You Won’t Get It If I Explain Both At The Same Time. As Your Teacher, I’m Sorry.

You won’t get it if I explain both at the same time. As your teacher, I’m sorry.

This broke me when I was a kid. Had me sobbing.

As much as we all love to tease him, Naruto’s actually real fucking smart. I do it, too, in no small part because I see a lot of myself in him. Having ADHD, growing up fighting desperately to be able to learn on even ground, with the same opportunity as my peers, and never really having exactly what Kakashi is being here. Most of us never have so much consideration into changing how instead of what is being taught. Yet, here was a well-known, beloved, and even respected character across the world doing what all teachers should do.

For context, the gif above is from one of the first scenes where Kakashi is taking Naruto’s training more directly and teaching him foundations of pieces Naruto already uses. Initially, he goes to explain this in a very direct, technical manner as he would for Sasuke or Sakura, and quickly realizes that is the wrong approach for Naruto. He then, as he will continue to do throughout training Naruto, breaks things down differently or shows him in a tangible way. Teaching him how to access the full extent of the shadow clones is a perfect example of this.

And the biggest reason it made me cry my fucking eyes out is because as he does this, there is not a single implication that he’s looking down on Naruto for needing a different approach. Not even a little.

Now, this is emotional for even more reasons, because we have a much better understanding of Naruto’s parents and a significantly better idea of what Minato was probably like as a teacher. Minato also had a brilliant student who was almost certainly ADHD, I mean we have joked about him being like Naruto since he was introduced, and in all honesty, I’m am really fucking sure that Minato understood a bit more first-hand than it would appear. We see how similar their ways of impulsive thinking are, and how absolutely unintentionally ridiculous Minato is if he isn’t focused. Kakashi being Kakashi was probably aware of these things, probably saw for himself this same example set by his teacher. In other words, Kakashi is a real good fucking teacher and has made me cry for the only reasons a teacher should ever make someone cry, which is still a very foreign experience.