This Underrated Naruto Character Deserved So Much More
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As a worthy member of shonen’s big three, the sprawling Naruto anime treats anime fans to some truly incredible character arcs. No one will ever forget Naruto Uzumaki’s heroic rise from zero to hero as he strove to become Hokage and create an era of peace, and plenty of side characters got decent arcs alongside him, too. Sakura Haruno and Hinata Hyuga both glowed up in a big way, and Sasuke Uchiha had quite the arc as a hero turned villain turned antihero. Then there’s the matter of Neji Hyuga, who could have gotten a legendary redemption arc — but he mostly didn’t.
It’s true that Neji’s character arc did hit the most essential beats for a redemption arc — it’s not as though the Naruto anime forgot him halfway through. However, the anime did the bare mininum to give Neji an arc, and there are some serious gaps in that arc that needed to be filled, yet never were. That, combined with Neji’s rather abrupt and unsatisfying death in Naruto Shippuden, means Neji Hyuga only realized half his potential as an antagonist turned hero, and he deserves to be remembered as more than that Byakugan-wielding ninja who almost beat Naruto in the chunin exam.
Neji Hyuga’s origin story is a painful one, and it’s a grim reflection of the cruel norms that the Hyuga clan practices. The Hyuga clan rose to prominence in the Hidden Leaf Village alongside the Uchiha clan, but not even the Uchihas and their curse of hatred used the brutal means that the Hyugas did, and Neji personally paid the price for it. The Hyuga clan was divided between the esteemed main family and the branch family, with those two halves of the clan being unequal. The branch family existed only to serve and protect the main branch, and it was a matter of birth, not merit. So, roughly half of all Hyugas were born into that unfortunate role, including Neji and his father Hizashi, which inspired Neji’s bitter view of determinism and fate.
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