[[ That’s a good question! He may have been, and he may have not been. Something like this is actually not answered in the novels, so it’s up for reader interpretation.
Personally, I think Itachi might not have been. What we do know from the novels is that Itachi dedicated his free time to training. Sasuke was also incredibly important but by training, he was getting stronger in his goal of protecting Sasuke, therefore, it was for Sasuke. So training, especially when Shisui came into the picture, generally came above Sasuke, purely because in the end it was for his little brother. He may have easily missed some developmental milestones.
The novel mentions things like Sasuke slowly learning to talk, not that it’s the first time Itachi’s ever heard him speak, etc. Mikoto most likely took primary care of Sasuke (as is fit), with Itachi as secondary care (when Mikoto is out), and Fugaku as tertiary (his job has him out more, he’s also the Captain of the Force and Clan Leader so he has even less time on his hands.) Mikoto has the most free time (time spent in their house) as she is a house-wife.
I don’t think Itachi would’ve been too bothered by missing him walking for the very first time, he’d be glad his brother achieved something. Sasuke could drool all over his shirt and he’d be proud. ]]
You: Mitsuki made his own choice
Me, an intellectual: Mitsuki was baited into the choice Orochimaru actually wanted, nullifying the idea the choice was made completely on his own. Siding with Log or Orochimaru was merely the false option presented, and choosing them again would’ve gotten Mitsuki’s memories erased a seventh time. Mitsuki is given a false sense of autonomy to dissuade him from severing his newfound admiration of Boruto on his own, as Orochimaru’s manipulative tactics center around the victim believing the choice was truly their own. There’s a plan in place for making his youngest clone the friend of the Hokage’s son and likening them to a ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ and we’ve yet to see it come to fruition.
Thank you so much! I’m not sure about “best” because Sasuke’s great in so many ways and it’s hard to be objective about it, but these are the first ones that come to mind when I think about this.
1. His belief in himself.
It took some time to build up, but after Sasuke left the Village (and before the ending) he never wavered when it came to his personal belief that if he wants something done, he is capable of doing it. I find it very admirable that against all odds he still fights for himself and doesn’t even question that maybe he can’t do what he wants to do.
2. His desire for autonomy.
Even though it doesn’t work out for him a lot and he ends up being manipulated I think that his drive to have control in his own life is really admirable and there’s so many examples of this but the one coming to mind right now is when Taka starts working with the Akatsuki and Sasuke’s all “Don’t forget, we’re the ones using them.” It’s like wow even in this situation where you’re literally working for other people you’re working for yourself and refusing to be manipulated. (And then he was manipulated anyway). But it’s the thought that counts!!
3. His honesty.
I’m too lazy to explain this one fully but -gestures to the scene where Orochimaru tells Sasuke he needs to be heartless and Sasuke replies that he’ll be heartless when he faces Itachi-. Like… he knows how he feels and there’s no embarrassment in it. Also he apologizes when he’s fucked up like he did to Karin after the Kage Summit Arc. Yeah.
Worst qualities…
I have a hard time answering this. I don’t mean that Sasuke’s perfect but when it comes to his “bad” qualities a lot of them like… don’t apply all the time or aren’t really indicative of his personality so much as the situation he’s in? Like I could talk about how he tends to be self-absorbed and not pay as much attention to the problems of others or think that he’s the only one with difficult trials or that his are the hardest, but then I’m also like– the only person whose trials Sasuke ever really saw are Naruto’s because he was unconscious or not present for practically the entire Chuunin Exams, then past Shippuden no one really talks about it in front of him or anything, and like he’s not the type to ask pretty much until Hashirama so it’s kinda like? Not surprising he makes those assumptions? But then again he did tell Hashirama that Itachi suffered more than him so like, lol, but by the time any of that happened he was pretty low on his ability to empathize with people just in general. Is that a flaw of his? I don’t know, it’d have to depend on if that could ever change.
And then he can be a pretty bad listener sometimes like when Karin was like “Hey Sasuke I think Konoha are after us do you want to plan something” and Sasuke was just like “no whatever we’ll just fight them if they get to us” like uh Sasuke? That’s a terrible idea. But again that isn’t true all the time so it’s like, is that Sasuke or is he just sometimes a bad listener? Is that important enough to call it one of his worst qualities?
