Headscratchers / Naruto - Other Characters

Misc

Misc

• Why do the ninjas wear sandals and not proper shoes/boots/etc. The explanation "so your feet can breathe" is just silly. wouldn't it make more sense to have shoes that afford more protection? On a related note, why do the akutski people have black nail polish? Fashion statement?
  • Naruto's initial design had him wearing boots, but it was changed because Kishimoto likes drawing toes. Take that as you will.
  • Akatsuki's leader calls himself Pain, that should answer the black nail polish question.
• Why does the Naruto CCG classify Naruto as a Lightning-element ninja? He's been classified in-story as Wind-type.
  • Someone's been playing too much Chrono Trigger?
  • He wasn't classified until long after the CCG came out. They didn't have a clue what his element might be, so the gave him the element that most closely matched his hyper personality.
    • There's also the issue of balancing the elemental natures of the cards and getting them to work well together, in cases when some characters like Sakura have no determined elemental nature, and some elements are more common than others (for example, more than a few characters have Lightning affinity, but hardly any have Earth affinity).
• When Pain asks Naruto what his solution would be to stopping unending hatred and bringing real peace, at first Naruto's speechless, then answers "I don't know". Wouldn't his typical answer be "To become Hokage and change it"? It was his answer to Neji during the Chuunin Arc, and it's what he set out to do after Haku and Zabuza died. How does Pain's situation call for an "I don't know"?
  • He's older and more experianced now, and has seen the limitations of a Hokage's power. He has, in the meantime, seen Sarutobi die ultimately a failure, having failed to stop his wayward pupil. He's seen the rise of Tsunade, and how she's been so limited in what she can do. He's spent three years with Jiraya, who has reasons for not wanting to be Hokage, which he's no doubt shared with Naruto. He obviously still wants the job, but he's been long since disillusioned about what he will be able to accomplish when he gets it- he no longer sees it as a be-all end-all "make the world perfect" position.
  • Also as Hokage, he only would have the power to change Konoha, and the clans that reside in it. Pain's question was basically "how are you going to bring about world peace?" and just like the answer of "becoming US president" is not a valid answer because, as your influence ultimately stops at the borders, so does the influence of Hokage stops at the Konoha gate.
  • I've always wondered why do they keep on the Hokage motive still. In the beginning he said he wanted to be the Hokage so everyone would respect him and acknowledge him and look up to him, doesn't a lot of people even outside Konoha already do that? He keeps striving after a title even when he has achieved all the reasons he wanted it in the first place.
    • Just because the motive has changed doesn't mean the goal has changed. Naruto wanted to become Hokage so everyone would love and respect him, but now realizes that it's by earning the love and respect of the people of the village he can become Hokage. If Naruto had somehow become Hokage with the mindset of his 12 year old self who saw the Hokage position as a reward and didn't have anyone who cared about him/he cared for, he probably would have become disillusioned and misanthropic having attained his dream without actually having anyone who cared about him, and perhaps might have gone the way of Madara or Obito. But because he managed to build bonds with everyone in the village, he doesn't want to become Hokage to earn their respect anymore, but rather because he wants to protect the people he cares for as Hokage like the previous Hokage did before him.
• Just before the Third Hokage sentences the First, Second and Orochimaru's arms into the gut of the Death God he states that it is an eternity of pain. Seeing as the Death God is supposedly impossible to escape, how does he know that being sealed with this jutsu is agony? obviously it wouldn't be pleasant; but there is simply no way for anyone to know that it inflicts an eternity of pain or an eternity of mild annoyance.
  • Can you honestly tell people that you think the interior of Death's stomach would be a GOOD place to be? It's like Hell- We might not have been there, but past references seem to think it's a bad place.
  • For that matter, how does he know that your soul actually stays in the Death God's stomach? It's not as if anybody has come back from it to explain the details. And it's not as if the Death God itself talks to anybody.
    • The Death God Seal was eventually revealed to have been developed by the Uzumaki clan and studied extensively by the 4th Hokage and was the Jutsu that he used to seal half of Kurama’s Chakra (along with himself) while the rest was sealed into Naruto. Hiruzen having learned it, probably had the knowledge that Minato had gained from studying the technique. It’s also revealed that there’s a method of extracting that which had been sealed inside the Death God and it was a known method to the Uzumaki clan. Sasuke found the scroll explaining it in an abandoned Uzumaki clan shrine. It’s possible that there have been those who were sealed and then released from the Death God in the past.
• Why does Naruto suddenly decide that he has to single-handedly fight and win the entire war all by himself and no one else is allowed to do anything? He's been told that this won't work because not even he has that much energy and he's already visiting all the battlefields at once. I get that he wants to protect people but that still doesn't explain the extremism. When the already dead Itachi says that he knows how to stop Kabuto and Naruto has no plan, why demand to be allowed to face Kabuto alone on top of everything else he has to deal with?
  • Made worst when you remember how he was telling everyone that no one was taking into consideration how he felt staying on the sidelines while everyone else fought. So now he's trying to turn the tables, doing the opposite.....to the military population of the 5 biggest nations in the world plus the samurais. So he's really taking thing to a new level by being a hypocrite to 80,000 people
    • I don't think Naruto's a hypocrite. People really are dying and Naruto acquired pretty huge power so why would it be hypocrisy to try to save everyone when he already saw what happened to people affected by war (i. e. Nagato and Konan). He just wants to protect everyone from becoming that and it doesn't matter to him if he's injured because his friends are more important to him. However, Itachi is also justified in saying that if you take too much responsibility, you could in fact end up as an evil person, although it was a bit of a stretch to me to compare him to Madara (alright, he acted selfish, which he shouldn't have done, but I think Naruto was closer to becoming Sasuke than ever to becoming Madara... although Itachi thinks the world of Sasuke, so he wouldn't warn Naruto against becoming Sasuke...)
    • The key word is fighting with everyone. Everyone wanted to protect Naruto, be it to protect a dear friend and so Madara doesn't achieve his goal, or just for the later. In Naruto's mind, it was, they mean good but I can't stand in the sidelines not doing anything while everyone else is fighting, but now he wants to do everything and put everyone else in the sidelines, not thinking, hey they might feel just the way I felt not a moment ago. His intentions are still good but he's still a hypocrite because of his earlier complains about depriving someone of a battle to protect, friends, family, nation, etc.
    • But he also knows that a war means tons of people dying. I don't think he would have any problem with someone wanting to protect him in times of danger, but he hates the thought of people being in war and dying. He wants to end the war quickly so no one has to fight. He also had Nagato tell him that maybe he can end the cycle of revenge, and he knows from him that wars are not really just about friends protecting each other but involves a lot of random killing without any reason whatsoever so Naruto wanting to hurry to end the war is understandable. Also, if he's the only one fighting, no one has to die. This is not necessarily true, but that's how Naruto thinks (at least in my interpretation).
    • You can be a hypocrite with good intentions.
    • Yes, you can, only he's not doing the same thing as the others. Everyone is pretty much okay with fighting a war because they want to protect Naruto, but Naruto hates the very thought of fighting a war, so he wants to do everything himself, because fighting alone doesn't count as a war. He wants to stop the war, only he needs to fight it to end it. Still, what he wants is pretty much impossible, so I would say that he's pretty desperate and it just looks like he's a hypocrite. You know, Itachi even compares him to Madara, which I thought was a bit of a stretch, but I think now Naruto is sort of okay with everyone helping him in the war, so if I was wrong, and he was really being a hypocrite, he isn't now.
    • Read what I said again again, you 'can be a hypocrite with good intentions. This thread started when the latest chapter was the end of their fight with Nagato, where Itachi told Naruto that, hey there's other people in this war and I'm technically already dead, don't try to do everything yourself (which he's doing, he's fighting "with" everyone now). And I think Itachi wasn't comparing him to Madara, he was just telling him that that was how Madara started.
    • But he told him how Madara started for a reason. I thin that he did compare Naruto to Madara not because he really thought that Naruto was at risk of turning into Madara but because Naruto was behaving irrationally and he's not easy to talk down when he's like that. Itachi's Madara comparison shut him down with just a few sentences.

• What exactly do the toads and other intelligent summon beasts get out of the contracts? Why hasn't Naruto ever been reverse summoned to help THEM in combat?
  • Jiraya once saved a toad from a snake, then he studied under the toads. The summoning contract with the toads was his reward, and since he had the contract, he could also invite others to sign it. Who knows what the backstory is on the other contracts.
  • We don't know the full details of the contracts, since we've only ever focused on Naruto and the toads. Orochimaru's contract with Manda, however, does seem to involve a ritual sacrifice of some kind, so presumably contract to contract it's up to whatever is being summoned what the conditions of their help would be. Naruto piggy-backed onto Jiraiya and the Fourth Hokage's contracts with the toads, meaning that he could summon any of them and presumably Jiraiya would take the heat (sort of like being on your parents' insurance plan) and Gamabunta seems to act similar to a Yakuza boss, and is under the obligation to protect Naruto, his underling; presumably, if someone manages to sign a contract with the animals, then the animals have decided that this person is worthy enough to receive their aid in battle, and presumably the ninja don't have to do anything more. As we see with Naruto and Gamabunta, being able to summon something in no way obligates that thing to help you, and if someone piggy-backed off another person's contract like with Jiraiya and Naruto the summoned creature would probably say something along the lines of "who the heck are you and why should I help you at all?" and presumably poof away. At the end of the day, the summoned creatures have a degree of agency and don't have to help if they don't want to, they just feel obligated out of pride and respect for the person who summons them. Also there's the possibility of clans who specialize in summons of a specific kind who probably repay the summon beasts with annual tributes in thanks for their support. A lot of contracts probably work similarly with the toads where it's a matter of respect and pride, while there are some that work like Manda where the ninja is required to compensate the summoned creature for it's time.

• Why has Obito continued working on Madara's plan? Madara made it pretty clear that he would be in control of the eternal illusion, there's still the obvious problems of everyone affected just freezing in place until they die of starvation or thirst and how is it supposed to have an effect on people if they avoid looking at the moon.
  • The last chapter made it clear, he gets Rin in the dream world, alive, happy, smiling.
    • Basically, as long as it's got brown, short hair, and it's name is Rin. Obito will go for it. TRUE LOVE, FOLKS!
    • My problem wasn't with what Obito wants, it's that he seems to trust that Madara is actually going to use the 10 tails to cast the eternal illusion and that Madara won't just put everyone into Madara's idea of a perfect world.
    • He honestly could care less if it's Madara's idea of a perfect world so long as it has Rin in it, because that's HIS idea of a perfect world
    • My problem has been solved by the fact that Obito had no intention of reviving Madara or allowing him to be the one to cast the illusion.
  • Considering the fact that "common" Tsukiyomi is capble of doing 3 days in 3 seconds, you get 86400 days per day (about 230 years), i think that is enough, on the "not looking at the moon" thing, well, the izanami doesn't need eye contact, why would illusion fueled by Eldritch Abomination / Humanoid Abomination need that?
    • Because Tsukuyomi does require eye contact, it wouldn't matter how strong it is, if you don't look at it, you aren't going to be affected.

• This isn't a criticism, it's a genuine question that I haven't been able to find an answer to. What is the deal with the crossed out headbands on rogue ninjas? The obvious answer (which I think comes directly from the source material) is that it signifies that the ninja is no longer loyal to his particular village. Couldn't you accomplish the same thing by simply not wearing your headband any more? Logic would dictate that if you successfully defect to another village and are accepted, you start wearing that villages headband. If for some reason you want to visibly demonstrate that you aren't loyal to any village couldn't you just wear no headband at all? Pain's background makes it more complicated, in that it suggests that he did it to show that he was not only no longer loyal to his village but also actively sought it's ruin, which makes sense given the circumstances. But not everyone with the crossed out headband feels that way. So the only purpose the crossed out headband seems to serve is to inform everyone you meet of precisely who is responsible for you being inflicted upon the world, sort of like how the Hidden Cloud knew to blame the Hidden Leaf when they identified the Uchia crest. And on that subject, Sasuke Uchiha, who has the exact same reasons to wear a crossed out headband as Pain does, wears no headband at all.
  • It's only Akatsuki members that have done that and it was to show that they aren't part of their former village, with the exception of konan and Pain.
  • I always saw it as a spit in the face to their former villages.
• Exactly how small IS this continent they're all on? In the span of about 3 days running-time, you can go from a forest, to a desert, to some sort of dried up riverbed, to an ocean. The Leaf and Sand villages are specifically noted to not be that far apart from one another. That's 4 different ecosystems in what I'm just going to assume is a 50 mile radius.
  • Probably quite large, remember that the preferred travel method is more or less outright sprinting by our standards (if not faster than that). Assuming a speed of 30 kph (about 19 mph) and a daily downtime of 10 hours to rest and recuperate, then a three day trip for a ninja is about 1260 kilometers (783 miles) or the distance from New York to Chicago. I personally think this is a conservative estimate, but even then the combined landmass of the elemental nations is at least continent sized.
  • I don't recall each of the locations mentioned here so correct me if any of my assumptions are wrong. The Forest is around The Village Hidden in the Leaves, the Desert is around the Village Hidden in the Sand, the Riverbed is where the Rescue Gaara Arc ends and I'm not sure where the Ocean is. First, those aren't ecosystems by any stretch of the immagination. A dried or dryish riverbed in a desert or a desert near the ocean (Middle East anybody?) isn't even contradictory to each other. The only one that's at all out of place is the forest and that's not a huge stretch. Even if it was more radical you can travel parts of America or Asia where it changes just as rapidly from actually different kinds of terrain. That's not a great gauge of size one way or another. It's hard to gauge distance by ninja speed anyway, the above poster has given them a top speed of 20 mph which while it can't be maintained is a human speed. Nobody in real life can move so fast that you lose track of them and if what we've seen is any example of "normal" any ninja who isn't faster than the average human eye is no ninja at all. It wouldn't shock me to find out that ninja are capable of getting up past 40 mph with bursts in the low to mid hundreds. Rock Lee is fast enough to play ping pong without letting his opponent touch the ground in Part One and it might not be stated but it's heavily implied that the 4th Hokage, 3rd and 4th Raikage and Naruto are all MUCH faster than that.
• Why is Haku put over as such a powerful ninja? Kakashi and Zabuza sell the kid like he's a lot more powerful than he is. First it's mentioned that he can perform jutsus one handed. Well Kakashi knows the rasengon which if you're not Naruto can be done basically without hands. Then we're told that even the most talented Jonin fear Haku. Given how Shippuden/Part II plays out it's difficult to see Haku proving more than a speed bump to any but the weakest or most over specialized Jonin. At that point in the story it wasn't even necessary. Just claiming Haku was a standard run of the mill Jonin would still have put Naruto and Sasuke in a fight where they were in well over their heads.
  • It's just power creep playing out, which was a thing even before the Fourth Shinobi War came out and made it run away like a train.
    • Also Haku would be a major threat to anyone that doesn't have super speed like Lee and Guy or a Sharingan if he actually aimed to kill people, his one handed jutsu was impressive because everyone else needs two hands for seals to control their chakra to fire off most jutsu. It's not that he's overhyped in universe, if he actually fought properly then he'd live up to the hyping, being a pacifist means we never see him fight properly.
• Why do none of the Tailed Beasts even attempt right out the gate to be on good terms with their jinchuriki? At the beginning of the series it made sense because they were presented as mindless demons who could not be reasoned with but now we know otherwise. It seems like that would be the logical thing to do, Naruto would almost definitely have freed Kurama multiple times especially if he could trust him not to destroy his home.
  • The way I saw it, each Tailed Beasts had already seen the "true" nature of human beings long before they were sealed within their Jinchuriki and so they weren't willing to cooperate with them. Its shown however that they can be persuaded over with enough conviction and sincerity, unfortunately no other hosts other than Bee, Naruto, and Yagura (and possibly Yugito) took it upon themselves to befriend their beasts most likely because of their harsh treatment from their villages.
• On a related note why not brain wash the host? Even if the jinchuriki were treated well in their villages having someone stuck in your head twenty four seven telling you that they are your friend and you should trust them would eventually get through to most adults, and Gaara and Naruto both had their Tailed Beast at birth and Naruto had no parents and limited friends.
  • It might vary from seal to seal. Naruto wasn't even aware of the Nine-Tails' presence until he was 12-13 and it took him being pushed off a cliff to do it; we can presume that not a lot of hosts get a whole lot of face-time with their tailed beasts, and even if they do, Gaara and Naruto are the only ones we know who have been sealed since birth; a good chunk of them were adults or at least young children when they were sealed, which is old enough for the ones doing the sealing to say "hey, don't trust the evil monster we're putting inside of you, it will say and do anything to kill you and get free"
• What precisely is a Combination Transformation Jutsu anyway? As seen when Naruto uses shadow clone in combination with transformation to turn into Sai it in no way prevents him from using the Rasengon so you aren't limited to whatever you turned into can do. When Gamabunta and Naruto do it they are seen speaking mentally to each other. Now in their case they were just trying to grab Shukaku and nothing else. But if Naruto and Sasuke did it would they basically be a fusion having full access to the powers and techniques of both of them?
  • In the case of Gamabunta and Naruto, Gamabunta proposed the idea as a combined transformation, which would later be known as Collaboration Jutsu; Gamabunta would provide the chakra and the foundation [his large body and a chunk of chakra], while Naruto performed the hand seal to fire it off. Think of it like two guys manning a machinegun; one is loading up the ammo while the other is aiming and pulling the trigger. The Naruto/Sai Rasengan trick was not a case of Collaboration Jutsu, it was just his shadow clone jutsu and then a transformation jutsu into Sai to try to trick Yamato, but it failed. Yamato points out why it failed; Sai can't use Rasengan, which was basically Naruto's jutsu at that point in time, so it was basically Naruto placing an 'I'm Naruto!' sign right over his head.
• Just where were the Sand Trio during the Sasuke retrieval arc? The Village hidden in the Sand is three days away. Assuming Tsunade sent word immediately they wouldn't arrive for three days. Even if they'd been on their way for diplomatic reasons none of them are shown to have any special tracking ability and they each find their targets almost immediately. Meanwhile Kakashi still has to use a hound to find Naruto and takes forever by comparison.
  • They probably saw the mountain-sized Chouji while tracking them and decided "okay, it's that way."
  • Considering the sheer number of things Gaara can use his sand for, it's possible he just made one of his sand platforms for the three of them to fly on. That would probably save a lot of time, especially since they wouldn't tire out the way they would on foot, and Temari could probably use her Wind Style to help accelerate them further.

Sasuke

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Sasuke's Revenge

• Wouldn't killing Sasuke end the cycle of revenge, seeing how there's nobody left who cares about him to avenge him should he ever die?
  • Technically, it would, but it would also make the lesson: "A Cycle of Revenge would be bad, so make sure your either only take revenge on someone with no loved ones or kill anyone who might avenge them in response."
    • But seeing how Sasuke actively worked to destroy all his ties with other people and is always on "revenge" mode, wouldn't it be kind of like poetic justice/irony if he died with nobody bothering to avenge him? And I don't necessarily mean killing Sasuke in revenge either; some people want him dead simply because he's dangerous, not because they're trying to avenge someone else.
    • The latter is fairly reasonable idea, and is pretty much what Shikamaru suggested. Sort of like how in Fullmetal Alchemist one of the major themes is also not letting a desire for revenge overcome you, but since most of the villains are to dangerous to let live and/or to horrible to forgive they usually are just killed by someone else.
    • Naruto is planning to kill Sasuke (granted, he's got the stupid idea that he'd die in the process, but we'll forgive him his lack of confidence), so technically that is how he's going to end the cycle of revenge. Sasuke dies and he die, and no one wants revenge either way.
    • Yeah, that part just kind of bugs me because the cycle can end with Sasuke's death alone and that he doesn't really deserve having someone die for his sake.
    • He doesn't have to, but he wants to because if he can't keep his promise, he doesn't think that he deserves to live.
    • Naruto isn't planning to kill Sasuke, he said that he would keep stopping Sasuke every time he wants to try his revenge, and that cycle would probably lead to a mutual kill. Naruto plans to stop the cycle from moving.
    • All of the above certainly factors into it, but most importantly it seems that Naruto knows something that Kishi hasn't revealed to us yet. The frog-prophet-thingy (whatever his name is) alluded to it, and so did Naruto in his conversation with the Konoha 11. Something epic (probably) is going to result from that final confrontation which will lead to their deaths. Now whether that 'death' is to be taken literally or metaphorically remains to be seen. Unless, of course, Naruto manages to evade that confrontation as my predecessor suggested.
  • The implication is that if Sasuke were killed by someone other than Naruto, he and possibly Sakura would kill his killer, thereby perpetuating the cycle, despite Naruto's harping otherwise.
    • It's eventually revealed that Naruto had realized Sasuke had "something" in him just as Naruto had one within himself that was motivating his behavior. The Sage of Six Paths reveals it was Indra's chakra reincarnated in Sasuke, the latest of many times it had done so. Naruto's instinct was thus right that killing Sasuke would not actually solve the issue long term, as Indra's chakra and hsi grudges would simply carry on to the next incarnation. Hence why he told the rest of the Konoha 11 when they staged that little intervention that he didn't believe Sasuke (or rather what was in Sasuke) could be stopped simply by fighting or killing him. We see in the end what it took was getting Sasuke to accept defeat and release the grudge between Indra and Ashura.

• Why doesn't Sasuke realize that for the Uchiha to have been discriminated against enough to justify a coup and possibly starting a war, he shouldn't have to have been told it was happening in the first place? He should have been well aware of it as it was!
  • The reason why he went off the deep end Sasuke has officially been dubbed a bad guy by In-Universe legal authorities ever since the end of Part 1, when he abandoned his village in order to join Orochimaru. But something to bear in mind is that, while Sasuke did technically betray his village, Part 2 reveals that he was planning how to usurp/assassinate Orochimaru from the moment he joined his organization. Part 2 also gives us scenes where Sasuke, despite spending three years as Orochimaru's pupil, refuses to kill anyone who's not a Complete Monster. Given this, I'd say that, until he met up with Tobi, Sasuke's actions were reckless and irresponsible, but weren't actually immoral.

It's only in the aftermath of Itachi's death that Sasuke truly becomes a villain. Here's how I interpret his mindset at that point:

He's spent most of his life planning to kill Itachi; he refers to this as his "reason for living". Then he finally achieves his goal and . . . he's not happy. He comes face-to-mask with the other man responsible for the Uchiha Massacre, but now all Sasuke's drive and passion is gone; he can't think of anything except to ask to be left alone. I believe that, if Sasuke had been left alone then, he would have killed himself, having found his purpose in life to be empty and unfulfilling.

Then Tobi drops The Reveal about how the Leaf Village ordered the slaughter of the Uchihas and how Itachi, forced to commit such an atrocity against his own family, still loved Sasuke, tried to protect him, and was ultimately driven into suicice-by-proxy. Suddenly Sasuke is given an explanation for why Itachi's death brings him no joy, because, even if he could only guess at the truth through little hints (Itachi's tears after the massacre, his dying words to Sasuke), on some level he knew that Itachi wasn't the person he should be angry at.

Tobi gives him a new target for his anger, an anger that's only intensified after being manipulated into killing his brother. And Sasuke, who had been left with no reason to go on living, jumps at the opportunity to have a purpose for his existence again. And this time he expands the scope of his revenge beyond the people directly responsible for his suffering; he starts targeting everyone remotely connected to them as well. Why? Because deep down he fears that, if he kills Danzo and the other village elders, all that will happen is he'll once again feel the way he did after killing Itachi: empty, joyless, and without the will to live. He swears revenge on the entire Leaf Village, and even on the entire Shinobi world, because he recognizes that this is a goal he'll likely never be able to fulfill, that he can spend the rest of his life on it and never finish. Because if he does succeed, if he kills everyone he's sworn vengeance against, he has nothing but despair waiting for him. Until Naruto can do for Sasuke what he did for Gaara, show him that he can have a purpose in life other than violence, Sasuke's only options are a never-ending crusade of revenge or an emotional emptiness that will drive him to suicide making him like old Gaara.

The trauma from the reveal caused Sasuke to be actually clinically insane, at least in his obsession to kill everyone. There is a mental condition called delusional disorder, and looking at the symptoms, they apply to Sasuke The patient expresses an idea or belief with unusual persistence or force.

That idea appears to exert an undue influence on the patient's life, and the way of life is often altered to an inexplicable extent.

Despite his/her profound conviction, there is often a quality of secretiveness or suspicion when the patient is questioned about it.

The individual tends to be humorless and oversensitive, especially about the belief. There is a quality of centrality: no matter how unlikely it is that these strange things are happening to him, the patient accepts them relatively unquestioningly. An attempt to contradict the belief is likely to arouse an inappropriately strong emotional reaction, often with irritability and hostility.

The belief is, at the least, unlikely, and out of keeping with the patient's social, cultural and religious background. The patient is emotionally over-invested in the idea and it overwhelms other elements of their psyche. The delusion, if acted out, often leads to behaviors which are abnormal and/or out of character, although perhaps understandable in the light of the delusional beliefs. Individuals who know the patient observe that the belief and behavior are uncharacteristic and alien.

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Sasuke's Techniques and Fighting Abilities

• This is something that's bugged me for a while: How can Sasuke have both Fire and Lightning chakra natures? When Kakashi explains the whole concept to Naruto, he definitely implies that each person only has one nature (otherwise, how would that paper test work?). When an enemy ninja like Kakuzu or that filler chick voiced by Lust uses multiple chakra natures, its a sign that they've forced severe changes onto their body to receive that kind of power. The only other way to use two natures seems to be a Kekkai Genkai, like Haku or Yamato, but in those cases the natures are combined to form a brand new chakra nature. Plus, Sasuke has never been mentioned to have a Kekkai Genkai beyond the Sharingan. So how the hell did Kakashi teach a young kid with a Fire nature to use Lightning Style jutsus?
  • The paper test figures out which element they are best at, and most ninja can learn more than one element without a Kekkai Genkai.
  • It's pretty simple. Let's say that each person has 1 to 10 points in every one of their elements, with 10 being the strongest possible affinity and 1 meaning "feh, don't bother using it" but still not being equal to 0 (and thus meaning that they can use techniques of said element, but it requires far more training and ability to use them as well as someone with 10 points would). Now let's also say that every person can only have one element with affinity of 7 or more; Sasuke's lightning element would probably rate 9 or 10 on that scale. Now let's also say that various bloodlines can add a few points to any of the elements; if that was the case with the Uchiha blood and fire element (which it is), it would allow Sasuke to have two high-score affinities instead of just one, and thus make it possible for the paper to react to them both (either because said elements have the same rating, or because the paper only detects affinities that rate "x or more"). Also, as you had mentioned it yourself, the multiple-element female ninja is a filler character, and fillers in Naruto don't necessarily make a lot of sense (in fact, they most often have more plot holes than Swiss cheese).
  • Actually Yamato explained it during Naruto's affinity training a Kekkai Genkai is the mixture of multiple

elements for example Wood Release is the mix of water and earth, the Uchiha Kekkai Genai is Blaze Release(or something) which (if I remember correctlly) is the mix of fire and lightning.

