"Phew—phew—"
The fierce wind rushed backward, howling past his ears. As Chiba sped onward, he occasionally glanced back, watching the exit leading to the primeval forest where Obito lay buried grow farther and farther away. He clenched his teeth slightly.
His right cheek still seemed to ache from that slap.
Faced with Rin's gaze, he had ultimately chosen to save Hirohiko and Yukina.
In that impossible choice, Rin had made the decision for him.
She had chosen Hirohiko and Yukina.
At this moment, his heart was undoubtedly heavy. As for Rin—this strong girl who had endured Iwa's repeated genjutsu interrogations without revealing a word of intelligence, who had been willing to sacrifice her own life when he endangered the village—apart from thinking, If she survived, if everything changed, then in Obito's perfect ending, she and Kakashi would become the most trusted aides by Hokage Obito's side, he could find no other words to describe her.
Honestly, judging from the original work alone, Rin was absolutely the template for the perfect woman in Japanese anime—or at least in the eyes of Japanese otaku. Delicate, gentle, quietly supporting men, she fit the image of the girl next door that Japanese otaku admired.
In his previous life, in the country where the original Naruto had been created, women's status was quite low. After marriage, they basically became housewives, constrained by men and educated into the sort of women an utterly male-dominated society wanted—women who served men. To put it somewhat inappropriately, it nearly erased the possibility of women becoming independent.
Therefore, female characters in literary works born from such a society often tended to become male appendages.
This could also be seen in many popular hot-blooded manga.
Basically, there were rarely any outstanding female characters in such manga. Men generally took the lead,