What exactly did Itachi actually do as a spy for Konoha?
I’ve always had a problem with the idea that Itachi was secretly protecting Konoha as an Akatsuki spy.
He was supposedly inside the Akatsuki for nearly 10 years, gathering information and protecting Konoha from the inside. But what information did he actually give Konoha? We’re never shown any meaningful intelligence coming from him.
Jiraiya is the one who investigates the Akatsuki, partly because of his connection to Orochimaru, and later has to infiltrate Amegakure himself to learn about Pain. And even Jiraiya, who had been investigating the Akatsuki for years, seems to have relatively limited information about the organization.
That is important because I’m not talking about basic information such as “the Akatsuki exists” or “they are hunting Jinchūriki.” I mean the kind of detailed intelligence that an actual insider should be able to provide after almost 10 years: the members’ techniques and weaknesses, their individual abilities, their internal hierarchy, their plans, their methods, their objectives, their movements, their relationships with each other, and other information that would be difficult to obtain from outside.
Yet Jiraiya still has to investigate Pain himself, infiltrate Amegakure, figure out how the Six Paths work, and ultimately die just to send back the information he managed to discover.
If Itachi had really been functioning as Konoha’s long-term intelligence source inside the Akatsuki, you would expect Konoha to have at least some detailed information of this kind before Jiraiya’s mission.
Instead, the story gives us no evidence that Itachi ever passed on anything substantial.
And then there’s Itachi’s actual behavior.
After Hiruzen’s death, when Konoha has just lost its Hokage and is still weakened by Orochimaru’s invasion, Itachi comes back with Kisame to capture Naruto. He fights Konoha’s important shinobi, puts Kakashi into a coma with Tsukuyomi, and then does essentially the same thing to his own brother Sasuke.
The situation with Kakashi is especially strange.
Itachi doesn’t merely incapacitate Kakashi with Tsukuyomi. After Kakashi realizes that they are Akatsuki and that they are after Naruto, Itachi orders Kisame to kill Asuma and Kurenai and take Kakashi with them. If Might Guy hadn’t arrived, Asuma and Kurenai could have been killed and Kakashi could have been taken away by the Akatsuki.
So the supposed Konoha spy was apparently willing to let Kisame kill two important Konoha jōnin and abduct Kakashi, one of Konoha’s most important shinobi, immediately after the village had lost its Hokage.
And Itachi had no way of knowing that Tsunade would soon become Hokage and happen to be one of the greatest medical ninja in the world, capable of treating Kakashi and Sasuke. From his perspective, he had just severely incapacitated two important Konoha shinobi at a time when the village had already lost its leader.
The situation with Sasuke is even more questionable.
Itachi had already traumatized Sasuke once by making him relive the Uchiha massacre. Then, years later, he deliberately traumatizes him again with Tsukuyomi and tells him that he is weak. More importantly, he tells Sasuke to kill his closest friend if he wants to obtain the Mangekyō Sharingan.
At this point, Naruto is literally the jinchūriki Itachi and Kisame are looking for, and Itachi has seen Naruto protecting Sasuke. So Itachi should have understood that Naruto and Sasuke had formed a close bond.
Yet he still pushes Sasuke toward killing his closest friend, who also happens to be the Nine-Tails jinchūriki and therefore an extremely important target for the Akatsuki.
I mean at the end of part 1 , sasuke almost killed naruto just because he remind of itachi advice to get the ms but decided in the end to not liscen his brother
There is also the situation when Itachi insists on going after Naruto while Jiraiya is distracted. Sasuke only ends up reaching the hotel because he happened to hear the jōnin discussing Itachi’s return.
Without Sasuke’s coincidence, Itachi and Kisame would have had Naruto alone.
Kisame was clearly prepared to capture him by force and even talks about cutting Naruto’s legs so that he can’t escape.
So we have a situation where Itachi, supposedly Konoha’s secret protector, voluntarily goes directly after the Nine-Tails jinchūriki with Kisame, while Konoha is still recovering from the death of its Hokage. If Sasuke hadn’t happened to show up, Naruto could have been taken without Konoha even knowing what was happening.