• Shinobi have an easier time learning to create and control a chakra nature that matches their affinity, although even then it may take a number of years. Shinobi are not limited to the nature they have an affinity for, and it is in fact common for jōnin to have mastered two natures. Although it is technically possible to master all five natures, it is very rare because of how much of training is involved.

• Are Sasuke and Itachi vulnerable to their own Amaterasu flames?
  • Probably.
    • While fighting the Ten-Tails' clones Sasuke fired off several of those Amaterasu magatama like standard shuriken so it is possible that his Kagutsuchi ability protects him from his own Amaterasu flame.
    • The above poster is partially correct. The anime states that this is possible through the use of Blaze Release: Kagutsuchi, while in the manga he showed the ability to put out Amatersu before he invented Kagutsuchi.

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Misc.

• A few times in the show most notably the chunin arc some characters make sexist remarks and (usally) are proven wrong but my question how does the concept of a weaker sex even exist in this world with some of the strongest ninjas being female some of the oldest leaders being female and all the skills and techniques being taught and learned to both genders like if all adults know there's no difference in ability between sexes how do the kids think there is?
  • For the same reason there's sexism in the real world when there are also women who are smarter or more physically capable than a lot of men. The fact that women can be just as skilled in an area as men doesn't hamper the presence of gender bias one whit. From their perspective, just because "some" women are better at something than men doesn't mean "all" women are, and most adolescent males like those in the Chuunen exam are still in the "boys rule, girls drool" mentality that forms the basis of real world sexism to begin with.

• When Sasuke meets Itachi the first time since the anime/manga started, he gives that speech. "In order to defeat you..." after which he charges up his Chidori. After charging up, though, he looks at Itachi, screams the last line of his speech, and his left hand pulls the collar of his shirt down. WHAT. THE. FREAK. That just took much of the awesomeness out of their meeting, since there is no reason why he'd want to do that. If it's to show his curse seal, that's on the back. This is just... odd.
  • I figured it was either so he would be easier to hear or to keep the collar out of his face when he's charging.
  • Fanservice? (I get the feeling that if it had been the curse seal, Itachi would have been really, really pissed off with Orochimaru. Like, 'I know you lack hatred, but I'm still killing whoever molested my foolish little brother.')
• Sasuke's family died when he was like seven, right? So where did he live? I'm under the impression that he lived alone but that's odd even by Naruto standards.
  • Not that odd, Naruto seems to have lived alone for most of his life, obviously only after a certain age, so Sasuke would be a similar case.
  • Sasuke was eight at the time, and in ninja villages 12 year old genin are considered adult soldiers.
• Sasuke's revenge on the Leaf makes no sense after he killed Danzo, literally everyone who was involved in the Uchiha massacre, is (as far as we know) Dead, he then goes on to proclaim he will slaughter the Leaf village, acting as though every man, woman and child there is to blame or at least some form of Karmic Justice on his part, there's also how he plans on implementing said slaughter, he is a teenager, who only really just developed his stronger powers, against a village full of much more experienced and versatile ninjas, Even Itachi needed help killing all the Uchihas, Pain was a Physical God, who only lost because of Narutos Superpowered Evil Side and his Power of Friendship nature making pain do a Heel–Face Turn, A whiny brat on a power trip is going to be very surprised when Tsunade punches his jaw so hard it flies to the Sand Village.

Sakura

• This just occured to me: how the hell did Sakura not HEAR the Chidori? It was not 3 feet away from her head, and yet somehow she didn't hear the sound of "1000 birds". What the fuck?
  • Probably because it was just a lightning charged hand, as opposed to the annoying ball of lightning chakra in the hand that is Chidori. Not that the former wouldn't make noise, mind you, but he could do it on the fly before she had a chance to hear it and dodge.
• Why is it that we know absolutely nothing about Sakura's parents, or the Haruno family in general? I mean, Sakura is the main female.
  • According to Kishi its because Sakura was unpopular and thought no one would care.
  • Well, Kishi designed and pretty much wrote the new movie Road to Ninja, and in it it shows Sakura's parents. There was an episode of the anime that featured them in it as a teaser for the movie as well. YMMV on how cannon they are.
• After Sasuke and Naruto pretty much declare they're going to off each other, why does Sakura say that this scene makes her believe there's a chance for Team 7 to get a happy ending with all of them together? I'd figure someone would go into an Angst Coma if her old friends declare they're going to kill each other and leave her alone. T
  • She's saying she believes Naruto can do it without them both dying. And saying "I'll let Naruto do this thing becuase he actually has a plan that doesn't conflict with how he feels" not "I'll never try and do anything myself again".
    • One of Sakura's flaws is that she has a tendency to make decisions on the behalf of others that they don't want out of the belief that it's for their own good, which can be patronizing at best and often leads to mistakes. For example, she was going to forfeit before the 10th question so that Naruto wouldn't try to answer it, almost certainly get it wrong, and stay a Genin forever. In this case, she realizes that she can't kill Sasuke, and should instead trust Naruto to find a solution.
• Okay, I can't believe this hasn't been asked before, but why in the FUCK is Sakura still 'in love' with Sasuke? Pretimeskip, she was nothing but a pestering fangirl to him the entire time. True, he grew to care for her to an extent, but at no point did he ever make any show that he returns her feelings. Sakura has a crush, and that's fine for a 12 year old girl, whatever. Near the end of Part I, she begins to see the flaws in Sasuke, with how aggressive he can be with his inferiority complex, and then he plans on leaving Konoha. Then she want to abandon Konoha with him, abandon her entire life, everyone she knows and loves to join fucking OROCHIMARU of all people with him, and become part of his terrorist organization...Why?! Because he's hot?! But that's still nothing compared to the time skip. Apparently, for 3 years, she has dated no one, thought of no one else romantically besides Sasuke. As Sasuke descends further into madness, and explicitely tells her that he wants to kill everyone in Konoha, she can't bring herself to end his life, not even to defend her own. What bugs me is that I don't understand what in the fuck Sasuke did for her that is so worthy of her loyalty and affection. The only time he showed any ounce of affection toward her was when she thought he complimented her on her beauty, and that was Naruto in disguise. Yet many trope pages maintain that Sakura grew out of her crush and learned to love Sasuke for the flawed individual that he is. But I don't think it's true, because she was just made more aware of his flaws, and disregards them. Which would be fine, except there are no good things he has done to outweigh his flaws. Since the beginning, he has shown nothing but callous indifference to her at best, and has only gone down into murderous psychopath as the tale went on. Why the fuck does she 'love' him?! What in hell makes him worth so much pain and heartbreak?
  • Love is not logical. I don't like Sakura or Sasuke, but I think that for Sakura, it doesn't matter if he doesn't reciprocate her feelings. Same way for Hinata to Naruto. Truth is, Sakura came to care for Sasuke for real, instead of shallowly fangirling over him. I agree with you though, that Sakura did disregard many of Sasuke's flaws in the beginning and excused him for it, and never did anything to stand up to him. Now, she passionately defends Naruto from Sasuke's bullcrap, even going so far as to get angry with him for the first time ever. I wondered the same thoughts, though.
    • I agree with the OP. WHY did she develop feelings for him? that is the question, she liked him because he was cool and hot, that's ok she was only a fangirl then, but then she loves him despite all his flaws? why? I had a crush on him when I only thought of him as hot and cool, now I love him because he's hot and has anger management, would sell his village and all his friends even ME for his selfish reasons. Where are the positive points? the question is what did Sasuke do to be "loved" by her. I always considered her to be a representation of a crush taken to the extreme and she telling herself that she loves him, but apparently Kishimoto is trying to say she's really in love.
    • Like the first response to the OP said: love isn't logical. People fall for and remain loyal to bad people all the time. I think Sakura has just been fond of him for so long that her fangirl admiration just kind of evolved in genuine love as she matured. Also, it's easy to forget amidst all the Sasuke hate that even though he's been a prick from the moment we first saw him, he at least had admirable qualities (despite what the haters claim): At one point he did genuinely care about Naruto and Sakura, at least enough to be willing to risk his life for them and state out loud that he considers them "precious" and will not let them die. Even when he defected and fought Naruto, he was willing to acknowledge Naruto as an equal and fight him as such, showing some humility (and this is someone who is generally anal about people being stronger than him). He was the type of person that, despite appearances, did care about people and was capable of doing the right thing. That's the Sasuke that Sakura fell in love with: The one that was flawed (not evil) but did have good, even admirable qualities underneath those flaws. The shallow fangirl obsession she had for him based on his looks and popularity evolved over time into genuine love for the flawed, yet decent person he was. As was said earlier, it doesn't matter to her that he never reciprocated her feelings (which may not be entirely true anyway. It was hinted during their confrontation as he was leaving the village that he at least appreciated her affection on some level). She can't let go of him because the memories of that person he used to be are just too strong.
    • I call BS on the "love isn't logical" part. And apparently, you do too because if it was, then everything you just said that logically supported why she'd love him is meaningless. Love is can be strange and ironic, sometimes funny, and it's definitely complex, but it's certainly logical. Now, as for your argument itself, you are confusing what we, as the audience, see with what Sakura sees. I never tried to say that Sasuke was an evil asshole from the beginning (I actually really like Sasuke from Part 1), but that doesn't matter because he never showed her any part of his good side. Ever. He acknowledged Naruto as his equal (Though why would acknowledging Naruto instead of her be a major plus in her book is beyond me), but that was at the valley of the end. She only saw was him at the hospital, being an insecure jerk over the idea that his friend could be stronger than him. The one time he risked his life for her in a way that went beyond standard duties was during the Gaara incident, which is also when he acknowledged that Sakura was precious to him...except she was unconcious during this, so she never heard him say it. Given her ignorance during the aftermath, where she presumed Sasuke saved her when Naruto did, I assume she only got the general story but remains ignorant of details like what Sasuke said. Other than that, he has never shown an ounce of affection for her except telling her that she was annoying (ironically, but how would she know that?). After the timeskip, his behavior just gets worse and worse, culminating now in an attempted assassination, and there is STILL no indication that her feelings have changed for Sasuke in the slightest. The way I see it, it's not love, a sick obsession that she has (and Naruto does too, for that matter).
    • To the above troper who says that Sasuke never showed Sakura any affection. While you might think that Sasuke was nothing but a jerk to her, she could have seen things differently. Remember in the bell test when she was knocked out by genjutsu, and Sasuke is standing over her when she recovers and then confides in her? She could have taken that as him warming up to her. Or during the Land of Waves arc, when the Demon Brothers were about to kill Tazuna and Sakura jumps in front of him? Sasuke then jumps in front of Sakura. Could be seen as to protect Tazuna as well, but to a 12 year old girl crushing hard, it might be taken as something else. In the Forest of Death, Sasuke bailed her out of many problems, and grabbed her hand in comfort after the curse seal came into affect. After she gets beaten by the sound trio, Sasuke wakes up and demands to know who did that to her, and wants to make them pay. For the rest of the phase of the exam, you can see Sakura helping Sasuke out and him letting her help him, and also asking her not to tell the examiners about the Curse. That, and his last words to her before he left, "Thank you." I'm sure lots of that can be seen in a different light to a 12 year old girl. So, I personally think Sasuke showed enough good in part 1 to her that she did end up falling in love with him instead of blind fangirling. That, and those last words before he left the village could be seen as something else, and could have made her think they meant something more than they actually did.
    • She's sixteen.
    • To the above troper, I am pretty sure he was discussing her during Part 1. However all of those examples just show that Sakura is delusional. All you can say is how Sakura misinterpreted events. That is fine for a 12-year-old girl. However it has been three years since then. You would thing at some point in that time she would stop and reflect on what happened with Sasuke (considering how he rules her life this should happen). She should have been able to look back and realize that those examples, IF she thought of them as proof and not a ninja looking out for his comrades like he is suppose to, meant nothing. Three years is a long time and people can change a lot over it, especially at her age. She is obsessed because we are past the 12-year-old naïve girl stage and she still thinks the same way. Sasuke did enough to justify her crush. He did not do anything that would make Sakura’s undying love for him anything but an unhealthy obsession.
  • One could say the same about Naruto.
    • Not really. If you mean Naruto’s feelings for Sakura than those never went past the innocent crush phase. If you mean his desire to save Sasuke than it is true that is is similarly obsessive and stupid but happens for very different reasons. Naruto sees Sasuke as a brother due to their similar backstories and Sasuke did a lot more that showed he cared about Naruto than he did about Sakura. Plus Naruto is a Messianic Archetype. It is in his character to want to help those he cares about. He wants to atone for his mistake, not chase after a delusional romance.
    • For this topic as a whole, it's very telling that when Sasuke calls out that Sakura only likes him because he was an attractive boy that was on the same team 3 years ago, she has absolutely no argument against that. She has every bit the same motivation Ino did at the time but Ino moved on. Compare the other two relationships. Hinata fell in love with Naruto because she was weak but saw just how much Naruto as a fellow weak student worked to better himself. She grew to deeply admire his determination because she understood how hard it was to be looked down on and wanted to grow to do the same. Naruto and Sasuke also have logical motivations. They're both orphans who grew up alone and share understanding of what that's like. As rivals they constantly pushed eachother's limits, and even when they were arguing, it was still a rare moment of person to person communication that they don't normally get with other people. You can understand how they can view each other with familiarity and friendship. Sakura is the girl who was so blind that one of the first things she says to Sasuke "MY ENTIRE CLAN IS DEAD" Ulchiha was that orphans are terrible because they don't have parents to teach them to act right. She's just flat out never had a single point of common ground with him and only liked him because he was the popular kid in class. Following 'Love is not logical' is the same thing as following love as first sight, it's flat out not a healthy thing to do and a sign that Sakura never matured.
    • In the end Sakura's love for Sasuke is characterized as a silly crush that matured into a unwavering devotion, much like Naruto's own (if perhaps for fewer reasons/experiences, and romantic instead of just friendship). She did learn about the real Sasuke during part 1 rather than the idealized version she saw at the beginning and came to care for him more over those things, and she did have a number of positive experiences with him that formed the basis of a deeper connection (a big one being Sasuke bothering to thank her for her feelings before he left). Yet, as Kakashi told Sasuke, one ultimately doesn't need a reason to love someone. Sakura decided to genuinely love him and keep loving him regardless of whether it was ever reciprocated. Whether we call that BS reasoning or not, it does certainly play into the idea and ideal of unconditional love.
• Fridge Logic moment: Discounting the vicious cycle angle, considering Sakura was bullied in her youth, why on earth is she so abusive of Naruto (at least earlier on; she is—for the most part—getting better, though she's still dismissive and downright manipulative—or so she attempts to be—at times)?! You'd think she'd have more empathy.
  • People often like to bully the people they consider below them. It sucks, but they just take it as the natural way of life. I knew plenty of people in my school who were bullied by someone, only to turn and bully the kid that has an even more noticable flaw (for example, like stuttering) and considered below them. Also, keep in mind that Sakura was constantly trying to be one of the cool kids so Sasuke would like her (or did she like Sasuke because it was considered cool?), so since Naruto was the pariah, that made him a target for her.
  • It is a Japanese thing. Sakura thumping Naruto is played for laughs. Notice she rarely does any serious damage to him. Moreover, she gets Flanderized in the anime and punches Naruto far, far more than she does in the manga. As for her behaviour towards him in Part 1, she's grown up a bit since then and is beginning to understand him.
• There is a significant amount of time developing Sakura as a proficient medic ninja- so why doesn't she use the amazing battle med jutsu that we see Tsunade and Kabuto use? Instead of just punching people out, she could cut their tendons with a touch in battle. Kishimoto isn't taking advantage of all the character development he's done with her, chickifying her, really.
  • Also remember that the maneuver you mentioned was only used by Kabuto, and Tsunade is far from being that subtle. Her fighting style consists mainly in smashing her foes with her fists and sometimes use her medical knowledge to cripple her enemy, but even then it isn't as subtle and precise as Kabuto's attacks. Sakura is just fighting like her master taught her to.
  • The point is, everyone has his own style of combat (look at Naruto with his Rasengan-centred attacks), and it's possible that she does know those tricks, but simply doesn't like using them. And people usually don't use things they don't like using, because they prefer to feel comfortable than to be efficient. That, and she was taught to defend herself with chakra-empowered strikes, and not by cutting tendons (which Kabuto is the only person in the entire manga to do, and he is the kind of person who had to hide his combat abilities as medical abilities for quite a long time).
  • Sakura does know the abilities Kabuto uses, but she only displays them for their intended purpose-medicine. She also abides by the rules Tsunade set down for medics by not entering combat unless absolutely necessary, unlike Kabuto, which may be why she hasn't polished those skills for combat the way Kabuto (who ignores those rules, obviously) has. There's also the matter of ethics; as a dedicated medic, Sakura would probably feel wrong using her healing techniques in such a twisted way, so she opts for brute force instead.
• So Sakura forgives Sasuke... and then what? They have makeup sex right away and he abandons her when she's pregnant? Wow, Kishi... Wow.
  • Considering that their daughter is the same age as most of the other kids and that it is unlikely they all got pregnant right after the war (Kurenai's kid seems to be 2–3 years older), he is probably wandering around Tsunade-style and visiting the village from time to time. And besides, the whole "forgiveness" bit is mostly about us (readers) rather than Sasuke; if you take a look at it from the viewpoint of eastern tradition, Sasuke's quest was honourable (filial piety) and humble (his attempt to sacrifice himself as “hokage” for peace) and it is only his methods that were wrong, which is why he travels, the same way a hermit would travel, not for others to forgive him but for himself to atone for his methods. I'll add that I don't particularly like Sasuke as a character, but way too often he is vilified more than he deserves.
• So, Salad asks Sakura whether Sasuke wore glasses.._andSakura doesn't know.._she's known him for basically her whole life. Went to the same schools as him. Stalked him obsessively...and she doesn't know whether he wore glasses...What?
  • Sakura was playing dumb. She didn't know why Sarada was asking, so she dodged the question to avoid having to discuss all the traumatic circumstances of Sasuke's Sharingan (since they did, after a fashion, deteriorate his eyes at one point). The issue was that she played it *too* nonsensically oblivious, which made the situation worse.

Other Leaf Village Characters

Characters outside the main cast.

Jiraiya

• It really bothers me that Jiriya was able to memorize EVERY SINGLE WORD of his books, in order to write that code on the back of that frog. Most people don't have that kind of crazy memory.
  • It was his last book, he wrote it in a strategic way just because of that, who knows if he did that with all his books, but since he always won he didn't needed to use them.
  • Why did he encode the message in the first place? Why did he write it in such a cryptic way, instead of writing: "The akatsuki leader is just a puppet", or a similar much clearer message? (You can't argue that he had no time to think, since he had enough mental power left to encode a whole message). Or hell... why didn't he just say it instead of writing it down? The whole 'encoded message' bit was sort of pointless.
    • A better question is, since all he needed to verify his suspicion about Pain was to get one more look at the Paths of Pain, why did Jiraiya go back up there and die at all? Why not send a shadow clone, while having Fukasaku or Shima reverse-summon his real body to safety?
    • Shadow clones are fragile and Pain would likely have only needed to use a single body to dispel it, or Konan would have done it.
• Why didn't Jiraiya use Naruto's multi-clone training thing during the Chuunin exam arc? He has the key to clamp down on the fox afterall. Only thing I can figure is that he wanted more time to ogle women.
  • He didn't think of it. Kakashi's pretty much a genius you know.
  • He also might not have known just HOW proficient Naruto was at the clone jutsu. He only trained him for a month before hand, where Naruto never used any clones, and he didn't even know him before. Since then, he's only seen Naruto fight once, and then Naruto only used like one clone (for the Rasengan) On the other hand, Kakashi has watched Naruto fight multiple times, and seen his strategy being "throw more clones at the problem" so he knew just how many clones Naruto could make and just how useful it would be.
    • Is there any evidence that Jiraya even knew the Shadow Clone technique? It is a forbidden technique and while most ninja know a clone technique and they all SEEM to be fairly interchangible they probably aren't. People occasionally forget that Kakashi even by comparison to better, stronger ninjas has a freakish amount of jutsu available to him. The better question really is why Naruto never casually noticed in all the times that he used dozens upon dozens of clones that he was able to absorb their knowledge you'd think that even if it was as simple as realizing getting stabbed sucks he would have figured that out almost immediately.
• What the hell was Jiraiya doing while Naruto was growing up? Did it never occur to him that he should train and take care of his most brilliant student's son so that he doesn't end up becoming a sociopathic monster (like Gaara) or being killed by a villager? Or what about Kakashi? I mean Naruto is his sensei's son. I can understand that he would be busy with missions, but he never occasionally checked to make sure he was okay? For that matter, you'd think the Third Hokage could find someone to take care of him! There had to be someone who would be willing to do it. In fact, you'd think protecting the son of the former leader and most powerful ninja produced by Konoha who just happens to have the MOST POWERFUL BEING IN THE WORLD sealed inside him would rank as an S-rank mission. I bet if Konohamaru had Kyuubi inside of him he certainly wouldn't have been treated like that.
  • No kidding, they just threw him into the acadamy as young as possible (he's referred to as "the kid" by some of the other Konoha 11 however he had already failed the final year twice (which doesn't stop him from not having ever have seen Rock Lee, Neji or Ten Ten before by the way).
    • Nowhere is it ever stated that the final exam can only be taken once per year, and it can apparently be taken early seeing as how Kakashi graduated when he was only 5. For all we know he kept trying to graduate early or all 3 attempts took place within a month.
  • Maybe the whole village was holding a giant, collective, 12 years long Idiot Ball.
  • Kakashi was like 14 when Minato died, and between Obito and whatever happened to Rin, musta had one hell of a complex about how everyone he got close to died, and would be afraid.
  • Jiraya was Walking the Earth as per the Old Toad's prophesy, and didn't want Naruto to grow up on the road. He probably never checked in due to doing recon on Akatsuki in his spare time, and not wanting to lead them to Naruto.
  • The series never really goes into any detail about Naruto growing up, except for his mischief-making and constant loneliness. One interesting fanfic I read suggests that Naruto lives on a stipend from the Hokage (but not much, which is why he's always eating ramen like a poor college student), and another mentioned that he lived at an orphanage for some time, but the operators aparently kicked him out at some point.
    • Well considering Konoha's a military community they'd have provisions for orphaned children of Shinobi. Also I don't think Jiraiya wants to be in Konoha much if he can avoid it. He'd have had Minato's memory haunting him and the Third pleading with him to become the Fifth.
    • Don't forget, Naruto actually likes ramen; he doesn't really care that it's cheap college student food.
    • Also the ramen he eats is likely miles ahead of instant ramen. As it's actually cooked and prepared traditionally.
  • Maybe the fact that Naruto is the Fourth's son is only known to the Third and maybe the elders. He may have wanted to keep Naruto's existence low key, to prevent potential enemies for kidnaping him to obtain the Kyubi's power. Is not necessary to make Naruto famous by revealing this fact, as he was not created as a weapon. Without that, Naruto is just a kid with a serious potential of becoming a demented psychopath, so it is not surprising he was shunned.
    • Naruto being the 4th's son could only be a secret if the people of Kohona are very stupid. He looks exactly like his father, his parents were the Hokage and the Hokage's wife and her pregnancy was presumably well known. Her precise time of labor was a tightly kept secret but not the pregnancy. Also it's clear that him being Kurama's prison isn't a secret, at least not from the adults. Anybody from the city should have been able to put two and two together without any difficulty. In addition Naruto WAS explicitly created as a weapon/hero what not. The Fourth knew that the man who would defeat Madara would need the power of the Ninetails to do it. If they weren't painfully stupid he would have had the best tutors in the land from day one.
    • The people of Konoha being very stupid is the only way to explain how they've apparently been cool with having a Jinchuuriki in their midst since the founding of the village and understood that the people hosting the Nine Tails isn't the Nine Tails itself until one day it gets loose and goes on a rampage. Being upset makes sense and suddenly believing that the Nine Tails isn't as secure as thought is understandable but at the beginning of the series people seem to really not understand that Naruto is just the (questionably secure) container for the Nine Tails.
    • There is no indication that Kushina was anything but a beloved member of the village. She was the Hokage's wife and was brought specifically because it was believed (probably correctly) that the best way to keep a Jinchuuriki from going crazy is for them to know they are loved and to love others. I suspect when the Ninetails broke out it had a much higher body count than is generally depicted. We know that the ninjas who were teaching Naruto at the acadamy were children when the attack happened but they seem to be the "adult" generation with very few elders.
  • And how do you know that the Third Hokage didn't have him taken care of? For all you know he had a caretaker until just before the start of the manga. I like to think that he had a bunch of them and he kept driving them all away with his pranks and bad attitude, and the Hokage finally threw his hands in the air and said "Fine! You're old to take care of yourself now,and besides I can't find anyone else willing to take the job of watching you. Here's the key to your new apartment."
    • It seems obvious that the Third didn't take much care of Naruto. He got an apartment and food but we also know the only reason he's such a trouble maker is because he craves attention and recognition. Naruto doesn't even really want to be Hokage until later, he wants to acknowledged and respected and everybody respects the Hokage. Young Naruto would probably have been perfectly content if the Third had simply assigned a random chunin to play tag with him once a week.
  • I don't know if it was in the manga or not, but they did at one point show the Third showing up in Naruto's apartment and dropping off money, I believe he said something to the effect of "Here is your rent and food money for the month", he acted pretty dickish about it too, not gonna lie (I get that Naruto is a trouble maker, not to mention the nine-tails, but still the Third could show a little compassion) and just walked away without saying anything when Naruto asked him who his father was. You'd think he'd say "Naruto, I can't tell you now, but your parents were great people who loved you" or something. That would probably help with his abandonment issues.
  • Jiraiya was spending his time tracking some of the most dangerous criminals in the world. It was a job pretty much no one other than him could do, and he could hardly bring a newborn child with him. Kakashi was a teenager with a bad case of PTSD when his mentor died, he'd be in no condition to raise a child.
• If Jiraiya is so strong, how come he's only been shown using a handful of techniques? Actually, the same could go for Kakashi. The "master of a thousand techniques" prefers a few water-based attacks and Raikiri, and that's it.
  • Lack of imagination on the artist's part
  • Could just be advertising; it is sort of fitting that Jiraiya would encourage rumours and speculation, especially if it would make his job easier. Plus, he's shown to have been like Naruto when he was younger e.g. naturally strong, but not good at learning, like [[Main/Negima! Magister Negi Magi Negi's]] father being called 'The Thousand Master' when,"...it's more like 5 to 6 techniques,tops," but still strong enough to level a mountain.
  • Kakashi's natural elements may be water and lightning, so it'd make sense to use the Sharingan as little as possible, to avoid tiring himself out.
    • Also, just because he can copy most techniques right after seeing them performed by others doesn't mean he actually remembers them for very long. Copying isn't the same as actually learning and practicing said techniques.
    • Additionally, he probably can't use them as well as the original user could (like with Shikamaru's Shadow Possession Jutsu; Kakashi is quite intelligent, but without specializing in the jutsu, he probably couldn't know all the nuances like stretching his shadow or moving it from one shadow to another).
    • Don't remember if it was stated in the manga, but I'm pretty sure the Sharingan can't copy secret clan techniques.
  • Third option: as the saying goes, "There's old pilots, and there's bold pilots, but there ain't no old, bold pilots." They're old soldiers; they know their limits and what will get the job done.
    • Most of the fighting we've seen has shown the situational nature of any jutsu. Even if Kakashi remembers every technique he's seen, can use all of them, and has the understanding to apply them sensibly, he hasn't lived long enough to have experienced the kind of fight each one leads to. It could be the same reasoning which leads chess players to specialize in two or three opening combinations, even if they've studied a couple dozen. Kakashi's style is effective, and he does use his knowledge to predict what an opponent is likely to know for strategic or intimidation value (such as that copy-the-jutsu-before-it-starts trick he used on Zabuza). Given how intellectual his combat tactics really are, it might be very difficult to integrate random jutsu into his style... and certainly not a thousand of them.
  • Keep in mind that Jiraiya has never been seen fighting at his true potential, against an opponent who seriously threatens him. His appearance during Destruction of Konoha is extremely brief, he's drugged by Tsunade at the end of Search for Tsunade, and Itachi and Kisame try deceptions and flee rather than directly fighting him, and he's off gathering intelligence about the Akatsuki for almost the entirety of part two. Itachi — who is no pushover — points out that if he and Kisame had tried to go toe-to-toe with Jiraiya, there would have been no doubt about the outcome. The Akatsuki leader, Pein, is supposedly going to attack Jiraiya soon in the manga, so we'll probably see the true extent of his abilities then.
    • That was what i was about to point out, we will be able to see his power soon. What worries me is that this is going to be a worf situation since he has already set up plans in case of failure and he doesn't know they know he is in the country. At the very least he can't win this battle.
    • He puts up a pretty damn good fight, and apparently manages to kill one? of Pain's 6 forms. We still have no idea what on earth those freaky eyes do, but Jiraya apparently knew something before his death, and sent off a messanger. Count me as confused.
    • Actually he managed to kill three of them and I bet it would've been a pretty close fight with all of them if he had known that there were six of them total and he had conserved his energy.
  • The techniques are typically used out of tactical necessity, and since conserving chakra is a large part of most of the series' fights, the ninjas only use their best and most effective moves at the right moments.
  • If Jiraiya had known there were six of them and known their powers, cus lets be honest "Hey didn't I already kill you?" is a pretty big surprise mid battle. That coupled with Pein was trained by Jiraiya so one guy went into the fight pretty much blind while the other had at least a basic knowledge of who he was fighting and what they might try.
  • Jiraya is one of the secondary character we've seen the most jutsus of...
• Why didn't Jiraya tell Naruto about his parents and how proud of him they would be? Even if you assume that nobody ever bothered telling Jiraya the details around Minato and Kushina's deaths he still personally knew them. I can get strategically leaving out the whole "I'm your Godfather but decided it was more fun wandering and boozing it up to coming back to raise you." part but telling him that his father was Hokage would have been massive.
  • He may have felt it wasn't his place to do so. After all, Naruto's heritage was kept secret for a reason.
• Jiraiya as Naruto's godfather. Was Jiraiya the wandering spy master of Konoha before Naruto was born, or did he become it after? The difference is that either Kushina and Minato were idiots for naming him as godfather if it was before, or that Jiraiya is a horrible prick if it was after.
  • Jiraiya was godfather only in that Naruto was named after the main character in his book. Wasn't there a scene where Kushina and Minato tell him the baby's name, and Jiraiya's like 'Wouldn't that make me the godfather' or something... Doesn't seem to mean that much that he was, and there certainly seemed to be no expectations for him to raise Naruto in case the parents died (what with one being Hogake and the other a Jinchuriki they must have realised it was a possibility). Also Jiraiya is definitely NOT the kind of person that could raise a child well - hell, Sarutobi might not have wanted a drunken pervert around Naruto while he was at his most impressionable. And how many Kage-level ninjas (minus Sarutobi himself, for obvious reasons) did they have who could spy on Orochimaru and Akatsuki? Especially considering probably the best guy to spy on a Kage-level ninja is his former teammate who knows something about him (and is also conveniently a Kage-level ninja himself).

