I've had a odd little brainworm recently that I thought I would share with everyone here.
The idea is basically, how would cannon Naruto change if Kishimoto wrote Hazo to be the series overarching main villain? How would Kishimoto write Hazo as the BBEG? (Hazo in this case would have the same character and character motivations, but also no doubt be given a couple dozen levels in baddass to make him a credible threat.)
The following is what I envision Cannon Naruto would probably be like if Kishimoto was forced to make Hazo the main villain of the series.
Hazo as a BBEG wouldn't even neccesarily need to be out of character, as we all know he would go ''Pretty damn far'' for his friends and family, so to turn him into a BBEG all Kishimoto would have to do is kill off all of his friends and family and have Hazo main goal then be to open up a permanent portal to the afterlife so he would NEVER lose them again.
With the neccesary fuel for the creation of this portal either being the tailed beasts or (and let me stress that Kishimoto would probably not be clever enough to think of this) Hazo takes a page out of the book of Father from
Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood and creates a sealing ritual that would suck out all the chakra of every living thing in a massive radius (Like maybe all of Fire country) this way when Hazo does his own version of shippuden's war arc, he actually has a good reason to antagonise all 5 great villages with his true goal for antagonising the 5 great villages into attacking him together is so he can have all of their forces be in range of the chakra SUCC ritual to fuel his afterlife portal.
Hazo in this version of Naruto would probably either be the same age as Naruto (as he is here in MFD) or Kishimoto would make him the masked man instead of Obito (As I'm not sure how Obito would fit into the story with Hazo being the main villain)
As a sidenote, Kishimoto's version of Keiko would in all due likelyhood not be gay as only Hirohiko Araki from JoJo's is ballsy enough to make a character like that be important (or at all for that matter) in shonen jump, and even he ended up being forced to give Anasui a impromptu sex change.
If Hazo stays the same age as Naruto then he would probably be introduced in the chunin exam arc, which would also neatly force Kishimoto to develop Yagura aka ninja Hitler more and not have him just be a massive waste of potential as a character. (Seeing as I'm pretty sure Yagura's age wasn't revealed in the wave arc, Kishimoto would also probably make him not be a literal child kage)
Hazo, Keiko and Noburi being bloodline users under Yagura's rule who are not dead would be justified by Yagura letting Hazo's parent (Hazo's would still end up dead the same way because Kishimoto is not allowed to change Hazo's character) immediate friend group (Noburi and Keiko in this case) live thanks to Hazo inventing the skywalker seal and thus being a massive asset as a sealmaster (Hazo in this case would essentialy be the equivelant of the Nazi's letting a jew that is very useful to them live ''For now'') with Hazo's loyalty being ensured by the fact Yagura has Hazo's mother as a hostage.
Hazo in this case would likely have the same (if not higher) level of ridiculous bullshit talent that Itachi and Kakashi have, but would have been held back from going to the chunin exams until now by Yagura because Yagura wanted Hazo to show up to this particular chunin exam because he knew Gaara and Naruto (and maybe Sasuke) were both going to show up to this chunin exams so he can then send in Hazo to kick both Naruto and Gaara's shit in during the chunin exam finals to humilitate both Suna and Konoha.
Alternatively Hazo has been sent to and outright won the last 5 chunin exams except everytime Yagura keeps coming up with some sort of increasingly flimsy excuse and the other 4 kage are getting real sick of his bullshit and probably starting to act real passively aggresive about it (Except for A he would just act regular aggresive)
Hazo and his team's first appearance would likely be at the same time as team Gaara's first appearance, with Hazo showing up both to scope out the ''competition'' (Naruto, Gaara and maybe Sasuke in this case) and also to unironically rescue Konohamaru from being manhandled by Kankuro because he is still the same Hazo we know and love character wise.
next we see Hazo is when Kabuto is handing out his infodump with his cue cards about all the examinees, with him talking up Hazo as really powerful while also mentioning that he is the famous inventer of the skywalker seals. (Because Kishimoto probably would either not realise that skywalkers would definitely be kept super topsecret or would realise and handwave that shit away so he can have a bunch of really cool fight scenes with Hazo messing around with his skywalker seals, this is afterall Mr. Kishi''I completely fucked up my series powerscaling so I could have cool Kajiu battles''moto)
Hazo might then confront team 7 in the forest of death during the exam's second phase resulting in team 7 fighting together against Hazo who is not at all taking them seriously, after a entire episode of Hazo essentially toying with team 7 they use some really clever shenanigans and manage to defeat Hazo! Only for it then to be revealed that they we're fighting a earth clone of Hazo the entire time. (This actually would be a pretty clever anime power flex move, so I might be giving Kishimoto to much credit to think he could come up with something like this.)
Hazo then lets them go because he still needs to humiliate them (Or more specifically Naruto and maybe Sasuke) in the actual chunin exam finals where there is a massive crowd to witness it as per Yagura's orders.
Team 7 then get jumped by Orochimaru which would probably go down the same way it did in cannon because Hazo didn't really hurt them.
the primilary tournament arc that has that really sick Rock Lee vs Gaara fight would come and go with Hazou winning against Ino, Noburi winning against Shino (hey that rhymes!) and Keiko winning against useless (sorry I meant Sakura)
The day of the Chunin exam finals then has the Konoha Crush happen which is the start of Hazo's descent into being the BBEG because for the Chunin exam finals Yagura allowed Hazo's mother Hana to come and watch, the Konoha crush the promptly occurs durring which Noburi, Keiko AND Hana are all caught in the crossfire and die. (Rest in peace!)
