Thread: Konan's role in Akatsuki

As the last few chapters have shown Konan is perfectly fine with having her past told to Naruto (Jiraiya's last student). It's gotten me thinking about what her role is in Akatsuki and if she truly believes in the organizations goals.

Seeing her benevolence in her few tiles makes me think that she's only in Akatsuki because Nagato is in Akatsuki. She's helping Nagato with his goals and has become his true bodies caretaker when he's using his Six Paths jutsu. In fact we have seen her doing absolute shit to further Akatsuki's goals outside of helping seal bijuus when they're caught.

Then you have the fact that she got completely owned by Jiraiya in their fight. Makes me think she didn't even want to fight him at all.

Now I think when the three of them were leading the rebels during the shinobi war, I think she whole-heartedly believed in Nagato's and Yahiko's cause. Now she's just going along with Nagato because he's the last person that she feels any closeness too. And like a good shinobi she's following his orders because she doesn't want to ostracize herself to him, not because she likes the goals of Akatsuki.

So her role was to be Nagato's real body's minder/bodygaurd and as a watcher of the Ame village.

Now that there is a chance of Nagato dieing soon, I think there she's going to defect to help Jiraiya's student make his hopes of peace a reality.

Originally Posted by metrobluejay

As the last few chapters have shown Konan is perfectly fine with having her past told to Naruto (Jiraiya's last student). It's gotten me thinking about what her role is in Akatsuki and if she truly believes in the organizations goals.

Seeing her benevolence in her few tiles makes me think that she's only in Akatsuki because Nagato is in Akatsuki. She's helping Nagato with his goals and has become his true bodies caretaker when he's using his Six Paths jutsu. In fact we have seen her doing absolute shit to further Akatsuki's goals outside of helping seal bijuus when they're caught.

Then you have the fact that she got completely owned by Jiraiya in their fight. Makes me think she didn't even want to fight him at all.

Now I think when the three of them were leading the rebels during the shinobi war, I think she whole-heartedly believed in Nagato's and Yahiko's cause. Now she's just going along with Nagato because he's the last person that she feels any closeness too. And like a good shinobi she's following his orders because she doesn't want to ostracize herself to him, not because she likes the goals of Akatsuki.

So her role was to be Nagato's real body's minder/bodygaurd and as a watcher of the Ame village.

Now that there is a chance of Nagato dieing soon, I think there she's going to defect to help Jiraiya's student make his hopes of peace a reality.

That seems quite likely. As you say, from what has been shown of Konan so far she really seems more concerned about Nagato than she does about Akatsuki. She was obviously very close to Yahiko (he died for her after all) as well and since he passed his mission on to Nagato she most likely sees it as her responsibility to protect that mission. Nagato now embodies both himself and Yahiko, not just physically but also in terms of what they were fighting for. Yahiko died to protect Konan and now I believe she sees protecting Nagato as a way of paying him back for his sacrifice (on top of being deeply connected to Nagato as well). Since Yahiko made Nagato the new leader of their group and put his trust in him, I think Konan feels that by serving Nagato she is serving Yahiko as well. That makes Nagato's already singificant influence that much stronger.

If Nagato does die, it will be interesting to see what Konan will do. I don't think she really cares about Akatsuki enough to go back to them but then again his death may give her the very reason she needs to recommit herself to their cause, this time in a more active way. As you mentioned though, she may also see Nagato pass his will on to Naruto the same way Yahiko passed his on to Nagato and thus commit herself to helping him. It is hard to say but I am interested to see how it will play out.

I think that Konan isn't really in Akatsuki to further the goal of taking over the ninja world. She is, however, in it because, as you guys already said, she is providing support for Nagato spiritually, emotionally and the most obvious physically (being Nagato's nurse).

However, if Nagato dies, Konan will have one of the highest position a ninja could have in the ninja world: that of -kage. We all know that Pain is the leader of Amegakure, and that no one in Amegakure truly knows who Pain is (I doubt Amegakure ninja have figured out that the seemingly disabled Nagato is, in fact, Pain). However, everyone in Amegakure knows that Konan is "God's Angel", with "God" being Pain. Should Nagato die, Pain will go along with him, and all that would remain will be "God's Angel". She has always been the liaison officer between the village and Pain, and that her words are the words of "God", so if events would lead to the demise of Nagato, Konan can take over and rally Amegakure's forces in the name of "God".

Then you have the fact that she got completely owned by Jiraiya in their fight. Makes me think she didn't even want to fight him at all.

Don´t count on it, Naruto´s women in general are completely worthless even in Shonen standards, Konan had her mind set on killing Jiraya, that much was certain and she was hellbent on perpetuating the "Divine" vibe they had going on in the Rain Village with Pain being treated as a God and her the Angel.

Thing is, she´s a woman in Naruto, so she literally got defeated in 2 pages. It´s the sad truth and one of the greatest flaws in the Naruto manga. Wasted potential, especially when it comes to it's female characters.

Originally Posted by metrobluejay

Now I think when the three of them were leading the rebels during the shinobi war, I think she whole-heartedly believed in Nagato's and Yahiko's cause. Now she's just going along with Nagato because he's the last person that she feels any closeness too. And like a good shinobi she's following his orders because she doesn't want to ostracize herself to him, not because she likes the goals of Akatsuki.

I think you´re forgetting that Konan suffered the exact same past as Nagato and that she shares the same views of Peace and Justice, or lack of those, that Nagato has; More so even, as she tried to tell Nagato to stop conversing with Naruto several times when he proposed to stop fighting and start talking.

Originally Posted by metrobluejay

Now that there is a chance of Nagato dieing soon, I think there she's going to defect to help Jiraiya's student make his hopes of peace a reality.

Well, since Nagato pretty much just defected from Akatsuki in the last chapter, there´s a massive probability of her doing the same, they´ve been together since they were little kids and it´s not now that she´s going to change. don´t know if she´ll join up with Konoha per se but i doubt that she´ll stay with Akatsuki from now on.

Hell, if Nagato dies, he´ll probably have some instructions for her or something.

Frankly, Konan's role in Akatsuki was little more than Nagato's bitch. She has no actual personality or character of her own and has done pretty much bugger-all. If Kishimoto actually wants to surprise us by giving her some character, he should make her refuse Nagato's order to assist Naruto when he's dead because she thinks Naruto has caused Nagato to stray from his ideals, that she genuinely believes in even more than he does. But of course, that's not going to happen.

Her power is nothing spectacular, although losing to Jiraiya is no great shame since Jiraiya was EXTREMELY powerful. It's not like Konan is even expected to be anywhere near as powerful as Pain since Pain was supposedly the most powerful shinobi the series had seen up to this point (it's going to be interesting to see how Madara manages to top him- in my belief he won't be able to convincingly, given that he was even afraid of Itachi).

While I don't think that Madara is as capable of as much destruction as Pain/Nagato, I do think that he will be the hardest of the remaining Akatsuki members to kill.

It's hard to see anyone be able to take him out at this point because of he shrugged off the greatest fire jutsu in the story and hasn't been able to be hit yet.

He feared Itachi because Itachi was probably getting to be just as efficient at using his eyes as Madara was, which Sasuke is still a long ways off of.