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Jonin

• After watching Shippuden 120-121, I wonder WHY didn't Kakashi use his Chidori to crush the stones that landed on Obito, instead of just punching?..
  • Well, it was too late to do anything for Obito at that point. His entire right side had already been completely crushed. And even though Kakashi is a jonin a this point, he still seemed rather immature and impulsive. It's perfectly likely that he wasn't thinking clearly while one of his teammates slowly died in front of him.
  • Keep in mind Chidori was still a relatively new technique at the time, and he didn't know its limits yet, even then, Sasuke, who was arguably more talented and stronger then Kakashi when he was his age, never actually managed to break the bolders he used chidori on, and they weren't even the same size of the one that crushed Obito
• What's up with Kurenai's eyes?
  • What specifically? That they are red, or that they superficially resemble the Rinnegan in Black and white?
    • I was referring to the fact that they look like Sharingan without the tomoe, so the redness.
    • The Rinnegan thing bothered this troper. It wasn't until we finally got a color picture of Pain's eyes that it was clear Kurenai didn't have the Rinnegan. And every other character with such unusual eyes has them because of a kekkei genkai.
    • Well Kisame(white on black) and Kakuzu(red on green) had pretty weird for eyes for no really reason too.
    • Kisame and Kakuzu are both character designs left over from when every Akatsuki member was going to be freakishly inhuman (You can also see this in Zetsu, Sasori and sort of Deidara). So their eye colors are probably supposed to make them look weird.
    • And Hanzo also has weird eyes (something light on black, though only in the manga) and unlike Kisame or Kakuzu there isn't even anything weird about his body.
• Why are Kurenai and Choza seemingly the only two Jonin that don't have to wear the normal body armor that every other Jonin wears? A small detail, but it bugs me so badly. At least with the Hokage it makes some sense, since they're above that, or with the genin and chunin, since they aren't at that level yet, but with Jonin there's a certain sense of unity... and then these two.
  • Shibi Aburame never wears the standard body armour despite being a Jonin, it might be because Choza and him are clan leaders or just because the standard one doesn't work well with their techniques. Kurenai, I guess because she's a woman, she's always drawn with that weird bandage outfit for fanservice or something.
  • As of the Great Ninja War it seems the normal body armor is more akin to official battle armor. Everybody is wearing it and the majority of them are just Chunin at this point. Additionally armor isn't really useful. Guy and Rock are both special in that they primarily use taijutsu but I assume most ninjutsu would pass through armor not really stopped by armor much and genjutsu obviously not at all.

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Rock Lee

• Okay, so Rock Lee can't use Ninja Arts or Illusions because he has a stunted Chakra coil, correct? Then how can he generate the chakra necessary to unlock his Inner Gates?
  • I always took it that he can generate chakra just fine and that is problem is getting it outside of his body, hence why he can't use ninjutsu or genjutsu. He is, however, able to use it to affect the stuff on the inside, such as the Gates.
  • I always thought about it as you didnt need to use chakra to actually open them, just training and a shit ton of concentration, hence the DBZ stance and the ocational "scream of rising power"
  • I also thought that it wasn't necessarily a defect of some sort, he just wasn't smart enough or interested enough in ninjutsu or genjutsu to learn it.
    • Nope. Lee's chakra coils (as far as I can tell, the 'lines' that Byakugan users can see) are malformed. He still produces chakra, but he can't externalize it in any way.
    • Theres even a defect in the Naruto D20 about the whole chakra coil defect...thingy
    • There's... nothing wrong with Lee's chakra coils. I don't know why people must keep bringing it up, but Gai specifically says, during Lee's fight with Gaara, that he has no talent for Genjutsu and Ninjutsu. He can walk on water and walls, and even gets a Battle Aura when unleashing the gates. That's chakra, folks. Not sweat.
    • When did he ever walk on water or walls? Granted, it is only ever said he "had no talent" for ninjutsu or genjutsu (reflected by his listing in those skills for the databooks being very low instead of zero and him making a very minor improvement in genjutsu over the Time Skip, likely reflecting his ability to counter genjutsu), but it's just odd that it's always spoken of as if him learning them was physically impossible instead of just too difficult to bother with.
    • He walked on water in the early episodes of Shippuuden, the rescue Gaara arc.
    • Walking on water and walls means focusing chakra at your feet. So, like the Gates, he can do it just fine.
  • OK, Rock Lee's power goes like this: think of Chakra in the same way you would think of Mathematics. Everyone on Earth has the capability to be good at maths; we all have brains, eyes and the ability to learn... but so very, very few of us could be considered anything beyond above average and even less are brilliant - this is because even though, on paper, all thing ae equal many of us simply don't have a talent for it. Chakra is the same thing; everyone in the Narutoverse has a chakra network and the ability to learn or go to the Academy, but many like Rock Lee simply have no aptitude for it. Remember how many powerless civilians we've seen? given how everyone would learn how to use it if they could... Rock Lee would have been one of these faceless mooks who work as shopkeepers if it wasn't for his determination and for the training of Might Guy. Rock Lee has been shown to open his chakra gates, walk up walls and across water and use his chakra to amplify his speed and strength; the chakra coil idea is simply incorrect.
• If Rock Lee has weights on his feet that weigh a ton, how come he doesn't liquify people's heads when he kicks them in the face? If he can move that much mass that quickly, it should be fairly detrimental to the target's health.
  • Logically, yes. But would that be as fun to watch? He probably has remarkable self-control (since he can easily move around, he'd probably be good at making sure the weights were kept under control too), and he seems the type to enjoy the fight as long as he can without letting hell break loose.
  • I can accept that he's good enough to not splatter opponents, or when he's going all out that the opponent(s?) are good enough not to be splattered, but how does he keep from breaking whatever he's standing on/lands on?
  • That was what caught me a bit off-guard before the Chuunin Exam. He launches a weighted kick at Temari, and is surprised when she stops it easily (and she herself notes that it was "nothing special"). I mean, his kicks certainly would lose power compared to unweighted - you get more kinetic energy from velocity than from mass - but considering how much those things weigh, it should still have been a pretty hefty shot to be called "nothing special."
  • Looking at the weights, they have writing on them very similar to that found on explosive tags. It's highly probable that they're not ordinary weights. In other words, A Ninja Did It.
    • Lee was introduced as someone that attacks Sasuke for reason other then his clan and that he's not stronger then him like Neji is. After completely wiping the floor with someone that's three momths out of the Academy he gets on his high horse about how hard work is better then natural genius, which might appease the Sasuke haters but coming from someone that never met Sasuke in his life it doesn't come off as nice at all.
    • Neji is not stronger than Sasuke, even in the Chuunin Exam phase. At no time did Neji rival Sasuke or Naruto in terms of brute strength, and I doubt he even rivaled Lee in brute strength. What Neji had on his side was the force-multiplying effects of the Byakugan and the Gentle-Fist style. Skill, not strength. Without that advantage, Neji wouldn't have simply lost to Naruto; it wouldn't have even been a contest.
    • Lee heard about the supposedly most talented ninja at the academy, and decided to test his skills against him, Lee had the disadvantage of not being able to use anything but taijutsu, so its understandable that he was happy to see that hard work pay off.
    • Okay one thing has always bothered me, in the chunin exam arc Rock Lee is put against Gaara who was built up to the point we all sort of knew he didn't have a chance even before watching. That's not what bothers me, infact I'd say the this fight remains possibly one of the best fights in the show, either the original and shippoden. What has always peeved me off to no end is other characters reactions to the fight naruto even stating in the dub (I kid you not) "he beat bushy brow (Rock Lee) without even breaking a sweat!" Okay I'll grant you that the match ended abruptly because Garra broke an arm and leg and even tried to murder him,forcing Guy to intervene. but WITHOUT A SWEAT!? Gaara was in control during the start of the match and he did end the fight, but Rock Lee controlled the middle of the fight, in fact he dominated it, Lee was in control until the end. Gaara who seemed to switch between stoicism and homicidal mania expressed one clear emotion. fear.the look in his eyes was clearly fearful, and Rock Lee was the first character on screen shown to hit Gaara(Sauske was later the first to make him bleed on screen) So basically, in what universe is that "without a sweat"?
    • Two words for you: blind translators.
• Here's one related to the above. Rock Lee has several hundred pounds of weight strapped to each leg, he fights with these weights on more often than not. When Rock Lee performs one of his spin kicks, how does he stop? The momentum generated by his weights should send him spinning out of control. Ignoring that, if he follows through properly with his kicks, his leg should be torn from his body, or at the very least dislocated. How does Rock Lee keep all his limbs attached?
  • Chackra and super-human strength, his limits far surpass ours, if it gets to the point where his limbs can't stand anymore, then he will decrease the load, and that point is presumably several tons.
• Why is Rock Lee not just constantly blitzed for the entirety of the 4th Shinobi World War? Yes, he is technically still a minor, but you'd think exceptions would be made. The only objections that Tsunade and Guy had pre-timeskip was that he had just gotten out of the hospital so his body wouldn't support his actions forever, but that's obviously not a problem anymore. It seems like his status as a Drunken Master has been completely forgotten since he fought (pretty impressively) against Kimimaro.
  • Because he sees everyone as an enemy when he's drunk, he passes out after a few minutes and sobers up if he gets hit, it's not really useful for any kind of battle.
  • In addition to the above most people in Naruto still hold their best technique in reserve.

---

Shikamaru

• This doesn't bug me per say, as Shikamaru's my favorite character by far, but it was immensely amusing to watch the latest filler episodes: "We're in trouble! We need a plan! Where's Shikamaru?!" I'm sure that would bug people who don't like him, but honestly, who doesn't like Shikamaru? It seems that ninja are incapable of coming up with a plan on their own, and they need the resident super-genius to bail them out.
  • People want to be around Shika? He must've quit smoking then.
    • He only smoked for a short time while avenging his mentor.
    • It just bugs me that he stopped smoking now. But that probably would scare the kids away, right? Right...
    • They could show him trying to quit and struggling with it in the anime, all it would take is more Filler screen time than he's had in the whole series so far...
    • It's physically impossible to get addicted to nicotine after a few smokes. Nicotine addiction takes years to develop.
    • I don't like Shikamaru. In part 2 he just comes across as a douche to me. Ninja war or not, he was an asshole in telling Naruto just to 'get over' the death of Jiraiya.
    • And how'd he do that? By telling Naruto that he understood what he was going through, but they've got a responsibility to step up and do something about all the crap that's been going on in the world so that it'll be better than they left it. Naruto's a nice guy, and it hit just where it needed to.
    • Urm, the smoking part comes after the filler arc. My beef is that after hyping Shikamaru's brilliant planning he just comes up with "We'll let Naruto handle it." Anyway, maybe in part 2 Shikamaru acts like a jerk but he, Hinata and Chouji were the only three originally nice people in the Konoha 12.
• This Has been bugging this troper for a while but why was Shikamaru promoted?
  • He didn't win the battle but you don't have to. He proved what a brilliant strategist he was by planning out every move and dominating the battle. He also sensibly quit when he knew he couldn't win instead of recklessly going ahead which, in real situations, would just get him or his teammates killed which was probably why Naruto wasn't promoted. Plus can you imagine getting him to enter another exam?
    • Yeah but it's more because of what the third stated at the beginning of the preliminaries, that the exams were a substitute for war, call me a nitpicker but would you want a guy who gives up in charge of troops? Since in a ninja war I'm assuming that the enemy would torture and interrogate him for information on their troop placements and such.
    • He didn't just quit because he was scared or sick of the fight. He quit when he had no more chakra left and, knowing his limits, knew that nothing good would come in continuing. The real-life equivalent to that isn't surrendering but rather retreating and trying the mission again later when you might actually succeed. What would be gained by a ninja in war charging ahead recklessly like Naruto always does but who isn't as overpowered as Naruto is? That's a far better way to end up killed or captured than retreating is.
    • You're looking at it the wrong way, if Temari was hurting him over and over until he gave up, and then he quit, then it applies, but that wasn't the situation. "A good leader knows when to retreat", He showed that if he were leading a squad, he is capable of coming to the conclusion that they are incapable of completing the mission successfully, where the best solution is to flee, possibly getting as much information as possible before leaving. As in no being suicidal hoping your mayor character powers save you.
    • Furthermore, the fight was one-on-one, which is not realistic for a Chuunin being deployed. In a real mission, he'd have teammates to back him up, most likely Ino and Choji, given the experience and clan relations. So while he was unable to keep Temari under his control for very long, in a real battle he wouldn't have to, because Ino would take advantage of the enemy being caught in Shadow Possession to execute a Mind Transfer and seize control of the target. Thus, not only has he shown good judgment, but also good field tactics. They were okay with him losing without backup, because he proved he would win with backup that would be provided to him in the field.
    • In a real battle, Temari would have her brothers as backup and Team Asuma would be dead .00003 seconds into the fight, and 90% of the fights in the Naruto universe are one on one.
    • Not a fair comparison since Gaara could take Team Asuma in half the time you suggest. That said the fights in Naruto don't seem to be normal for what fights are supposed to be in the Narutoverse. I doubt the 4th Ninja War is the first time they've fought in large groups and it's flat out stated that each team is supposed to have a healer. I doubt that's because normal fights are 1 on 1. Further more a lot of the fights that are one on one happen that way because one side simply chose to do it that way for reasons we'll never know.
    • I have to take issue with your statement that every team is meant to have a healer because (in anime anyway - it may be different in the book) part of Tsunade's reluctance to return to the Leaf Village and become the Fifth Hokage is because her brother Nawaki was, many years before, killed explicitly because his team never had a Medical-Nin. Sarutobi afterwards directly tells her that it would be a waste of resources and I see no evidence that this rule had changed by the time of Naruto's graduation from the academy. Why? because it would have been a compulsory subject. It makes absolutely no sense to decree a rule to have every team feature a Healer if you haven't taught them the raw basics either during basic training or immediately after - in real world Special Forces Teams each member is trained in field medicine to prevent the need to include a true Medic. Sakura only became a White Mage because she felt useless compared to her team mates.
    • Standing corrected. She did get put down on this issue, she only started the official Medical-Nin program. I'd teach it as a compulsory subject however. Medical Nin aren't nurses their tiny miracles. In a real life situation for Special Forces you get a major wound you likely aren't surviving without a fair bit of luck, certainly nobody is bringing you back from the dead or regenerating your body parts on the fly. Which doesn't change the fact that I'm skeptical that what we've seen as far as singles combat being the norm and not the exception. It seems when a war breaks out (as opposed to what ultimately are escort or retrieval missions remember protecting a Bridge Builder from gangsters was an A-Rank mission and seems like S-Rank mission is almost code for we don't expect you back) that suddenly we see mass combat. I'll grant that some of it is it would be difficult to depict organized teams in the 4th Great Ninja War.
    • There is another interpretation of Shikamaru's fight with Temari. He essentially won, trapping her in a jutsu that she can't escape from and from which he could easily kill her. He basically was the only ninja who showed any kind of long term strategy and planning (Shino and Sasuke couldn't. Neji and Naruto didn't). He had enough chakra to take her down, shown when he trapped 8 Sound ninja later on in the invasion. He just didn't want to. He showed that he knew exactly what it took to win and become chunnin without putting himself in any more danger. He showed strategy, astute knowledge of his goal and efficiency. That's why he became chunnin.
• What was the point of Shikamaru's water scroll in the anime?. While it was useful against Kakuzu to a limited extent,he had no clue that Kakuzu could produce those thread beasts so what the point of bringing it.
  • Many ninjas use at least one elemental power, maybe he always has scrolls with him to counter every element just in case?

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Konohamaru

• Konohamaru's scarf. It's quite long, how is he supposed to go on missions? It can get tangled easily and the enemy can grab it (as Naruto did in one of the endings).
  • Because it's part of his look. There are plenty of characters with clothing items that would be a hinderance in the real world, but aren't one in the Shonen world. Neji's long sleeves, the Akatsuki cloaks, Bee's belt strands, etc.

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Tenten

• exactly where are Tenten, Lee's, and Sakura's parents? With all the other characters we've seen at least one parent or we know that both parents are dead, the exception being Shikamaru who has both. Yet those three are never shown to have onscreen parents and there's really nothing to indicate they've died. In fact, in all three of their cases it appears they don't belong to shinobi lineages at all given that all the other characters have either a bloodline limit or a secret technique passed down through their clan.
  • Kishimoto actually states that Tenten was just created as a filler character so that he could have the 2 boys, 1 girl pattern complete.
    • That being said, is there an internal justification for the 2:1 gender ratio pretty much throughout the ninja corps?
    • Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls lets them do MMF threesome shipping.
    • Other than aesthetic reasons, probably not, unless it just happens that kunoichi are better at medical ninjutsu and all the teams have to have a medic nin. As to why teams always have more males than females, I'd say chalk it up to good old fashioned sexism.
    • To quote a certain other action anime, "A system in which all the parts react the same way is a system with a fatal flaw." Sexist or not, the fact remains that most girls are still raised differently than most boys, so a lot of them end up with a thought process that's totally different. And as much as the two twelve-year-old males on a kunoichi's team may grumble about the "stupid girl who doesn't 'get it' or make any sense", the fact that she's on the team at all means that the administration takes into consideration the fact that successful brainstorming in a group is a hell of a lot easier when there's three people who think nothing alike in the first place; you've got the Cold Sniper guy, the Hot-Blooded guy, and a girl, who no matter what her personality seems to be able to keep the other two focused on the task at hand simply by telling them in various ways to get a grip. As for the reason we never see the reverse, if Naruto's class is anything to go by, a lot fewer girls attend the Ninja Academy than boys (probably due to over-protective parents - and considering what these kids get up to, can you blame 'em?). Plus, y'know... consider the personalities of the young lady genin. Can you imagine a productive team in the first season with both Ino and Sakura on it? Or Hinata and Ino? Or Sakura and Hinata?
    • Sakura and Hinata is plausible to this troper, especially with Sakura post-time skip. They could have some nice bonding scenes together.
    • You just know someone stole that line and used it to write a fanfic.
    • Seems like any of the girls could work together as part of a team, although it probably wouldn't happen since they seem to have been picked for potential skills to fill a certain role in their groups.
    • Before everyone jumps to the sexism accusations, you gotta remember that there are a lot more male soldiers, firefighters and cops than female ones, this doesn't mean that women aren't equally good or at times better than men at these jobs, simply that those are jobs that interest a greater number of men than women, some girls will want to be policewomen, but almost all boys wanted to be a cop at some point in their lives. I always figured that there were simply more male leaf ninjas than female ones and that's why the pair was made that way, since as seen by Kabuto's group among others, there can be a 3 male squad, and even 2 females and 1 male squad like Team Samui, which shows that they try to have at least one female in every team.
  • Even without her just being a filler character, with so many characters it was bound to happen that someone got shafted. Still, one can hope that eventually she'll get some development, since the series is already a long runner and seems to have the potential to turn out incredibly long. Plus, she uses a freakin' knife bomb! There's just so much potential kickassery in that character.
    • and what about shino no one seems to remember him.
    • Maybe not, but we've at least seen one of his parents and we know he comes from a pretty good clan.
  • Sakura has at least a mother; her voice is heard off-screen in a few episodes. I figure her parents are civilians, which is why they haven't shown up much.
    • That makes sense; we don't see much of Ino's parents either and they're quite explicitly civilians (operating a flower shop that's only open between ninja missions being pretty much impossible).
    • Actually it's Ino's mom who owns the flower shop, her dad is shown to be a ninja. He forms another trio with Choji and Shikamaru's dads.
  • I just thought it was because of the war and stuff that a lot of characters are orphans. I can also imagine that it'd be kind of awkward to put in some mention/appearance of parents, particularly of so many supporting characters.
• I think it was Tenten during the Chunin exams that used an elaborate system of mirrors to cheat off the others(mighta been anime only). How in the name of Oprah could she have A: Set up and B: used those mirrors without anyone noticing? Especially not the professional espionage agent proctoring the bloody test?
  • It's likely said professional espionage agrents did notice, they just didn't care. Remember, the goal of that exam was to creatively cheat.
    • Also, her battle technique has her turning symbols on a scroll into weapons. She may have simply done something similar, substituting mirrors for weapons and paper tags for the scroll, which she could have thrown into position.
    • I think it's quite blatant that the officials were only told to check for conventional cheating. Lets look at the other methods of highly obvious cheating they missed: Gaara's large and very visible floating eye, Neji near enough shouting the word Byakugan to spy on someone else's work, Sasuke with large red eyes hungrily staring forward as he copies pencil movements, Akamaru noisily barking the answers to Kiba... realistically speaking, if this wasn't the case we should seriously consider buying the shinobi of Konoha some glasses.
    • It was about the ability to gather and transmit information. Gaara I'll grant you should probably have failed but Neji and Sasuke could have been doing anything. Same with Akamaru. If I'm the locking my safe and I hear a yappy dog I think yappy dog, not he's telling someone the combination to my safe.
    • Looking back and knowing what we know about the incredible observational powers of most seasoned ninja, it seems likely that the instructors were going easy on the genin. It's more than a little ridiculous to ask rookie ninja to completely fool multiple seasoned jonin, especially in that setting, where the jonin know to look for something fishy.
    • The point of the exam is not to cheat creatively, it's to cheat without getting CAUGHT. And the Jounin are most likely holding back but the problem is by how much. It's reasonable to assume they're holding back enough to not care about say Sasuke activating his sharingan or how Kiba can get away with it because like the above, a yapping dog could be anything to an average person. But even an average person could notice that 2 people keep glancing at the ceiling and see some very obvious mirrors and obviously know something's up. Likewise, Gaara first distracts the person he targets by getting sand in their eyes...which is very noticeable on it's own. It's saying that in a dead silent classroom, when one guy suddenly starts rubbing his eyes very openly, no one glanced over and noticed a floating sand eyeball and the one person, who's power is sand, happens to be covering one of his eyes. Creativity is pointless if it fails to do the job correctly.
  • There's also the other problem of the exam, Team 7 outright failed the whole point of it. The point of the exam being the threefold 'Covertly gather information, Covertly convey it to teammates, and be brave enough to take a life or death mission'. Now think about it, of the team only Sasuke was able to successfully cheat on his test, Sakura was lucky enough to actually know the answers but she was still incapable of gathering any intel (so she would have failed if any of them required information she doesn't know like an actual intel gathering mission), and Naruto couldn't get answers that were literally 3 inches away from him without getting caught. Then the second step, Sakura and Sasuke make no attempt to convey their answers to Naruto and are otherwise unable to, unlike Ino, ten-ten, and Kankuro. Finally, the last question is supposed to be a complete all or nothing that you have to bravely face, but the problem is Naruto has no reason to think he can answer it at all. It's one thing if he stays because he doesn't want to hold his teammates behind, but being brash enough to take the risk just for himself is basically suicide. It's nice being brave enough to take a dangerous mission is nice and all, but this is the equivalent of Naruto choosing to take a high risk espionage mission but being to gung-ho to realize he would definitely fail because there's no question that if he actually had to write something down for the final question he would have failed completely.
  • The exam also has a glaring loophole on quantity vs quality. You get deducted 1/5th of the total whenever you're caught cheating, but it's a flat amount. Kankuro was blatantly caught for cheating but since it was a single instance and his attempt got him all 10 answers it didn't matter at all. By that reasoning, one person could stand up in full view, grab the test next to him and memorize all 10 answers, get marked -2 for cheating, then sit down and fill out his sheet. And really THAT is still putting more effort than necessary, you only need to grab three answers to offset the points lost from cheating and you'll still pass with a positive score.

