DYK. I should mention that this is my fault, not
@eaglejarl's. However, I believe my point of view is still mostly valid. This is the only time I remember this technique being used in combat, even though it's very nearly teleportation, and indeed in the link Hanzō uses it to dodge a really powerful technique. By contrast, we see a dozen ninja use it without seals or words in Episode 1 alone. Kishimoto clearly just thought it was cool.
Compare the Substitution Technique. The first time we see it, Kakashi substitutes with one of Naruto's shadow clones, causing him to believe that said clone was now Kakashi in disguise and attacking him. I invite you to ponder the implications of being able to substitute with unwilling targets.
To expand briefly and non-polemically on
@eaglejarl's post on politics, I should mention that we've consciously written the majority of characters as
far too liberal for the setting, especially Hazō himself in terms of his inner thinking process. Hazō doesn't have a racist, xenophobic, authoritarian bone in his body, despite having been born and brought up in a state where Yagura's equivalent of
Mein Kampf is required school reading, the histories are deliberately written so as to demonise the other villages, and anyone considered a foreign sympathiser is an enemy of the people and deserving of the death penalty. Oh, and 90something percent of the world's population are subhuman and have no rights, including the right to life. Yagura's Mist is both partially inspired by, and a lot worse than, Stalinist USSR.
For perspective, it took Russian state propaganda a matter of
years to convince a significant chunk of its people, probably even the majority, that the West hates Russia and wants to destroy it; that said West used mind-controlling drugs to influence the Ukrainian elections; that the instances of poisoning of prominent Russian expats in the UK are lies concocted by the enemy; that Muslims will soon take over the world due to a higher birth rate and disrespect for native laws and institutions, and so on and so forth. Even some of the most intelligent, open-minded people I know have subscribed to elements of this ideology (notably
Krym Nash, "Crimea is ours").
OK, maybe that wasn't that brief or unpolemical. But the general takeaway point is that if we were
truly simulationist about the characters' beliefs in this setting, it would be a vile place to live (reminder: at the corresponding point in RL history, women were still largely treated as property), and few if any of the people in this community would want to play in it.
