OCTOBER 15TH, 2015 · 290 NOTES || VIA 395Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMN8YquouLW
WAS RELEVANT THEN IS EVEN MORE RELEVANT NOW IT WAS'T CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IT WAS IN KARIN'S CHARACTER ALL ALONG KARIN'S CHARACTER MISCONCEPTIONS LONG POST GOING THROUGH OUR LIKES SO MANY THINGS I CAN'T REMEMBER WHETHER OR NOT WE REBLOGGED BUT HERE THEY ARE AGAIN
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//KARIN IS NOT SELFISH. HERE’S WHY.
//I think she has a strong survival instinct, as anyone who had to serve Orochimaru would, but I don’t think she’s selfish. Let’s examine her behavior in a few different situations.
First, there’s her understanding of Jugo. Unlike Suigetsu, she understands that Jugo’s not a sadist, but a man with a psychological problem. This doesn’t necessarily make her unselfish, but it does exhibit her ability to empathize.
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Then there are these panels here, in which she saves Jugo, Suigetsu, and Sasuke from the Hachibi, dragging them away from the scene of battle.
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If all she cared about was Sasuke, she could’ve just left her other teammates behind. But she dragged all of them along, quite a feat for her, given her physical weakness and lack of shinobi training.
Doing so exhausts her, and she collapses and is almost crushed by the Hachibi’s tentacle. Luckily, Sasuke pulls chakra out of nowhere and uses Chidori to cut the tentacle in two before it can fall on her.
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She might’ve avoided this by just saving Sasuke, but no, she saved the others as well. Karin is a very logical person, and it would’ve made much more sense to leave the others behind and just focus on the one she loved, but she risked her life for all of them.
Then, the following panels confirm that she has come to care about her teammates very much.
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She doesn’t want to go on without them, but Sasuke tells her they need to keep moving. She complies, but she is uncomfortable with doing so, and begins to suspect something is very wrong with Sasuke (he has just recently awakened Susanoo and his chakra has become very dark):
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Then, there is the fight with Danzo. Again, she risks life and limb for Sasuke when he is unable to move because of Danzo’s binding curse, doing so to the point of being illogical, as she stood no chance whatsoever against Danzo, and she knows it. So does he, as you can see in the panels below. He kicks her away instead of attacking her with ninjutsu because he is trying to conserve his chakra, as Tobi observes.
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There is also the nature of her love for Sasuke, which is indeed selfless at its core. Yes, she wants her love for him to be required, as all people do, but what she wants more than anything is to see him smile again.
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Karin lies dying as Sasuke tells Sakura that he will let her come with him if she kills Karin. Sakura pretends to go along with it, trying to steel herself to kill him. Karin does not know this, and Sakura is technically her enemy, yet she still uses one of her dying breaths to tell him to stop (of course, he doesn’t listen). These are the only words she says after Sasuke stabs her until Sakura starts healing her, so for all she knew, those would be the last words she’d ever speak.
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And when Sakura heals her, Karin cannot help but empathize with her. It is significant that when she cries with Sakura over their shared love for a man who is not what he once was, this is only the second time we have ever seen her cry. The other was when she shed a single tear because she thought Omoi had obliterated Sasuke.
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The rest of what she says is “Don’t cry like that in front of me…!” Then, against her will, she, too, begins to weep.
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So, in conclusion, I believe that Karin is very compassionate. She risks her life for her team, she risks her life for Sasuke, she empathizes with the enemy, and her love for Sasuke is ultimately set upon seeing him happy again, even if it’s not with her.
Thank you so much for asking! I hope this post can be used to educate the part of the fandom severely lacking in this knowledge.
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