He holds himself overly accountable for stuff like I remember during the Chuunin Exams there’s this part where he’s hallucinating that a younger version of himself is talking to him and blaming him for the Massacre and I’m like– Sasuke you weren’t even home when it happened let alone the fact you were literally seven and couldn’t have done anything but like, that’s a result of trauma.
IDK, maybe I’m just biased but I find it hard to list off his “worst” qualities without taking context into consideration and whether or not those behaviours are persistent. Sasuke’s pretty malleable and adapts to different situations so pinning down particular qualities and being like “Yeah that’s Sasuke all the time” can be hard although there’s a few ones that I can think of that are consistent that way and they’re all positive lol
listen. listen. i think konoha sucks and that taka was the best option for sasuke as much as the next guy. but i absolutely cannot handle yall calling him “healthy” at the beginning of shippuden. he was repressing every single emotion. he talked like, twice. just because he was on like three levels of dissociation doesnt mean he was like… doing. well. fjdmdkfjcm yall he was literally meticulously planning a murder-suicide
People: Sasuke wasn’t even that great of a character!
Me: It’s not that he’s THE best character but because of his journey; of what he had to go through and struggled with all while still having the passion and initiative to right the wrong in the web of lies the people who “love” him have surrounded him in. The biggest crime of it all is that he gets no justice and is shafted for some money making agenda and the sole knowledge that there are people who rejoice in this outcome disheartens me. So no. He’s not a world breaking character nor is he the epitome of heaven and light and all that is holy but I’ll still fite u on that. So miss me on that subjective statement.
[[ Well, using Sasuke kind of negates the question. There’s no sister for him to reproduce to restore the clan if he’s the last one left, is there? And if Itachi is this sister, it still doesn’t work, because Sasuke will want to kill Itachi.
And I have always hated the idea of a female relative OC introduced purely for Sasuke to have sex with. And I’m not saying “ew brother/sister sex” because I already ship incest type ships, so that’s not the problem. It’s the canon dynamic being introduced by forcing a relative who’s only purpose is to hook up with a canon character.
Unfortunately, this kind of stuff doesn’t work in a non-massacre scenario, either. The Uchiha isn’t as strict or crazy about their “breeding,” or the importance of their kekke genkai, so Itachi and Sasuke would be expected to marry women, and Uchiha women at that, but nothing as close as a biological sister.
Perhaps in some other, very specific setting, where there are very few members left and even less females at an age they can reproduce. Something as serious as that would be applicable then. ]]
[[ Sasuke X Justice OTP. (If you want to go further back, it was Sasuke x Vengeance.)
However, I don’t think he “shipped” himself with anyone when talking about an actual person, and assuming shipping means a romantic/sexual relationship. That kind of stuff simply wasn’t on his mind and was completely unimportant, since he was so heavily obsessed with his goal of killing Itachi, or getting revenge for Itachi later. Romance was forced on him. ]]
[[ This has been sitting in my inbox for almost a month and I just keep meaning to answer it, lskdfjlksdjf. I am here now.
Of course, this question is slightly objective. It could mean a good decision (for himself), a good decision (for others), and so on. For the sake of this ask, I’m going to assume you mean, did Sasuke make a good decision for himself to leave the village before the timeskip.
And my answer is yes.
Although the story did make it clear it was actually healthy for Sasuke at the time to stay with Team 7 and slowly give up on wanting to kill Itachi, that all falls apart very, very quickly. Sasuke is still having trouble controlling his curse seal, Itachi’s returned and made a complete fool out of Sasuke, his inferiority/superiority complex with Naruto is rearing its head, and Kakashi, the closest thing he had to a parental figure, has suddenly turned on him and demanded Sasuke completely give up his goal or he won’t train him (Hypocrite– since Kakashi’s known this was his goal since the beginning of the series).
Then the Sound 4, a group of people all with Curse Seals, show up and completely wipe the floor with him. All it serves to do is show Sasuke how weak he truly is at this time. Kakashi has already been pushing Sasuke extremely hard, going as far as to break him out of the hospital to train, something seen as a positive sign of determination.
And where did that get Sasuke? Nowhere. He still got his ass kicked, so clearly he needs a teacher who is not Kakashi, because Kakashi is not cutting it and has already threatened to stop training him completely. Kakashi is useless to him now.
And through all this, Sasuke doesn’t really want to hurt Naruto and Sakura. He leaves because he’s not getting the training he needs, and because he needs to cut Naruto and Sakura off. For their protection. If they won’t chase after him, he won’t do anything.
