Naruto Chapter 498 – Thank Goodness for Hot Moms

Post Author: Bob

Hello ladies and gents, it’s been a week’s wait for chapter 498, and boy was it worth it. To tell you guys the truth, I was feeling a bit anxious about this chapter because I was worried about how Kishi would portray Kushina’s personality. The safest way for him to have done it is to make Kushina act like the stereotypical soft-talking and caring mother figure — it’s corny but it gets the job done. Good thing Kishi didn’t stick to that route and fully fleshed out Kushina’s personality as it was previously described: a fiery tomboy with a quirky personality to match.

Even though this chapter was almost all just dialogue, it was one of the best Naruto chapters I have read. It was informative, heart-warming, and funny at the same time. I seriously would not mind if Kishi devoted another chapter or two just to have Naruto spend a little more time conversing with his mother. For everything our hero has had to put up with since birth, I think he deserves to have a few more precious moments with his mother. Kushina’s personality was everything I expected with just the right balance of spunk and motherly charm to make her the perfect match for Naruto’s character.

Jiraiya wasn’t kidding when he mentioned in the past that Naruto inherited a lot of her mother’s characteristics. Kushina even uses those strange suffixes to end her sentences, much similar to Naruto’s trademark “Dattebayo.” Mangastream translated her “-tte be ne” to “like”, which I thought was a good idea but has the effect of making her sound like a valley girl; you guys can decide whether that’s a good or bad thing. I liked how Kishi retained Kushina’s tomboyishness in her encounter with Naruto; Kushina probably tried to act more feminine and mother-like when she first reunited with her son, but just a few panels into their encounter Kushina smacks Naruto hard on the head — a hilarious scene. If Kushina is able to hit her son so soon like that after just meeting him, just imagine what Minato would have had to endure while dating Kushina, hahaha. I found her childhood nickname “the Bloody Habanero” very clever — Kushina was a girl that didn’t mind letting her fists do the talking; she would put some of our modern kunoichis to shame. But at the same time, I can’t help but think how similar Kushina is to Sakura, personality-wise— could this be why Naruto has had such a big crush on Sakura all these years? Maybe it’s because, subconsciously, Sakura reminded Naruto of his mother and that’s why he wanted to get her attention all the time and be closer to her. Suddenly, this has gotten a lot more Nietzschian, lol.

Aside from their personas matching so well, I think the other factor that made Naruto relate to her mother so quickly was because their age gap is relatively small. If you haven’t noticed already, the Kushina who appears in this chapter looks about the same age as the one (pregnant Kushina) which appeared in one of Jiraiya’s flashbacks. I think this is good evidence that current Kushina before us is at the same age (about mid-20s) when her chakra was sealed in with Kyuubi inside Naruto. If Kushina is still alive today (and this is not a prediction on whether she is dead or alive), she would probably be in her late 30s. But instead we get the young mother Kushina who has the energy and beauty to make her attractive to the readers: good choice Kishi.

Okay, let me stop all this Kushina-worship to actually talk about some of the information that was leaked through the telling of Kushina’s background. But first of all, I just want to say I found the Minato-rescuing-Kushina-love-at-first-sight thing as clichéd as many of you thought, but at the same time I wouldn’t want Kishi to do it any other way. Yeah, it was cheesy and oh-so-corny, but part of me kind of wishes the same thing would happen to Naruto and his soul mate (notice how I didn’t name any characters, lol). Okay, back to the more important info, there wasn’t much of anything mentioned about Kushina’s home village, Whirlpool, but she does say she ‘moved’ to Konoha instead of something like arriving as a refuge. I may be reading too much into it, but this suggests the collapse of Whirlpool country happened after Kushina came to Konoha. So why did Kushina move to Konoha in the first place? Well, I think it’s most likely due to her ‘special chakra ability’ which was demonstrated in this chapter to be able to restrain even something as powerful as Kyuubi. Notice that Kyuubi actually recognizes that the chakra binding him belongs to Kushina; this probably means that she used her powers against him in the past and may even have been instrumental in subduing the Kyuubi 13 years ago so Minato could seal him away.  This is all just speculation at this point, but perhaps Kushina was invited to Konoha to be trained and studied as her ability is similar to the First Hokage’s ability to tame the tailed beasts. This could very well mean that Kushina possessed a kekkei genkai, and you know that that means — dare I say it, Naruto may have inherited the kekkei genkei from her mother. It’s no wonder Kumogakure tried to kidnap her to use her powers themselves (it feels like the gabillionth time Kumo tried to steal one of the Leaf’s kekkei genkeis, bunch of dirty thieves); makes you wonder how Konoha can put up with these guys in the alliance. I’m really hopeful Naruto does possess some latent kekkei genkei ability which Kushina will help awaken. Akatsuki may have seven of the nine Bijuus, but it won’t matter if Naruto learns a way to suppress them like the First could.

One last thing I’ll comment on is the last scene where Kushina tells Naruto she loves him. I found it pretty heart-warming, but at the same time it reminded me of that false confession Sakura gave Naruto a while back. I’m not really a Sakura-hater, but if she were beside me right now I would push this scene and also Hinata’s confession scene into her face and shout “Do you see now!? This is how it’s done!” Sure, it’s love between a mother and her child, but it’s undeniably genuine affection. Alright, enough with this lovey-dovey stuff, show me what you guys thought about the events of this chapter in the comments. We had a mind-blowing 225+ comments last week, I think we’ll easily top it this week with this monumental chapter. (P.S. the big chapter 500 is just 2 away!)