Although Konoha's system couldn't exactly be called outdated, the village's internal hierarchy had at least become entrenched. Under these circumstances, trying to make changes from within would be extraordinarily difficult. It would be easier to overthrow it outright.
Destroying Konoha was harder than changing it. How much had Naruto changed, even after he became Hokage? And he was no ordinary ninja.
Most of those changes were superficial. They never reached the heart of the matter—they treated the symptoms, not the cause.
"Yuzuru, aren't you being a little too pessimistic?"
Shinnosuke Kohinata tugged his clothes tighter, trying to shut out the damp chill of the night air.
He'd known beforehand that Yuzuru wasn't the sort to get fired up after a single speech, but he hadn't expected such a cool response.
"This isn't pessimism. It's reality... Well, there's no need to distinguish between the two. They're the same thing."
Yuzuru touched his cheek, partly trying to steer the conversation and partly probing Shinnosuke's true intentions.
"The twenty years of peace we had seemed like a dream. It only makes the brutality of the war we're fighting now stand out all the more. Blood looks redder against pure white cloth..."
"Ninja from the great and lesser clans still have some understanding of what war means. But what about ninja from civilian families? They went to the battlefield knowing almost nothing, yet the village leadership remained indifferent..."
Shinnosuke seemed to be trying to awaken Yuzuru's empathy with this argument. But Yuzuru wasn't moved. At heart, he wasn't a civilian-born Konoha ninja.
"Civilian-born ninja and clan ninja have different understandings of war? What do you mean by that, Shinnosuke?"
Yuzuru was more interested in the practical point Shinnosuke had made. He didn't quite understand what he meant by "different."
Shinnosuke sighed and said:
"There