Many have described Kakashi as "the Sasuke who didn't give into his vengeance". But I have to wonder: who exactly do those fans think Kakashi needs to get vengeance on?

Kakashi already got vengeance for his teammates a long time ago. He killed all the shinobi responsible for Obito's death, so he got revenge for Obito, he just didn't have to wait an entire decade to get his revenge like Sasuke did because Kakashi got his revenge right away.

As for Rin, the shinobi who drove her to her death were all dead when Kakashi woke up, and Kakashi might've woken up and assumed that he'd murdered them all in a fit of rage he couldn't remember and thus avenged Rin. Otherwise he was left always wondering how Rin's killers mysteriously died while he was unconscious. Either way, her killers are dead and she is avenged. It would be weird for Kakashi to be upset and regretful for his whole life that he didn't get to kill Rin's killers himself – isn't it enough for Kakashi that the people responsible for killing his friends are all dead?

Vengeance isn't even a concern for Kakashi, neither regret that he never got it (because he did) nor the desire to avenge his comrades (because he already avenged them). So why even make a comparison to a child who had to wait an entire decade to get his revenge, when Kakashi was "lucky" that he got his vengeance right away and never had to live knowing his friends' killers were running wild and free, unchecked and unchallenged?

Sasuke and Kakashi can't be thought of as similar in this regard, because the people who killed Kakashi's loved ones are conveniently dead and Kakashi's loved ones are already conveniently avenged, whereas the person who killed Sasuke's loved ones is inconveniently not dead. Obsessing over revenge wasn't even an option available to Kakashi, so Kakashi isn't going to be obsess over doling out vengeance to people who are already dead.

Plus Sasuke and Kakashi are not the same person; they don't respond to that trauma the same way. Their experiences and their personalities are so different that their situations aren't even comparable. Completely different stories, completely different personalities, completely different outlooks, completely different cultures, completely different family structures, completely different values, completely different philosophies, completely different experiences, etc. And what does that all lead to? Completely different reactions to emotional trauma.

I also hear a lot of comments that "Kakashi is the Sasuke that didn't turn bad" or something to that effect.

No, he is not.

This is a common topic among the fanbase, but I personally find the "which character suffered the most" debates to be one of the most annoying topics plaguing the Naruto fanbase (well, one of many).

For some reason, in the Naruto fanbase, how cool your favorite character is has become dependent on how much they've suffered. I've watched fans compete for whose favorite suffered the most, because apparently the more a character suffers, the better that character is. This is stupid reasoning, and I despise the "who suffered the most" arguments (though yes, regrettably I did once participate in them but these days I try to avoid such topics). They nearly always have an agenda behind them of proving some characters "better" than others at the expense of other characters being ridiculed as lame or whiny for not suffering as much as another, being written off entirely as pathetic without any good reason.

When fans are debating which character is the best (by which they really mean which character is their personal favorite), how tragic of a backstory a character has is treated like some kind of status symbol, bizarre as it is. There's infighting about "well, that character (that I clearly don't like) didn't really have it that rough, but just look at how much my fav suffered and what a horrifically tragic life he had".

I find such discourse distasteful, inane, and bizarre. But it's become a fanbase pastime to criticize or belittle one character's behavior for "overreacting" to their trauma, while playing up another character's trauma and how "cool" or "mature" they were in response to it. Fans diminish the horrific events a character went through just to hate on a character for being childish, whiny, emo, lame, pathetic, or whatever dumb excuse fans have latched on to pretend that a character doesn't deserve empathy or sympathy when they clearly do.

As far as I'm aware, there are no whiny characters in Naruto. As for the Naruto cast, if they cry, get angry, are a jerk, are passive-aggressive, are apathetic, idly do nothing, turn evil, get majorly depressed, scream, snap, sulk, act like a brat, or whatever, I won't call their behavior admirable, but most of them had their reasons for behaving in such a way, regardless of whether their behavior is acceptable or not. Virtually all the Naruto characters suffered to some degree, and I see no need to emphasize one character's pain while belittling the pain of another character. It seems lacking in empathy, when you can easily sympathize with the hardships a character faced, even if you do hate that character.

It's very odd to view Kakashi and Sasuke's circumstances as similar, since they are nothing alike. "Your dad commits suicide and your three remaining teammates die in the line of duty" is a completely different scenario from "your brother murdered your parents and your entire race and he abusively tortured you". Genocide and ethnic annihilation at the hands of a trusted family member is quite different from a parent committing suicide coupled with losing your entire team in battle.

I'm not going to play the game of debating whose life is worse than whose, because I don't care. I'll leave that issue for fans to scrabble over somewhere else. Both backgrounds majorly suck, and they caused both Sasuke and Kakashi a lot of negative psychological trauma that neither could handle.

Sasuke developed Complex-PTSD, survivor's guilt, severe trust issues, and a bunch of other psychological issues. Meanwhile Kakashi had PTSD, a futility complex and a low internal locus of control, likely suffered from depression, and couldn't move on from his trauma for two full decades, stagnating in his grief that whole miserable duration.

Both scenarios led to wretched and miserable lives for our two heroes, and neither is an enviable position. I think after one's painful circumstances reach a certain level of horrendous trauma, it becomes pointless to pit one tragic backstory against another. They both had rough, really hard lives, and they were both traumatized because of them. But their situations were very different, and they themselves were very different, so they reacted differently, and it's annoying that fans cavalierly make faulty comparisons between the two and don't factor in individual differences. Different people respond differently to grief, yet fans don't consider how that affects a character's decisions.

