SK appreciation #3; Sasuke's “I need you”
First of all: thank you so much to everyone who shared their preferred topic and helped me decide! ♥ This one won with 4 votes, so here we go~
My main focus is going to be his wording and my personal take as to what may have motivated it, so (with one exception) I’ll be only addressing him I need you from the context that immediately surrounded it. Meaning: Hebi’s formation and the Chasing Itachi arc.
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To need something is to find it necessary; to find it necessary is to find it 'impossible to do without' (thesaurus).
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I think we all agree that the first thing that stands out regarding Sasuke’s “I need you” is the fact that it is Uchiha Sasuke saying this to someone. That it is Uchiha Sasuke openly acknowledging to someone’s face just how valuable he finds them. It is big no matter how one looks at it because Sasuke is simply not the type of character to willfully admit such a thing on normal circumstances, and much less without any prompting whatsoever.
In my perspective, it becomes even bigger when one takes into account that by telling Karin - someone with the free will of her own and no obligation to him - that he needs her instead of playing it cool by simply asking her to come, or saying that her abilities could come in handy, Sasuke (who is usually quite arrogant) is basically putting himself in a position where he is giving someone else the upper hand. Because Karin could have easily denied him (which she initially did) - yet Sasuke did not bother with pretenses, or by acting nonchalant about his request. He willfully made her fully aware of the weight he was giving to her presence on his team.
By telling her that he needs her, Sasuke basically told her: “your presence on my team is important. I must have you on my team”. In other words: he let it show that if she were to reject him, it would be some skin off his nose because he had made her into an essential part of his team.
As such, he essentially put himself out there at the mercy of Karin’s own whims when he was under no obligation to do it. Even if we entertain the thought of him doing it because he knows how Karin is and that she wouldn’t be easily convinced with a mere come with me - again, Sasuke is not the type of character to cater to others. He is usually the one whose whims other characters are at the mercy of. Notice that even when he acknowledges others, he does it after said people have voiced their acknowledgment of him. Rarely - if ever - the other way around.
Now - as we all know - the particularity of his behavior only becomes even more singular thanks to the fact that it is something he did for Karin and Karin alone. He did not have the same courtesy nor with Suigetsu, nor with Juugo.
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And that begs for a second look as to why he deemed her necessary above the other two. Which will then take me into what I truly want to address in this post: what prompted Sasuke’s choice of wording?
I think there is a whole lot to be said about that particular subject. In my previous Appreciation Post, I briefly went over my personal perspective about the matter; but here I’ll basically - try to - justify my viewpoint by taking you step-by-step through my thought process. So that in the end, even if you don’t quite agree with what I may suggest, you will (hopefully!) at least be able to see where I’m coming from.
But I can’t do that without first mentioning two very special SK fans that helped shape my perspective about this matter back in 2009: Teachan and NeuviemeCiel. It was through a very enlightening conversation with them that I first reached this conclusion:
Sasuke wanted her abilities, but he didn’t actually need them. So there must have been - IMO - more than one factor coming into play in order to prompt such an uncharacteristic admission from his end. (<- essentially the tl;dr of the post haha)
Like before, I’ll start by taking a look at the goal he recruited Hebi for:
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So going by that, what truly mattered was manpower. The manpower was enough to hold Kisame and any other distractions back while Sasuke fought Itachi on his own.
And the kind of power needed to fulfill that particular role is physical power (or ninjutsu). Something Juugo and Suigetsu excel at, but that was nowhere near Karin’s area of expertise.
Which means Sasuke deemed her necessary for something else entirely. That takes me to the second - and apparently, secondary role, going by Sasuke’s words - that Hebi fulfilled at the time: helping Sasuke actually find Itachi.
