Personal Thoughts on Jiraiya, Optional Reading

The author started watching Hokage Ninja in 2007, and this year marked a full decade. Hokage Ninja could be considered the anime that got me into the medium.

Over the past ten years, I watched quite a few anime and encountered many characters who left a deep impression on me. I had been captivated by Lelouch's cool-headed wisdom; envied the Blank duo's undefeated record; looked forward to Kirito and Asuna's journey in Sword Art Online; liked Luffy's sincerity and frankness; but Jiraiya was the only one I ever loved.

Back to the point—let's talk about Jiraiya! The only character I had ever loved in all my years of watching anime.

As one of the Three Ninja, Jiraiya taught two Hokage over the course of his life, as well as the leader of Akatsuki, the largest mercenary organization in the ninja world. Of the other two, one became a "bridge to peace," while the other was the first person to threaten Obito with 600 billion Explosive Tags.

Not only that, Jiraiya was also a great writer. His Icha Icha Paradise was one of the ninja world's best-selling books, one that even an Elite Jonin like Kakashi could not put down.

By all rights, a Jiraiya like that should have been an indisputable big shot, a wealthy tycoon with money to burn.

Yet Jiraiya's life was not like that at all. He spent the latter half of his life wandering abroad, running away and searching for Orochimaru, the bond he once shared. He loved Tsunade all his life, yet he left forever just when Tsunade decided to accept him.

In Hokage Ninja, Jiraiya was always frivolous and unserious, a perverted lecher who loved peeping into women's bathhouses.

A dignified member of the Three Ninja, yet Tsunade could take him down with a packet of medicine. When he trained Naruto, he never forgot to swindle away the ramen money Naruto had painstakingly saved in his frog wallet to spend on drinks and women.

And yet, this washed-up uncle with no integrity and no bottom line had terrifying popularity. When Jiraiya died fighting the Six Paths of Pain, I still clearly remembered how people on the forums cursed Kishimoto. The passion ignited by the battle against the Six Paths of Pain was extinguished in an instant.

One was the stereotypical washed-up uncle; the other, one of the legendary Three Ninja. When those two images overlapped, they became Jiraiya. He used his entire life to tell one story—The Tale of the Gallant Jiraiya!

For a ninja, how one lived did not matter; how one died was what mattered most. The value of a ninja's life was not determined by how they lived, but by what they accomplished before death.

Was Jiraiya's death meaningful? He could clearly have chosen to leave after confirming the Six Paths of Pain's intelligence, so why did he insist on fighting to the death? To put it another way, was Jiraiya's life a success?

Jiraiya's life was full of regrets, yet it was also a success.

Jiraiya's life was inextricably linked to the Child of Prophecy. The reason he did not choose to leave even after gathering the intelligence was because he believed Nagato was the Child of Prophecy. Nagato had strayed from the Child of Prophecy's path, and as the Child of Prophecy's guide, Jiraiya had to correct that mistake.

In his final dying moments, Jiraiya thought of the disciple whose wallet he had swindled away, whom he had taken to peep at hot springs, and whom he had kept by his side and carefully taught for two years—Naruto Uzumaki!

Two years earlier, Naruto had run into Jiraiya at a women's bathhouse. From then on, this "Pervy Sage" gave Naruto the warmth of family, something he had never experienced before.

It was precisely because Jiraiya existed that Naruto found his ninja way: "Move straight ahead and never go back on my word!" He upheld that ninja way to the very end, lived up to Jiraiya's trust, and became a ninja like the protagonist written about in Guts Ninja Legend.

Jiraiya had excellently fulfilled his duty of guiding the Child of Prophecy, and he died with peace of mind. There was no doubt that Jiraiya's life had been a success.

One last unrelated note: when the anime episode of Jiraiya's death aired, it happened to be when a childhood friend of mine went to Japan for high school. According to him, fans often smashed the windows of Kishimoto's home at the time.

Lastly, I only wrote this because of my love for Jiraiya. Thank you all for reading this far.