---

Guy

• Whatever happened to Guy's tortoise summon?
  • It probably only existed because the author hadn't decided Mighy Guy would almost exclusively use taijutsu yet.
  • Summons don't seem to be universally practical, as apart from Kakashi's dogs (which are summoned to track scents), most summoned creatures are brought in when someone else summons creatures. Unless Guy faces an opponent with a summoning jutsu, he probably won't use it again.
  • That tortoise didn't really look to useful, anyway.
  • It actually reappears in Shippuden in Guy's final fight against Kisame. The tortoise is deservedly pissed that Guy hasn't summoned him in years.
• Question regarding Team Guy as a whole: when the Leaf genin were originally divided up into teams, Iruka answered Naruto's complaints by claiming that they had put each person on each team to ensure that the teams were all balanced and capable of handling any situation. For the most part, it seems like they did a good job (Kiba's team may specialize in tracking, but they're pretty diverse when it comes to combat). Until we meet Team Guy: Three incredibly strong taijutsu users and a weapon expert (so really, another form of taijutsu). None of them appear to be capable of using traditional ninjutsu or genjutsu at all. Why would you put the village's three best taijutsu users on the same team? How the hell is that balanced?
  • It's a team specialised in taijutsu that is well-rounded in that aspect, with Lee being a short-ranged warrior, Ten-Ten capable of providing heavy firepower at mid and long distances, and Neji being able to hit whatever would be protected well enough to resist their attacks. So instead of being just a balanced team, they are a balanced strike team. They don't need ninjutsu because their wide repertoire of taijutsu is a viable substitute, and they do have protection from basic genjutsu in form of Neji (add to that the fact that the only form of genjutsu they surely wouldn't be able to resist comes from the Mangekyou Sharingan, which they can defend against by not looking their opponent into his eyes [which is made easier because they can throw strikes/weapons blindly, but wouldn't be able to do so with most techniques]).
    • Except they're still highly vulnerable at range since ten-ten has sub-par abilities. Ten-Ten loses to anyone able to dodge(everyone) or block(most ninjutsu users) regular arms. Neji also had no ranged abilities early on (he would have lost if Kidomaru bothered to cut his spider thread after firing at him since he'd never be able to close the distance otherwise). Which leaves Lee who can close distances but has shown time and again that even at close range his straightforward attacks are vulnerable to rounded ninja with ninjutsu.
    • Tenten doesn't have sub-par abilities. Her strongest attack pre-timeskip cannot be dodged (by most people), as she can throw and control the thrown weapons with chakra strings. The only way to dodge is to practically use the 8 gates, and most people don't actually have a blocking ninjutsu (pre timeskip only Neji, Gaara and Kidomaru which is 3 out of a lot).
    • Not blocking ninjutsu, blocking ANYTHING. If a ninja has any form of wide defense AT ALL the ability is useless. All 3 of the sand ninja, that sound ninja with the air blasts, most rain ninja carry those needle umbrellas that also can block weapons, any ninja with earth element, any ninja fighting near any form of cover (which rules out both inside town and outside town in the surrounding forest), any ninja with a moderately forceful wide spread blast (so any water or wind ninja), and the list goes on. Likewise it takes up her hands for the sizeable windup so she's vulnerable to any attack at all with range while using it. Also saying that Hokage level power is required to dodge is a gross extradition. Without using any gates at all Lee could easily out pace the technique, yes he's an outlier but it's only hard to dodge if the whole thing is allowed to fire. Ten-Ten never uses it in the future because there's just no situation where an enemy would idlely sit by and let her summon every one of those weapons then raise them into the air then fire them.
  • Iruka never says anything about balancing the teams for any given combat situation. He says that the lowest and highest scoring students are put on the same team to balance the competency of all the teams as a whole. Which is what happened; the ninjutsu and genjutsu-less Rock Lee was on the same team as the genius Neji.
• On the subject of Afternoon Tiger...how the hell does it contain no chakra whatsoever? Punching really hard can't produce a blast of air in the shape of a giant attacking cat...
  • It's possible that it contains no *chakra*, but instead uses pure physical energy, wihtout mixing in the spiritual energy required to produce chakra.
• In the flashback to Guy's childhood, his father talks about how Guy, at the time five years old, cannot use ninjutsu or genjutsu at all. On the surface, this sounds identical to Rock Lee's situation, but as an adult Guy has been shown (at least) using summoning ninjutsu and dispelling genjutsu. So... was Guy's inability not absolute like Lee's is, or are we to assume that Lee too could learn some nin/genjutsu? Or did Kishimoto just forget he'd already shown Guy using techniques other than taijutsu?
  • Guy was never physiologically incapable of using genjutsu and taijutsu. He just sucked at them. Eventually he overcame that, otherwise he'd surely be a Special Jounin instead of full Jounin.
• So Tsunade was cut in half, and was put back together. Kakashi loses his eye and Naruto makes a new one. Naruto and Sasuke lose their arms, but Naruto gets a new one (with Sasuke declining the offer). So why is Guy still limited to a wheelchair with a shattered leg?
  • Tsunade's healing ability is not something that can be used on other people, they have to learn it. Reattaching parts also seems to be comparatively easy in the Naruto world compared to actually healing the parts themselves. Naruto lost his ability to do what he did for Kakashi when he lost that seal on his hand. As for the new arm Naruto got, it was specifically made for him, and the cells used may not work on ninja that don't have his unique powers. Even in the sequel series when Kawaki gets a prosthetic arm, it's actually stilled attuned to Naruto and requires Naruto kneading chakra into it for it to function properly. The novels also clarify that Guy can get out of his wheelchair if he really needs to, it just hurts. As for why his leg couldn't be healed, the easy answer is that the 8th gate's Night Guy simply did damage that cannot be fully healed.
    • Well, no, Tsunade's healing ability is Creation Rebirth, which can 100% be used on others since Sakura did it for Obito. But the point stands that Night Guy's damage might simply be irreversible, espeically if Naruto's Yin-Yang Release didn't fix it in the first place. It was already established, back when Naruto developed Rasenshuriken, that certain injuries are simply outside the scope of what healing or regeneration can fix (unless you have Hashirama's cells, of course.)

---

Kakashi

• How does Kakashi accurately throw shuriken, jump from tree limb to tree limb, etc, with no depth perception?
  • Considering that most of those actions defy the laws of physics, I'm going to go ahead and say chakra, just like any other ninja.
  • He does it the same way that Leela manages to pilot a spaceship. How she does it is still a mystery.
  • Let's just say that Mask Power lets just putting his headband over the Sharingan eye act as a seal that makes it function like an uncovered normal eye.
  • He's the Copy Ninja - upon realizing his lack of depth perception, he carefully observes with the Sharingan other ninja doing these activities, and then uses those muscle patterns to fall back on.
  • There's also the fact that when people lose an eye the other has to develop stronger sight in order to compensate. It takes time, obviously, but it happens or one eyed people all over the world would still be running into things. Don't forget it's been near a decade since he lost his eye. Plenty of time to adjust in a world where people seem to have stronger senses anyway.
  • Previous poster is right. Depth perception is a subject you should look up on The Other Wiki (or Schlock Mercenary)Vivi Fizgig. It's done in more ways than just use of two eyes. What I'm saying is that depth perception is too particular for this problem. Try "How does Kakashi accurately throw shuriken, jump from tree limb to tree limb, etc, without the use of both of his eyes?"
  • I blame the Sharingan. It's capable of seeing chakra through solid objects. Since's Kakashi's normal sight with that eye is obstructed with the headband most of the time, this would cause some "aura sight" as the view of Chakra is super-imposed over the actual image he sees with his good eye providing some form of depth perception.
    • Yeah, there really has never been any proof that Kakashi's headband blocks EVERYTHING the Sharingan can do. It blocks most of it sure, but when you consider how stupidly powerful both he and it is, there is probably some form of Chakra Aura perception he is capable of. Also, pure WMG territory here, but maybe he has punctured a small hole into the headband that allows him a small amount of vision but isn't enough to drain his vast reserves of chakra.
  • speaking as someone with only one eye, two eyes is not the end all of ranged ability, I can throw, drive, and even shoot just fine, you learn to judge distance in other ways, two eyes just makes it easier.
    • I agree with this one (though I still have both eyes) - it's possible to learn how to perceive depth with just one eye, it's just a little bit more difficult because we have less data to process. It's the same thing as basic echolocation used by people who are blind, or lip-reading done by those who are deaf; not impossible, but most people just don't bother. And if one really wants to ask how is Kakashi able to perceive depth with just one eye, he should ask a sniper, for none of them uses two eyes when looking through the scope.
• There's one other thing that bugs me. When Kakashi had the chance of ambushing Kakuzu with a well-timed Raikiri, why aiming for his heart? Kakuzu has five of 'em! You gotta shoot 'em in the head! Go for his brain, dammit, it's not like Kakuzu can replace his own head!
  • If you're talking about the Raikiri he used to take out the first heart, he did that before he was aware that he had more than one heart. And anyway, given how strange Kakuzu's biology is, there's no guarantee that taking out his brain would kill him, or for that matter whether his brain is actually in his head or somewhere else. His hearts, on the other hand, are big targets that are guaranteed to kill him if he loses them all.
• Deidara's arms. Specifically, how the hell he managed to find, fix and reattach his left arm after his battle with Gaara, after getting it crushed and torn off by sand. Also his right elbow, it looks like it's decaying or something. But I suppose a dramatic battle with Sasuke wouldn't be as dramatic if the enemy only had one arm. (On a side note, this troper now harbours a strong dislike for Sasuke for killing both her favourite character and her favourite summon, Manda.)
  • I don't think he reattached it, I think he regrew it. Something like putting special clay on the stump and it turning into his new arm.
    • It's explicitly stated that Kakuzu used his thread to reattach Deidara's arms the same way he managed to reattach Hidan's head. That still leaves the question of how he managed to recover his crushed left arm from the Sand Village, though.
    • The left arm never got detached in the first place.
    • Which doesn't do much to explain the stitches there...
    • It was crushed.
    • Maybe it was actually someone else's arm, with the same modifications?
    • Since Kakashi used Kamui on it, it probably landed in the other dimension. Which, of course, means that Obito found it and handed it back.

• Kakashi's dad killed himself when he was six and mom was dead before that, so who took care of Kakashi when he was a child? Even if he was the genius he is, Unlike Naruto, the village had no reason to let him live alone.
  • Kakashi probably lived alone like Naruto and Sasuke after the Uchiha Massacre. I don't think being a genius comes with privileges regarding caring for orphans. The Third Hokage seemed to be the one who spent most of the time with the orphaned ninjas as seen from the flashbacks during his funeral, however. Even so, Kakashi didn't have a very happy childhood, even if the village had no reason to let him live alone. I think he was similar to Sasuke when he was a kid, only he probably didn't betray his village. He also had very few friends, maybe just Obito, and he died too (and they only became friends before that). So, bottom line is that I don't think anyone made much of a fuss about raising Kakashi Konoha being a military village and all.
  • At the age of six, Kakashi was already an active-duty ninja. It stands to reason that he did indeed live alone.
• Did Kakashi, by proxy, face or recieve any kind of bullying, prejudice, or abuse from people because of the villages feelings toward his father? It could explain why he never talked about Sakumo after his death.
  • Not sure about bullying, but it seems like Kakashi was embarassed by him and put missions before teammates, and apparently Sakumo was still well respected and feared by a lot of people.
• If Kakashi is such a powerful ninja that he's notorious everywhere and considered a Hokage candidate, why did they send him out on a bunch of C and D-rank missions in Part 1? Even in peacetime I find it really unbelievable that his skill wouldn't be better used elsewhere, say spying on enemies like Jiraiya was doing or training ANBU instead of genin.
  • His skills probably could've been put to better use, but his skills were recognised enough to be handpicked to train a team that included a Hokage's son and the last Uchiha in the village, the missions are just part of their training.
  • I could buy that, it does sound like a good explanation. But the dialog in his debut episode outright says that he'd been doing the bell test thing for a while and Team 7 was the first to pass his test. He wasn't lying about that either, Sarutobi also says this to Iruka in a different scene. So either he was being assigned to random schmucks, or he was assigned to the most important graduating students and all of them were even worse than Team 7.
  • It's normal for Jonin to lead a team of rookies, I'd guess Kakashi was allowed to reject the other teams that failed the bell test because of his skills being respected, the other teams were most likely random nobodies, it doesn't seem likely that there were that many important students around.
    • First, it's not really clear if Kakashi was really in the running for Hokage in any serious way. Even when it happens it's more of an emergency provision than a case of he was being considered. Unfortunately in fiction sometimes things aren't thought up until they are, otherwise Danzo would have made a much better choice than Jiraya the wandering porn writer or Tsunade the wandering alcoholic problem gambler. That said maybe he's on similar level, politically, to those two. He simply does what he wants. It's also possible he wasn't so much trusted to train the son of a Hokage and the last of the Uchiha as it was hoped that he would fail them. A Jinchuriki and the last of the Uchiha are easier to protect inside the village than outside it and frankly them passing was equal parts Sasuke being really smart and dumb luck.
  • One of the best things Kakashi can do for the village is pass on his skills to new ninja, especially if there is no pressing need for a man of his skills elsewhere, which there wasn't at the time. Anime filler also indicates the Third thought having students would help to break Kakashi of the PTSD he developed from losing Sakumo, Obito, Rin, and Minato.
  • There's no reason that a Jounin who's been assigned a Genin team can't also be sent on missions without them as needed. That's precisely what happened in the aftermath of Orochimaru's attack on the village, for example, hence the only people being available to send after Sasuke at short notice being a Chunin and a few Genin. Had Kakashi been needed for Jonin-level mission prior to the Chunin Exam Arc, Team 7 would've just been left behind in the village to either train on their own or do D-ranks without him.

---

Minato

• Why did Minato put Kyuubi in Naruto, anyway? There are tons of ninja who would've made better candidates. Did he foresee the future?
  • yeah he did, plus its a nice way to annoy Madara by making kicking Madara's ass a family trait
  • It's not like you can ask somebody else for their kid. I bet the Fourth's mindset is that he won't do to somebody else what he's not willing to do to his own flesh and blood...
    • I also think they're about to give an explaination
    • And Now I'm having horrific flashbacks about Gaara and the reasons why his parents end sealing Shukaku into him...
    • "Hey, wanna lend me your newborn baby so I can turn it into a container for the Kyuubi?" Not gonna go over well.
  • Naruto's umbilical cord had just been cut... I don't suppose there are enough babies being born every minute to give Minato a whole lot of choices.
    • Gaara's case was bad because they already had the Shukaku sealed, and they just wanted him as a weapon, not to save the entire village.
    • There probally wasn't a large group of babies to chose from. Konoha probally has around a hundred births a year, which is about fitting to keep a decent fighting force when looking at Konoha's grading system, and the child had to be young enough to not have fully formed chakra coils yet, which is hinted happens shortly after birth.
    • Jiraiya suggests that Minato was preparing for something, and also to make Naruto more powerful (for all the drawbacks, the fox's chakra proved useful on several occasions in Part I).
    • Later chapters confirm that Minato was aware Madara sent the fox against the village and sealed the Kyuubi into Naruto in order to combat Madara. Minato assumed that Naruto as his heir would have the skill to eventually control the fox.
  • Naruto's mother had special "Kyuubi-suppressing" chakra and he hoped Naruto would have it too. Also, Naruto's having just been born was not a coincidence.
    • In more detail, the Kyuubi was locked down by his dying wife outside the village where the only people around were himself, said dying wife, and the newborn Naruto. Since the seal he was using was going to kill him, and putting the Kyuubi in Kushina would unbalance the nations when she died and the Kyuubi was released into the world, Naruto was the only option. Minato also had hope his son would be able to master the Kyuubi.
• Okay, how in the HELL did Minato gain control of the Nine-Tails Chakra mode so easily? He's been dead for years, he's had no time to learn how to use it effectively, as I sincerely doubt he just learned it on the way to Naruto... Does some one wish to explain this? It's kind of a gigantic plot hole.
  • Nine tails kinda implied that he'd used it before when Naruto started handing out chakra cloaks to everyone.
    • That's a bit of a stretch. Naruto says "My father really is incredible" and Kurama replies "I should know, he used the 10 seal on me years ago!" That doesn't sound like he's implying that Minato had mastered his power in the past but rather that Minato was incredibly powerful and the Hokage are all stupid strong. Best we can tell the Third was the "weakest" and that might just be because he lived long enough to get old seeing as the Third used to be called the God of Shinobi when he was younger.
    • The version I read had Kurama saying that even Minato wasn't as good at adapting Kurama's chakra for other people.
  • I always figured he spent part of his sixteen years being sealed with his Kurama half chatting him up, and they eventually reached the same sort of understanding Naruto and his Kurama did.
• Why exactly did Minato know the Reaper Death Seal? You don't just learn a All or Nothing attack like that for the sake of knowledge. So what exactly was he planning on using it for? Or did he originally plan to seal the Kyuubi in Naruto in case things went south?
  • What was he planning on using it for? Pretty much exactly what happened. Shit hit the fan out of nowhere and he needed a powerful seal. The thing with an All or Nothing attack is you still need to know how to use it and if you don't know it when the unexpected happens, you're screwed.
  • Given that the Uzumaki clan had means of reversing the soul-sealing aspect, it stands to reason that the Reaper Death Seal was their jutsu and Minato learned it from Kushina.

---

Kushina

• Okay, Kushina gets kidnapped by Kumo and she waits for Minato to rescue her? Does she not know how to transform into the one-tailed form in order to break free? Now one could argue that she did it on purpose in order to hook up with him, but that would mean that she knew he was coming, which she didn't.
  • perhaps they put some kind of seal on her to prevent exactly that
  • she didn't have Kurama in her yet A, B, it would have been horrible if she went one tail because she wouldn't be able to control, remember Naruto the first time some of Kurama's chakra enveloped him? C, anger is the trigger not fear.

---

Tsunade

• Why isn't Tsunade, with her world renowned medical abilities, actually doing something useful like, say, healing people. Instead she's just sitting around snarking at the Raikage when he decides he wants to contribute unlike Tsunade.
  • A couple of points:
    • 1) Tsunade's status: You have to remember that she's the Hokage now. As in the leader of the whole Leaf Village, not only it's strongest/best ninja. The role is as much political as it is military wise, so she can't just run into any old fight. If she died on the battlefield then the Leaf Village would be without it's leader. Remember when the Third Hokage died and what a hassle it was to find Tsunade to replace him? That would happen again. Sure they could just make Kakashi the Hokage, but that probably wouldn't be preferabbble, since he isn't exactly as legendary as one of the Sannin and he probably still has a couple of haters of the Hatake family. Not to mention the morale of the whole Leaf faction of the army would drop if they learned Tsunade had died. They wouldn't be able to fous on the battle properly and the army's tactics could faulter.
    • 2) The other Kages: Sure, Gaara is out on the battlefield, but he is the youngest, fittest member and since he is a 'Regimental Commander', he should be doing more commanding than actual fighting. The Mizukage is currently protecting some Daimyo (which is not the main focus of Madara's army) with elite ninja on her side - not very dangerous. The Tsuchikage is on his way to fight the Second Tsuchikage, only because he is the only one who has moves to counter the Second Tsuchikage's, whereas there are many medical ninjas that may not be as particularly great as Tsunade, but are still good enough to provide treatment. The Raikage is with her, obviously. - As you can see the other Kages are not needlessly thrusting themselves into danger either.
    • 3) What she is actually doing: You say that she's just 'sitting around'. Correct, when she is on panel she is mostly sitting and/or talking, but it would hardly be worth showing her devising military plans or checking on the status of the teams or getting information. We can't say whether or not she is actually doing these things but as she is a Kage we can only assume she is.
    • Overall, Tsunade doesn't need to go on to the field and shouldn't go onto it anyway.
    • Also, she might still be recovering from being in a coma, and thus unable to take the field.
• Why was Tsunade not hunted down for desertion/treason after she abandoned Konoha or not marked as a missing nin? Or Shizune for that matter? Konoha is not a coddle home where you can just up and leave if things don't go your way. What makes it more unbelievable is that Tsunade left after the Second Great Ninja War and did not set her foot in Konoha until Naruto won their bet. It gets worse because she was absent during the Third Ninja War and that alone would be high treason as someone of her skills would have been vital. I don't think the Elders or Danzo would have just sat by without doing anything and I don't think even Sarutobi would sit by idly and let such a powerful ninja desert/abandon their village even if she was a Senju -descendant. It's really unbelievable Tsunade and Shizune were still considered loyal enough that Tsunade was considered for Hokage position. And then there's the whole hemophobia-issue, which seems to be wildly known, why would they consider someone like that to be suitable to be a Hokage?
  • The reason for not hunting down Tsunade may have been for the same reason as why all of those gambling debt collectors couldn't find her: she just kept changing her appearance. Jiraiya has mentioned that he hasn't seen her in twenty years, and keep in mind that Jiraiya is one of the greatest trackers and spies of all time. Also, Tsunade never officially declared herself as a missing-nin and relinquished Konoha citizenship. Instead, she just upped the village and left for a long period of time. Jiraiya did something similar. After this, the Elders and Danzo may have realized that she wanted nothing to do with the ninja life and left her alone and Sarutobi seems like a softie anyways if we go by his interactions with Orochimaru. No one considered her for the position of kage except Jiraiya who made a pretty convincing case. With her fear of blood, Jiraiya mentions her unbending will several times, so maybe he figured that if she took up the position she'd get over it. It's also not a very well known thing. Only Orochimaru and Jiraiya seemed to know about it, though maybe Hiruzen knew about it as well. Finally, they didn't have much of a choice. Jiraiya seemed adamant on her becoming Hokage and there were no other candidates aside from Danzo, which very few people would like if he became Hokage.
  • Maybe she had officially resigned as a shinobi or her hemophobia left her considered mentally unfit for duty. As for being suitable for Hokage, her skill and intelligence is obvious, but why they'd choose her despite her hemophobia...well, with Jiraiya refusing they didn't have much choice, did they?

