Naruto is not exactly well known for making great life choices. In fact, we don’t call him a knucklehead for nothing! While he usually means well, he often gets himself, and the people around him, into sticky situations that often get people hurt or at least put them in danger.
And because he’s not very smart, he very rarely learns his lesson in these cases, usually going on to continue to make dumb mistakes later on. But just because he doesn’t learn anything doesn’t mean we can’t learn from them! Here are 10 lessons we can learn from Naruto’s mistakes.
10 Sticking Up for Someone is Always the Right Move
Naruto and Hinata’s relationship begins when they’re kids just starting ninja school, not that Naruto really remembers that. Some schoolyard bullies are picking on Hinata, and Naruto, no stranger to bullies himself, stands up for her. He’s outnumbered and outmatched, and he gets his butt thoroughly kicked.
But even though he couldn’t actually protect her, Hinata always remembers the fact that he tried, which is the beginning of her affections for him. So, the lesson here is to always try to stick up for people weaker than you, even if it doesn’t seem like a fight you can win.
9 Trust Your Instincts
On a mission to the Land of Birds with Neji and TenTen, Naruto and the team solve a mystery concerning a Cursed Warrior’s ghost, which is haunting and attacking people around the village, particularly the feudal lord residing over it. After the mission seems conveniently and neatly wrapped up with someone behind bars, Naruto feels that there might be more to it and continues to investigate.
His investigations lead to him getting captured and thrown in a dungeon, where he is attacked by the Cursed Warrior, who very clearly isn’t behind bars. Though Naruto got him locked in a dungeon, his instincts that the case wasn’t so neatly solved were right on the money.
8 People Can Change
Naruto has befriended an old man named Gennō, only to learn of his past, when he had a mission to come to Konoha and destroy it but never accomplished the task. Naruto believes that he’s come back to finish the job by blowing up the mountains behind Konoha to bury it. But we soon learn that Gennō had a son who died during an attack on his village, and Naruto reminds him of his son.
So, instead of setting explosive devices, he was actually creating a scavenger hunt for Naruto, as he used to for his son. Gennō dies following a battle with Naruto and his friends, having shown that people can learn from their mistakes and change their priorities.
7 Some Things Aren’t Meant to Be
Naruto, Hinata, and Shino go on a mission to find the bikōchū, a special bug ninjas use as a tracker, with the hopes of using it to find and bring Sasuke home. The bikōchū can follow the scent of whatever it smells first after emerging from its cocoon.
They successfully find and capture the bikōchū, but just as it’s emerging from its cocoon, Naruto farts, so the bug smells that instead of Sasuke’s headband, which they’ve brought for it to use to find Sasuke. While this is a dismaying and silly mistake, it does show that sometimes, something just isn’t meant to work that way, and they know they’ll have to bring Sasuke home through other means.
6 You Don’t Know What’s Going On with People
When Naruto meets Tsunade, he thinks she’s disrespectful to the Hokage and immediately tries to fight her, attacking her with the Rasengan that Jiraiya’s been trying to teach him. He hasn’t quite managed to learn the technique, and Tsunade, mocking him, bets him that he can’t learn it in a week, putting a precious necklace that she wears all the time on the line as part of the bet.
Shizune later explains to Naruto exactly what that necklace means to Tsunade, since it once belonged to two different people she loved who died tragically, but Naruto refuses to back down, showing a lack of empathy. We never know what’s going on in other people’s heads, and we should try to be as compassionate as possible wherever we can.
5 Spend Time with Your Family
There are lots of discussions about whether or not Naruto is actually the bad dad that Boruto makes him out to be. Because we’re seeing the relationship from Boruto’s perspective, it’s possible that Naruto is just disappointing him and doesn’t even realize it. Regardless, Boruto clearly feels neglected by his father, who is so busy being the hokage that he’s rarely home to spend time with his family.
He even goes so far as to make shadow clones to spend time with them in his place, which isn’t really a substitute for seeing them himself. If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s to spend time with your family whenever you can to protect those relationships as much as possible.
4 Know Your Strengths (and Your Weaknesses)
When we meet Rock Lee in the series, we know right away that he’s a total weirdo. And we know that he’s obsessed with Sakura. The first thing he does is challenge Sasuke to a duel for Sakura’s affections. Naruto, not wanting to be outdone and jealous that no one is challenging him to a duel, attacks Lee before he and Sasuke can even face off. Rock Lee thoroughly dispatches him, barely breaking a sweat.
This isn’t the only time Naruto bites off more than he can chew, but hopefully, we can learn from this that we have strengths and weaknesses, and we should know when to break them out.
3 Don’t Let Your Friends Go At It Alone
On a mission to find buried treasure, Hinata hurts her leg, and Naruto decides to stay with her outside of the cave while Kiba goes in alone to find what they’re after. Naruto and Hinata get attacked by ninjas with the ability to change their faces and voices to match another person’s.
Kiba is caught off-guard inside the cave when these ninjas, posing as his friends, come to join him in the cave, attacking him while his back is turned since he’s not expecting it. We can learn from this that the friend who isn’t in the cave is probably the safest, and we shouldn’t let our friends do dangerous things without backup.
2 Some People Don’t Want to Be Saved
One of the biggest moments of Naruto is the epic battle between Sasuke and Naruto, as Naruto tries to bring Sasuke home to the Leaf Village by force after he runs away. The battle is nasty, with strong words and stronger blows exchanged between these former best friends. In the end, Naruto loses the battle because there are limits to what he’s willing to do to hurt Sasuke.
This battle doesn’t stop him from trying to find and bring Sasuke home, but we can learn from it that some people aren’t willing to be saved and don’t want to stay friends. Pursuing them isn’t healthy for anyone.
1 Fighting Isn’t Always the Answer
Naruto and just about everyone he knows is a ninja. It’s part of the deal growing up in a ninja village. That means that for the most part, they solve their problems by fighting each other about them. Sasuke and Naruto’s final confrontation is no different, and they go to it with even more aggression than in their initial battle.
Each man even loses a limb in the process before they finally realize that they’re pretty evenly matched and find a different way to resolve their issues. Most of the time, it just takes a moment of talking it out to solve problems, instead of throwing fists.