I Had So Many Thoughts About This Little Guy I Just Had To Get Them Out - Tumblr Posts

thank you for tagging me in this wonderful post! my own feelings about Obito are so perfectly aligned with yours, i don't think i could have worded them better myself!

honestly, i think the episodes with kid Obito are my absolute favourites. you're right, he's such a crybaby boyloser, but he's also a sweetheart who isn't afraid to break away from conformity. and that is bravery, regardless of what others around him think of him. he's also proud, stuck-up, pouty and huffy, it's adorable. i love all these things about him too, and the more i look at his character, the more i realise he's nowhere near the Naruto Uzumaki clone parts of the fandom seem to think he is.

Obito doesn't have Naruto's slyness or tactical mind (even adult Obito is not particularly tactical - you don't need to be when you're a powerhouse, after all!) and he seems to try and compensate for this by training constantly to obtain sheer power instead.... and it paid off! this sweet baby boy became chunin without his special eyes, and he did it all by himself without any teacher to help him.

i love how radical-minded he was, despite the fact it brought him to do terrible things later in life. Obito just saw things differently. though he wasn't particularly intelligent, he was still incredibly perceptive and astute, and his ability to empathise with others, even those he didn't like or relate to, made me love his character even more.

when it comes to adult Obito, i have so many mixed feelings about him it's unreal. to me he's like a rubix cube... when you think you have one side of him figured out, there's several other parts of him mushed into the mix, a lot of them seemingly contradictory but without them, we can't get the complete picture. some of the time, i don't understand his motivations for actions at all (aside from the war itself). it feels like an issue with the way he was written and i definitely think a character as fascinating as he was could have been handled so much better. and one plot point/writing decision i absolutely hate is the idea of the curse of hatred and how he fell victim to it. i think the idea of it robs him of the agency that made him interesting in the first place, buuuut maybe that's just me.

also, learning that Tobi was simply a personality copy of Guruguru was sort of disheartening. i always loved the idea that Obito was secretly having a ball play-acting as Tobi the Fool and pressing Deidara's buttons. i would have loved to have seen more hints of the real Obito shining through the persona, like in that post i made. and despite knowing that Tobi is actually just Guruguru's personality... i kind of choose not to believe it. i like to believe some of it is just Obito. just himself.

but regardless of how he was written, ill always adore this little disaster and im glad so many others do too ^_^

Hi!! What do you like most about Obito and what do you like least?

Hellooo! Oh Obito, there are so many things <3

I think what I love the most about him is that he's a little loser boy.

He's a little loser boy but he's so, so brave about it!

Obito messes up his shuriken throws, he's always late, he's no good at tests, his fireballs are small and his very special eyes haven't awoken yet so he feels like he's a failure. He gets treated like a failure too. It's awful, really. No kid should have to be laughed at for not performing perfectly or for struggling in school. You can't blame him for getting frustrated and sad and I love him for pouring all of his emotions out, unfiltered and genuine. He can't help it, he's built that way <3 When I watch him run away from school in tears to sit alone on his feelings-bench I'm in tears too, every damn time.

Baby! T_T

Obito breaks down easy but he gets back up too. I love his little Rocky-esque training montages where he fights to improve himself and I'm not joking when I say he's my gym inspiration. He fights on and he doesn't back down from the things he believe are right. Helping that old lady to the hospital was more important than being on time for the violence competition with his classmates and if the shinobi world doesn't agree with basic human decency then fuck the shinobi world, right?

I love him for thanking Rin at the top of his lungs with glitter in his eyes when she gets him the paperwork he needs for school, because he's exactly as happy as he appears to be in that moment. He's not holding it back. Obito expresses his dreams and visions with his entire chest and I just wanna hug that kid so hard and give him all the encouragement in the world.

This is what I mean when I say he's brave about being a loser and when I say "loser" I hope it's clear that I'm being affectionate. Loser is the role he's been assigned by people around him and by himself because they're measuring him based on a very narrow set of skills. Obito has the emotional intelligence and strong moral compass that makes him a true hero when he's really put to the test and I love him for believing in his own ability to rise up and protect his friends despite fear and insecurity.

Obito never gives up, even in the darkest dark <3

Until he does :(

I don't dislike Obito for breaking and for wanting to break things when his world falls apart. The loss of who he was before is the great tragedy of his character. His story wouldn't be complete if that didn't happen.

What I do dislike is how poorly this part of the story is told.

This is definitely more of a writing thing than a character thing but I don't know if I can even blame Kishimoto for not telling more of Obito's story, that man had a lot on his plate. He had to make sooo many major plot points come together with Obito at the center of them and I'd be very surprised if he planned it all out in advance. You have to make allowance for a few plot holes.

Still, the jump from regular Obito to "Madara" is so jarring that what follows feels more like a chasm than a hole. There is no transition period between Rin's death to the moment Obito seeks out Nagato and starts to speak with Madara's voice, except for a brief powerpoint presentation before the real Madara unplugs himself from life support and leaves Obito to roam. There is nothing to explain how Obito actually becomes a supervillain with supervillain skills and that to me leaves a big glaring emptiness in his character. It makes it difficult for me to understand him for big chunks of time and it's not believable to me that he's the same character until very late in the timeline.

Trauma explains the personality shifting and the erasure of the old Obito but it doesn't explain his instant transformation into a perfectly capable Madara clone. I don't buy it and I don't like it.

I still love adult Obito, in all his shapes, even when he's very unlikeable. I think much of that is thanks to a wonderfully creative fandom though. Everything between the cave and Obito's mask breaking is a gap that I would have had a much bigger problem with if it wasn't for all the headcanons, meta and fics. Stuff that stitches Obito's off-screen story together and collects the crumbs that show that "Madara" isn't just a mindless copy of the real Madara. Obito is still in there, with Obito thoughts and Obito quirks. Things like this amazing post by @inkkat

I feel like I've just thrown a big wet towel of negativity over his entire character arc now and that wasn't my intention so here are Tobi gifs to brighten the daaaay:

He's in there, the little loser boy <3