Rant about the Naruto fanbase and Kakashi's character incoming: one thing that never fails to annoy me is when fans say: "even after everything he's been through Kakashi always keeps a smile on his face" or "Kakashi never complains despite everything he's been through", etc.

Kakashi is an extremely bad place spiritually and mentally, yet fans act like that's "cool" and admirable because he can smile at the same time he mentions all his friends were brutally killed on the battlefield.

Personally, I see nothing positive or admirable about smiling while you tell someone else that all the people you ever cared about are dead.

Kakashi never overcame his trauma; he stagnated in it, to the detriment of those around him. He may not have gone full-blown villain, but there are plenty of ways to hurt others around oneself without being a villain.

Smiling while telling someone that his most precious friends have all been killed in violent ways is not indicative of a healthy mindset per se. In fact, in Kakashi's case, it shows just what  and abysmally poor and unhealthy state of mind he's in.

If you're looking for some actual signs of healthy emotional catharsis, then that would be moments like these:

Those are healthy psychological responses, indicating healthy signs of emotional catharsis and healing. And yes, progressing and healing doesn't always involve smiling.

Forcing yourself to smile when you're suffering is not admirable, it's emotional repression. It seems weird to applaud unhealthy emotional repression when it's truthfully a bad and harmful thing. Yet so much of the fanbase applauds Kakashi's stoicism seemingly without realizing how Kakashi stagnating in grief stopped him from overcoming his emotional trauma and processing through his suffering in a healthy way. Kakashi's inability to cope with his trauma should be viewed with pity and concern, not admiration and praise.

If people aren't feeling okay, they shouldn't force themselves to act like they're feeling okay. That will only prolong the problem, and ultimately it will only make it difficult or near impossible for others to help them.

If anything, it's heartbreaking that Kakashi feels he has to cover up his pain with an insincere façade just because he feels it's unacceptable to express his true feelings to an apparently unforgiving public who judges expressions of sadness harshly and demands everyone shove their genuine feelings under a rug and pretend that such negativity or grief never existed at all because that's more convenient for them.

Kakashi is suffering from PTSD, possible depression, a futility complex, and he's so lost in the past that it's become crippling and damaging to his current life and relationships. Kakashi soaks in his grief over his deceased friends while repeatedly rebuffing potential friendships with people such as Guy, Asuma, Kurenai, Team 7, and several others who were reaching out to him, trying to offer Kakashi human connection and friendship. Instead of embracing and welcoming these connections, Kakashi repeatedly slaps them away. Generally, Kakashi was emotionally cut off from most people because of his unhealthy depression and because he chose to be.

Him smiling when he's miserable and struggling psychologically isn't admirable or "cool", it's tragic and heartbreaking. So why glorify emotional trauma and unhealthy psychological mindsets like it's a desirable standard? We might as well glorify Sasuke and Gaara as the epitome of psychological health if we're setting the bar that low. No one should want to be the unhealthy psychological wreck that Kakashi is, nor does Kakashi deserve to be praised or idolized for it.

As for my issue with the "he never complains" sentiment that Kakashi fans frequently gush: This claim seemingly contains a hidden agenda behind it, because bizarrely Kakashi is the only character in the entire series that repeatedly gets praised for never complaining. Which means, evidently, that there are Naruto characters, or at least one (and I am pretty sure I know exactly which one Kakashi fans are criticizing), who are extremely whiny by Kakashi fans standards, because every praise that Kakashi isn't whiny implies that someone in the Naruto-verse is very whiny and immature.

It's weird, because as far as I'm aware, there aren't any characters in Naruto who are particularly whiny, and I don't really recall any of them whining about how rough of lives they had. They mention they had rough lives, and some of them might have undesirable traits that developed in reaponse to their trauma or misfortunes, like being bratty, arrogant, cruel, or mean, or they might resort to committing terrible deeds as a result of the traumatic experiences they had (which is different from being whiny in my opinion). But whiny? I don't recall a Naruto character that is whiny. Naruto, Neji, Gaara, Nagato, Obito, Madara, Rock Lee, Sasuke, Haku, Tsunade and many others explained or discussed their suffering, but I wouldn't describe any of these characters as whiny.

Telling others that you are suffering is a very different thing from complaining. Expressing your suffering to others is a good thing (and expressing pain is considerably different from whining about it); bottling up your suffering and hiding your pain is bad. People can't help you unless they know what the problem is, and they can't know what the problem is unless one speaks up and identifies it. Trying to pretend your life is awesome or perfect when you're feeling totally miserable isn't helpful. Hiding pain isn't heroism; it's often selfish foolishness.

It's okay to admit you're not okay, you're miserable, you're messed up, and you need help from others (and admittedly, there are both mature and immature ways to do this). It's better to do so than to pretend otherwise. Being messed up means being human; unfortunately people are messy and it's who we are. It's just not okay to stay that way. Continuing to bluster that things are okay when they aren't makes things harder for the people around you. It's better to openly admit where you need help and be honest with what you're suffering or struggling through.

After all, why should people force themselves to pretend to be cheerful if they aren't feeling that? Cheerfulness and happiness should be a natural expression of what one is feeling, just like sadness should also be a natural expression of what one is feeling. I see no reason why humans should view it as "admirable" to lie about their emotional state and cover up their pain. Sometimes, sadness needs to be expressed and addressed and dealt with, not just ignored and left to fester.

