Itachi's problem isn't the contradictions; it's the lack of thematic glue for the said contradictions. There's nothing wrong with a contradictory character. There's nothing wrong with a muddled character. There's nothing wrong with praising that character, either. It doesn't even need to have a point, but what it needs is a stitch to tie it effectively to the narrative's themes, and Itachi fails at every turn--quite spectacularly.
He isn't a prodigy, albeit the narrative insists that he is (and I've debunked this through the manga time and time again); he isn't a good soldier, albeit the narrative insists that he is; and he isn't a good brother, albeit the narrative insists that he is. The issue isn't even the characters' insistence (why wouldn't they laud another fascist soldier among their ranks?), but narrative's; and if a narrative insists on something through its primary causal generator (Sasuke), there should be something to back this up, but there isn't any.
What's Itachi's theme, exactly? Cult of soldier? Sacrifice for family? Unsung hero? If so, why does he comically fail to illustrate all of them? And if failure was the illustration of his character, why does the narrative remain ignorant to his failures? And without any glue in sight, he just comes across as several characters pretending to be a single character; and, you know what, even that would've been fine had the narrative actually explored any of these--but it didn't!
"The point" as many call it has to be the "thematic point", not anything else; and without that, a character's very existence in the narrative becomes shaky; so Itachi Fandom can keep belching out nonsensical essays for this guy’s “absent characterization”, as Itachi’s an incomplete character (without the theme for the said concept), but they'd never be anything more than poorly penned fan-fictions, because Itachi in the manga isn't what they think him to be. In the manga, he's simply a personification of a "collection of failures" with no thematic backing; and without any of that, what am I, as a reader, supposed to do with the said "collection of failures"? Nothing, from the looks of it; and as it stands, Itachi's character amounts to the same, as well, a no-nothing character that's obfuscated as "something" at every turn; and that's what makes his character so uniquely hilarious.
