Maybe it was the Naruto-and-Sasuke effect, but by the next day Team 8 had quietly started training too.
The second exam still had four days to go—but there was a third exam after that, and nobody knew exactly what to expect. Konoha's rookie squads were starting to grind.
Which, of course, meant Hanabi herself had nothing to do.
She just had to keep upping the weight on her training gear to keep growing stronger. Day to day, all she had to do was keep a low profile.
"Maybe brush up on some biology? Mm, I'll try that later."
Taking advantage of the downtime, Hanabi decided to give the audience comment section a proper once-over.
On her end, only a single day had passed. But over on the audience side, many episodes' worth of the Chūnin Exam's second test had already aired—even a dedicated sakuga fight episode. So in one day, the audience had piled up an enormous amount of comments and hot threads.
"Mm, recent hot threads. This one, huh."
[Thoughts on the main trio's archetypal origins, plus other character analysis]
"Oh? This looks interesting."
[As everyone knows, The Ninja's Path is packed with references to mythology]
[Orochimaru is very likely based on Yamata-no-Orochi—according to the legend, Kusanagi was discovered inside Yamata-no-Orochi too, which ties in with the sword Orochimaru carries]
[Naruto's mom and Kushina Shiraginu actually share their reading with Kushinada-hime, and the way Orochimaru pursues Naruto's mom mirrors the way Yamata-no-Orochi pursued Kushinada-hime. It's the same pattern]
[A lot of people think Naruto's dad is the fox spirit, and others say he's a Susanoo-no-Mikoto type—I think there's something to that]
"Terribly sorry, but 'Susanoo-no-Mikoto' is actually Uchiha Itachi~"
Hanabi could tell the analysis was well-reasoned. But unfortunately, the real world wasn't built out of those myths.
That said, this thread was generating a solid wave of buzz for her. Now that she'd been recast as a "supporting character," when Hanabi opened threads like this, she could see roughly how much they earned her, plus the post's overall influence coefficient. The bigger the coefficient, the more popular the thread, and the more it impacted her popularity gain.
This applied to this set, and would apply to every set she worked on afterward.
A shame the whole expansion into outside markets still didn't have an update. She knew it would take a long time, but the lack of news so far was honestly a little teasing.
Aha, c'mon—do something useful already, Aha!
Hanabi kept reading.
[But what I want to talk about is the OTHER main trio. Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke, and Hyuga Hanabi]
[All these names are technically kana—just phonetics—and the translations will be off in a bunch of places, so going by the Chinese alone isn't ideal. Fortunately, the analysis I'm about to do doesn't depend on that]
[Hot take first: the main trio's archetypes are actually Japan's Three Great Yokai, and Naruto's archetype is Tamamo-no-Mae]
Hanabi: ???
At first she'd thought the "hot take" would be something completely unhinged.
But she really hadn't expected this hot take to be… an actually outrageous take.
Well—okay, not completely unhinged. Because the Nine-Tailed Fox and Tamamo-no-Mae are inseparable. Switch to any other set: bring up a nine-tailed fox, and "Tamamo-no-Mae" is basically guaranteed to come up.
[Japanese legend has a tradition of three great yokai, and these three line up perfectly with the ninja main trio]
[The Three Great Yokai are Shuten-doji, Tamamo-no-Mae, and Daitengu]
[Everyone already knows Tamamo-no-Mae—Tamamo-no-Mae is the nine-tailed fox, basically no dispute on that. The second the Nine-Tails showed up, I already saw people calling this]
[And in Japanese legend, Tamamo-no-Mae is the Daji who fled to Japan from China—a creature that bewitches the hearts of men. You've probably already noticed: Naruto has one very distinctive jutsu—the Sexy Technique. In-story, Naruto even used it to take down the Third Hokage. Doesn't that sound a lot like Tamamo-no-Mae bewitching the emperor?]
"This kid is kind of a genius."
Even Hanabi was dumbfounded reading the analysis.
This kid was genuinely sharp.
The level of supporting evidence was something else.
[Next up: Hyuga Hanabi]
[Honestly, before the OVA dropped, I hadn't gotten to the Three Great Yokai theory yet. But once the OVA came out, I had something to work with.]
"Ara, ara—turns out it involves me too?"
Hanabi really hadn't expected the thread to circle back to her—wait, could the fans and popularity she'd been racking up here actually be related to this?
[Of the Three Great Yokai, Shuten-doji is depicted wearing a red hakama. Look at Hanabi's favorite color of clothing—exactly, red!]
[Unlike Naruto, who already had the Nine-Tailed Fox from the start, Hanabi only obtained the power of a certain "evil god" partway into the plot]
[Before that, I'd even toyed with a theory that Hanabi might be Tamamo-no-Mae, since she likes wearing fox masks]
[But after the OVA, with Hanabi getting that new power, this theory suddenly clicked]
[Of course, someone's going to say Shuten-doji is associated with sake, and Hanabi has never touched alcohol. To which I say: minors can't legally drink (laughs). And aside from real-world law, you all surely noticed Hanabi is also a genjutsu prodigy in-story]
[Genjutsu makes people see illusions. Think about it—in the real world, what state makes a person hallucinate? Yeah—being drunk]
[So Hanabi's "sake," in essence, is the genjutsu she uses to inebriate her opponents]
[Now, Shuten-doji also has a close companion—Ibaraki-doji. And conveniently, Hanabi has a sister, Hinata, who maps onto Ibaraki-doji. Yes—the one whose arm gets cut off in the myth. Bold prediction: Hinata is definitely losing an arm at some point. Although honestly, when Hinata witnessed the Hanabi-and-Hikari scene, that already counts as her "losing an arm."]
[Side note: in some versions of the myth, Ibaraki-doji and Shuten-doji are husband and wife]
[As for Hanabi's twin swords—my guess is the names will be Dōjigiri and Onikiri, lining up with Shuten and Ibaraki]
[Finally, our Sasuke]
[Honestly, Sasuke—poor guy. A pun turned "Sasuke" into "Pillar Bro" (柱子哥), then we found out he had an older brother, so now he's downgraded to "Second Pillar Bro"]
[Sasuke maps onto Daitengu—this one's more speculative because the plot hasn't gotten there yet. But in-story, once Sasuke runs into Uchiha Madara, his powers will absolutely awaken, and he'll probably gain some extra stuff. The correspondences will become clear then—everyone can come back and necro this thread later]
[Sasuke has the Fire Style talent in-story, and Hanabi mentioned he has Lightning Style talent too, which she said he could learn from Kakashi. Among tengu, the Rai-Tengu holds the most revered rank]
[There's also another tengu—the Karasu-Tengu—the great tengu deity capable of crossing time and space. Bold prediction: Sasuke's future abilities or storyline will absolutely involve time or space]
"…Huh, this is kind of accidentally on the nose?"
Like it or not, Sasuke really does have tengu energy. His Susanoo's "Gundam" form alone is already screaming it; in the original canon, Amenotejikara is space-based; and in Boruto, Sasuke literally goes back in time.
"But that's such a good idea… mm, stealing it."
If Oda can lift ideas from Tieba, then Hanabi can lift ideas from the comments—nothing wrong with that!