And I'm not advocating immature whininess or griping about everything (and I'll also clarify here that sadness and grief is a lot different than anger and outrage) and I'm not saying that everyone should immaturely and rudely spew their problems out to everyone either - but it's okay to express what you're feeling and what problems you're working through at the moment, so long as you're not clinging to your negative emotions and actually want to work through them instead of soaking in them forever.

So for the life of me I cannot understand why Kakashi's inability to cope with trauma and his unhealthy emotional repression has become so admired and even considered role model behavior...which I personally find concerning.

Additionally, I object to the claim that Kakashi "never complains". Kakashi said on multiple moments that his life was a harder than the next generation; he even told Sasuke that things were worse in his day, and that's "complaining" as much as anyone. Like everyone else in the series, Kakashi expressed that his life was hard and full of suffering, because it was.

Furthermore, being angry at the injustices of the world isn't whiny. Anger can be a good thing in the right context when the anger is justified and isn't wildly and destructively out of control. Some things people should be angry about. Anger is an emotion that triggers us to act and moves us to work towards change. Anger can help us identify the injustices of the world and give us the energy and motivation to change our circumstances for the better or fight against unfairness.

Problem is that in the overwhelming majority of cases, people misuse anger or get angry over silly, petty, dumb things instead of things that actually deserve anger, more hurt over bruised egos and overly fragile feelings than actual injustices. Anger often tends to override logic which leads to outrage rather than understanding and empathy. Thus why anger is typically viewed as a bad emotion, because it is an often abused emotion. But though anger is often misused, there are times when anger is valid and a good thing. It all depends on what it's for, how it's used, and whether it's truly justified, particularly since anger is such a wild and intense emotion that easily and quickly becomes very destructive and harmful, and it is easily aroused, typically far more easily than it should be. Most of the series' main villains that Kakashi is compared to (purely so fans can prove how much better Kakashi is than them) were justified in their anger at the injustice of the awful system and cycle of hatred that the shinobi world was stuck in. They were right to recognize that their world needed to be changed and fixed. What wasn't justified was their actions and the evil crimes they committed to "solve" these injustices, because their "solution" was even worse than what has come before, thus why they are villains.

Furthermore, fans act like Kakashi is Mr. Smiley because he smiled one time when mentioning that his beloved comrades were all dead. There were dozens of other times when Kakashi was visibly depressed, pessimistically musing about his grief, or crying. He frowns and looks glum often and overall, Kakashi doesn't even smile all that much.

Yet the fanbase still says things like this:

Kakashi is an emotional wreck just as much as any other character in the series. We might as well pat Eeyore on the back for how optimistic and happy-go-lucky he is all the time for every time someone praises Kakashi for apparently "always smiling". I must be watching a completely different Kakashi, because the "always smiling, never shows depression" Kakashi is not at all who Kakashi Hatake is. Kakashi was depressed a lot, he muses about it often, and he's blunt about expressing his pain ("complaining" and "whining" about his pain, as I guess fans would say).

In Kakashi's case, he has plenty to cry about, so it's okay if he feels sad about the deaths of his friends, and it's okay if he shows that he's sad about his friends.

One might even say that thematically, Kakashi's forced smile in this scene stands as a warning against the dangers of emotional repression, against trying to pretend everything's okay when it's not, putting on a façade of fake cheerfulness when it's nothing but miserable death and agony inside.

After all, if Kakashi would've been honest with Sasuke about his feelings and explained how devastated he was after his friends died, that would've likely reached Sasuke better than Kakashi's aloof and stoic lecture did. Kakashi's fake smile was a turn-off for Sasuke that pushed Sasuke away. Had Kakashi instead been totally honest with his feelings, it might have deepened his relationship to Sasuke. But because of his stoic "force-myself-to-pretend-I'm-not-miserable" smile, it pushed Sasuke away instead, leading to Sasuke deserting and ultimately resenting his former sensei. So one might say the story contains a warning about stoicism and lying about one's emotions like Kakashi did, seeing how that caused more harm than good in Kakashi's relationship. And Kakashi isn't the only one at fault for this: Naruto, Sasuke, and even at times Sakura hide their true feelings and thoughts from each other, and all that secrecy contributes to hurting their relationships with each other because of all the misunderstandings it creates between them. If everyone on Team 7 had just been honest and open with each other about their feelings instead, things would have ended up very differently for Team 7 and gone far more smoothly.

Through his stories, Kishimoto often focused on the difficulties and challenges of human connection and how hard human relationships are to navigate and how much work and effort bonds with others require and how sharing feelings with others isn't so easy, so it's no surprise that tucked into the story of Naruto is a commentary about the dangers of emotionally "lying" like Kakashi does here with his smile that is forced as a façade for the public, not telling the true story of what's in his heart. Because of his insincerity and him holding Sasuke at arm's length and refusing to let Sasuke understand how he truly feels, his words fail to reach Sasuke.

I also dislike the fanbase's claims that, "Even after all he suffered through, Kakashi is the only character who never turned bad". Fans love to bring up "Madara, Sasuke, Nagato, and Obito all turned evil, but Kakashi didn't, so Kakashi is amazing".

Oh yes, because not being a criminal mass-murderer is such a high bar when it comes to morality. Why don't we give Kakashi one of Katara's prestigious "not as much as a jerk as he could have been"