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As Sasuke told Suigetsu, “Karin has a special power that no one else has”. Now, we know that queen Karin has a whole arsenal of special powers at her disposal; but considering that no reference to her healing bite was made until Chapter 412 and that - as far as we know - Sasuke healed on his own after his battle with Deidara:
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It is then safe to assume Sasuke was indeed referring to Karin’s sensing abilities when he talked to Suigetsu. Which were very helpful, as Karin was able to give them the upper hand by noticing whenever Konoha was tracking them. Yet - Sasuke didn’t strike me as being particularly interested in bothering to sidestep nuisances; he did after all say they would just “charge straight through”.
So if you ask me, his main priority was simply closing-in on Itachi as swiftly as possible; obstacles be damned. So in that regard, I find worth noticing that Karin did not know Itachi’s nor Kisame's chakra signatures.
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This means Karin’s tracking ability would help Sasuke to more or less - at least in my eyes - get to Itachi by what would essentially be trial and error. By following on intel and eliminating which hide-outs and/or places had any chakra signatures inside and as such were worth checking out.
So (again, if you ask me) Karin’s chakra sensing, while certainly helpful, was not “impossible to do without” - so it wasn’t actually necessary to the fulfillment of Hebi’s two main goals: tracking Itachi and holding Kisame / outsiders back.
Sasuke himself seems to acknowledge this right here:
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Notice the (IMO) sounds disappointed (“It can’t be helped…” -> raw); but he respects Karin’s apparent unwillingness to tag along and simply says that he will recruit someone else. Remember that even at the start of the chapter, Sasuke acknowledged there were people “easier to handle” than Karin that he could have recruited.
What that amounts down to is: He could have gone through with fulfilling his goal regardless of whether Karin was on the team or not. He simply would rather she be there, above every other option.
And why is that? What is it that makes Sasuke need her when her abilities weren’t actually as necessary as he made them sound?
Personally, I believe there are mainly two factors at play:
1) The first being that Sasuke acknowledges more than just Karin’s special power(s). He knows Karin being there will make matters easier for him because she is an extremely capable kunoichi not solely due to her special abilities, but because of the aggregate of her aptitudes and strengths.
Take for example what was - in my eyes at least - Karin’s most important contribution to the Itachi search: coming up with a plan to lose Konoha. That plan was her own idea. She did it on her own initiative; Sasuke did not ask for it. So Karin put her extensive knowledge at play and with her quick-thinking, made things easier for Sasuke in a way that he simply wouldn’t have bothered to do on his own and consequently saved the team from an unnecessary fight (which was Sasuke’s “worst-case scenario”).
So I believe that what truly made Sasuke deem Karin as necessary, usefulness-wise, is that he finds her extremely reliable and trust-worthy. He knew he could count on her and did as much:
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(^ breaking my own only from the Itachi arc! thing because this panel says it all lol)
2) The second factor that, I believe, comes into play into Sasuke’s choice of wording is that - as Teachan so aptly put it back in 2009 - Sasuke wanted her there with him.
After all, personally, I consider something or someone ‘impossible to do without’ for either one of two reasons (or both!): either it is a person or something without whom I can’t accomplish something important to me, and/or me needing them has everything to do with the personal value they hold to me.
All the rambling above (sorry!! the post took an unexpected turn, didn’t it?) was to try and illustrate why I personally don’t think Karin’s usefulness in and of itself was enough to warrant that ’I need you’; especially not coming from someone as arrogant as Sasuke. So I believe that what made her usefulness go the rest of the way and cross into necessity territory was the personal value Sasuke (consciously or otherwise) gives to her.
Which casually ties into what I mentioned before about Obito’s comment regarding Karin being his favorite:
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AND comes full-circle by also tying into Sasuke using such wording with Karin in contrast to Suigetsu and Juugo (and even into Sasuke’s partiality towards her).
But of course, this is all just my personal perspective! (or just me being captain obvious, depending on what camp you’re on haha) What is awesome about SasuKarin is that no matter how you look at statements like his I need you or She’s his favorite - whether you do it like me or simply take them as being about Sasuke acknowledging her power - they still end up being pretty important on the virtue of Sasuke’s character type alone. So I believe we can all agree on that at least, haha
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