---

Konoha In General

• What kinda crappy Ninja Academy does Konoha have? Aside from throwing kunai, shurikens, physical training and a couple of odd jutsu like subsitite and clone, it doesn't seem like they learn an awful lot. Why the heck don't they bother teaching them elemental jutsus and stuff?
  • Because you have to learn the basics first if you wish to learn the more advanced techniques. If your name is not Naruto or Sasuke, it takes years of practice to master just one element, being able to use 2 elements is considered to be one requirement for becoming a jonin.
    • Yeah that's two elements but how bout teaching just one element first? At least the Uchiha had the sense to try teach their kids fire style at a young age. A lot of ninja from outside Konoha of all ages happen to be proficient with elemental jutsu and yet the Konoha 12 are ridiculously lacking in widely used elemental styles. What excuse does the village academy have?
    • Kakashi said that Sasuke shouldn't have enough Chakra to perform the fire technique he's known since he was seven. Presumably Sasukes very above average, if the academy tried to teach elemental jutsu to everyone that age they would probably get several people dieing of Chakra exhaustion.
    • Most of the K12 use secret clan techniques and thus don’t need elemental jutsus. Moreover as far as I remember, there were actually very few shinobi in the chunin exam who could use elemental jutsus to a certain extent and all of them (like Temari) were older than the K12, which means they had far more time to master their elements.
    • The Chunin exam was open to any genin so technically you could have a 30 year old epic ninja who was just really lazy in it so thats not a great example. I think that Kishimoto was more interested in the life of naruto after the academy so he didnt bother elaborating on the workings inside the school. I'm sure they learn much more then that.
  • They only "bother" to teach the basics because that's how much schooling they can get in before the students graduate into genin. Don't forget genin only mostly do D-rank missions, which are basically chores and errands. The jonin instructors are meant to provide specialized instruction to their genin, that's the whole point of the 3 genin to a jonin system.

---

The Third Hokage

• Was the Third Hokage stupid or something? Why didn't he just banish the Uchiha clan? Or publicly expose them? Or publicly execute them? And wouldn't their loss weaken Konoha seeing as how they're losing a lot of powerful police force? And if Itachi is such a nice guy, why did he stand by and let Gaara and other innocent people die? And why couldn't he have just killed his father (as he was the ring leader) and leave it at that? And why would he get help from a person (Tobi) who was so evil? And why did Tobi want the Uchiha clan dead seeing as how they were planning an attack and he could have helped them? I thought the clan abandonded his ideas? WTF?!?!?!?!?!
  • The Third was against slaughtering them, but Danzo and the other Elders out voted him. If he had just banished them, they would be able to join with one of Konoha's enemies and be an even bigger threat. Publicly exposing them might've forced them to do something desperate that could hurt innocent people. A public execution of an entire clan might have made the other clans (especially the powerful ones like the Hyuuga) nervous, possibly leading to another situation like the plannned Uchiha coup. The loss of the police force wasn't a big deal because it was just a sham created by the Second Hokage to appease the Uchiha, Konoha didn't really need it. Itachi let innocent people die because it suited his needs. Also, calling him a good guy is a bit of a stretch, I wouldn't say he's completely evil, but he's pretty far from being a good guy. Just killing the ring leader wouldn't have been enough to stop them. Think about it, would killing Hitler have stopped the Nazi Party? I doubt it, someone else would've come along and taken his place. Plus if Konoha had made Itachi kill just his own father, the clan would've been even more pissed off. He got Tobi's help because Tobi was strong enough to get it done. Tobi hated the Uchiha for turning against him and allowing themselves to be put in their current position.
    • As far as Itachi goes, he's definitely a "good guy" in the sense that (despite his long list of epic screw ups) he's on the Naruto's side and is now trying desperately to make up for said screw ups. Why he allowed Gaara (and the other hosts) to die was probably because he was so deep undercover there was nothing he could do. Same thing tragically happens in real life, he just couldn't risk blowing his cover.
    • I have to take issue with you there. You don't automatically become the good guy because you're on the hero's side. You become the good guy by not doing bad things. He committed the mass murder of the Uchiha (It absolutely stretches credulity that they were all guilty), mind raped Sasuke at least twice and joined an organization dedicated to killing other people in order to extract their demons. Your explanation as to why he joined doesn't make any sense whatsoever in crediting him because he didn't just help them capture the hosts - he was an active and willing participant. Do you honestly believe that, in real life, a CIA agent could murder US citizens in the name of being undercover in an Al Qaeda terrorist cell and still be considered by everyone as the good guy?
    • Personally I think that your good guy/bad guy point is a bit too black and white, but that's just me. I have no trouble at all believing that everyone in the Uchiha clan (save of course Sasuke and Shisui, who we know actually helped Itachi out) was guilty. I've seen enough of cults in my life to understand that people are disturbingly easy to control. He didn't help capture the hosts, in fact he deliberately avoided capturing Naruto when he had the chance. Yes, he delayed them from rescuing Gaara but A) he could've put even more effort than he did into it and B) it was plot relevant. And in the real world there's only one rule for those undercover: don't blow your cover. Whether or not everyone could still call them "good" is irrelevant; they do what needs to be done, no matter how difficult it is.
    • I agree that it's asinine to think that EVERYONE in the clan was evil. It's shown that Fugaku didn't let Sasuke participate in the meetings when he was a kid, so it would be a reasonable assumption that other members did the same, and wouldn't tell their kids about the coup until they reached a certain age (Itachi notwithstanding, being a prodigy) Unless what, was Sasuke the ONLY child in the entire clan born in the last 12 years? No matter how "good" Itachi's intentions might have been, he undoubtedly had to massacre children and possibly even infants.
    • Well, it's more like Madara, who was clearly biased and had left the village by that point anyway, was under the impression that the police force was a sham. The Uchiha had clearly been fine with it for decades and weren't exactly forced to join it. And, of course, Madara has no particular reason to be honest if the truth won't help convince Sasuke. Also, since when can the advisory council outvote the Hokage? The Third wasn't happy about the massacre, but he did sign off on it. No one went behind his back.
    • People should stop with the Blackand White Morality, there was a group of people who were gonna start a civil war and giving that it was the 3rd who came to the decision, they probably were not up for negotiations, so it was either, go into a more leveled civil war (the Uchihas had already lost the element of surprise) which would damage the village greatly as does any civil war since it's an we vs us battle, or do a reverse sneak attack and kill them all discretely and quietly avoid all the issues with the public knowing the government had something to do with it.
    • Alright, how about, "Why didn't Hiruzen just make Itachi the Hokage in order to head off the coup?"
    • Because Itachi was freaking 13!!! He may have been good enough to be an anbu but not wise or experienced enough to be Hokage.
    • Right, but he's wise and experienced enough to be given a long term mission to assassinate his entire clan and become a rogue ninja, then infiltrate the Akatsuki and act as a double agent, all while keeping his allegiance to the Leaf under wraps. Sounds legit.
    • But Hiruzen DID say Itachi had the wisdom of a Kage at the age of 7.
    • He had the mindset, which in this context is "the village comes first". That is not sufficient to put a 13 year old in charge of the village.
    • Why did Hiruzen let the Elders and Danzo "outvote" him? Konoha isn't a democracy. Why not just be more forceful and say "we're doing it my way, and you'll obey my orders or be dismissed."
    • It truly boggles the mind seeing people who think that being on the hero's side makes anyone a good guy automatically or that an entire group of people could be inherently evil and should be wiped out trying to school anybody else by saying that they are thinking in Black-and-White Morality. It's downright surreal; no, even if every single Uchiha down to the youngest infant was a monster waiting to happen, there's no excuse for genocide. So, no, Itachi was not a good guy by any stretch of the imagination. He was conscious he was a monster, but that doesn't make him any less of a monster. He still was on Naruto's side because, guess what, the series doesn't run on Black-and-White Morality and there can be any kind of people fighting for any side.
• Iruka said Naruto is like a "little brother" to him.. Huh? I thought they had a father-son relationship.
  • Iruka was 11 or 12 when the Kyuubi attacked. Even though the father/son relationship may be accurate, he's too young to be admitting to it.

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Danzo

Danzo is desperate for power and control of Konoha. Okay. He's struggled for years, hidden out of sight, to develop the power and resources to take control when the time comes. Pretty standard fare so far. Except...he has a mind control eye. He has had a mind control eye for something like seven years by the start of the series. In all that time, did he never realize he could just walk up to the third Hokage and say "Sup, dude? You should totally work to make my the Hokage from now on."

• It would be terribly inconsistent with the Third's known personality or what have you. He suddenly decides to elect Asshole Mc Douchebag as his replacement, even though he's passed the guy over twice, first in favor of Orochimaru, then Minato. His jonin would say "Gee, that's sorta weird. Let's check to make sure he's not being genjutsued or anything. Plus, Shisui's eye jutsu isn't permanent, so Hiruzen would realize the second it was over that Danzo had put the wammy on him.
  • If Danzo could have gained the Hokage's seat at any point in time through his mind-control jutsu (even to the extent of fooling all the Kages) and the only reason anyone ever found out was because someone with a Byakugan had fought Shisui before and the fact that Danzo had a Sharingan was a secret, why didn't Danzo become the Godaime in the weeks it took for Naruto and Jiraiya to go on what was thought to be a wild goose chase to find Tsunade?
  • Because Ao found out only because he had a Byakugan eye implanted, and the Hyuga's are from the Leaf, he probably would had been found out, plus he was probably still making preparations with the Senju DNA since that's what made it possible to be used once a day instead of once every decade.
  • Why would there be a Hyuuga present when Danzo was influencing Homura and Koharu into making him Hokage? It only had to be done once and it's not like the Byuukagen allowed Ao to be check after the fact to see if someone had been manipulated by the Sharingan...which no one knows Danzo even has.
  • Even if he had everything set up 3 years ago, he still can only use the technique once a day on one person, he would need to use it on Homura, Koharu (who had years of experience and would probably notice something odd in the other's change of mind) and possibly the fire daimyo, all of which showed preference to choosing Jiraiya (who was offered the position of 4th, 5th and the fire daimyo even said he would had liked him to be 6th if he weren't dead) not to mention that they only elect the Hokage, he still needs to be approved by the Jonins who probably would had notice the shadiness if it got to that point.
  • Simply put, Danzo never shows that level of ability using Shisui's eye. Shisui or Itachi might have been able to pull off something like that (if they could use it as often as Danzo), but the Sasuke vs. Danzo fight explicitly established out that Danzo wasn't even as good as Sasuke with his Sharingan, much less Itachi. Danzo was only able to subtly manipulate Mifune (who was leaning toward picking Danzo anyway), and the effect wore off as soon as it was pointed out to him. Danzo had to wait until the conditions were right to use Shisui's eye effectively.
• There is a pretty simple explanation for that - as much as Danzo wanted to be a Hokage, he didn't want to trample on Hiruzen, who was his "rival" (we can assume that they were friends when they were younger). Heck, he even went as far as to create ROOT, which he used not to take over the village, but to support Hiruzen's rule. And to be honest, their relationship kind of reminds me of the relationship Naruto and Sasuke had about the time of their chuunin exam.
• Also, when Danzo uses the eye, he has solid arguing positions both times. That's why we didn't catch on when he used it, he had a point when getting people to do what he wanted. If there was never a chance for Danzo to have a decent reason to shoot for Hokage that he could use the eye in, he'd be stuck.

• What type of name is "Rock" Lee? It sounds like a title but I'm guessing that's his legal name. "Rock"'s his first name? Likewise with "Might Guy".
  • Rock and Might are their last names. Technically his name in the West would be Lee Rock, but it wasn't translated that way because it sounds stupid. The same goes for Guy.

Rin

• What even happened to her? Why did Kakashi kill her?
  • From her Heroic Sacrifice section: She deliberately took a Lightning Cutter from Kakashi, as she had the Sanbi sealed inside her and was intended as a Trojan Horse for Konoha. Once they had "rescued" her and taken her back, the seal would break and the Sanbi would run wild.
    • Goes into Senseless Sacrifice considering if she knows this she could just say "Kakashi, I've been made into a village destroying trap, take me to a secure but remote location then call help"
    • Particularly given that their sensei was a seal master who could teleport. Kakashi could've summoned Pakkun and had him run back to the village to get Minato's help.

Aoba Yamashiro

• Aoba is an intelligence officer with the ability to read minds. He would be a great asset in interrogations. He surely knows the value of discretion and yet he bursts into a room asking if it's true Itachi is back, right in front of Sasuke. How could he do something that stupid!?
  • Because everyone always should expect the one worst person to hear something is listening when you say it? He was clearly emotional and not thinking in pure, cold logic there.

Other Characters

Nagato, Konan and Yahiko

• In chapter 446, where was the gang that Yahiko formed when him and Nagato went to the assigned place? What kind of a leader would go to a negotiation without their gang to back them up? And as a matter of fact, how or when did Konan get taken away? Was it before or after they got to the assigned place? And would it have been that hard for Kishimoto to add some panels showing any of this?
  • Maybe they all got killed/kidnapped on the way to the negotiation point and Konan was the only one spared, because it be even more of a Deus Angst Machina. There probably was a fight, Yahiko and Nagato were standing in a giant crater. Konan could have gotten taken then too. What bugs me is if Nagato had that Rinnegan thing and trained to use it properly, why didn't he just kill everybody. Like how he saved Yahiko the first time.
    • If all of what you typed is true, they why didn't Kishimoto just add a couple of panels to show it? Or at least have Nagato SAY that the rest of the gang got killed, and him and Yahiko found out that Konan was taken away? It wouldn't have been that hard to put that in the chapter. It just jumped from "Yahiko forming a gang with Konan and Nagato and discussing some future peace negotiations" to "Yahiko and Nagato arrive at the assigned place without the gang for no reason whatsoever and Konan was somehow captured" all within 3-4 pages.
    • Because it's Nagato telling us this, and the narration was likely too lengthy for his weakened (dying?) form.
    • So two sentences like "Our gang suddenly got attacked, and in the middle of the scuffle, Konan was captured. We searched for her but found a note telling us to meet them at the assigned place if we wanted to see her alive again." would've been too lengthy, but him going on for about 5 pages talking about how Jiraiya was teaching them to fight and him talking to Nagato about protecting his friends and how he wants peace in the world isn't?
    • Well, after reading chapter 447, Nagato says that he took over the gang after that huge fight. Which means that the gang didn't die. Which now means that Yahiko not bringing his gang with him to the assigned place pretty much makes this a wall banger moment because HE WOULD HAVE HAD A BETTER CHANCE AT SURVIVAL HAD HE BEEN A COMPETENT LEADER AND JUST BROUGHT THE GANG WITH HIM.
  • Given that Konan was held captive by being attached to a fairly complicated looking paper bomb, it's seems more like she was caught earlier and Hanzo told them to come alone to get her... but Nagato just said that was when Hanzo called them for a meeting. Given that the first thing we see of this "meeting" was Nagato and Yahiko meeting the enemy party with Konan, it seems as if Nagato skipped something with his narration that lead to that situation.
  • That still doesn't answer the question, because this all leads back to the question of why Kishimoto didn't just add this in Nagato's narration? You'd think that he would seeing how he had Nagato be so in detail with everything else he was telling Naruto. This isn't one of those things where a writer can just show something and have people assume what happened. He literally made Yahiko stupid on purpose by not bringing the gang he formed with him just so that Yahiko could die. AND HE DOESN'T EVER EXPLAIN WHY THEY'RE NOT WITH HIM WHEN HE LEAVES. It's not like he couldn't add a little part in the flashback showing why Yahiko left his gang or even have them find a note telling them what to do if they want to see Konan alive (Like I typed earlier up there). Do you see how easily you assumed and typed what happened? Do you see how easily everyone up there (Including myself) made some assumptions and typed it up there? Now tell me, why couldn't Kishimoto just do that; something as easy as explaining why the gang wasn't there and how Konan was captured in just one or two sentences?
  • Actually, it is fairly obvious why Yahiko didn't being his gang to a peace negotiation. The answer being, of course, that it was supposed to be a peace negotiation.
  • Well, if that's true, then he'd go to the negotiation by himself, instead of bringing Nagato along seeing how it was a peace negotiation and that he was the only one that was needed to go there. Besides, this is Naruto. There have been tons of times where someone would meet someone else at a place for a simple discussion, and still bring backup as something to fall back on because they know that anything could happen (Like Yamato bringing Naruto, Sakura, and Sai when he was disguised as Sasori and was meeting with Kabuto). Then there's the fact that we'll never know what happened to the gang, seeing how the only time they were mentioned was when Nagato told Naruto how Yahiko quickly formed one, and how Nagato himself took over it after he finished raging. They could've been attacked and were too injured to come along, or Kishimoto could have made Yahiko too stupid by having him trust Hanzou too much, thus making him decide to not bring the gang with him. Kishimoto could have shown at least one of them in a panel.
    • How about this? Kishimoto didn't feel like it. Yahiko's death was important to the plot HE wanted. He doesn't care about how you wanted the story to go. Get over it, man.
    • In the meeting with Sasori's spy, Yamato brought Naruto, Sakura and Sai to capture the spy, while Orochimaru came to kill Sasori, so both sides had devious intentions. The problem is that Yahiko's group didn't realize that Hanzo wasn't being honest.
• Is anyone else bothered by the recent manga? We know the real identity of Pain now, but the fact that Jiraiya also had it figured out (chapters ago) but couldn't write it on the frog's back is ridiculous. The entire world (unless I'm mistaken) runs on some kind of One-Steve Limit, so "Pain is Nagato" would've made worlds more sense than simply "The real one isn't here" (the latter of which lead to chapters on chapters (until now) of people trying to figure out what the hell that meant). What gives?
  • No one but Tsunade would know who the hell Nagato is and even she only knew of Nagato, Yahiko, and Konan as "those kids from the Rain Country that Jiraiya trained for a while" so she might not have known which one was which and assumed that Deva Realm/Yahiko was the real one.
    • Also that according to recent chapters, she and Oro didn't give two shakes about war orphans. Only Jiraiya was even willing to give them half a chance.
  • It also wouldn't say anything about the NATURE of the powers, which is more important than the name of the person when you're trying to defeat them. Plus I think Jiraiya didn't want Pain to realize he'd figured it out/was sharing the secret.

• Nagato has the Rinnegan, which makes him the most powerful person on the planet and probably the destined child. So why does Jiraiya leave him behind, unsupervised, in the middle of what is essentially a war torn third world country? Instead, after 3 years of training, he leaves Nagato and the others, then doesn't tell anyone about Nagato, not even the frog sages or Tsunade.
  • Jiraiya already took 3 years off from his duties as a konoha ninja to train and protect Konan, Yahoo and Nagato. He obviously knew how dangerous the rain country was, that’s why he pointedly waited until he thought they were able to protect themselves and achieve their dreams to take his leave. Ultimately, it was arguably just another failure of his. He kind of messed up when he assessed they were good enough to make It on their own or that he could have faith in them. But it worked out in the end, and he’s not a god, he can’t know everything. He did all he reasonably could, and life happened
  • Just because Nagato has the Rinnegan doesn't mean he's the most powerful person on the planet. To quote Zetsu "The Sharingan" [or any other bloodline] "is just another tool that a ninja can use. A tool is only as powerful as the shinobi who uses it. An expert with a stone can still beat a novice with a shuriken. All he needs is more skill and power."
    • Still, the only other person with the Rinnegan founded the ninja world and made the moon and somesuch. That might be a hint that he's the destined child, and at least worthy of long term observation.
    • The Rikudo Sennin is said to have done all of that, just as it is said that the Sharingan mutated from the Byakugan. It may be true and it may not be. Konoha was in the middle of war and Jiraiya, being as valuable to Konoha as he was, probably spent as much time as he possibly could with the kids and didn't have time to worry about unconfirmed legends.
  • Nagato gave every indication, at least on the surface, of being reluctant to kill, even to save his friends. He and Konan were assumed to have died at some point in the past (and Yahiko really died), so Jiraiya may well have assumed it was no longer important and decided to forget about it.
  • It may also be another set up for Naruto, as it's revealed that Nagato was a member of the Uzumaki Clan.
• Is there any reason Kakashi didn't just Black Hole the Deva Pain? He ends up using it twice anyways, once to block a nail, and another to take out a small projectile, both of which seemed like a waste of an incredibly deadly ability. Two times wouldn't even disable him if he hadn't used other powers as well.
  • Because it takes time to work, something Pain would not be giving them.
    • Given that he can Black Hole a nail being thrown at him, a moving target that he is chasing, and an explosion, that isn't entirely convincing. Granted, Pain might just wise up and Shinra Tensei him into paste.
    • Besides, Pain controls gravity. Trying to use a black hole against someone who controls gravity is a very bad idea, and far more likely to blow up in your face than to actually work. Imagine, Kakashi uses his black hole technique, and Pain turns it around to suck up the entire village and crush it into a singularity.
    • His technique isn't a "black hole." It has nothing to do with gravity. What Kakashi does with KAMUI is create a rip in space where he transports his target into another dimension. He has stated that it's easier to perform on smaller objects and trying it on the Deva Path would have been a horrible idea. He wouldn't have time to focus on him without getting pushed away. At least now, thanks to Naruto's ability to lend Kurama's chakra to other people, Kakashi would have no problem doing that. He did it with Killer Bee while he was in his full tailed beast form to attack the Ten Tails. Enjoy my spoilers.
• Why was Yahiko so sure that Nagato could have been "the bridge to true peace" instead of himself? Just because Nagato had the Rinnegan?
  • No, I also think he thought Nagato was a better person, who, with his strong desire to protect his friends, could lead them to peace, probably. I don't think Yahiko thought too highly of himself, to be honest. And his goal to acquire world domination in order to change his country and the world for the better wasn't exactly a good way to bring about world peace, either. That doesn't mean that Nagato would stay on that road, though: he was easily corrupted when Yahiko died, but Yahiko couldn't have foreseen this, of course. On the other hand, the Rinnegan gave Nagato huge power that, along with his dedication to his friends, was more than enough to convince Yahiko that Nagato was (or could have been) "the bridge to true peace".
  • Dueling Heroic Self-Deprecation. Yahiko thinks Nagato's Rinnegan and good nature make him a better man than himself. Nagato thinks Yahiko being The Leader with a vision makes him the better man.
• After Nagato is ressurected by Kabuto, and after his Curb-Stomp Battle against Naruto, Killer Bee, and Itachi, Nagato is defeated and impaled by Itachi's Sword of Totsuka; as we learn earlier during Sasuke's fight against Itachi when the latter uses the sword to defeat Orochimaru, that whoever is impaled by the blade is entrapped within an inescapable jutsu for eternity. However, within Nagato's final moments, he mentions that he will join Jiraiya in the afterlife. Maybe Kishi simply forgot, or maybe Nagato wasn't aware of the sword's properties, but this could have been explained a little more.
• Why didn't Konan destroy Nagato's body? It was the only way to ensure that Tobi/Madara/whoever he is from getting the Rinnegan. She claims she knew he was coming (Issue 508) and he would have come anyway. What's more is it would have ever so slightly improved her chances of living since he might have spared her once he found out there was no more Rinnegan for him to steal. Probably not but he's been shown to be if not generous terribly random. The important part being stopping him from getting something she knew he wanted very badly.
  • She had a pretty airtight plan to kill Tobi lined up. The man had to do the impossible to survive it and all. She probably felt there was no need to desecrate her friend's corpse since the enemy who wanted it would be dead.
  • Also bear in mind that besides their importance to Nagato, Konan viewed the Rinnegan as a treasure of Amegakure. She wouldn't have been willing to destroy the eyes unless she thought she had no other choice.
• If Madara implanted his eyes into Nagato then shouldn't Nagato have had the Sharingan, Mangekyo Sharingan and Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan as well as the Rinnegan?
  • Yep, but similar to Kakashi, either he didn't know he had those, he needed to unlock them so he could use them similar to how he didn't have the ability to use the Rinnegan at first or as a Senju, Madara's eyes locked to him only being able to use the Rinnegan.
• Where exactly did Kabuto and Oorochimaru hide their prisoners and who's feeding them? It's important because the Edo Tensai is described as needing a sacrifice to be made. It's easy to believe that between the Sound Four and the entire Sand Village that someone picked up a pair of Sacrifices on the way to the Invasion of Konoha arc but by my count Kabuto revives at least two dozen (9 dead Akatski, several kage, Demon Brothers, Zabuza and Haku, Madara, Granny Chiyo and some assorted others) and Oorochimaru adds on the four former Hokage as well. Sasuke has gone to (at least the bases he was aware of) and cleaned them all out. I know it's unimportant from a story standpoint these were a bunch of Red Shirts but from a mechanical standpoint I want to know where they kept these sacrifices. Kabuto seemed to be traveling pretty light and Oorochimaru wasn't even traveling light, he was dead(ish) locked in his students or something similar!
  • Kabuto only revived about 30-40 people at the most, he could've picked them up from any village including civilian towns and he can create all the Edos and then summon them as needed, he doesn't have to move them with him, they can be summoned to any place by him or any Edo he takes control of.

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Kages

• Okay, I admit, I haven't read the actual chapter itself, but I read somewhere else on this site that Minato considered the village over his family, and thus, sealing Kyuubi into baby Naruto and condemning himself and Kushina to death. Fine. But I wondered why it bugged me so much, I mean, yeah, the thought's uncomfortable, but sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do, right? Then I realized, why the fuck did this man decide to have a family in the first place if he was so willing to give it up? Especially considering that he was the frickin' Yellow Flash and would have numerous enemies coming after his loved ones. He obviously wasn't ready or responsible enough to start a family.
  • Not even close, he sealed Kyuubi into Naruto specifically to give Naruto a weapon to use against Madara. He said that sixty chapters before the flashback even started. And he was responsible, he brought Kushina to a secret location guarded by ANBU so she could give birth. This measure would have worked perfectly had they not been attacked by one of the most powerful ninja who ever lived, a man he had absolutely no possible way of knowing was a threat, since, you know, everyone thought the man was dead. Not to mention how he had worked his Flying Thunder God seal into the seal keeping the Kyuubi inside Kushina, it's not exactly unreasonable to assume he'd figure out a similar way of getting to his son. What the hell man? how can it bug you if YOU HAVEN'T READ IT?
• When I was reading Kushina's account of Minato telling her his plan, he seemed to be telling her that he could use her life to seal the Kyuubi in Naruto (and since she was dying anyway, it wasn't a moral issue) but that if he did that then Naruto would only grow up having a loving legendary father who could protect him and care for him but never meet his dead mother and so instead it was better to get them both killed so that Naruto grows up alone but can have one single conversation with both dead parents. I get that mothers are important and whatnot but it really doesn't seem like one conversation with Kushina was worth forever without Minato.
  • Could just be BS Minato was telling Kushina to comfort her about himself needing to die to seal the Kyuubi. If the Kyuubi died it A. Would have upset the balance of power between biju, weakened Konoha B. The thing would have resurrected even if it died, meaning another disaster was likely, Madara could make another grab for it, and this way they were able to contain it again C. This is all he could do for Kushina as he didn't save her in the first place.
    • But we know that the sealer doesn't have to die. Gaara's mother didn't seal Shukaku inside of him and yet she was the sacrifice. Why couldn't Minato have just used Kushina as the sacrifice? Under ordinary circumstances, I can absolutely understand why he wouldn't sacrifice his wife but since she wasn't going to survive anyway...Can you just not use a dying sacrifice?
    • Normally, you would be right about the sealer not necessarily dying, but I believe the Shiki Fuujin, the jutsu Minato used requires the user to offer his/her soul in order to seal something away. Minato didn't die because he sealed the Kyuubi into Naruto. He died because he sealed half of it into himself using Shiki Fuujin. Of course, he used another jutsu on Naruto, that's why he didn't die. This way, half of the Kyuubi could never, ever return, so in the long run it is better than the whole Kyuubi returning at a later date, and Naruto has to deal with a weaker Kyuubi as a Jinchuuriki. Still, the greatest shinobi died, but Minato believed that Naruto would surpass him.

