Naruto Vol. 43
- ISBN
- 9781421529295
- Publisher
- Viz Media
- English release
- Pages
- 256
- Chapters
- 390–402
- Anime
- Season 6: 師の予言と復讐の章 (Master's Prophecy and Vengeance) ep. 113–143
At 256 pages and thirteen chapters this is the longest volume in this stretch of the run, and the one where the series changes what it is about. Chapters 390 to 402 give the first five to the end of the Itachi fight and the remaining eight to one unbroken explanation of what the Uchiha clan was and what Konoha did about it. Every other volume between 37 and 48 runs 192 to 208 pages, so the extra length is not padding: it is exposition the rest of the story depends on. Shippuden season 6 covers chapters 343 to 411, so the whole book is adapted. A reader arriving for the Itachi fight should know that most of this volume is people talking.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
Sasuke wins, and the win is worth less than the eight chapters that follow it. Kirin does not finish Itachi; Itachi pulls Orochimaru out of Sasuke's body and then dies of the illness he already had. Tobi collects Sasuke and talks: that he is Madara Uchiha, that he founded Konoha alongside Hashirama Senju, that village and clan spent generations distrusting each other with the Nine-Tails making it worse, and that when the Uchiha moved to take the village, Konoha ordered Itachi to destroy them. Itachi did it, spared his brother, and arranged the rest of his short life so that Sasuke would one day kill him and be honored for it. This reads as a redemption of Itachi, and that reading is too small. What it actually does is move the antagonist from a man to an institution, which is why Sasuke leaves to destroy Konoha rather than to mourn, and why the remaining twenty-nine volumes have a political problem to solve instead of a family one.
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