There are always two stereotypes followed in shonen mangas and animes, those that Masashi Kishimoto understood very clearly when he began working on Naruto. He had always taken great care when creating characters, making sure not to go too far with one or too little with another. This gave Kishimoto the opportunity to better explore his characters and make them more relatable.
This allowed him to give individuality to his creations in a way that made them stand out and blend with the crowd at the same time. He made crucial decisions about why one character had to be too smart while another was not even a little. In turn, he made a conscious decision to turn Naruto into a character whose vocabulary wasn’t as vast and whose mind wasn’t as sharp.
Masashi Kishimoto Made Naruto a Dimwit
Masashi Kishimoto, in an interview with Cinema Today, explained why it was integral for him to make Naruto a character who lacked a lot of skills instead of one who was versatile in his speech. He purposefully made the titular character someone who’s vocabulary was limited, one that he wasn’t able to expand over immediately.
“I also couldn’t have Naruto speak complicated words. To a certain degree, it was ok if it was something he had experienced, but if he suddenly said something grown up about something where he had no experience, it would be a lie. I had decided the characters first, so that wouldn’t have worked honestly.”
As someone who was still growing up, whose life was filled with hardships, and who lacked basic education, the ability to work around complicated words would seem alien on his tongue. So it was important to incorporate his actual lifestyle with all the other aspects that could perhaps be missed by a bigger audience.
His ability to stay true to his characters made every single Naruto character a charmer in their own way. He made Naruto learn his way to the top. Kishimoto built experience and gave him the opportunity to grow. No plot armor could protect him.
The Two Sides of a Shonen Protagonist
These two types of characters can vary in ways that could make them stand apart from others. On one hand, there are characters such as Light Yagami, Loid Forger, Killua, and Kurama. On another side, there are characters such as Naruto, Itadori, Natsu, and Denji. Making a protagonist dumb is followed by many mangakas. At the same time, there are many who choose to make their protagonists with minds that can easily woo the crowd.
Usually, if the main character is considered to have a lower comprehensive power, they have a supporting character – in Naruto’s case, it would be Sasuke. For Itadori it would be Megumi, for Natsu it would be Lucy and for Denji it would be Aki and Quanxi.
They balance each other out and thus make that lack of skill the strength of another’s.
