Naruto Series: Obito Uchiha (ENFP)
Ne:
“You’ve seen reality. You should be able to understand… No wish can become true in this world. That’s why I’m pursuing the dream of infinite Tsukiyomi. I want to build a world where hero’s don’t have to make pitiful excuses in front of graves.”
Obito’s Ne is relatively obvious prior to his tragic “death.” Young Obito is constantly running late. He is scattered, lighthearted, and optimistic. He gets easily distracted, and always word vomits a chain of excuses from helping an old lady carrying bags to getting something in his eyes. He generally appears to lack focus. In addition, he gets caught off guard and surprised easily in battles. He seems less about action, and frequently makes comments about waiting for his Sharingan to activate so he can become strong. Upon first waking up in Madara’s lair, he is taken with a bout of paranoia, and his mind runs away with a theory that Madara is the grim reaper of the Uchiha. Madara eventually interrupts his thoughts to explain what happened. Later, after witnessing the death of Rin, whom he loved, by the hand of Kakashi, Obito loses all desire for reality and gets lost in the endless pursuit of a never-ending dream world. He doesn’t really seek vengeance, but instead a better place where Rin would still be alive and well.
Fi:
“Those who break the rules and laws are regarded as scum, but those who would abandon even one of their friends are worse than scum! I’m scum anyway, so I’m gonna choose to break the rules! If doing that somehow makes me anything less than a true shinobi, then I’ll just go an crush all of the so-called “real” shinobi!”
Young Obito’s Fi is very clear. He holds very strong beliefs and ideals that he shares readily. Obito retains certain beliefs in spite of popular opinion, like believing the White Fang was a true hero. Obito also declares that he will hold true to who he is, even if it makes him less than a true shinobi. He is the one who teaches Kakashi that those who abandon their friends are worse than scum. In fact, the entire ideology that Kakashi spouts to his students is basically stolen word-for-word from Obito. In addition, Obito refuses to obey Kakashi’s orders, and strikes out on his own to save Rin based on those Fi values. Of course, older Obito ends up jaded as a result of his tragic past. He attempts to convince Naruto to abandon his ideals, while simultaneously enforcing his own jaded ideology. Obito feels compelled to do this mainly because he recognizes part of his former self in Naruto, mainly, a shared ideology and value system. It is these ideals that allow Naruto to inevitably remind Obito of who he is, and win him back to the side of good.
Te:
“There is no such thing as peace in this world, that is reality. And reality is like this grand river, no matter how hard one tries to stop it, reality will swallow them whole and mercilessly crush…but there is one way to escape from this suffering….the Infinite Tsukiyomi…”
One can see young Obito’s weak Te through his inability to adhere to structure and retain focus. He is not very disciplined and struggles to arrive anywhere on time. Upon losing Rin, Obito begins to lean heavily on Te. He focuses on the how cold and harsh reality is. (It’s the subject of most of his rants and declarations throughout the Allied Shinobi War.) Obito becomes dark and pessimistic, and begins working with Madara to remake (Te) the world into something more ideal. During the final battle, Obito attempts to retain control of the Ten Tails and temporarily prevent Madara from performing the final ritual in an effort to make everyone know suffering, pain, and despair like he had. And, of course, tertiary Te always comes to the aid of auxiliary Fi when enforcing one’s value system, and one can easily see this harsh enforcement in Obito’s dealings with Naruto.
Si:
Obito’s inferior Si is shown after he is struck with tragedy. As mentioned briefly in the dominant Ne section, when Obito witnesses Rin’s death, he does not really seek vengeance. Instead, he strives to regain the past in the form of the infinite Tsukiyomi. He is unable to form any new dreams or hopes for the future, and essentially gives up on reality. The only thing he can bring himself to hope for is a dream world promised by Madara in which the Rin from his past will be alive and well. He focuses all his efforts on fulfilling Madara’s vision, because that is the only escape from reality that he can see. This over-dwelling on the past, and living solely to regain it is very clear inferior Si.
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Can you identify ways in which his Ne-Te manifests in terms of his battle tactics, strategies and approaches to planning? He seemed to gradually become more hasty in his actions during the war which I wonder could be his Ne-Te becoming more impatient. I wonder if hypothetically if people were to type Tobi in 2012 before his mask came off (or know he was actually Obito), would he still come across as an ENFP? You could say that even though he was stuck in Ne-Te, he was still conflicted about his Eye of the Moon Plan behind his cold, ruthless demeanour and seeing this conflict within him continuously suppressed his Fi, labelling it as ‘weak and sentimental’ which he sees in Naruto. This is why he fixate heavily on crushing Naruto’s spirit through killing off his friends, to completely silence that small doubt within him and to affirm that his plan is indeed right.
While I agree with ENFP, could you break down your thought process in how you narrowed down the other types in coming to that conclusion?
I see we finally agree on something, lol.
Well, the thing with Obito is that the majority of his actions prior to him taking off the mask can’t be counted. He was possessed by Madara’s will and by Tobi, so they were primarily driving his actions up until that point. So, Obito’s actions growing more hasty can be explained by the fact that Obito was finally in control of himself again, and he is an extroverted perceiving dominant. Once back in control, he started messing with the plan, and doing things out of order (like summoning the ten tails too soon).
It’s difficult to completely break down my thought process, but the simple answer is that I prefer to type someone off of their healthy state first, whenever possible, and then compare that type to way their unhealthy side developed (if there is an unhealthy side). Young Obito’s Fi was fairly obvious, in addition to him being an extroverted perceiving dominant. From there it was just a matter of determining which perceiving function he was using.
The other thing worth noting here is that there is only… maybe one character typing on this entire blog that is solely my logic. Otherwise, Ryan and I always discuss the characters in depth prior to one of us (or in some cases, both of us) choosing to write the article, so they’re all technically a combination of both of our thought processes.
I wouldn’t exactly say that Obito’s actions prior to taking off his mask was him being possessed by Madara’s will. Obito even when acting with the mask pretending to be Madara was still Obito. I was just wondering if you noticed anything about his approach to planning or battle that seemed Ne?
Fair enough, but the overarching plan was always Madara driven. Obito was just playing a role, and carrying out his orders the entire time. The cold calculating thing was mostly him emulating Madara. Obviously you mentioned the lack of planning which is a general extroverted perceiving dom tendency. You can actually see that even before the mask comes off… Back when he first approaches Nagato, Tobi is shocked that he’s doing it without any sort of plan. But other than the general impulsive tendencies, I can’t recall any Ne specific strategy instances. I imagine it would surface as a variety of techniques, and possibly experimenting with different techniques or strategies mid battle… I can’t really remember if Obito ever does anything like this. As I’ve said in the past though, the Naruto show as whole has very weak Ne.