. However, when Zabuza goes after the rich businessman and successfully kills him with relative ease, it perpetuates the stereotype that low class people are strong and dangerous, very capable and very willing to kill, while high class people tend to have little ability to fight and therefore hire other people to do their dirty work for them, hence the thugs. In relation to what Gramsci writes, according to the hegemony theory paper, the lower class in this clip is struggling against the upper class for his own reality. In this regard, the upper class person is depicted as a bad person trying to control and set limits in the lower person, with the lower class person being more of a hero type character, trying to fight for freedom.

Also present in this clip is the portrayal of power. It is almost clearly in the hands of Zabuza, despite his lower class. It is when he dies at the end that he relinquishes his power (because he dies). The rich businessman, who is supposed to have power through his riches, has some power through the thugs whom he controls, but it pales in comparison to someone who earned his power through hard work, a Japanese ideal. It is through this power in his hands that the Japanese ideal overpowers the power of upper class and is shown to be more important.