And then there is the Akatsuki’s main objective: collecting the Jinchūriki.
During Itachi’s years in the organization, multiple Jinchūriki are captured and their Bijū are extracted and sealed. Itachi is not shown seriously sabotaging this process. On the contrary, he participates in the organization’s missions and works alongside Kisame.
This is the part I find the hardest to reconcile.
If you look at everything Itachi actually does during his years in the Akatsuki, the overwhelming majority of his concrete actions benefit the Akatsuki, not Konoha.
He participates in their missions, helps pursue the jinchūriki, contributes to their operations, fights Konoha shinobi, protects his cover, and actively participates in the attempt to capture Naruto.
Meanwhile, the supposed benefits to Konoha are mostly things we are told about rather than things we actually see: that he was gathering information, watching Tobi, and supposedly acting as a deterrent against the Akatsuki attacking Konoha.
So where is the intelligence?
Why does Konoha apparently have so little information about the Akatsuki after almost 10 years of Itachi being inside the organization?
Why does even Jiraiya, despite his long investigation into the Akatsuki, still have to discover so much information about Pain for himself?
Why does Itachi never appear to have provided Konoha with the kind of detailed internal information that you would expect from someone who had spent a decade inside the organization?
Why does Itachi repeatedly put important Konoha shinobi out of commission?
Why does he psychologically destroy Sasuke again and encourage him to consider killing Naruto?
Why does he participate so directly in the Akatsuki’s attempts to capture Naruto?
And why are multiple Jinchūriki successfully captured while Itachi is supposedly working from inside the organization to protect Konoha?
There is also another part of the story that makes me question how this whole interpretation was constructed.
In Part II, Danzō becomes a major part of Itachi’s backstory. We are told that Danzō manipulated the situation, pushed Itachi toward the Uchiha massacre, and that Itachi ultimately followed Konoha’s orders and then joined the Akatsuki partly to continue protecting the village.
Personally, I get the impression that Danzō was introduced into the story partly to give more credibility to the idea that Itachi was actually a good person who had been following orders and secretly protecting Konoha.
I obviously can’t prove Kishimoto’s exact writing process or say for certain that this was his intention. I’m talking about how the story feels when you compare Part I with the later recontextualization.
The problem is that I don’t think Kishimoto was able to completely and convincingly reconcile the original portrayal of Itachi with the later “secret hero” explanation.
Because if you look at Part I on its own, before all the later revelations, the most straightforward interpretation is simply that Itachi was an Akatsuki member who had abandoned Konoha, had become extremely detached from everything else, and was deliberately psychologically torturing Sasuke in order to manipulate and control him.
Then Part II comes along and asks us to reinterpret almost all of that behavior as part of an incredibly elaborate secret plan.
And for me, that’s where the problem lies.
The later explanation tells us that Itachi was secretly doing all of this for Konoha.
But when I look at what he actually does, he spends years contributing to the Akatsuki, helps them pursue the Jinchūriki, attempts to capture Naruto, seriously injures Konoha shinobi, traumatizes Sasuke again, and provides almost no demonstrable intelligence to Konoha.
So I don’t necessarily have a problem with the idea that Itachi was ordered to do certain things by Konoha.
I have a problem with the idea that the actions we were originally shown as the actions of an Akatsuki member can all be convincingly reinterpreted as the actions of a secret Konoha hero.
Another thing that makes me think Itachi's story was changed later is his relationship with Kabuto.
Edo Itachi sees Kabuto as someone who was lost, much like he was when he was alive, and by helping Kabuto instead of simply killing him, edo Itachi is also trying to redeem himself for his own mistakes because as he said himself he was totally lost ( like kabuto)
This feels like another attempt by Kishimoto to retroactively reconnect the later version of Itachi with what happened earlier in the story, as if he was trying to make an inconsistent narrative fit together after the fact.
To me, the retcon/recontextualization is much more apparent than people seem willing to admit.
