For the past few days, Haru and his two assistant directors had been arguing nonstop over which parts of the movie should stay and which should be cut.
The assistant directors Haru had hired were extremely serious and responsible. As expected of directors from the Land of Fire who had already made high-grossing films, they had their own distinct understanding of cinema. They did not give Haru, a first-time director, any face at all. Whenever it was time to argue on principle, they held nothing back.
After several days of back-and-forth discussion, the Leaf's first official film, Haru's directorial debut, Saving Genin Obito, was finally fully edited and submitted to the Land of Fire for review.
Some troublemakers always used movies as an excuse to slip jabs at important domestic figures into the story, so censorship was a necessary step. Some sensitive scenes had to be cut, or the film would never be allowed to screen.
Of course, Haru was the exception.
His movie was approved at lightning speed.
Even though the film did contain some ideologically sensitive material, the censors only had to think about how the Leaf had recently made blood run through the Land of Fire over pig iron futures.
And lately, when it came to iron mine trade, the Leaf had become a direct competitor of the country's major figures. Soon after that, Leaf ninja started visiting the estates of those same important people over and over, delivering fruit baskets.
Whether those important figures were "sick" or not, the censors knew perfectly well.
So, for the sake of their own safety, they decisively ignored all the hidden messages in the movie and approved it on the spot.
From the start of filming all the way to the end of production, the movie had already stirred up a huge buzz across the ninja world.
Directed personally by the Hokage of the strongest ninja village in the world.
The first war film ever told from a ninja's perspective.
Based on the First Great Ninja War.
A shocking technological leap: color film.
Countless trending topics had been tied to the movie, and the moment its release date was confirmed, advance tickets were sold out almost immediately.
"Hokage-sama!"
"Hokage-sama!"
"..."
Haru only had one job today.
He was taking the Leaf's top officials to the movies.
Naturally, they were all paying for their own tickets. They had to contribute to the box office of Haru's first film.
The Leaf's upper ranks were already very familiar with movies. Everyone had certain lonely moments that could not be soothed otherwise, and there were always certain special kinds of knowledge and techniques worth studying, leading men to sneak out at night to watch late-night private films.
That kind of thing was unavoidable.
Haru's movie had already become one of the hottest topics in the ninja world. Given that the Leaf's current Hokage never did anything the normal way, every ninja in the village was deeply curious about a film directed by him personally.
"Color film..."
"I really can't wait..."
The moment the opening scene began playing, the bright color visuals immediately hooked the audience.
This was a whole new technological revolution.
The ninja world had suffered under black-and-white films for long enough. If even that kind of entertainment couldn't be enjoyed properly, then what hope did life even have?
Several directors who specialized in making adult films were especially excited. To them, this was the dawn of a new age.
Haru had prepared for that long ago.
If he could not personally make money from adult films, then he would charge technology fees instead.
Any adult film wanting to use color movie technology would have to pay an extremely expensive licensing cost.
The technology for color films was in Haru's hands.
No money, no access.
Of course, once the technology spread, piracy would be inevitable. Small workshops would always find ways to get around licensing.
But every industry had its leaders.
As long as Haru controlled the major directors and publishers of adult films in each country, that was enough.
The Leaf's intelligence network was not for decoration. It had already dug up the backgrounds of all these people. Without exception, every one of them was tied to criminal activity or underground organizations.
And as the head of the ninja world's most fearsome power, Haru had no reason to be afraid of them.
Just from licensing fees alone, this would likely bring in more than a billion ryo a year in the future, and that number would only keep growing. Tens of billions or even more was practically guaranteed.
Everyone knew the two great driving forces of humanity were appetite and desire. If you claimed not to care about one of them, it usually just meant the other had not been satisfied.
Another huge stream of income.
Very soon, the movie got to the main story.
War films revolved around war.
The protagonist team stepped onto the battlefield and was immediately met with one battle after another. Fierce hand-to-hand combat, brilliant and flashy ninjutsu clashes, all of it left the audience stunned.
Compared to the total population of the ninja world, actual ninja were very rare. For most civilians, war between ninja existed only in imagination.
Even ninja from the smaller hidden villages were amazed by the ninjutsu duels in the film, because the techniques being used came from real Leaf veterans who had survived actual war.
To guarantee the movie's spectacle, Haru had even sent in several jonin to perform a truly intense combat scene.
