The Cold War allegory and Communism symbolism in Naruto

The Naruto series is my favorite anime/manga series of all time. There is a lot of symbolism, allegories, and life lessons present here. Let's talk about my favorite allegory in Naruto Shippuden. This allegory is present during the Pain arc, when Pain and Konan attack and destroy the hidden leaf village. But to understand the allegory you must first understand what happened in the series. So the leader of the organization the Akatsuki, Pain has a goal to gather all of the tailed beasts in order to create weapons. Pain had a very traumatic past, his home country was ravaged by war, his parents died in front of him. He also had to kill his best friend to save Konan.

Pains real name is Nagato and he was very idealist, he wanted to create world peace but after he lost everything he became a realist. He was going to achieve world peace through pain, he was going to make everybody experience the same pain so that they can understand and sympathize with each other. The way he was going to do this is to gather all the tailed beasts and make very powerful jutsus with them that could be capable of destroying a whole nation. He was going to give each nation a jutsu, and since they are always waging war against each other they would use these jutsus and completely destroy each other. If you know history you would notice that these jutsus are an allegory for nukes and the cold war. Pain also said that after the nations used these weapons and everybody experienced pain together then they would stop fighting and there would be peace. The jutsus would be deterrents. This is exactly like the cold war because while none of the weapons were used , the threat was always there and it was quickly escalating.

 I think the creator Masashi Kishimoto really took inspiration from history, and it is evident because of the intelligent writing of Naruto with allegories like this one. Now another allegory that is present here in Naruto has to do with the end of the series. One of the last villains, Madara Uchiha and Obito Uchiha have a plan to collect all of the 9 tailed beasts in order to create the ten tails and then absorb the ten tails to become the next sage of the six paths. Then the divine tree will sprout out, and with the rinne sharingan Madara is going to look at the moon and his eye will reflect over the whole world. This will make everybody fall into a deep slumber, almost like if they are hypnotized.

 The divine tree will then but branches over everyone in the world, and everyone will be living a happy dream while they are sleeping. It seems like a Utopia but it is fake. Madara and Obito experienced a traumatic past so they want to make a world where there is only happiness. This symbolizes communist China, because the point of a communist society is to create a Utopia. And then leader and government decide everything for the citizens. Which is what Madara and Obito are doing to the world of Naruto. Another thing I did not mention is that Madara’s plan is just an illusion. The people that are asleep slowly turn into monsters and they are unaware. This makes the utopia Madara wants to create into a dystopia. Just like a communist society. And Madara is unaware of this, just like communist leaders are unaware that their so called “utopia” is actually a dystopia. I have not seen a lot of Naruto fans notice these 2 allegories/ symbolisms. I hope you guys enjoyed these 2 examples of allegories/symbolism in Naruto.


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