There's also the "Kakashi is the better Sasuke because Kakashi didn't turn into a villain" narrative. Kakashi being a "good Sasuke" is not true, and more a "reason" to over-glorify Kakashi at the expense of hating on Sasuke. Which feels weird since Kakashi and Sasuke have nothing in common, not in personality, not in backstories, and not in the way they respond and react to the world around them. There's nothing in common. You might as well say that Neji is the "good Gaara" if you're obsessed with making empty parallels, since that's how far-off comparing Kakashi's plight with Sasuke's plight is.

I wouldn't have such a problem with the comparison game of questioning who suffered the most if it stemmed from an innocent and truly genuine interest in who had the most challenging life. But that is rarely ever the interest at the heart of these debates. It is rather a silly contest to prove which character is the best, because the fanbase has evidently decided that the worst victim is the best character (regardless of whether that is actually true or not). The Naruto fanbase has weirdly turned misery and suffering into a status symbol for ranking how great their character is. A character suffered a lot? Great character. A character hasn't suffered that much comparatively? Bad character.

To a degree, I get it. Characters who react well under pressure, stress, duress, and trauma and prove themselves emotionally stronger in the face of such trials are more admirable and praiseworthy and likeable than those who don't. The strength of a person's character is tested and revealed through trials, thus why tragic backstories or circumstances are a regular staple for the hero. Audiences find characters with rough circumstances more entertaining because they are easier to empathize with and it becomes easier to understand their reasoning and motivation.

Though I'm not sure why Kakashi is the only character who gets praised for "being the only hero to not turn evil" when there were several other Naruto characters who could have easily turned evil but chose the path of good instead, and frankly did a far more admirable and upstanding job of it than Kakashi with a far healthier mental state. Characters such as Naruto, Killer B, Hashirama, and Tsunade (though it took Tsunade a little while to get over her trauma, but she was still overall much healthier than Kakashi, mentally speaking). So why don't fans say the same thing about these characters, who changed their world for the better in dramatic ways and spent their lives helping people and never took the path of the villain?

They had cause to be bitter and to turn villain but who never traversed that dark path, yet strangely Kakashi is primarily the one who gets acknowledged and praised for it by the fanbase, even though Kakashi's psychological state was extremely unhealthy for the entire series (he doesn't reach a healthy state until Boruto), yet fans don't acknowledge the abysmally unhealthy psychological state of Kakashi's mind for some reason.

Plus to me, saying that Kakashi is heroic for not being a totally depraved villain is...a bit strange. It makes it sounds like everyone who has a rough life in the Naruto-verse should and does turn into a villain and Kakashi is the only exception. Yet we see that everyone in the ninja-verse has a rough life, not just Kakashi. Tsunade watched all of her loved ones slip from her life one by one: her grandparents, her parents, all of her teammates, her brother, and her lover. Yet fans don't give her the same praise as Kakashi, and seemingly no fans care to mention Tsunade's amazing strides in overcoming her trauma and how she changed from being ridden with trauma to recovering from her painful past and changing the world by completely revolutionizing Konoha's government. Tsunade interjected a considerably more personable, caring, and morally upstanding regime into the Leaf for the first time in decades, yet her amazing accomplishment (which benefited a ton of people, including the main characters) goes largely overlooked by the fanbase.

Aside from that, fans act like Kakashi took Obito's and Rin's deaths in stride without blinking an eye and was Smiling Sam and Konoha's goody-goody citizen of the year. That's not what happened. After Kakashi was betrayed, he became a bitter, rude jerk who was nasty to everyone. Kakashi was resentful towards his dad for abandoning him and became this heartless robot who only cared about rules, not people. Just look at this:

Clearly Kakashi is a very pleasant fellow to hang around. I'm not sure what is more charming: the way he degrades his teammates as useless burdens or the way he derogatorily refers to Obito's breeding like he's some kind of defective animal.

And as for the fanbase's claim that "Kakashi always smiles despite everything he's been through", just look at all those beautiful smiles he flashes at his team.

Sarcasm aside, it's apparent that Kakashi's unpleasant circumstances turned him into a jerk. Yet it's like Kakashi fans completely wipe Kakashi's horrendous treatment to his teammates out of their minds, forgetting how spiteful Kakashi was after his dad screwed him over and ditched the poor kid. Yet Kakashi gets praised for not being a jerk while Sasuke gets vilified for being a jerk, when the reality is that they were both jerks.

After all, if you're going to compare the two characters, it's only fair to compare 14-year-old Kakashi's persona to 12–year old or 13-year-old Sasuke, and compare Kakashi's adult self with Sasuke's adult self for a true comparison. But usually fans compare a 13-year-old boy to a 28-year-old man, and assume that both should have the same level of mental and moral maturity, which is...odd. Then fans act like it's somehow impressive that Kakashi isn't behaving like a little kid. Yes, I'm always super impressed when 30-year-olds don't act two whole decades younger than their age (I'm being sarcastic again).

When people say "Kakashi never complained about his past", well, as far as I saw, Kakashi complained about his backstory as much as everyone else. He said on multiple occasions that his life was really bad and commented how hard his past was.