Seven Colours (Naruto)

*Blink* I think that's the problem there author-san. At no point did mama make that clear. Sure she tried to express her love, but she never once did anything beyond that to make it clear she would not murder ran. Sure we know as an audience that if she had to choose between love and her job she'd choose love, but that's because of meta logic. She never said that in character. Which she should have under the circumstances in the momo interlude. Instead of pulling a stoic tragic badass who can't communicate properly she pulled a Zelretch. Now to be fair pulling a zelretch often works out in the long run but it is still a dick move.
So the problem is there is two ways to take this one is that mama somehow learned of all her kids plans in advance and noticed she was acting out of character but never thought to question why long enough to figure out this is the result of her own fuck up, or she secretly changed her alignment from lawful to chaotic and has been trolling her kid.
Like I'll be honest with you. You seem to have a real talent for characterization because shimama has made such an impression on us that given the option between momo spending a decade and half altering her personality to play a prank on her kid or her making a careless mistake we would find the former why more believable,

 

Why are people assuming Momo is good at social? Like, she is better at it than Ran, but only a little. By the in story examples we see she talked to a school teacher about her child by ripping his eye out, failed to talk a woman out of suicide, and raised her daughter to have all the social skills of well, Ran. I highly doubt the apple fell far from the tree.

In short, I can see how a combination of Momo's low social skills and Ran's abysmal ones creating this mess. It isn't out of malice, just character flaws playing off each other.

 

I don't think the story conveys her spending years planning her disappearance. I expected Ran to defect with Karin, but faking her own death came completely out of left field. As far as I can tell, the only real reason her "dying" would be better than defecting would be to protect her mother from taking the blame. Ran knows her mom is badass, but she doesn't know that there is no Grass ANBU that could take her, and she doesn't know her mom would be leaving grass so soon (or at all). Ran wouldn't need to kill herself off and completely separate herself from Karin just to create a false identity with different abilities and travel around, doing whatever she's been planning, interspersed with weeks of vacation and plotting with Karin. Any other problems with her defecting or being alive could be resolved in a much easier fashion than burning her old life and forcing Karin to grieve for her until she gets the locket, and then still be separated for (implied) years without contact.

I think it could have gone off really well as a story if you had treated the whole thing like a tragedy of misunderstandings, a la Romeo and Juliet minus the romance. Various people's character flaws, lackluster social skills and foolish pride bouncing off each other, leading to Ran falsely believing she must sacrifice her life and happiness, along with that of her friend/sister/soulmate. But that's not the tone you use, and the epilogue makes it feel like it's all pointless, for nothing, oh well, but join us next time on Momo's Grand Adventure! Momo isn't a grandly adventuring protagonist to me, she's the sometimes adversarial parent & mentor figure who completely failed to provide her daughter with any semblance of safety and allowed her to burn away her life for nothing. Her excuse of the superman dilemma doesn't even begin to apply to the situation. Being a parent means not letting your 8-12 year old kids get into situations where they have to make superman dilemma worthy choices in the first place. And that part would be perfectly fine if the moral of the story was that Momo is a bad mom or a villain. But it's a problem if we're supposed to feel good about the ending and want to read Momo's Grand Adventures.

Hope this helps clear up the confusion. I've otherwise very much enjoyed this and your other stories, which is why I care enough to write all this out in the first place.

 

I enjoyed the epilogue, at least. Mama Shimada always struck me as somewhat inhuman. Maybe, one could say, even monstrous. Ran doesn't quite see it, but she certainly describes it. From her very first description she struck me that way, so when it turns out she's rolling with a youkai, and considers raising Ran to be a vacation, it was more of a 'ah, yeah, I can see where that came from' moment.

The fact that everyone around Ran recognizes that she's a terrifying monster, even people who just met her, Naruto and Sakura were certainly thrown the fuck off by her. Poor Karin spent, like, a year torn between existential terror from Ran's presence and a pack of asshats. There was a lot of stuff telling us that Ran is not exactly the typical genius si/oc character. Heck, even the 'Stupid Shimada Blood' fits into that, what with touhous being defined as much by what they are as who they are in many cases.

 

No wait I get it now. Everything checks out if momo thought ran being paranoid is a good thing. She's making a joke not being serious.
Took me too long to figure that out. Sorry author you straight up said that and I still didn't get it.

 

Okay just caught up, didn't know this was a thing, it kept awake all night I just had to binge the whole thing in less than 24h.
Still, first things first, I love the story, how Ran is an unreliable narrator even if some of the stuff goes right above my head, other people's impressions of her are amusing too.
I love the mother-daughter bond Ran and Momo got going, and the subtle ways they show their love for each other.
I'm still somewhat upset about the whole thing with Uzumama, but what can you do? I kind of assumed she'll die the moment she was introduced, so I'm not too hung up on it.
And finally the thing I love the most about your story Planeshunter is the relationship between Karin and Ran, I hope (you better) that they do end up together in the end, if you don't, I'll find you and hold you hostage untill you write a satisfying end to this tale. It's not my fault you got me hooked or anything, okay? Ba-baka!

 

Well, that was damn fun to read through, not really understanding everyone's complaints here but oh well. Thanks for the story Planeshunter and I look forward to the sequels, either of them!

 

It’s alright, but I’m dropping it because the SI blaming her blood every few paragraphs even jokingly has become nerve grating.