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Gaara

• There is one man who is (mostly) single-handedly responsible for Gaara growing up a murderous psychopath like he is. Yashamaru. Okay, so Gaara's birth killed his sister. Whom he loved. WAS IT GAARA'S CHOICE?? NO!! Why doesn't he go and hate the Kazekage, who made the choice to seal the Shukaku inside his son? Moreover, if he just hated Gaara to the point that he would agree to assassinate him, fine. He should have told Gaara that it was the Kazekage's orders, pulled out his exploding tags, and died. What is the POINT of traumatizing the poor six-year-old even further by telling him that he hated him all along? Didn't Yashamaru even consider the fact that it has no function except to make this already suicidal kid even more dangerous? People really shouldn't burden young children with such disturbing facts. This is further proved by Naruto, who grew up isolated and not knowing the truth but kind in general, as opposed to Gaara knowing everything and going psycho because of it.
  • The way this lurker sees it, Yashamaru also hated the Kazekage for it, but wouldn't dare attack him because he's the Kazekage. So, he aims to cause as much trouble for the man as possible, along with displaying his sister's hatred of the village in possibly destroying it via her son, since Karura hated Suna too. Plus Gaara wasn't exactly stable from the beginning with the insomnia and all - you ever tried keeping a toddler awake? He'd have snapped pretty soon anyway, be it from the rest of the village, or his father telling him what Yashamaru said afterwards.
  • Gaara: Daddy, why did Yashamaru just try to blow me up?!
  • Kaze-Daddy: Because he hated you, I hate you, your mother hated you and so does Suna, and you mean nothing to anyone. I told him to btw. Bye bye!
  • Actually Yashamaru was forced by Gaara's father to say those horrible things. He made him do it to see if Gaara could handle the trama and control the Shukaku. He sure ain't gonna win the father of the year award!
  • Yashamaru clearly wasn't actually supposed to succeed in killing Gaara. Gaara was powerful, but even years later at the Chunin Exams he was far from invincible. Note how when Guy jumped in to protect Lee, he casually swatted Gaara's sand away as if it were as dangerous as a gnat. If the Kazekage had really wanted Gaara dead, he would've sent Baki or just done it himself.
    • Alternatively, Guy is just that badass.
• In the explain-Gaara's-background-in-mid-fight-flashbacks during the Chuunin Exam arc, a big deal was made of Gaara not knowing what pain was (because the sand protected him from injury). So did he never think to bite his tongue? It HURTS. One hopes the sand doesn't get inside his mouth, too. And even if it does, what about stomach-ache? He's six, for crying out loud!
  • Gaara never saw his own blood, it was never about pain, even though he won Lee beat him up pretty good, but that brings the question as to what the hell is the love for oneself kanji on his forehead? I thought it was a scar, is it made of sand or what?
• Gaara oddly underuses his own powers. He bizarrely uses his sand as a bludgeoning tools of sorts, instead of taking advantage of that it flowing and abrasive. For instance, he shouldn't have had all that trouble with Kimimaro. He might have been a tough nut to crack, but all Gaara had to do was to stuff sand into every orifice and wait for him to suffocate. He never thinks of using it for blinding his opponents or hurting them with the friction.
  • Most likely the way he uses his powers was simply the first thing that came to mind and he saw little reason to change it over the years. Gaara is heavily implied in Part 1 to be completely untouchable with Rock Lee being the first person to push him and he ultimately won that fight. He eventually lost to Naruto (and came damn close with Kimmimaru) but presumably he had to go through some extra fights on his way to becoming Kage since all the Kage are the most powerful ninja in their respective villages save Tsunade and possibly the Raikage. He only lost to Deidera because he was focused on protecting the villagers. If he'd been trying to kill Deidera and ignoring the collateral damage that fight would have gone differently. I think it's a case of if it ain't broke and it ain't broke.
• I know that Gaara's mother said that he was really small but the picture of baby Gaara being maybe a fourth the size of her head is absolutely ridiculous.
  • It's mentioned (or at least heavily implied) in the chapter that Gaara was a premature birth. Premature births really can be that small, though I imagine the perspective makes baby Gaara look even smaller than he should be.
• Regarding the Ret-con if both The Yondaime and Kurara loved Gaara why would they name a child a self loving carnage?. I could see the Kaze Kage doing it in a fit of rage at having lost his wife but if so it's never mentioned that he did so
  • That wasn’t a retcon at all. The only one who ever said that Gaara’s parents hated him was Yashamaru, who said it to trigger Gaara as part of his mission. The Kazekage explains he took the actions he felt were necessary to protect the village but that doesn’t necessarily mean he hated his son. He confirms this when he sees Gaara again as the 5th Kazekage and regrets what he did to his son.

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Raikage

• Sorry if this has been answered already but the current Raikage,is he the one who was in office when Cloud tried to kidnap Hinata for the byakugan,I know that they guy who was killed was a leader but I thought that hat meant a general for the ninja on the field not kage, and I remember Yamato said something about Kohona's sacrifices for you when talking to the current Raikage but I couldn't tell if it was you as in Cloud or specifically him?
  • This Trpoer thinks it's the same one, but isn't sure.
  • Really, it's never been addressed. Certain statements imply that he was Raikage at the time, but it's never been outright stated. Ultimately, it's probably not going to be addressed within the story itself, but I wouldn't be surprised if it shows up in a databook or something eventually.
  • It's possible, because he seems to remember it, and the Tsuchikage calls him out for amassing jutsus in peacetime (which might explain the attempt to get the Byakugan).
  • The trailer for the next episode says that he was in charge when it occured, but whether thats canon or not is unkown, my guess is yes
    • Well even so, the Raikage before him was his father.
    • Pretty much confirmed now, since we've seen Minato fought him and referred to him as the Raikage
• Raikage cut off his hand. Doesn't that mean he can't perform ninjutsu anymore? He's more of a Taijutsu person, but he doesn't seem to care in the least. Then again, he is the only one Killer Bee ever listens to. But it still bugs me.
  • There have been instances where people could manage without having their hands free. Jiraiya can make barriers, for instance. He could always get a new arm grafted onto the stump.
  • Haku did most of his jutsus with one hand.
    • The Raikage uses a lightning punch on some falling debris after losing his arm, so his lightning technique is not dependent on handsigns.
• Chapter 451: I am going to ignore the major plot points and pick this little quirk; why the hell did the Raikage send "two" messages? What was the point of sending Samui and co, when an eagle could (and did) also deliver the message? And why the hell did the two messages reach at the same time? I thought the birds were much faster, otherwise, what's the point of using them?
  • The bird's message was about the emergency meeting of the Kages. The team's message was about Sasuke. Incidentally, the bird was probably confused by the obliteration of his destination. Either that, or the Konoha birdmen only just check their b-mail.
    • The team was also sent to retrieve information about Sasuke and bring it back to the Raikage, which would necessitate sending ninjas out.

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Orochimaru

• Is Orochimaru really dead?
  • Given how we're not definitely told whether Sasuke managed to kill him before he completed the soul transfer, just given strong hints, the possibility of an "Orochimaru all along" reveal is strong.
  • There's also Kabuto, whose body is being taken over by the piece of Orochimaru he implanted into himself. Not quite the same — you'd be left with a copy with Kabuto's memories of ol' Snakey; natural ability only; none of the thousands of jutsus he's supposed to have learned.
    • And yeah,I thought that was strange and out of character for Kabuto too.
  • The way i see it, Orohimaru is dead, his power and personality are infecting Kabuto, his abilities have been absorbed by Sauske.
    • I'm betting on alive. Look at the fifth panel here to see the snake slithering away.
    • And then burning alive...
    • While there hasn't been an update on Kabuto!Maru, Sasuke!Maru is definitely dead. At least he died by one of the few techniques that he couldn't master.
    • As of the Shinobi World War arc Orochimaru is now indeed alive and well and supposedly stronger than ever. Perhaps we will finally see him return to being the main Big Bad again although from what we've seen of him over the years it is highly doubtful he would be able to fight either Tobi or Naruto at this point unless he finally achieves his dream of obtaining a powerful Kekkai Genkai.
• Why didn't Orochimaru just have his arms amputated after Tsunade refused to heal them? They were causing him intense pain and he couldn't use them anyways.
  • Better question. Why'd his arms start working when he got a new body? His arms weren't broken or decayed like his body, they were spirit sealed by the Third Hokage.
    • Good question; in my opinion a new body gives Orochimaru the ability to hijack the chakra network of his victim's arms in a similar way to Sasori's human puppets allowing him to use jutsu even with his arms sealed inside the Shinigami. We see in the Shinobi World War arc however that now he has been returned to his original body he has lost the use of his arms again - until he murdered the Shinigami and got them back of course.
• Why did Orochimaru train Sasuke instead of just taking over straight away? he didn't need to have a body that can control the curse seal completely and the few extra techniques he would've obtained are just ranged versions of the chidori, doesn't seem worth it.
  • He couldn't take over straight away, not anymore. Living Corpse Reincarnation can only be used once every three years and Orochimaru's decaying body forced him to perform the technique before Sasuke's late arrival, so he had no choice other than wait three more years and Sasuke would rebel if he didn't train him during said time.
• What exactly is Orochimaru's end goal? What is he trying to accomplish by learning every jutsu? His motives and goals have never been clearly defined. When he was the big bad we only got vague statements like "I want to learn all the world's secrets" and "I want to become the ultimate being". Imagine if all Tobi said about his goals was "I want to achieve a complete form" and we never received any elaboration for what that means. That's how ill-defined Orochimaru's goals have been. After he was written out of the big bad role in part 2 he was given a freudian excuse of wanting to see his dead parents again but it's implied that he lost sight of that a while ago. So what was Orochimaru planning to do with all that knowledge and power once he obtained it? (Even taking into account his recent revival and the fact that his plans seem to have changed, we've still only gotten vague statements about what he intends to do.)

---

Kabuto

• What the hell is going on with Kabuto anyway? Who is he loyal to, if anyone?
  • Kabuto is a villageless assassin who became loyal to Sasori of the red sands, Sasori is shown to have a number of mind control Jitsu so that's how he did that. He was placed as a mole within Orohimaru's sound village and quickly fell into the same thrall most of Orochimaru's servants are. At some point Sasori's mind control technique was discovered and removed leaving him loyal to Orochimaru, but more of a man loyal to his god than a military sense. When Orochimaru died (who Kabuto sees as a god) he went a little skits and absorbed what was left of him, initially to try and revive/preserve him he then (as he told Naruto) found himself (to his own surprise) wanting to preserve his own personality rather than roll over and let Orochimaru come back. In short he was loyal to Orochimaru until the point where his own personality was at stake, and his survival instincts kicked in. Combine 1- a parasitic entity of pure malice and power 2- having lost the only man he was ever loyal to and worshipped as a god and 3- years and years of performing really messed up human experiments Kabuto is now utterly nuts and loyal to no-one.
    • Yeah, but in the first series Orochimaru implies that Kabuto isn't completely loyal to him (when he sends him to retrieve Sasuke after the chunin exam preliminaries). As far as I know, this occurs after Orochimaru breaks Sasori's mind-control, so...
    • When Orochimaru's arms were paralyzed after the fight with the Third Hokage, someone had to wipe his rear for him. Chances are it was Kabuto. That certainly could've strained his loyalty...
    • The suspicion was due to him initially being a spy for Sasori, and a villageless spy who had no home and thus no true loyalties, and while it was unfounded, Orochimaru did know of a reason why Kabuto might betray him.
    • Incorrect. Kabuto was under the control of Sasori. The same jutsu he used at Gaara's village to get in. Once the jutsu was broken there was no reason to suspect him of being anything but loyal.

• Kabuto does a mass summoning of dead people which irritates my suspenion of disbelief. There should be some drawback behind jutsu violating the laws of nature.
  • Um...it does have at least three drawbacks. The first is that the target has to be dead first, the second being the target's soul has to be accessible, and the third is that it kills whomever gets turned into the formerly dead person. Also, Kabuto mentioned he was more skilled with the jutsu than Orochimaru (Possibly because he's a Medic-nin) and that may relate to being able to summon more. Honestly, I had been complaining that Orochimaru hadn't done just this. $5 says Jiraiya will appear for Naruto to angst over.
  • Well they just spent a chapter explaining it, and it seems like the only drawback is the amount of chakra needed to fully control someone. Seems like Kabuto just skipped over that with some handy-dandy brain control talismans though. On the other hand, Sasori and Sai's brother died again when their souls were at peace, so I guess there's some drawback even Kabuto doesn't know. Also, they discussed bringinf Jiraiya back and noted it was unlikely (unless we assume Pain's paths never bothered cleaning).
    • The problem with the explanation given is that Kabuto is demonstably smarter than that. He needs their DNA not their body. If you read chapter 520 where the edo tensai is described he's heavily insinuating that the DNA from the weapons of the Peins have enough DNA to bring back Danzo. Unless the first step cannot be taken until the person is dead he should have one of those contracts for every worthwhile ninja he ever fought. On the flip side if he didn't collect the majority of his DNA like this then his collection makes no sense.
    • Of course they need to be dead first. Their soul is summoned from wherever it is once they die (including inside of a Shinigami it looks like as Sarutobi had to actively work to stop Minato returning, he wasn't ruled out because he was stuck somewhere) and it can't be summoned from their living bodies.
    • Why would they need to be dead before you collected the DNA? That's like saying someone needs to be dead before they write a will because you can't execute a will while the person is alive. If they have to be dead before you can get the DNA then some like Deidera make NO sense at all. Nor does Sasori.
  • Also, all of this is assuming that Kabuto was telling Madara the truth, and seeing how he knows that Madara is probably planning on backstabbing him and using the jutsu himself, Kabuto probably just neglected to mention a drawback or two in the hopes that those drawbacks would get Madara killed if his own double cross was unsuccessful.
  • There is a very major drawback: Itachi. Or, to be more precise, if someone is able to override Kabuto's control over one of the summons, and turn them against him by genjutsu, Kabuto's screwed.
• When Kabuto finds himself in a confrontation with Sasuke and Itachi why doesn't he simply unsummon Itachi? It seems to me that even if you are the baddest man on the planet (and he very well may be) going two on one when all it takes is a snap of your fingers to make it one on one is stupid.
  • Either Kabuto cannot unsummon Itachi because he cannot control him anymore, but that would mean that it is unclear how Itachi would finally be able to return to the afterlife, or he's summoned too many ninjas and if he unsummoned one, all the others would disappear, but this is just speculation on my part. I believe Kabuto's not stupid enough to let Itachi be summoned if he can unsummon him. Personally though, I'd prefer the first solution.
  • Given how badly Kabuto is showing them up, unsummoning Itachi really wasn't necessary.
  • When Kabuto does finally undo the jutsu, all the Edo Tensai vanish. Most likely, he couldn't unsummon just one.
• What stopped Kabuto from resurrecting Yahiko? If he could get Nagato, then it means he knew where Nagato was buried. Yahiko is right next to Nagato. I'd imagine that someone able to fight Hanzo and decimate his forces, and the founder of the Akatsuki, would be notable enough to bring back. Did he just not feel like it?
  • He already had Nagato before Obito went to retrieve the Rinnegan so he probably found DNA from near Konoha, and Nagato was the one who killed Hanzo and his forces so reviving Yahiko didn't serve any purpose.
    • Good point. I'm impressed anyone noticed this question at all too.
• While it's always possible that Oorichimaru was lying to Kabuto his claim that ROOT wanted to kill Kabuto and Mother jives well with what we know about Danzo's behavior. So I believe Oorochimaru's claim. Kabuto also claims to have been a member of a Leaf Village orphanage and well known spy which sounds accurate. How exactly did someone of his level of notoriety infiltrate the Chunin Exams under his "real" name no less?! Are we really supposed to believe that none of the Sarutobi and all the Jonin and ANBU present couldn't recognize him on the spot?! I assume Oorochimaru reported him dead back while he was still loyal but that doesn't explain how nobody questioned a kid with the same name, similar appearance and age unless we're to believe he reported to nobody.
  • He was working directly for Root, there's no reason that any regular ANBU would recognise him by appearance and the only people that would expect him to be dead would be Root, everyone else would have to go off official records which would show that he's alive and the adopted son of Nono. It seems like he only became an official ninja of Konoha after Orochimaru recruited him.
    • It's said at the Chunin Exams that Kabuto has taken the exams an unspecified number of times. Enough times that when he drops out before the prelims that a few of the Jonin act like they expect it. Which is fine like the above says if he worked directly for ROOT then it's plausible regular ANBU wouldn't recognize him. However where is Danzo? I also agree with the original question that it seems a little far fetched that only Danzo and Orochimaru would be able to identify Kabuto on sight.
    • It does seem a bit weird that nobody would be able to identify him but it is a big village and he probably would try to keep hidden as much as possible since he was a spy for Orochimaru, Danzo and ROOT might've had good reason to leave him alone, Danzo still had some sort of working arrangement with Orochimaru even after Orochimaru had to flee the village as he received Hashirama's cells at some point despite Orochimaru being a traitor, Kabuto being left alone being one of the conditions.

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Tobi (Obito)

• When Tobi and Naruto talk, Naruto says that Tobi doesn't really care about peace. Tobi confirms this and says he's right, his real goal is a complete body. Which makes sense because half his body was crushed. But after that it's never mentioned again and it's revealed that Tobi's real goal, is, actually, a (fake) peace. What happened to the body thing?
  • He just doesn't care anymore.
  • Tobi is a filthy liar who lies, repeatedly, for years at a time. He may have never wanted a whole body, or perhaps he considers the illusory one he'll have in the Eternal Tsukiyomi to be good enough.
• WHO THE HECK IS TOBI?!
  • Obito
• So Obito has basically been spamming his MS throughout the entire series up to this point. How has he not gone blind since that is his only visible eye before the rinnegan?
  • Senju DNA, probably. Itachi mentioned that Senju DNA would allow someone to use Kotoamatsukami on a regular basis (even though it can usually only be used once every 10 years) so it's not surprising that it would also let Obito use Kamui often without going blind.
  • His Mangekyo is different from the others. Kakashi hasn't gone blind either, so Kamui likely doesn't have that drawback.
• How did Shikaku (Shikamaru's dad, not the One-Tailed Beast) know Obito's intangibility only lasted five minutes in Chapter 612 if Konan was the first and only person to figure it out?
  • Like his son, Shikaku is very smart and good at observing people in combat. I suspect that the intangibility Jutsu doesn't actually last for five solid minutes normally, it's probably similar to Deva Pein's rejection attraction jutsu where it's x amount of time for done in short bursts and x amount after a large burst and somehow Shikaku did the math. It doesn't really make sense that Konan figured it out either seeing how they don't seem to have traveled much together and judging by the damage that was done to Obito if Konan had simply decided to play things safe and make enough paper bombs for six minutes we wouldn't be having this problem right now.
• If Obito's main goal is to bring Rin back at any cost, couldn't he have forced Kabuto to go find any remains of Rin and revive her using Edotensei? If it proved impossible even for Kabuto (and the man's a master at finding ninja remains), there ought to have been some mention of it. It would be an order of magnitude or two easier, at the very least, than casting a planet-wide genjutsu, and this Rin would be an actual physical person with her own sentience rather than an illusion. Then again, Kabuto DID have that trump card of Madara. Actually, as the Three-Tails's most recent jinchuriki, shouldn't Kabuto have chosen Rin to resurrect back instead of Yagura?
  • Yagura was the more recent jinchuriki, as he was under Obito's control while he was Mizukage.
    • You are absolutely right. It doesn't explain why someone can't just bring back Rin using Edotensei though. (With Kabuto incapacitated, it's up to Tobirama.) The best possible explanation I can think of is that Edotensei Rin is not a living, breathing being, but a zombie, but she would still look just like Rin (only with the weird eyes) and have Rin's soul, memories, and abilities. We ought to at least have had some mention by Obito of not being satisfied with this Rin, or that it doesn't change the fact that Kakashi killed Rin, or something.
  • Obito's goal isn't to have Rin back. It's to live in a perfect world with Rin. There is an important difference here. The Edo Tensai in addition to bringing people back visibly wrong (and it wouldn't shock me at all to find out there are other physical differences that you'd notice if you tried to. . .become involved the former Hokage seem be the only people who aren't royally pissed about being brought back from the dead. While it would have been nice to have it confirmed it wouldn't shock me to find out that Obito did just that (or had Oorochimaru do it) and Rin was less than pleased with being a monster. Or alternatively he's just smart enough to know that's how she'd react. Or a final possibility, he hadn't heard of the Edo Tensai at that point and by the time he was aware of that technique there wasn't enough of her left to revive which admittedly sounds unlikely.
  • It's like this...Obito is completely convinced that the world is shit. He does not want to bring Rin back into a shit world where she could very easily be killed again. He wants to live with Rin in a world that isn't shit, hence the MEP. Obito's problem isn't just that Rin is dead, it's with the world that led to her being killed.
  • Also wasn't Obito at least a little disgusted by Kabuto's use of the Edo Tensei? Not to the point of him rejecting it for the sake of the war of course, but I'm certain he would of probably abandoned the plan all together rather then defile Rins body and soul, and even if he was okay with Rin being brought back in such a way, how in the seven hells would he be able to explain that to Kabuto? "Bring this random Chunin back that is not exceptional in any way so she can keep me company during the war." Because even if Kabuto knew who Rin was and her connection to Kakashi, he'd probably be smart enough to ask about bringing Obito back, which Obito wouldn't be able to explain how and why it's impossible to do without letting Kabuto know exactly who he was.
• It's stated several times that if Obito touches his opponent, he wins. What exactly is the reason for this, and how do his opponents always know this?
  • If Obito touches someone, he pulls them into his Kamui. At which point, unless you're Kakashi, you're now trapped in an alternate dimension until he chooses to let you out. The heroes have seen him do this repeatedly (with people like Sasuke) and he's even told them his goal is to absorb Naruto and B and then bring them to the Ten Tails. Once the nature of his Kamui is discovered, this stops being as major of an issue because now the person who got absorbed can just pummel the real one when he's forced into there by attacks from the outside, and Kakashi can bring them back whenever he wants with Nine-Tails chakra.
• So, how exactly did Obito know about Narutos birth? Kushina mentions it was top secret, due to the whole Giving birth makes the jinchuriki seal weak enough that a tailed beast has a high chance of escape thing, Kushina herself mentions she has no idea how he knew, and from a story perspective, apparently nobody else found out how he knew.
  • Obito reveals to Kakashi that prior to setting off the events of the Nine Tails event, he would sometimes sneak in to the village and would spy on Kakashi while he stood at Rin’s grave and the Dead Shinobi monument. At those times, Kakashi would talk out loud to his dead (or “dead” in Obito’s case) friends about what had been happening since they died. In one of these instances, he overheard Kakashi discussing Kushina’s pregnancy and when she was due to give birth. Kakashi being Minato’s last remaining student would obviously be allowed to know. Kakashi is partially responsible for the plot, as it turns out.

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The Demon Brothers

• Am I seriously supposed to believe that the Demon Brothers were good enough to make Chuunin, and Kirigakure Chuunin at that? They got shamed by pre-Sharingan Sasuke, and they were idiot enough to use a puddle for disguise on a hot day. Have Kirigakure's standards dropped since Zabuza left?
  • Well, considering that Zabuza killed all the other potential kids, they were probably short staffed and had to keep up with lower ranked missions somehow - would you put ANBU on C-Ranks? As a result, ninja who shouldn't make the cut do. That or the Chunin exam for their year group was much easier then usual.
  • Keep in mind that the Chuunin Exams we saw had the toughest batch of candidates in the last 4 years (at least) and of these we focused on the top 21. And among these particapats Sasuke was baffling everyone with his skill without the use of Sharingan or any Ninjutsu. Sasuke was already at the top of the Rookie Nine before Sharingan so relatively it's not so bad.
  • The Brothers recovered from Sasuke "shaming" them like bosses, and would have accomplished their goal with very little trouble were it not for Kakashi stepping in again.
• Is it just me, or is the Fourth appearing in Naruto's mind remind this troper of Peter's battle against the Symbiode in The Spectacular Spiderman, when Uncle Ben appears in his mind?
  • This kind of thing is pretty common in a Journey to the Center of the Mind. The key difference though, is that that Ben was a manifestation of Peter's memories, but the Minato that is appearing her is some remnant of his mind/soul the actual person left behind as Naruto has no memory of him and he's stated that he was always there as part of the seal and was happy to meet his son.
    • This troper is pretty sure that the Minato seen there is the real one, and that his soul was sealed with the Kyuubi's.