The audience burst into cheers at the thrilling action. The bursts of light from clashing techniques were dazzling and beautiful in an almost intoxicating way.
But all of that came with a price.
What followed the battle was devastation. Corpses covered the ground. Dozens of lives had withered away in some nameless corner of the ninja world.
The ninja in the audience who had truly experienced war all wore solemn expressions. Their silence contrasted sharply with the excitement of the ordinary people around them.
The true color of war was suffering.
The story moved forward into the section where Haru had hidden his own message.
"The Cloud Village's ninja really are disgusting!"
"They wouldn't even spare children!"
"The Leaf really is different..."
The audience reacted with outrage.
The ninja in the crowd also despised the Cloud Village's behavior, though for most of them it stayed at the level of grumbling under their breath. If the same choice were truly handed to them during a mission, most of them would probably have made the same decision.
A covert mission meant risking your life at every turn. One mistake could get the entire team wiped out.
What were a few civilian lives compared to that?
But the civilians in the audience reacted with genuine emotion.
Across the ninja world, ninja casually killing civilians was already disturbingly common.
Many ordinary people had seen with their own eyes how ninja killed defenseless civilians for missions, for food, or sometimes simply for entertainment.
"The Leaf's ninja really are honorable."
"If I do business in the future, I'll go to a place like the Leaf."
Comments like that began appearing all over the ninja world.
The movie continued and soon reached its emotional climax.
Should you really abandon the comrades you lived and fought beside, all for the sake of completing a mission?
In the film, Orochimaru and Jiraiya came into conflict. Orochimaru, who was determined to finish the mission at all costs, chose to follow ninja rules and place the mission above everything else.
And then Jiraiya delivered that famous line:
"Those who break the rules and regulations are called trash, but those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash!"
The moment that line hit, the audience exploded.
The strong heroic flavor of that moment instantly made everyone project themselves onto Jiraiya.
Be a hero who saved his friends, or a tool who completed the mission.
For most people, that choice was unbelievably easy.
Even the ninja in the crowd naturally put themselves in Jiraiya's position, even though he had clearly broken ninja rules.
Of course, some people were unhappy.
The daimyo, for example, immediately sensed a dangerous undertone in that scene.
It completely opposed the ninja-as-tools ideology they had always promoted.
Pure heresy.
Punish it.
Ban the film.
But then they remembered that this was a movie personally directed by the Hokage of the Leaf, and they immediately went quiet.
Even the Land of Fire's daimyo could do nothing but keep his mouth shut.
The story quickly moved toward its ending. The remaining two-person team successfully completed the mission, helped secure victory in the war, and then the Leaf's victorious army returned home in triumph.
But the joy of victory did not last long.
A sorrowful piece of music began to play.
The screen turned blood-red, and what the audience saw next was a sea of bodies. The image shifted, enlarging into rows of memorial stones, while the ninja responsible for recording casualties mechanically wrote down one death after another, then routinely drafted letters to the families.
A wave of grief spread through the theater.
For both ninja and civilians, memories of war were always painful.
People were strange like that.
In ordinary times, they might curse ninja with the ugliest words imaginable, but when they actually saw their bodies piled up like mountains, they still felt pity from the bottom of their hearts.
A ninja's life was still a life.
If given a choice, who would really want to become an executioner?
"I heard ninja are sent to the battlefield while they're still children. Meanwhile my own kid complains every day that his allowance isn't big enough..."
"Ninja really do have miserable lives. They're treated like tools for killing and forced to sell their lives for those daimyo!"
Mission after mission, death after death.
That seemed to be the destiny of ninja. A whole lifetime used as nothing more than tools.
Maybe ninja rules were not laws that absolutely had to be obeyed after all.
In the movie, the Hokage himself had personally awarded Jiraiya the Leaf Hero Medal.
And the director of this film was the Hokage himself.
The leader of the strongest ninja village in the world had personally launched an assault on the ideology of ninja as disposable tools.
Ninja were not expendable materials meant only to carry out missions.
Especially in the Leaf.
Ever since Haru rose to power, the compensation paid to the families of fallen ninja had become the highest in the entire ninja world.
Other ruthless hidden villages still dared to skim the death compensation of their own people. Some even kept assigning missions to crippled or severely wounded ninja.
The movie ended.
