itachi is more fun to think about (read, less depressing) if u just place him in a modern au where he’s finally snapped big time so he quits his job at his dad’s company and decides to be a stay at home cook or something who dresses like a granny and makes jars and jars of apricot jam.
Naruto really is such a hot mess of a concept though. Imagine if there was a story about western assassins, but they rarely do any actual assassinations and also they all have magic powers that came from space. And the entire story has this overlying theme of “Is perhaps the system wrong and corrupt?” and after the entire series telling you it is, the very last chapter is like “Nope it’s fine.” And by the end of the story it’s entire fandom has no idea what actual assassins do.
Young Kishimoto: fight the system! look at these kids fighting to the death for a corrupt elite in a symbolic recreation of how the pressure cooker systems of the Japanese school exams and the manga industry chew up and destroy youth!
Old Kishimoto, sitting on top of his pile of money and prestige: turns out the system is actually fine and you need to uh, endure