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Madara Uchiha

• Madara Uchiha...is it a guy's name, or is it just a title given to the most fearsome Uchiha?
  • If I remeber correctly it was the first Uchihas name so its a guys name.
• What exactly are the rules for the transplant of a siblings Sharingan work? Does it have to be a Mangekyo Sharingan to restore your vision? Also why did Izuna need to go blind to save Madara's eyesight? Couldn't they just swap eyes?
  • They wouldn't have known about the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan until Madara recovered enough to notice a difference. From Izuna's point of view, they would have just been useless, blind eyes. By the time they figured it out, Madara's eyes might have already rotted.
  • Maybe they did!
  • I always assumed that transplanting another Mangekyo gave you immortality/powers like Madara's, but transplanting a regular Sharingan just made your own Mangekyo permanent.
  • They couldn't have swapped eyes, because it seems that the two pairs of eyes are somehow fused when transplanted or something like that seeing as the Eternal Mangekyou's pattern is a mixture of the siblings' sharingan pattern, which means only one of the siblings end up with the new, "combined" sharingan, the other is left without eyes. I think that Izuna didn't lose his sight; he lost his eyes. So it's not as much restoring sight than creating new eyes with better sight, I think. I also think that it has to be a Mangekyou Sharingan, because a regular sharingan wouldn't change the pattern, and stopping the Mangekyou's sealing itself has something to do with the new pattern in my opinion, and it has to be a sibling's, because I think the others are incompatible.
  • As it turns out, Izuna died prior to Madara taking his eyes, much like Itachi, so the issue of dual transplants hasn't come up yet.

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Kisame

• Manga Chapter #522: The Seven Swordsman of The Mist. Where is Kisame?
  • Kisame died within the past few hours. and Kabuto wouldn't have had time or know about his death to do anything about it. also These are the previous SSS of the mist,probably from the Yondaime Kazekage's rule before Kisame had taken his predecessor's position.
• Woah-kay. So Kisame and Zabuza are of different generations? Regardless, why does Zabuza have his sword...while Samehada is nowhere to be seen? Plus, it's not some mystic soul-copy of Zabuza's sword...it's missing the half that got sliced off by whoever when Suigetsu was using it.
  • Yes, Kisame and Zabuza are of different generations in the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist, it has nothing to do with age. Given the apparent way a member is promoted to the group, all this means is that Zabuza probably killed his predecessor before Kisame offed his. Also Samehada is currently with Killer Bee, while Suigetsu lost track of Zabuza's sword when the samurai took it from him.
  • Does anyone else think that some of the sword designs are hilarious? I mean, a needle and thread? A bunch of explosives on a stick?
  • This troper thinks that Nuibari is one of Kishi's best ideas.
    • You know how long the Nightmare Fuel page for Naruto is? This troper can honestly say that throughout the entire series, the Nuibari is the only thing he has found genuiely scary.

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Kyuubi

• Wow, in recent chapters, compared to the other Tailed Beasts, the Kyuubi is friggin' weak. He's been defeated and sealed away three times, he can't handle a couple of measly rouge ninja, and his chakra has been split in half, more of it being spread throughout the air or implanted into other people, and even more taken away by Naruto when he defeated him, nearly reducing him to his 8-tailed state.
  • Well, literally all the other beasts were imprisoned too, implying that they've gotten their asses kicked just as much as Kyuubi. Hachibi in particular was taken down multiple times by a bunch of ordinary shinobi using chains. And i'm sorry, but Kyuubi went down easily? When?
  • Also, the whole "Getting his chakra stolen" thing might be connected to him being weaker than he should be... And at any rate, it's possible that, as the strongest bijuu, the Kyuubi merely attracted more opponents strong enough to defeat him than any of the other tailed beasts did.
• When you look at the size of Kyuubi's paw print and the size of its paw during Kushina's flash back, after Minato uses the Dead Demon -seal Kyuubi's paw is actually over five times smaller than the print. That is a lot of power lost. And it is lost permanently, which is what Minato says. The Death God -summoning seems to be used to permanently consume things and make them unrecoverable, nothing more. Minato then sealed what remained with an 8-point seal and a 4 -element seal into Naruto. That fact alone should actually prove the undoing of Tobi's plan to revive the Juubi since the Kyuubi is incomplete and a large part of it can't be recovered. Unless of course the Kyuubi has somehow siphoned Naruto's own power to rebuild its reserves, but that seems unlikely as it is still so small.
  • It is actually implied he doesn't need the Kyuubi as a whole. When he retrieved Kinkaku and Ginkaku he said he was going to use them to fuel his plan, only for Kabuto to say he had so few of Hachibi's reserves for his plan. I presume he can revive the Juubi with only a fraction of the Bijuus, but the Hachibi portion he has (only one tentacle) is just that small for it to work properly. By the way, feeding himself with Naruto's chakra reserves could really replinish its powers, it recovered quickly from the drained state Naruto left his body this way, so it may not be lost forever, Tobi could find a way to buff it again.
• About the sealed away Chakra: So, is Kyuubi now twice less strong than he used to be? Half of his chakra is just gone? I didn't quite get it. Only half was sealed in Naruto, and Kyuubi is still much stronger than the other tailed beasts, is that right? Oh, and about Naruto's vast chakra reserves: are they just the leaked chakra from kyuubi, a small part of the halved kyuubi chakra, or does he have his own, big(for a human) reserves of it?
  • Not sure if the nine tails is weaker, but naruto's chakra reserves are mostly his, but some of the nine tail's chakra leaks out of the seal and has been expanding his chakra reserves since he was born, which is why he had so much energy before even graduating the ninja academy and expanding his chakra reserves even more by training like everyone else has to.

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Kakuzu

• How is Kakuzu still the same person after replacing his heart? Wasn't the whole idea of Sasori's puppet body that his heart was the center of his consciousness?
  • Sasori's technique is different from Kakuzu's, so it also works differently. Sasori didn't have a heart in a sense Kakuzu had many, since Kakuzu's hearts are the pumping kind of heart real people have which has absolutely no impact on his personality whatsoever, while Sasori had something that was more of a bundle containing his personality or essence or whatever in the same place where one's heart should be. It also looked nothing like a heart, so I think we should assume it didn't really work like a heart; remember, he was no longer a living person, so he didn't need to have a heart to pump his nonexistent blood. Kakuzu's personality, on the other hand, was stored in his mind, since he was still something considered a living being, just with the ability to assimilate multiple hearts in his body. It's not the "bundle" Sasori made out of his "essence" or whatever.
• There's one thing I never understood about Kakuzu's power. When he absorbs the heart, is it turned into the mask, and then reverts back when it becomes his main heart, or is it stored in the mask and the mask provides an outlet for the chakra?
• So Kakuzu had 5 hearts, and to kill him, you needed to kill each one... why was that the only option? Wouldn't have been smarter to kill him some other way, instead of attempting it in the only way that would require them to pull it off successfully 5 times? Why didn't they just lop off his head and call it a day, for example?
  • Judging by the fact that he was completely capable of detaching his hand to remove Shikamaru's chakra blade (iirc), I'd guess that he probably could find a way to do the same thing with his head. Also, they needed an excuse for Naruto to jump in with Rasenshuriken.

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Hidan

• Is it ever explained how or why Hidan can't seem to be killed? Or if he can be killed? This troper recalls several times in the series it is said there is no true immortality, but unless missing something, Hidan defies that. The only explanation I've seen was his religion gave him the power, which seemed like an obvious lie by Hidan.
  • Not really, seems more like some sort of super-secret jutsu from his weird evil cult. It's probably not known outside of said cult and may not prevent death by disease or old age, only from wound.
  • At one point Hiden is shown laying down inside his circle after a battle, Kakuzu wants him to hurry it up, but Hiden says he needs to do the ritual to appease Jashin, so it seems that the Jutsu is a life sacrifice, he isn't fully immortal per se, but as long as he keeps killing he is immortal, Word of God said that he has saved up enough life that his body (what's left of it at least) will rot away before his immortality runs out, so it seems he is immortal in lifespan, but he needs to keep killing to heal up re-youth his body.

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Pain/Pein

• Why does Pain feel the need to collect the tailed beasts for WMD purposes if he already has the power to destroy a several-mile area on his own?
  • It shortens his lifespan.
  • And because he want's people to nuke themselves after he's gone so there can be long periods of peace.
  • He's also stated that the weapon he plans to make with the tailed beasts is much, much bigger; like capable of devastating a country with one shot. I guess 'just' destroying one city at a time wouldn't frighten people enough.
    • It's possible that he can use more chakra from the tailed beasts, and thus make a stronger jutsu, or maybe make some variant of the beam that the Kyuubi and Hachibi use.
    • It has been shown that a Combined Tailed Beast Bomb is capable of destroying an area the size of a large city (chapter 572), or even the size of Rhode Island (chapter 609), without severely crippling the tailed beasts making it. The Juubi, on the other hand, is an entirely different level of power, greater than what Pain predicted.
• Chapter 407- Dammit, how did Pain get all six bodies back? The code obviously has something to do with "the six faces of Pain" or whatever, but it looks like they won't get a chance to really use it. I must say I'm pleased that Shikamaru's back. His presence has actually made me look forward to reading this again.
  • Maybe he has several reserve bodies, but he can only control six of them at a time.
  • It's explicitly shown that one of his bodies has the ability to resurrect the others. Which, in retrospect, we probably should have taken as foreshadowing.

• Okay... so Pain relies on Naruto to complete his plan on making a WMD. If that's the case, why did he enrage him by hurting Hinata? To prove a point? Okay, but he can't really accomplish his plans if he's dead. He's going to let himself be killed by the key component to his plan just to prove a point?
  • Did Pein realize that Naruto would freak out that badly when he attacked Hinata?
  • A tailed beast is easier to catch than a Jinchuuriki, though Pain probably didn't have it on his mind when Naruto was already pinned down.
  • Yes, Pain wanted to prove a point. He wanted to teach Naruto pain like he had the rest of the Leaf. After being basically untouchable since winning the Superpower Lottery, he just didn't consider that the Kyuubi would be a problem.

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Deidara

• If Deidara tried to eat M&M's with his hand-mouths, would they melt?
  • OK, wow. I just got a mental image of a one man Lady and the Tramp Spaghetti Scene.
    • I don't think Deidara can eat with his hand-mouths. Two reasons - that would mean throats in his arms, which if nothing else would make moving them and reattaching them more difficult, and it's been shown at least twice that he has to chew and swallow clay with his actual mouth (or the other one) to absorb the propeties of the exploding chakra into his body. And M&Ms melt in your mouth anyway, so isn't that kinda moot?
    • Guys, Accidental Nightmare Fuel much?
  • It would be like dividing by zero and everything would expl- wait... !?
• Is Deidara still alive? I mean, he wasn't killed in the Black Ant/Black Crow Puppet Dance of Death Iron Maiden thing, but Sasori was .. disentegrated from the event (due to his soul finally resting in peace and blah blah blah). He didn't die right? But where is he?
  • Probably trapped like most of the other zombies who haven't been mentioned in a while.

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The Tailed Beasts

Is there any explanation for the way they acted historically? Now that we've seen all nine in the past were an adorable family who loved the Sage of Six Paths very much and they've also shown that they are sentient beings not wild animals spirits I don't understand what started the negative relationship between the various villages and the beasts. They're so insanely powerful that aside from one family (that we know of, the other 8 beasts were wrangled somehow) that the idea that this started with human aggression sounds off. I simply don't buy that Son Goku was just walking around minding his own business and then BAM a bunch of humans thought it was a good idea to pick a fight with him. Since they have the ability to communicate it makes more sense that the ancient ninjas would have treated the 9 beasts the same way they treat the Toads or the Snakes. If the tailed beasts were the ones that started it then the question is why? Did they just get bored? Did they accidentally destroy something? The way the Nine Tails is depicted I can easily see how he might be walking through the forest and wreck a small settlement without even seeing it.

• People fear power, and these tailed beasts had enormous amounts of power. Not only was there fear and hatred of them, but certain people tried to use their power for personal gain. After all the abuse, it's likely that they (especially Kurama) believe that the Sage's efforts to save the world from the Juubi was in vain, and in turn, despise humans in general. Without a doubt, Kurama's largest source of hatred and anger is Madara, since he used the Sharingan to control Kurama and use him as a weapon. It's also likely that the reason that the tailed beasts befriended Naruto is that he restored their faith in humanity, that he most resembled the Six Paths himself, in terms of his pure heart and relentless determination.

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More Tobi and Akatsuki

• So Obito was pretending to be Madara and secretly led Akatsuki while pretending to be Tobi the new Akatsuki recruit. His plan is also to cast a genjutsu with the moon or some other such non-sense while pretending that the plan is to create a nukejutsu and intimidate everyone into peace while pretending that the plan is to create another mercenary organisation and secretly start war. Why the pointlessly complex ruse? The pretending to be Tobi part is especially confusing since all he did after openly joining Akatsuki was somewhat assist Deidara in capturing a tailed beast and troll him a bunch.
  • Well, to ease things a little, the "nukejutsu" part was actually Pain's idea, not Tobi's, and the "mercenary organization" bit was the plan that Pain presented to the other members.
  • Kakashi guesses that Obito spent much of that time trying to decide if he really wanted to go through with the plan while still laying the groundwork in case he decided he did. Him acting as Tobi lets him openly interact with Akatsuki, who are needed for capturing and sealing the tailed beasts.
  • As for why he pretended to be Tobi, Obito wanted to observe the Akatsuki, but he couldn't call himself Madara with Kakuzu around. Kakuzu was old enough to remember the real Madara, and might have caught on to Obito's lie. Onoki was able to notice in one conversation that Obito wasn't acting like Madara would've, and he only met him once. Coming up front and calling himself Madara would've raised Kakuzu's eyebrow, so Obito waited until after his death.

Specific Clans or Villages

The Uchiha Clan

• Didn't it state early on in the series that the Sharingan was an offshoot of the byakugan? Now it's the main offshoot of the Renegan? Was the dub mistranslated or was it retconned?
  • That was an in-universe belief that Kakashi mentioned which he didn't seem particularly convinced about it, it was not confirmed by Word of God and isn't a Retcon.
  • It has since been revealed that the Sage of Six Path's mother had the Byakugan, as did his younger brother(who is presumably the original ancestor of the Hyuugas) . So the Rinnegan is an offshoot of the Byakugan, and the Sharingan is an offshoot/laval state of the Rinnegan. It could be speculated that the Sage's Rinnegan was in fact a mutation of his Byakugan caused by the Ten Tails' chakra, either due to his mothers status as it's jinchuriki during pregnancy or because of his own time as it's Jinchuriki.
    • It's still not an offshoot as it's been made clear that the Rinnegan is a diluted version of Kaguya's third eye, while the Byakugan eyes were passed down to his brother.
• When the Uchiha clan was massacred, how come none of the other clans seemed particularly concerned about it? I mean, this is a major event and yet no one seemed to want to do any investigation on it and it's not even really mentioned by anyone but Sasuke?'
  • The Uchiha clan was respected, but it was never very politically loved. There was a reason it was segregated, after all. The other clans probably shrugged it off, besides which everybody thought Itachi did it.
    • In a scene after the massacre, two classmates are seen talking about it. It's likely that the clans were concerned about it, but there wasn't anyone able to go up against an S-class criminal.
• Why did only three members of the clan think Shisui's death wasn't a suicide? His corpse was missing an arm and both eyes!
  • The scene in which the three men confront Itachi is set right after Shisui dies, so it's likely that they came straight to the suspect before anyone else even knew. And, as Itachi didn't seem to be very popular with his clan before the massacre, it's very likely that more people would suspect him once the word got out.
• The Izanami, or the reason behind its existence. It was created to deter Uchiha members from abusing the jutsu Izanagi (which can only be used once). Just how would the average Uchiha abuse Izanagi? Even if one were to ignore the prerequisite of having both Senju DNA and the Sharingan, the average Uchiha only has two eyes.
  • Itachi said that Uchiha have been killing their siblings to obtain the Mangekyo ever since Madara unlocked his, so thats at least 2 times they could use Izanagi, more depending on how many siblings they had. Also Senju DNA isn't a prerequisite for Izanagi, Danzo needed it to support the chakra drain of having so many Sharingan implanted, not to use Izanagi.
  • It's also possible that clever Uchiha could find ways to milk extra uses out of Izanagi. While Izangi presumably can't be used to reverse Izanagi-induced blindness, perhaps a strong enough Uchiha could, say, kill their sibling, rip their eyes out, and then use Izanagi to resurrect said sibling with their eyes still in their head. This would leave the user with more eyes than they started with. And it *has* to be possible for Izanagi to create new copies of Sharingan eyes, otherwise both of Tobi's eyes should have stayed destroyed when Konan blew him up, instead of just one going blind.
• I've never followed Naruto and all I know about the series comes second hand, so clear something up for me. I've heard about how Uchihas are supposed to be prone to evil because they feel emotion more strongly than most people, and how most fans find that ridiculous. Tell me, if Uchihas are supposed to love so much and tragedy hits them particularly hard, then why are they so willing to turn on their friends? Shouldn't they value their companions more than the average person? Am I misunderstanding how that's supposed to work, or is that one of the reasons so many people think it's a badly written plot point?
  • They don't explain it particularly well but given the evidence we have from the four Uchia we know much about Sasuke, Itachi, Obito and Madara it seems they take the death of those loved ones much deeper than most people. When they lose someone they care about they snap and snap hard. In fairness some of them aren't entirely irrational. In the case of Sasuke I can't pretend that if my government wiped out my family I wouldn't join a terrorist organization bent on destroying said government. Also given that you need to lose a loved one (metaphorically anyway) to activate the Sharingon and Sharingons were apparently quite common it's not like they all go nuts and attack their families. They are basically kinda bi-polar is how it seems to be described. The highs are supposed to be real high and the lows super low.

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The Senju Clan

• Whatever happened to the Senju clan? From what we've seen, it most likely consists of a grand total of three people. The Shodaime, the Nidaime, and one of Tsunade's parent. I doubt they managed to completely die off in less than three generations, and you'd think that Tsunade would remember the murder of her entire clan. Which means that, essentially, that the Uchiha clan's greatest nemesis was three guys. And only one of them could use mokuton jutsu.
  • There were more than three guys. But yeah, it doesn't make sense that such a powerful and important clan would disappear in less than 80 years. Maybe Kishi will tell us what happened to them later.
  • I thought what happened to the Senju clan was that after the village was founded they split apart and are the ancestors of Konoha's current clans besides the Uchiha (and probably most of the village, unless they allow immigration). Though you're 80 years is a pretty short time for that to happen. Perhaps they disbanded as a formal clan at some point for some as of yet unknown reason to simply become the citizens of the village (non-clan members like Sakura, Rock Lee, Tenten, and Naruto), and the non-Uchiha clans were pre-existing and choose to join the village for stabler lives. Or may some combination of the two.
    • Perhaps adding support to this we know that the Uzumaki clan was an offshoot of the Senju clan (the manga just says that they are related, but it also clearly calls Naruto a Senju, which could mean a few things, but probably means that the original Uzumakis and the Senju interbred to the point that all Uzumakis share Senju blood, though not the reverse).
  • This troper always thought it was fairly obvious what happened to the Senju clan. The Senju and the Uchiha went to war over which was the greatest clan. Even though the Senju won, both sides probably suffered a great deal of casualties on both sides which lead to an extremely small remaining population. Couple this with the dangerous missions that shinobi are sent on and the fact that the Senju (being the strongest in the village) would be sent first to deal with the worst problems, means that the remaining clan members probably died in incredibly dangerous missions and in the various wars between the different countries. For another example just look at the Uchiha, they were also considered a great clan but there weren't that many left by the time Itachi comes around.
    • Which made his job that much easier.
  • Alternately, if you take into account Tobi's assertion that the Senju clan started with the son of the Rikudo sage and he can see that the fire of the Senju clan dwells within Naruto (yet Naruto goes by Uzumaki Naruto rather than Senju Naruto), it's possible that the Senju clan is so numerous (due to being started so long ago) that there are so many Senju descendants that the name becomes fairly useless in differentiating families.
    • Wasn't it stated that somewhere that a lot of other clans actually joined up with the Senju? It's possible that the Senju clan was originally quite small, and was just joined by other clans that made it the massive force that it was, and when the village was established, the Clan seperated into it's smaller versions once more, like the Nara's and Inuzukas.

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Hyuugas

• Is it ever explained why Neji keeps his right arm bandaged pre-timeskip?
• Does it seem odd that Hinata is the only Konoha 11 member besides Choji who has never spoken about the order to kill Sasuke? It might be interesting to see what her opinion is, as while she's not especially attached to Sasuke, she could have doubts about it due to it interfering with Naruto's personal quests, support it to take the burden off his shoulders (she intervenes against Pain despite his personally ordering everyone to stay out), or merely unconditionally support him and trust him to do what's best, and I wonder if her opinion on it is being saved for a future scene with Naruto.
  • Well, I doubt she intends to just let Naruto get himself killed.
• Does it bother anyone else that 15-year-old Hinata has approximately half to one-fourth the power and skill of 13-year-old Neji? Of course, Neji is a genius, but this power gap is just ridiculous.
  • Hinata lacks confidence and therefore has trouble progressing. Plus her dad appears to be exclusively training Neji and Hanabi, leaving her to Kurenai. Kurenai is a genjutsu specialist and the Hyuuga seem to solely use their own taijutsu, so that could explain some of the disconnect. And don't forget, Neji is outright stated to be one of the most naturally talented Hyuuga ever.
    • But... Eight Trigrams Thirty Two Palms... It's just ridiculous.
    • Wasn't that a filler jutsu?
    • I think they wanted to have her use the technique without going so far as to suggest that she learned it herself or was taught it by her father (which would mean he recognized her as heir, something that has not been officially stated in the manga yet, as Kou calls both her and Hanabi "-sama.")
    • Neji is THE most naturally talented Hyuuga, period. Also the official databooks have Hinata as ~4/5 of 14 year-old Neji's level whatever the fillers have to say about it.
    • According to the third databook, Hinata's skills grew significantly faster than Neji's did over the timeskip, to the point where she's smarter than he is and better at genjutsu (which could be because of Kurenai's training), compared to her unimpressive growth between "pre-chunin exam" and pre-timeskip, showing that she believes in herself and her hard work is paying off. There's also the issue that we don't have any "normal" Hyugas besides the "genius" Neji and the "failure" Hinata with whom to compare the two.
    • More than likely, the 4/5th part refers to skill and techniques, not total power. The Heavenly Spin and the Sixty-Four Palms are the epitome of the Hyuga Clan's techniques, and Neji taught himself these techniques. While Hinata has indeed grown faster than Neji, it is possible that she has not fully mastered the Main Clan's secret techniques.
• How does the whole Hyuga main/branch family thing work exactly? Neji's dad was a branch family member because he was born second. Okay, by that logic Hanabi should be a branch family member and there should be only a handful of main family members. Even if there are multiple nuclear families that make up the main branch, there could only be at most four, maybe five people (one from each generation) from each of those who are actually main brach. Also, if we assume that Hiashi and Hizashi were a special case because one of them would be the heir, either Hinata or Hanabi should be branch family members. So what's the deal?
  • Maybe Hizashi was branded to prevent fighting between twins over the position of head (similiar to the Man in the Ironmask), as well as provide a perfect decoy in case of assassination attempts on the next head.
  • Of course, everything falls into place if you assume that the branch family members aren't branded until the new clan leader is selected. Thus, Hizashi would not have been branded until Hiashi assumed the post. At that point, any of Hizashi's children (i.e., Neji) would also receive the seal. As for Hinata and Hanabi, both are still main family members until such time as Hiashi steps down and a new leader chosen from his descendants. At that point, assuming Hinata was chosen to become the new leader, Hanabi and any of her hypothetical children would be sealed, while any of Hinata's similarly hypothetical children would be left alone. This partially solves the issue directly below of main branch family members exposing themselves to danger. True, under this system there would only be a handful at any given time, but there would remain room for flexibility in choosing the next clan leader from the current leader's offspring; thus, main house descendants would not be quite as irreplaceable. This also solves the dialogue issue during the Chunin Exams, where Hiashi tells Hanabi that he believes that she is stronger than her older sister. Therefore, the line of descent is not strictly limited to the eldest sibling, but whomever the clan leader feels would do the best job in his stead. As for how this would effect Hiashi and Hizashi's selection way back when, all things and factors being equal (and they being twins, they probably were), then age was probably used as a kind of tiebreaker. Hizashi would then have been doubly pissed; not only had his brother been chosen above him because of a few seconds, but there was every possibility that he would have been chosen instead. And down the line, Neji would also be doubly pissed for being in the branch family not only because of his younger-sibling father, but because of his younger-sibling-but-equally-qualified father..
    • This is assuming that whole bit about Hiashi being the first born is even actually TRUE. Remember, the only one who ever mentioned that being the case is Neji, who only had his father's word to go on. For all we know, the story is a lie designed to help Hizashi cope with being the Esau to Hiashi's Jacob.
  • It's possible that Hanabi was not branded so that in case Hinata died on a mission, they would still have an heir (The only person we see being branded is Neji, and we know that his branding would be inevitable because he was born to a branch house member, and the reason why he would be branded when Hinata turned 3 is unclear).
    • On the Naruto Wiki, one proposed theory is that Hinata and Hanabi, being female, cannot start a branch family, and thus, neither would get the curse mark at any point, regardless of who inherited the clan.
    • As for why Neji wasn't branded right away, they probably don't brand young Branch family members immediately for fear that the head family would not produce an heir. Although the Naruto world seems to have fairly advanced medicine, the age of 3 might be a leftover from a time similar to our own world's past where most children died at a very young age. Once the head family heir turns 3 they can be fairly certain she will succeed the clan. That actually would explain Neji's flashback where his father suddenly expresses murderous intent for a young Hinata, if the head family produced no heir Neji wouldn't have to be part of the Branch family.
• If the branch house of the Hyuga are supposed to protect the Main House and the secrets of the Byakugan, then why is Hinata allowed to go off, separate from any branch members? Given that the seal on the branch members is supposed to do something to the eyes (the whole reason the elders wanted to send Hizashi's body instead of Hiashi's) isn't Hinata being by herself, without other Hyugas, and without the seal, a cause for concern? She was almost kidnapped once, so one could assume that without the seal the eyes remain intact after death. Or is the whole branch house thing just the elders continuing to be massive dicks? (Which is what it seems like. Didn't seem like Hiashi actually had a whole lot of power over his family. He didn't want to send his brother to die in his place.)
  • This has never been adequately addressed in the series. My theory is that Hiashi decided that the eye skills weren't worth a whole bucket of spit, certainly not worth his brother's life, and since then he's disregarded all the limits and worries about main family lives. We even see him fighting alone during Oro's invasion of Konoha, which he wouldn't do if he was worried about the secrets getting out. So if he doesn't care about Hinata, and he doesn't care about the eye jutsus, then it makes sense that he would let her go off on dangerous missions by herself.
    • Come to think of it Neji doesn't seem to worried about Byakugan secrets leaking when Hinata gets decimated against Pein. They've all probably realized that the rest of the world doesn't give a fig about Byakugan any more. It has its uses, but for sheer damage you can't beat Sharingan.
    • Then again, she is lying there in the middle of the giant Konoha crater, while the typical fear is that if ninjas die on a mission, the enemy will retrieve their corpses and study them for details on village secrets, as well as their bloodline traits. Since Pain flees six-tailed Naruto shortly afterward, and is mainly concerned with capturing him, there's far less risk of Hinata's body being taken.
    • If pain had won, he would've just made 6 paths again and had the ability to see from multiple viewpoints, which makes the byakugan kind of useless to him, plus most of his abilities seem to come from Rinnegan which means he probably can't swap one eye for something else.
    • Exactly, Hinata's body would have been more valuable to him as a replacement body than for her eyes.
  • And now that we know some guy from another village (Ao) did get a Byakugan from one of their memebers this all seems even more pointless and ineffective.
    • As Madara has displayed there is nothing stopping you from having eyes from different sets. It's true that shared vision is great but as both Naruto and Jiraya displayed that just means I have to get you away from your friends.
    • Is it ever expressly stated that the Rinnegan's POWER is shared sight? Cus that just doesn't sound likely since the Sage of Six Paths (to the best of our knowledge) wasn't called that because he had six bodies and Nagato figuring out that if he animated corpses it would let him use his funny eyes doesn't sound plausible either. It makes as much or more sense that whatever jutsu he used to create the Peins simply shared the vision amonst them all.
    • Shared sight is one of the abilities, the six paths are the powers that Nagato used through the dead bodies, not the bodies themselves.

