NARUTO: SASUKE RETSUDEN - UCHIHA NO MATSUEI TO TENKYUU NO HOSHIKUZU

DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

NOVEL ActionNARUTO Retsuden Series
ANIME ActionBORUTO: NARUTO NEXT GENERATIONS

REVIEWS

• 

  TheCollector00

  8/100
  An ugly work for fans love

  It is pointless to try finding good writing in material that was clearly created just for fan service.

  Note: Don't take recommendations from obsessive Sasuke fangirls, And I think I should move on from reading most bottom of barrel catalogues written work.

  Let’s jump straight into today’s review.

  Sasuke Retsuden is bad, and it becomes worse because it is a canonical, connected spin-off of the Naruto franchise.
  In metaphorical terms, the car is mediocre at best, but due to brand name, pricing, and history, it becomes worthy of standing in the trash.

  Starting with the positives:

  1. Dinosaurs
     This one is subjective, but I personally love dinosaurs, so I appreciated their inclusion regardless of whether they are out of place or breaking narrative establishment.

  2. It's tailor-made fan service.
     Do you want to see your favorite couple holding hands and helping each other over and over again?
     Do you want every fan-favorite character to be mentioned in few chapters, even if they have no real role in the story?
     Do you want puzzles and "mystery" tasks that constantly reference older, better-written lore?
     Then this weird manga is exactly what you’re looking for.

  3. Jiji’s creepy behavior and willful ignorance
     Strangely enough, this part was written decently. His actions, though creepy, felt more grounded than anything else in this work. Despite being portrayed as acting, this was the only piece of writing that had any subtlety or clarity. Good writing, I guess.

  4. All character designs fit perfectly in stories. Apparently that's a huge thing, and if you don't agree. You haven't read other Naruto spin-off novels; authors are just throwing in most of the randomness of design without a single care that character design should reflect the story's world, tone, and personality. That's why all designs in both the Sasuke Retsuden novel and manga are perfect. You can call them the most basic or literally the flattest designs, but that would be a personal bias issue, and I'm here to talk about quality.

  And that's where positives ends.

  Now for the main problems:

  The plot

  And if you take away all of the irrelevant things from the plot, it becomes three lines long: Sasuke goes undercover and finds Sakura is also there. Both won card games; find the correct hand signs to perform to get a magical cure. And done. Seriously this is the entire plot line without irrelevant information.

  It follows one of the oldest clichés in fiction: "A character falls ill, so another sets off to find a magical cure." That’s not inherently bad but depends entirely on execution.
  Unfortunately, the execution here is poor. Every single twist and turn is a convenience.

  Characters or items with key information appear out of nowhere.

  The villain has nothing to do with the story but still chooses to launch his master plan on the same day the overpowered main couple happens to be nearby. If you know two massive problems are temporarily undercover in your prison. Then why not delay your master plan of a lifetime by one or two days?

  The awful pacing can be sense in every puzzle, symbol, and riddle scenes, which are all painfully obvious and obviously there only to pass the time.

  The World-building

  Let’s be honest, the original Naruto world-building was already bad, a chaotic free-for-all where anything could happen.
  But this Sasuke Retsuden managed to trigger a selective suspension of disbelief breakdown. It's not that readers suddenly decided dinosaurs were "too unrealistic"; it's that dinosaurs clash with what the franchise’s world-building has established.

  First: Tone Clashes
  Even in a chaotic world, a story establishes a tone and genre identity. This franchise was based on magic called jutsu, power spamming battles called combat and plot convenience named cells
  Dinosaurs don’t break immersion because they’re "too weird," but because they belong to a different genre.
  So their sudden inclusion feels like the author copy-pasted them from a different story rather than integrating them into this one even though far more ridiculous things have happened before in this franchise.