Of course, if you want the POV of the village, or of the rest of T7, none of those people will think Sasuke leaving was a good idea/decision. But Sasuke needed to move forward, and he’d reached a point in time where staying at the village meant stagnating. ]]
[[ Sasuke’s sword post war: a bunch of rambling by me.
Alternatively titled: In which Esu thinks too hard about Sasuke’s weapon. ]]
So this morning I got to thinking about Sasuke’s switch from his Grass Cutter Kusanagi (his signature Chokuto) to….whatever sword he has in Gaiden.
Originally, I thought Sasuke lost the entire sword in the lava while fighting Kaguya.
This is somewhat of a relief because I was slowly losing my shit over the fact Sasuke has the sword (and a new scabbard) in his reference sheet for The Last. I pulled up an anime reference sheet first but I generally don’t trust those, not with how many edits they made to Kishimoto’s original sketches.
Right, so, he clearly still has Kusanagi. As in he picked it back up, it was given back to him, etc etc, one can kind of freely headcanon how he got his sword back but he made a point of traveling with it and get the scabbard replaced with an identical one.
This, however raises the question of…..when did he choose to give this one up? More importantly, why? What would drive Sasuke to pick up an entirely new sword? We’ve seen how durable and useful his Kusanagi is, what’s so good about the sword he’s using that he gave up his previous one completely?
My running theory, for the when, at least, is he started with the new sword around the time of his novel, but, the only image I can find by Kishimoto doesn’t even properly depict a sword.
(That still doesn’t answer why, I guess that is lost to the ages.)
Unfortunately this is….unclear. It certainly seems to look like his new sword, as the scabbard doesn’t have the black line running through it like his Kusanagi did. We also have little way of telling if this end of the sword is the hilt or the blade, ugh. (It does extend slightly under his cloak, between the foot and the cat, so this is a sword scabbard.)
Now, about that new sword….
AFAIK, Sasuke’s novel (the original text) doesn’t go into detail about the sword. Not in the sense of “this sword is new and different.” It only mentions when he’s using it. So for someone who doesn’t know Sasuke has switched swords they could very well visualize him using his original Kusanagi.
But the animated version of Sasuke Shinden absolutely depicts his Adult Sword. Granted, I did choose not to watch Sasuke Shinden because they shifted story elements around. I did some googling and was completely unable to find screenshots/stills of Sasuke’s scabbard during the duration of his animated novel (if he even has one in the animated version).
More about the scabbard….
Top Photo: Official Reference sheet of Sasuke from Boruto The Movie. His scabbard is a dark red.
Middle Photo: Official Kishimoto Illustration of Sasuke’s scabbard during his novel. It is a dark blue/purple.
Bottom Photo: Screenshot of Sasuke mid-fight with Kinshiki in Boruto The Movie. Scabbard appears Maroon– but this is due to the overall color palette in the scene. The scabbard matches the top photo I twould be a dark red.
Now for some colors from Ikemoto, Boruto’s current artist.
This sword has a black scabbard.
Ikemoto has currently updated Sasuke with a new outfit and this probably means a new scabbard.
Conclusion: Sasuke just changes scabbards pretty often.
The sword itself is exactly the same, just with a shiny new scabbard. Makes sense, since he loves to change outfits, too.
Now….what exactly is this sword? I honestly just keep calling it Kusanagi because that’s what I’m used to, but this sword doesn’t have a name and as outline above, we have no insight as to why Sasuke chose it and replaced his previous chokuto with this one.
Let’s see what the actual Kusanagi sword looks like…
[[ Sasuke does care for Itachi absolutely more than he does for any other person.
But one of the reasons he has such a strong tie for Itachi is that his parents died when Sasuke was young (obviously we all know this,) but Itachi stayed alive.
Thus Itachi’s life means more to Sasuke emotionally– especially when Sasuke finds out the truth. Sasuke just never got the time to bond more with his parents, as they were also dealing with their own problems (Fugaku with the clan and rebellion, and Itachi; and Mikoto also wanting to help with the rebellion.)
I don’t think Sasuke would’ve bonded more to his parents as opposed to Itachi in a non-massacre scenario anyways, but it would be a less severe divide.
This isn’t saying he doesn’t care for his Mother and Father. Of course he does– they’re his parents and it’d be amazing to have them back, it’s just his feelings for Itachi are at a severe level. ]]
UchihaSavior 