Haru led the group out of the theater. The people who had come with him were all members of the Leaf's upper ranks, and the sharper ones had already started connecting the movie's message to everything Haru had done since taking power.
Hokage-sama seemed to be trying to build an entirely new path.
In the Stone Village,
Ohnoki, who had only recently become the Third Tsuchikage, entered the village theater. The Leaf's Third Hokage had personally written to him, inviting him to watch a movie.
A Hokage had really gone into filmmaking?
Puzzled, Ohnoki entered the theater and watched the whole thing.
"What a vicious move."
"Now the whole world thinks the Leaf are the good guys."
"They're digging away at the foundations of every hidden village without making a sound."
"Is the Leaf really that rich?"
"If ninja start copying this attitude and stop properly completing missions for the nobles, then how are the villages supposed to keep getting funds from the daimyo?"
Ohnoki's brows twisted into a knot.
He could not understand what the current Hokage of the Leaf was thinking.
Promoting the Leaf's positive image was easy enough to understand. If Ohnoki made a movie, he would also make sure the Stone looked heroic.
But attacking ninja-as-tools ideology, one of the core assumptions of the entire ninja world, was like looking for death on purpose.
After a massive war, every hidden village was already badly weakened. At a time like this, provoking the daimyo's bottom line was madness. Did the Leaf not want its funding anymore?
He just could not understand it.
Even after thinking it through for a long time, Ohnoki still could not figure out what gave Haru the confidence to do something like this.
In the Cloud Village,
"Bastards!"
"The Hokage of the Leaf is a damned beast!"
"To smear the Cloud Village like this!"
"They only lost one Hokage, but we lost the goodwill of the entire ninja world!"
"This is outrageous!"
The Third Raikage slammed his fist onto the table in fury. If the village were not too exhausted to fight another war, he would definitely have gone to the Leaf to settle this matter properly.
This was nothing less than open slander.
"Go. Gather people. We're making a movie too and hitting back!"
"Raikage-sama, we don't have a script..."
"Idiot. Can't you even plagiarize?"
"Just remake their movie!"
In the Sand Village,
"Kazekage-sama, the movie directed by the Third Hokage of the Leaf opened today..."
Masaka, the Third Kazekage, brushed the sand off his body while sweating profusely and using Magnet Release to sift gold dust from the desert.
"A movie?"
"Do I look like I have time for that?"
Masaka shot his subordinate a cold look.
No sense at all.
Couldn't he see that the Kazekage was busy working to support the entire village?
The whole Sand Village's economic lifeline was practically resting on his shoulders alone.
Instead of wasting time on a movie, it would be better to keep digging up gold dust. That way the village could at least buy a little more food.
The village was already this poor, and people still wanted to watch movies?
Clearly their stomachs were still too full. They needed to go hungry for a few days.
That damned environment, with sand blowing everywhere all the time. Why did the Leaf get to be so lucky, living on the most fertile land in the ninja world and already starting to pursue spiritual and cultural life?
In the Mist Village,
"The Third Hokage really is an interesting man..."
"There'll definitely be more movies like this in the future. Compared to physical attacks, attacks on the mind are far more terrifying."
Mizuto was still thinking about how to deal with a situation like this when someone began knocking urgently at his door again.
"Lord Mizuto, regarding the compensation and debts owed to the Hozuki Clan..."
"And the Yuki Clan..."
"And my Kaguya Clan..."
Ever since Mizuto took the seat of the Third Mizukage, the bloodline clans under him had been finding ways to work against him. And every single one of them wanted money.
Did they not know the Mist Village was broke right now too?
The Water Country's daimyo was a stingy miser as well!
One day I'm going to wipe out all of you bloodline clans.
Mizuto flipped out the window in a single motion.
No money meant no money.
If he could not deal with them, then he could at least hide from them.
He still needed to save what little money he could to train ninja capable of keeping those bloodline clans in check.
In a cave somewhere in the ninja world,
An old man stepped out from the shadows, his hair already more than half white.
To awaken the legendary eyes, he could feel his life force being devoured more and more by his eyes, yet even so, it was still not enough to satisfy the conditions.
"The sunlight is too bright."
"I'll go out for a walk and clear my head. The legendary eyes won't awaken in a single moment anyway."
"I wonder what the ninja world looks like right now. It's probably become another giant mess of war..."
"The Third Hokage personally directed it?"
"A movie?"
(End of Chapter)
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