  Second: Sociopolitical Dynamics
  For the first time in the franchise, the story attempts to introduce democracy and geopolitical themes such as prime minister.
  But the treatment is completely unrealistic. The author clearly has no understanding of how democratic systems work especially in the context of prisons or political leadership.
  That said, it’s ultimately irrelevant. The world-building is so carelessly written that it's not worth analyzing in depth. The author treats it as disposable filler, so I might as well too.

  Character Assassination

  When a character is written well, fans should be able to explain why, beyond just saying "he's cool."
  But here, the new author (not gonna say her name) misunderstands what made these characters likable in the first place.

  Sasuke here is reduced to a confused, overly stoic mess, apparently to set up some kind of emotional moment that doesn’t land.
  Sakura on the another is okay as ever, but tbh she is stripped of any personality beyond being a simp, as if the new author saw no writing in previous stories and no reason to develop her character.

  Maybe they thought the "cool" factor was all that mattered. Or maybe they needed Sasuke to feel confused for a certain plot twist to happen. Either way, the original nuance is gone. And that's a bad thing from storytelling perspective.

  What makes it more frustrating is that the original author (Kishimoto) was involved. So perhaps everyone else is wrong and the authors genuinely believe this is what the characters are meant to be now. Either Kishimoto want those characters to be this way or ....
  Who knows? Maybe we’ll never really understand what they were thinking.

  Romance Writing

  There are only very few yet simple rules in writing romance: one of them is it must have an emotional throughline and build toward an optimistic or emotionally satisfying conclusion.

  So what does this story do instead?

  We get a one-sided effort in a married couple, where the emotional thread is just Sasuke feeling confused about whether he even made the right choice in marriage.
  And the “development” ends with him merely tolerating or re-accepting his family. That’s not romance. That’s reluctant responsibility dressed up as growth.
  THAT'S NOT HOW YOU WRITE ROMANCE.
  There’s no chemistry, no mutual emotional progression, and no payoff. The relationship lacks warmth, tension, and intimacy—all the things that define a well-written romantic arc.
  It feels like the author had no genuine interest in writing romance but included the couple just to check off a box for fans.

  The Conflict

  How to put this… The author sacrifices common sense and narrative integrity just to shove in more fan service.

  When you’re writing about overpowered characters, you need skill. You need tension, clever setups, moral dilemmas, or strategic disadvantages.
  But here, we have two of the strongest characters on the planet. One of them can teleport and shapeshift, and the other is basically a living weapon. Why not let's make them do the classic "almost got caught during disguise as messenger" and "save our enemies first"? Who's idea was that?

  The villain? (I seriously forgot his name.) He has no presence, no power, and no relevance. He’s so far beneath the any character and
  He exists solely to create fake tension and meaningless detours, like characters getting “captured” in ways that defy logic.

  And if that wasn’t enough, apparently the elite ninjas of Konoha, who are trained, tactical, and supposedly mission-focused, start prioritizing random animal lives mid-mission because… why not?
  It’s not an emotional beat. It’s just sloppy, irrational writing to delay the plot.

  The bottom line: a weak villain makes for a weak story, and this villain couldn’t challenge a background character from a filler arc, let alone the main cast.

  Final Thoughts

  This story is horribly written, there are payoffs when there is no setup and there are poor setups with extra dramatic payoffs. The entire storyline is just dragged around by poor writing choices or plot convenience called coincidences but what makes it worse is that it's not a stand-alone piece.
  It’s a canonical spin-off attached to a massive franchise with years of established lore, character development, and fan expectations.
  Instead of elevating the story, this spin-off drags the entire brand’s credibility into the dirt.

  It’s filled with shallow callbacks, character assassination, lazy writing, and fan service so forced it feels like parody.
  When you build something on a strong foundation but add garbage on top, you’re not continuing the legacy; you’re ruining both.

  Conclusion:

  Sasuke Retsuden is bad and It becomes worse because it's official canon. And it becomes insulting

  Unless you're one of those fans who will watch their favorite couple do literally anything, no matter how boring or out-of-character, this is not worth your time.

  Continue on AniList

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