From Savior to Scapegoat: Naruto Fans Turn on Konoha’s Most Controversial Hokage

So the Naruto crowd is reevaluating Tobirama Senju, and the vibe has flipped hard. The once untouchable Second Hokage who kept Konoha from eating itself is now getting side-eyed as one of the most morally iffy power players in Shippuden. The debate basically boils down to: necessary savior or Danzo with better optics. And honestly, both sides have receipts.

The big red flag: Edo Tensei

Let’s start with the obvious. Tobirama invented Edo Tensei, a reanimation technique that drags a dead person’s soul back and nails it into a living sacrifice’s body. He built it in a lab, called it research, and his big brother Hashirama slapped a ban on it for being, you know, a nightmare.

Powerful? Absolutely. Ethical? Not remotely. The whole thing became a franchise for villains when Orochimaru and Kabuto took it mainstream, turning the Fourth Great Ninja War into a shinobi zombie spectacle. The funniest bleak detail is that when Mu and the other dead Kage were revived, their first thought was basically: this has Tobirama written all over it. That’s how deep his reputation runs.

So yeah, he was a genius. He also, maybe accidentally, designed a war-crimes toolkit that everyone else abused.

The Uchiha problem he tried to solve (and maybe made worse)

Tobirama’s worldview wasn’t born in a vacuum. He grew up in the clan wars, lost siblings to Uchiha blades, and never got to be the idealist Hashirama was. His fix for long-term stability wasn’t kumbaya speeches; it was systems and rules. That’s how you end up with the Uchiha put in charge of the Konoha Police.

On paper, that assignment recognizes their talent for maintaining order. In practice, it fenced them off from real political power and isolated them from the rest of the village. Resentment simmered, and you know where the road leads: clan tensions, Danzo’s shadow games, and the massacre. You can draw a straight line from his pragmatic architecture to the ugliest outcomes, even if that wasn’t the intention.

What he built vs what it became

• Edo Tensei (Reanimation): initially a way to extract intel from the dead → later fueled mass resurrection warfare
• ANBU Black Ops: a secret security arm to protect the village → Danzo carved off Root and turned it into his personal black-ops squad
• Konoha Police Force: maintain peace inside the village → segregated and isolated the Uchiha from real power
• Ninja Academy: unify shinobi training → hardwired loyalty and doctrine from childhood
• Chunin Exams: fair, standardized promotions → morphed into a political stage and public spectacle

The grayest Hokage

Tobirama wasn’t a sage or a sermon guy. He backed institutions over individuals, rules over vibes. That made him incredibly effective and also permanently misunderstood. He gave Konoha its backbone and its blind spots. If the Will of Fire sometimes burned too hot, a lot of that heat came from systems he lit and left to run without enough safeguards.

Too practical to read as a hero, too loyal to write off as a villain — that’s Tobirama in one line.

Did he save the village from civil war? Yes. Did those fixes bake in cracks that never fully healed? Also yes. That’s why fans keep arguing about him: he’s the guy who kept Konoha standing and the reason it never stopped creaking.

If you want to revisit the receipts, Naruto and Naruto Shippuden are streaming on Crunchyroll.