Hazo then immediatly betrays Kiri and skedaddles using skywalkers, while Yagura decides that the situation is FUBAR and fucks off back to Kiri until he is eventually killed offscreen by Mei like in cannon.
While Hazo spends some time being sad in the forest before deciding to go ahead with his afterlife portal plan that has him become the series BBEG.
Anyway that is roughly how I envision Kishimoto might handle Hazo's descent into being the BBEG of the series, I can't be bothered to figure out how the rest of the plot would play out, but it would probably involve shit like directional sealing nuke blast rings (to keep Hazo up to parity with the utter bullshit that is end of shippuden Naruto and Sasuke so Kishimoto can have his powerscaling ruining kajiu battles) and Hidden Heaven becoming a actual thing probably with built in super weapons to boot.
other things this might include are
-copious amounts of flashbacks of Noburi, Keiko and Hazo's mother Hana dying
-Hazo being somehow redeemed in the end and surviving into Boruto and becoming a movie producer (The joke here is that he shares a surname with legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa)
-Hazo being backstabbed at the 11th hour by black zetsu so Kaguya can show up
Anyway I'm vaguely curious what you guys would change about Naruto if Kishimoto was forced to make Hazo the main villain, as I probably put something super dumb in the text above and you're opinion might prove entertaining.
A key part of Hazou's characterization in such a scenario, I feel, would be his combination of black-and-white IFF and his total willingness to cooperate with absolutely anybody to achieve his ends.
By default you're either a prospective or assumed ally who Hazou has to struggle to not instinctively share everything with, or a prospective or assumed obstacle who Hazou immediately start planning around. It's not quite so severe in actuality, but it leads to two dynamics of BBEG Hazou that would be interesting:
- In the initial encounters with BBEG!Hazou, he's genuinely 100% earnest, open, and friendly with Naruto, because there's no bad blood between them. It could even be genuinely pulled off that Hazou seems like an ally of Naruto rather than a villain, because Hazou would be more than willing to help Naruto in many of his fights.
- One of the things that might sour relations between the two of them, though, is Hazou willingly cooperating with Naruto's current enemies. He's the sort to collaborate with Akatsuki if it gets him the resources or knowledge he needs, which would send very mixed signals to Naruto, if Hazou's fighting alongside him one minute and helping Akatsuki the next.
- Hazou wouldn't go full antagonist to Naruto without genuinely trying a dialogue with him, but if Naruto shows that his ambition and Hazou's ambition fundamentally disagree, then BBEG!Hazou would quite rapidly change attitudes to reflect the fact that Naruto is now an obstacle that must be dealt with.
I'm not quite sure it fits for Hazou to be making his afterlife portal specifically in response to the deaths of his teammates, though. It would much more befit Hazou to pursue necromancy as a matter of principle, because he is dead certain that a world in which people die and stay dead is fundamentally wrong, and giving him a personal trauma to incite that goal would make him look like he's just lashing out in response to the trauma, undermining his position and cheapening his goals.
Also worth noting is that if we're making Hazou
the main villain, then we also have to create a long-form dynamic between him and Naruto, while also paying attention to the dynamic between Naruto and Sasuke. Hazou can't be Sasuke 2.0, doing the same sorts of things as Sasuke, which means it's more appropriate to lean into Hazou's genuine altruism and positive characteristics, so as to make him a foil to Naruto along a different axis than Sasuke. Ideally, Hazou would also be a foil to Sasuke along the same axis, so that BBEG!Hazou can serve as a unifying ideological point between Naruto and Sasuke, so that despite their differences they can join forces against Hazou in the last arc with the same motives and goals and such.
One of the main questions about BBEG!Hazou in general is why he'd even be the villain of the story, given how much we've crafted him to have genuinely good goals here in mfd. There are two broad routes to take here: either Kishimoto disagrees with Hazou's goals and writes them as bad, or Naruto agrees with Hazou's goals but, reasonably or unreasonably, comes into conflict with him despite that.
The second one is hard to pull off under the assumption that Hazou is generally willing to sit down and chat with Naruto about why he thinks his goals are good, especially since we all know Hazou's good at making speeches, but even if it happened anyways it would be lame for the final conflict against the series main villain to have the MC and BBEG agree with each other and just be fighting due to some petty misunderstanding or something.
So if we're looking for reasons why Kishimoto might genuinely disagree with Hazou's goals, unfortunately the main way that might happen is deathism, in which Hazou is pushing for immortality and resurrection for everyone and Naruto decides that's actually bad. The other main option I can see, though, is Hazou and Naruto agreeing in general but Hazou being
more radical than Naruto:
Naruto wants the villages to live in peace. Hazou wants a one-world government uniting everyone so there's no-one else to war with in the first place. Naruto wants ninja to get along with each other. Hazou wants to abolish the idea of ninja entirely and replace it with something else. Hazou would be less
wrong about his ideals and more a fundamental transgression against the nature of the Naruto setting, challenging the idea that the things Naruto's trying to protect are actually good in the first place.
Hazou's epic-scale plan might be to sacrifice the ninjas of the world to open a portal to the afterlife, simultaneously enacting his necromancy ideals and clearing the path to taking over the world and molding it in his image, but the core disagreement between Hazou and Naruto would be whether the world should remain a
ninja world, or if it should cast that to the side and make something new.
