post-mission debriefing (where neji is always in the hospital)
Not you putting Neji in hospital when he is a better fighter than Shikamaru 😭
But the art is pretty
This drawing is meant to take place post-Sasuke retrieval arc, though I felt too lazy to add Shikamaru’s finger injury. Shikamaru is also a much more conservative fighter and Neji is shown to take more risks because he believes (rightfully so) that he can handle/make up for it. I would also believe, especially as a jonin, that he’d be sent on more higher stakes missions or take higher stakes roles regardless of both of their statuses. This was also referenced from my personal, unserious observation that Neji seems to always be injured/out of commission whenever important things happen to the konoha 11 in canon (atleast in the og show) 😭 So in the end, it was just my amusing musings. Thank you though! I absolutely adore Shikamaru and Neji’s characters and I can talk about them all day.
I am not attacking you,I just thought at first that you think that Neji is weak 💀
Too often in fandom I see people forgetting that Neji is literally canonically the unique genius
But I am very happy to hear your opinion! This warms my heart ;)
But you are actually very right
Neji is literally an enslaved abused and exploited orphan used as a meat shield for hinata all manga till his death :/
So yea,Neji is probably always injured and likely fights even when he is hurt,unless he is bedridden
Also Neji is the only one who works both inside his clan for main branch for free and also for the village,so double shift goes crazy
Are you a NejiShika shipper? I always see Studio Pierrot for some reason putting Neji and Shikamaru together almost on all the merch and I always wonder if that is where ship came from
I don’t judge,I myself also ship a rare pairing—NejiSasu,it is just that in my imagination Shikamaru always was a hardcore stereotypical hetero guy because of his several mysoginic jokes,especially the one about Temari after she literally saved his life
I didn’t take it as an attack, I just disagreed with what you said. I wanted to take the opportunity to discuss two of my favorite characters, Shikamaru and Neji— Neji if I had to choose one :)
The caption was meant to be mostly humorous— I don’t think being injured constantly is special to him, but commonplace with shinobi of his level. It’s just especially obvious next to Shikamaru, who, like I said, is a much more conservative fighter (which brings him value as a leader) and who’s safety is prioritized over others as their strategist (as emphasized by Asuma).
Canon, unfortunately, also has never been explicit about the working dynamics within the Hyuga clan. It’s never been clear the kind of work Neji may or may not have under the head family outside of training Hinata.
If you mean whether or not I ship Shikamaru and Neji, yes, it was in the tags :) if you mean the dynamic NejiShika vs ShikaNeji— I personally do not care and I don’t think they would either. While it is extremely delightful as a shipper to see them always beside each other in official art, I believe there was a thought process behind this. During the Sasuke Retrieval Mission, Shikamaru and Neji were prominent side characters that played similarly important roles within the arc. Secondly, they both have neutral, earthy color palettes (and other complimentary features) that are easy to pair up for the sake of composition.
It actually wasn’t the official art that made me ship them, though— with how I binged Naruto, I barely saw any before I started slowing down post Season 5 😭. It was watching the Sasuke Retrieval Mission and witnessing how well they played off of each other, how seamless their teamwork, and how strong their field chemistry was that did. It’s easy to brush off their dynamic as “two smart characters getting along”, but I think it’s more than that.
That is amazing! I never saw such a deep perspective on NejiShika as a pairing,but you draw them beautifully and write about them very interesting.
Seriously,it’s great!
Now you made me think that in your AU it makes sense for Shikamaru being misogynistic if his hate comes solely from a place of his sexuality as a gay men: he dislikes women because he is not interested in them and being raised in a patriarchal society made him think that men are in deed superior to women.
I just want to add about Hyuga system:
Neji is not just hinata’s teacher and sparing partner,he is also her bodyguard.
Neji is hinata’s personal slave,hinata is a slave owner and she quite literally owns and uses him as her possession.
Neji was gifted to hinata on her 3rd birthday as a special personal slave,the same dynamic as in between Hizashi and hiashi.
Having a literal torture device on his forehead what can kill him any minute,Neji and Ko & all other side Hyuga branch members do whatever main branch members: hinata,hiashi,hanabi and hiashi’s father; tell them to do.
There is no choice except to obey or to die in torture and to watch your loved ones being also tortured to punish you and to set an example for other slaves.
Shikamaru for this is a nice proof himself because he is also a child of clanhead: the only son & kid of the Nara clanhead and unlike hinata,who lost her status as a heir to hanabi when she was 12, Shikamaru is the real,one and only heir.
Yet we don’t see Shikamaru getting special treatment anywhere,not even in his own clan: he doesn’t have bodyguards like hinata does and nobody calls Shikamaru -sama when he is just still a teen / a child.
It is clear that even if we compare hinata to other children of clan heads like Shikamaru,Ino,Choji, Kiba,Shino,Sasuke,Itachi,Gaara, Temari,Kankuro—nobody is getting the same privileged treatment inside of their own clans and villages.
I also never thought that Neji and Shikamaru being put together on official Studio Pierrot arts is because they have similar patterns,I guess I just never noticed that they have similar colours in their designs.
Also,if I am not mistaken,Shikamaru is also a jonin,isn’t he?
And in my personal opinion Shikamaru is the real Hokage while Naruto is just a cover up: Uzumaki can fight thanks to sheer volume of gifted to him Ashura’s and Kurama’s chakra but as a leader and a politician he is lacking.
Thank you so much! I do think they have great potential to even just be friends in canon. Shikamaru needs another shogi partner and while Neji wouldn’t beat him, Shikamaru would atleast have fun 😭.
Now, I don’t think Shikamaru is gay either. I believe he is attracted to women and might even prefer women. I think his opinion was informed a lot by the time period (based off the 90s) and the women he grew up around, namely: Yoshino, Ino and Sakura. They’re all very assertive and it clashed against his lazy personality. He also just, self admittedly, doesn’t understand women 😭. To a guy like him that’s all about logic, it’d bother him extra that he doesn’t understand them. My personal hot take is that Neji’s internalized misogyny is arguably worse than Shikamaru’s, but this is based off of a comment he made earlier on during the Chunin Exams like, once.
More reason to believe Shikamaru is attracted to women, I think a lot of his dynamic with Temari could be borrowed for his dynamic with Neji. I think he’d be attracted to Neji for a lot of the same things (smart hardass with a nice smile).
I am aware the owner-slave dynamics within the Hyuga Clan, I was talking more about work conditions for them. We don’t know if Neji does any manual labor or any other kind of work consistently for them, and him being Hinata’s bodyguard doesn’t seem to be a strict arrangement as A) they aren’t on the same team (and the Hyugas definitely have the power to make that true if they want to) and B) he isn’t with her all the time. We don’t know if this is because of Hinata, or that the agreement is a general “protect the head family” sort of thing. They seem to be okay letting Neji go off and do shinobi work, but we also don’t know if this is because the Hyugas are a shinobi clan so they respect that, or if Hiashi personally is okay with it, or if Hinata asked Hiashi to let Neji do these things. To reiterate, we don’t know a lot. Which is a shame, because the Hyugas are such an interesting clan to explore with so much potential for storytelling but never was.