• Something that occurred to me while planning a fanfic: since part of the Cage Bird seal's function includes being able to cause pain, could it be finely tuned enough to cause pleasure?
  • It appears to work specifically on the head physically, not in the head, so it would probably range from a mild throbbing sensation to head-splitting agony. Could someone get off on it? Probably. Is that a likely use? Probably not.

• Hizashi should not know Kaiten. It was clearly established that that technique is reserved for the clan head and the heir, and that Neji is a genius for figuring out how to do it without being taught. Either the anime screwed up, or somebody is lying about what's really going on. The idea that Hizashi was actually the first-born and Hiashi supplanted him somehow suddenly makes a lot more sense.

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The Yamanaka Clan

• Why does the Yamanaka clan own a shop? true it isn't as prominent as the the Hyuga or the Uchiha but it's still a very powerful clan... I guess what I'm really asking is where does all of its Ninja wages go? Ino is a Chunin, Inoichi is a Jonin and Fu is a Root; they should have more than enough money. And yet - this warrior clan have to sell flowers in order to make ends meet. Huh?
  • Not all of them are ninjas? Also money might not be shared between family members, so they would all need to have some sort of job.
  • I thought it was her mother's- since, you know, it'd be silly to think that all the people in a clan marry their cousins. Inbreeding works with dogs, not with humans.
    • Who says they need the shop to make ends met? My grandfather kept working after he could have retired simply because he didn't want to sit around all day. Even after he retired and went to a rest home, he kept a garden to occupy his time. So the shop could be both money maker and hobby thing.
  • There was an interesting bit of headcanon that theorized the shop was initially set up as a front for espionage and the Yamanaka eventually turned it into a legitimate business.

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The Leaf Village

• Why is it that most members of the Leaf village (whether or not they are part of a clan) have surnames, but Tsunade, Orochimaru, Jiraiya, Rock Lee, Tenten, and Shizune (am I missing anyone) don't?
  • You're missing Gaara (though you might consider his title a surname) Temari, Kankuro Jirobu, Tayuya, Kidomaru, and Sakon/Ukon (actually Kimimaro is the only one of the sound '5' to have a surname)...but that's just semantics.
  • Because they do have surnames? Rock -is- Lee's surname and Tsunade's is Senju for example.
  • Tsunade apparently doesn't have Senju as part of her name: even after revealing her grandfather's surname, she's still listed in the databooks as just "Tsunade".
    • Maybe it was Tsunade's mom who was a Senju and she married a surname-less character. Or maybe the shinobi countries have some strange naming conventions...
    • Oddly enough, Kimimaro is from the Kaguya clan, and he's just "Kimimaro" in the databooks.
    • Or maybe it's not mentioned because Kishi-san never invented ones. It's hard enough to make up first names for that many characters, take it from this writer.
    • Well, the reason Tenten doesn't have a last name is because she's quite literally a filler character in canon. Kishimoto said that she was only created because he wanted to keep with the "2 male, 1 female in each group" theme going on in the series. It does explain a lot of things...
    • For Tsunade, Orochimaru and Jiraiya, it can be argued that, being known all over the (Naruto) world, their surnames (or maybe they're first names?) are enough to know who you're talking about.
    • There's just one problem: the readers don't live in the Naruto world, so that's not a good enough excuse. It just seems like Kishimoto couldn't think of a last name for them and decided to leave it unknown in hopes that no one would realize it. Hell, most of the characters in the story barely have their last names spoken out loud anyway, and some of those we wouldn't even know if it wasn't for the databooks...
    • Yeah, and...? I meant that maybe WE, the readers, don't know the names of these three because they're so well-known in the Naruto world that everyone says "Look, it's Orochimaru!" and not "Look, it's Orochimaru Hebikage!" (for example), like IRL we'd say "Look, a picture of Gandhi/Hitler !" and not always "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi" or "Adolf Hitler". Of course, the real reason is that Kishimoto couldn't think of a name for them, that's why I said it can be argued.
  • If the last names aren't important, why bother naming them.
  • This could be a cultural thing; in ancient Japan, commoners (i.e., not part of samurai clans, nobility, etc.) weren't allowed to have surnames. One of the reasons that Naruto is so huge about announcing himself as UZUMAKI Naruto every chance he gets, is that his surname means he's got some sort of social status. By the same token, Kimimaro may have renounced his surname as a sign of his subservience to Orochimaru. And since the Kage title is earned by being the biggest bad-ass in the village, not through status or social connections, the Sand Siblings may be technically commoners, even though their father is Kazekage.
    • It could very well be that the people of Sunagakure simply don't use surnames. There isn't a single character from Suna who's been given a surname, so that would be a very reasonable theory.
    • This is actually highly plausible as of the Gaara Hiden novel. The Kazekage's bloodline is apparently extremely important to Suna, to the point that the city council were concerned about Shikadai having a claim to the Sixth Kazekage title when he grew up simply for being Temari's son, yet they *still* don't identify it by any sort of clan name.
    • There's also the possibility that certain surnames haven't been revealed because it might spoil something.
    • As for the idea that some surnames might spoil things if revealed too soon...well, for whatever reason Kishimoto didn't want to say that the Third Hokage was Asuma's father until well after the Third died. And while he didn't hide either character's surname, he did nothing to make it clear that Sarutobi was the Third's surname. Orochimaru called him "Sarutobi-sensei", and since every other character in the series had referred to their sensei exclusively by their given name, it was widely assumed that was the case for the Third. So Kishimoto didn't so much hide the surname in that case as hide the fact that it was a surname.
  • The series tends to be somewhat inconsistent as to who gets surnames and who does not. (For example, Akamon Manabu, a Chunin examinee who's noteworthy for nothing other than having been stuck at Genin level for a long time at 39, has a surname, as do some minor ninja like Izumo and Kotetsu, while the Sannin, Tenten and everyone from the Sand Village do not). Most of the main characters got their surnames through their association with a clan, and it's possible Sakura and Kakashi got them by virtue of being main characters.
  • Isn't it perfectly possible that he didn't think of surnames for those characters because we didn't need one? Case in point: If someone say's "it's Gaara", we don't need to know which Gaara it is. On the other hand, we generally do need to be told whether someone is an Uchiha, or a Hyuga.
    • When have we ever needed to know if someone was a Haruno?
    • That's an interesting question. Likely answer? given how Sakura is one of the main characters, the Haruno clan was originally meant to be revealed to be something special. But, in exactly the same way the Hyuga were introduced as a badass warrior clan only to be nearly forgotton about by the end of part 1, the Haruno clan were pushed to the side by the author's growing affection for the Uchiha, the Akatsuki and the Tailed beasts. After all, this clan is apparantly very secretive given how we have only ever seen Sakura and could very well have a dark/interesting past... although given how eclipsed Sakura was in terms of power until she was personally trained by the Fifth Hokage, it's equally likely she is the only Ninja to ever to come from a family of civilians.
    • Judging by the name itself, this troper has always thought that revealing Sakura's surname is purely stylistic. For example, her name is a homonym of "Cherry Blossoms of the Spring" the same way Iruka's is "Dolphin of the Sea". In other words, neither of them belong to high-profile clans; Kishimoto just made the names 'cause he thought they were cool.
• What's with the Springfield-like growth of the Hidden Leaf Village? In the sixth season intro it looks like a small city. Getting a bit too big to hide, no?
  • I always got the impression that "hidden village" was something of a misnomer. I mean, just look at the damn things. Sunagakure is a gigantic fortress in the middle of the desert. It's not exactly hidden. I think that since people actually need to find the ninjas to hire them, the cities are really just cities with cool names.
  • You have to take into account population growth as well. Consider that Suna is surrounded almost entirely by huge cliffs and that Konoha is in a densely forested area those places might well have once been very well hidden. But people, you know, breed, and well protected places tend to attract immigrants and such.
    • That begs the question; if the Hokage is the leader of Konoha, and is only ever seen operating the ninja service, who's in charge of all the Boring, but Practical stuff, "getting the water in and the trash out" as Terry Pratchett once said?
    • And while we're at it, how come the Third Hokage was never seen doing any kind of mundane paperwork, while Tsunade's simply buried in the stuff?
    • Because it's funny. Alternatively, the Third had, by that point, learned to get paperwork out of the way and Tsunade just likes to avoid the boring parts of work when she can. (There's also the fact that we simply see more of Tsunade than Sarutobi.)
    • It's been shown (though I don't think in canon) that the villages have basically the same government system as a non-ninja village, only the military branch and _____kage always outranks the local executive branch.
    • We see the series through Naruto's eyes, so we only see his interaction with Tsunade when she's giving him missions or debriefings on said missions. So its unlikely we'd see anything like that.
    • We have now, after Tsunade's falling into a coma we follow Shikaku, the Head Jounin as he, the ANBU Commander and the Hokage's council attend a meeting with the Fire Country's Daimyo and his own staff. There's your non-ninja government.

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The Sand Village

• So, Gaara's father - the fourth Kazekage - is killed and impersonated by Orichimaru in the leadup to the Invasion of Konoha. Fair enough, they think that he's still alive since Orochimaru is impersonating him. One or two arcs later, we skip three years and Gaara is the fifth Kazekage. Even if we're very generous and assume that he went from a genin to Kage within a year (and has thus been Kazekage for two years), who the hell was ruling the Sand Village for that one year? Konoha were anxious to get a new Hokage after the Third died, why wouldn't the Sand be the same? Shouldn't there have been someone in-between Gaara and his father that was the fifth, thus making Gaara the sixth?
  • Presumably Suna was in such disarray after being defeated in the war that it took them longer to get things together. There also could have simply been a dearth of suitable candidates. Chiyo and Ebizo would've both refused. Baki might have been a candidate, given his rank on the Suna Council and the fact that he seems to take charge in Gaara's absence, but if so he presumably declined as well.
  • Perhaps Gaara decided that he wanted to become Kazekage rather quickly. Whoever was in charge of selecting the Kazekage stalled for time because Gaara was a sociopathic murderer not even a month ago and nobody would want him in charge, and for the same reason nobody wanted to sign up for the job out of fear that Gaara would kill them for taking what he wanted. It wasn't until a while later that people could see that Gaara had changed that they were willing to give him a shot.

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Otsutsuki Clan

• How is that Hamura developed the Tenseigan, but Kaguya or other Otsutsuki like Momoshiki never did?
  • Developing the Tenseigan requires merging the Otsutsuki Byakugan with Hyuuga Byakugan. Kaguya couldn't do this because, well, the Hyuugas didn't exist yet when she was alive. Hamura also didn't actually have the Tenseigan in his eyes - all the references to "Hamura's Tenseigan" are talking about the gigantic vessel with all the clan members' eyes inside it, which Hamura helped originally create.

The Cloud Village

• What did they hope to accomplish by kidnapping Hinata? Yes, they could have one set of unsealed Byakugan eyes and a girl who could breed more. But given Hinata's age at the time, it would have taken at least twenty years to breed their own pseudo-Hyuuga shinobi - ten years minimum to get Hinata to the point where she could be used as a breeder without medical complications (They may not care for her as an individual, but if she dies or has a difficult pregnancy that renders her unable to have more children afterwards, they lose the ability to breed her again, so pragmatism demands some concern for her health), and ten years minimum to train the resultant offspring. Breeding enough to make their own clan would take fifty or so. And during that time the Hyuuga clan would be looking for their missing heir all the while, to rescue if possible, and euthanize to preserve the clan secrets if not. And if they succeeded, there would be another war, as the Hyuuga would have the evidence needed to demand it to the Konoha council. So essentially, they're risking war in the near future in exchange for a possible advantage in a war two generations from now. How does this make sense under any cost/benefit analysis?
• Well, as we saw, it worked out pretty well in the cost-benefits. They got a Hyuuga corpse (though not the one they wanted) and all it cost them was the Raikage. If not for the twin thing they might have gotten what they wanted. There wasn't even a war. It would be the equivalent of a special agent dying in battle in exchange for obtaining a flashdrive of enemy weapons details; the Cloud knew that if caught they could write him off as a radical and get away with it since neither country wanted a war, and if successful then they had their own source of Hyuuga bloodline. He might have been the head of the Cloud, but it's still arguable that he was acting of his own will, and while the Cloud supported his actions they still hung him out to dry.

Arc Specific Issues

Land of Waves Arc

• At the end of the Land of Waves arc, Kakashi and Naruto conjure shadow dopplegangers to scare off Gato's thugs because they're too weak to do anything else. But wait a second! Kakashi states that he doesn't have enough chakra left to do anything to actually fight the thugs... and then proceeds to use the solid kagebunshin, one of the most chakra-consuming moves in the series, instead of the illusory regular bunshin. Have I been reading the wrong translations or something?
  • I was under the impression that Kakashi did just make regular bunshin, but claimed that they were kage bunshin. Or something. It's been a while since I've read that part.
  • Yeah, Kakashi was definitely bluffing. Remember, the morons he was up against weren't ninjas. They couldn't tell the difference.
• In Part I, we're told that Sakura is perfectly suited for being a genjutsu user. The Third Databook stats put her genjutsu skills as second only to Sasuke among the Konoha 12. So why have we never seen her use genjutsu ever?
  • Maybe it's just her skill at working around and with genjutsu. Remember how she was one of the only two three non-jonin to recognize and reverse Kabuto's Temple of Nirvana? (the others being Shikamaru and Shino) It probably means that if she ever did try and use genjutsu, she'd be incredible at it. However, her training so far has consisted pretty much entirely of chakra control and Super-Strength.
• Why, despite his pretty huge contribution to Itachi's power, have we not seen a single image of Shisui? He's described as Itachi's best friend; surely we'd have had at least one flashback to him by now. On another note, anyone else find it hilarious that the Uchiha Clan owed debt to an old woman who wears false cat ears?
  • We probably haven't seen Shisui for the same reason we didn't see all of the jinchuriki until recently, why we still don't know the names of four of them, why we don't know what kinds of animals bijuu 4-7 are, why we only know the identities of three members of the Seven Shinobi Swordsmen of the Mist (not counting Raiga since he was filler so probably isn't canon and his name doesn't even fit the theme naming of the SSSM anyway), why we don't know the names of Minato's teammates from when he was a genin, etc. Either Kishimoto is holding out for a reveal or he just doesn't care.
    • Notice that the entire flashback is viewed from Sasuke's perspective (as a way of showing what he knew about the massacre and how it affected him), and conceals information that Madara and Itachi later mention to him, so maybe Itachi only interacted with Shisui at clan meetings or in places where Sasuke wouldn't have come.
    • Regardless, we've gotten a glimpse of Shisui now.

Chunin Exams Arc

• In the anime, Sakura is fighting Zaku, who throws kunai at her midair. Expecting her to have used substitution jutsu, he looks around. However, (despite having used the handseals) Sakura doesn't use it, instead landing on Zaku, stabbing his arm, and biting him. He then begins to punch her to get her off for a pretty sizable amount of time. Here's where I'm confused: While he was punching Sakura, why didn't he just shoot her with Decapitating Airwaves? He could have stabbed her in the head with a kunai, too. His teammates were also there. Why didn't they help, either?
  • I was under the impression that Zaku can't use the airwaves at point blank range. Also, to them, it was clear that Sakura was desperately trying to fight back, so Zaku kept punching her t to show how pointless her actions were in the end. His teammates shared the same thought and llet Zaku have his fun.
• How did they manage to create an exam for promotion to a leadership position without ever once testing leadership skills? The only test that isn't an individual exam (which by definition cannot display one's ability to command others) is the second test, which was in an environment where examiners couldn't study who is taking command of the teams and how well they did.
• During the written test, the guy with a scar on the face tells them that one purpose of the test is to see if they can get information without getting caught, so the better students were the ones who wouldn't get caught cheating, but everybody's "cheating skills" are terrible, Gaara so obviously using his sand, Akamaru talking to Kiba, but most importantly, Tenten using blatant obvious strings attached to a huge mirror on the ceiling, how doesn't anyone notice that? It would be better if they just cheated normally, Naruto talking to Hinata without raising suspicion is also hella strange, and to make it worse he was even on the line of vision of the ninja who caught someone cheating behind him, who was silent.
  • Because they lied about that part. It wasn't about not getting caught, because the proctors, as chunin and jonin, were practically guaranteed to see through whatever the genin did. They just had to demonstrate that they could use an actual ninja technique to gather the information; all the students they failed were students who tried to cheat by mundane methods. Gaara's floating sand eye was blatantly obvious in the controlled setting of an exam room, but in an intel-gathering situation in the field, it would likely work. Same with Sasuke and the Hyuuga's eye techniques. So stuff like that got a pass. Sakura didn't use a technique, but since she also didn't cheat, they had no pretext under which to flunk her (and for all they knew, she could have stolen the answers somehow before the test even began.) Naruto not getting caught for talking to Hinata was probably luck + the proctors being generous.
    • Actually, that makes sense, except for the Naruto part in my opinion, if anything, when people have a bias involving Naruto they always treat him unfairly. Either way, that raises another question, didn't any genin taking the test noticed the others cheating? I don't quite remember.
    • Once the first couple of people cheated, some genin probably *did* notice — and that's probably *why* so many more people started doing it too. If someone saw Gaara's sand eye or Tenten's mirrors, and asked themselves why those other ninja weren't getting kicked out despite being so obvious, they'd probably realize what the point of the exam was, and be less self-conscious about trying to cheat themselves. As for the ones who still didn't cheat despite all the blatant evidence surrounding them: this ties into Ibiki's comments about how genin who refuse to take risks don't deserve to be promoted. If you had so much proof right in front of you that something was fishy, but you *still* just kept your head down and did your test the futile normal way, then in Ibiki's mind, you absolutely deserved to fail.

Konoha Crush (Arc)

• Always annoyed me even as a kid how Sasuke never got a clear cut hit to Garra's heart when using the chidori even tho he has the sharingan designed to maneuver thru opposition so i don't see how he couldn't one hit kill garra. I get him not doing it during their official match cuz 1. it was a match not a fight to the death and 2. He couldn't see Garra's chest perfectly cuz of his sand coccoon covering him, but here he's in a obviously in a deathbattle and he can pretty clearly see Garra's chest so what the hell? Chidori can obviously break thru his sand, so why did it look like Sasuke kept going for his protected arm and not his exposed chest for the one hit kill?....plus to add on what happened to the awesome power of the curse mark back in the forest of death?, why did it completely screw him over this time? You mean to tell me that all that awesome power back in the forest of death granting him increased chakra, speed and power = One Chidori? You'd think Kishi would let Curse Mark Activated Sasuke vs One Tail Garra play out, even if Sasuke doesn't win, would be fricken epic.
  • Note that at this point, Sasuke has never actually killed someone before. As angry and violent as he might be, making the cold calculated decision to end someone's life isn't reasonable to expect of a 12 year old kid whose never been forced into that position before, so even if he had the opportunity and knew he had the opportunity he was probably subconsciously avoiding going for lethal blows and was just trying to wound and/or exhaust Gaara enough to incapacitate him, like how Naruto eventually did.

Curry of Life Arc

• With the revelation that Mangetsu Hozuki uses the exact same swords as Raiga Kurosuki, doesn't that by default also make the Curry of Life anime filler arc official (manga) canon?
  • No, it just makes his swords canon. Raiga is still a non-official character filling the black space of Ringo's sucessor, at least until Kishimoto decides to create one.
    • As of the flashback of Guy's father, Raiga is canon. Whether anything about him besides his appearance is canon, who knows.

Secret Wars

• During the fight with the second Mizukage, why didn't any of the ninjas try to dispell the genjutsu created by the clam?
  • I guess the genjutsu was just too strong to be able to be dispelled. Itachi's Tsukuyomi is too strong to be dispelled, for example, so why wouldn't the mizukage's be that strong, especially since Gaara had a hard time fighting him, even with his "absolute defence", so he must be pretty strong.
  • I may be remembering wrong, but the Mizukage stesses that it's all a mirage and not a genjutsu.
• This is one regarding the fillers in the latest arc: Why wasn't ANY previous filler character brought back? Of course I'm referring mainly to the ones who died, but seriously, why bother making a whole bunch of new characters with flimsy connections when you could just use ones that had been previously established?
  • Almost all of those characters worked through any issues that they had during their arcs and didn't have particularly strong ties to anybody still alive. Also filler characters are almost always forgotten as quickly as they pop up.
    • I'm not certain that's particularly important. The Edo Tensai seems to function however it wants. For example Granny Chiyo stuck around until she was released even though her children and grandchild were long dead and she died happy having seen the friendship Gaara and Naruto had. She should have dissipated on her own and she's not the only one who falls under that category. Itachi dissipated the same way, when it was released. Not when he'd finished his mission and said everything he wanted to say to Sasuke. Even though they did happen at the same time.
  • The real reason is because they don't want any of the crazy snarls that would come from the Manga borrowing from the Anime or leaving out important characters from the Manga to make room for characters from the Anime. I can only imagine the head aches that would be caused by that as to what's cannon and what isn't and why. Just check out Anime/Dragonball if you want to see how nasty the debates can get over what is or isn't cannon.
  • I've gone through the list of all the ninja who were resurrected and something is bothering me. Many great and powerful ninja are not revived for battle at all. Some like Jiraya have an excuse of course, but some don't. Like Kakashi's father Sakumo Hatake (a well known and skilled shinobi), the Third Kazekage, Danzo, nor any of Team Dosu's Dosu, Zaku or Kin.
    • The Third Kazekage might have been impossible to find samples for, considering that Sasori killed him a long time ago and turned him into a puppet, though that didn't stop Kabuto from finding dna to revive Sasori, Sakumo was famous during his lifetime but might've been seen as a loser after his death making him undesirable for Kabuto, Danzo died recently similar to Kisame who definitely would've been worth reviving if Kabuto had the time. Team Dosu were genin level mooks, they wouldn't be worth the time needed to revive them, since practically anyone above genin level could take them out with little effort, and all the genin seem to be staying out of the war.
    • Danzo completely obliterated his own body upon death, so getting a sample to revive him would've been even harder than for Jiraiya.
• In the Fourth Great Ninja War why are they relying entirely on the Yamanaka Clan and their psychic Jutsu for organization purposes? We know that two way radios exist in the Narutoverse and aside from the fact that range was never discussed (which is still no excuse for each company not being able to communicate with each other) that seems like it would have all the upsides of communicating via Yamanaka without the nosebleeds, potential death and unnecessary sharing of ninja techniques with other Villages. On that note.
• Is the Yamanaka Clan truly limited to two members because otherwise they seem to be a pretty good way to get around those pesky White Zetsu.
  • There are more members, they are just in the field using the mind control jutsus, Inoichi could help with the Zetsu but it would only work for one area and it wouldn't help with detecting them before they start sneak attacking, and would need them to link with a hyuga and stay linked for the whole night.
    • Even if it meant breaking away from their current units to support say the MEDICAL NINS that sounds like a vastly superior plan than what they seem to have settled on which was everybody stand very very still and wait for the plot to save us. If Naruto and Bee had actually followed orders the White Zetsu could easily have if not defeated the Shinobi Alliance definitely fought it to a stand still.
    • To be fair, there isn't much that anyone could do other than subdue any attackers which the Zetsus were picking off isolated people to avoid that, they didn't have the time or ability to set up a mind searching team in every division, and protecting the medical ninja would be pretty difficult because literally anyone could have been a zetsu, standing still was the best option for waiting out the night to prevent the zetsu from pulling sneak attacks.
    • Fair enough. However the White Zetsu plan didn't actually hinge on darkness that was just an extra psychological attack. Ultimately it's probably a matter of conservation of detail but I'm really curious what they would have done had Naruto not shown and not had the ability to sense murderous intent which he'd only discovered shortly before himself.
• It's unclear exactly how much time passed and when (Between two groups of separated characters) during what is presumably the final battle of the series. Is there an actual reason why Kakashi didn't follow Naruto and Sasuke if not immediately a short time later? Sakura was in no danger at all certainly very little if left alone. At this point every single ninja (and in theory person) in the entire world is on one team minus Sasuke and the location they're located has been a battlefield for at least two whole days. I doubt some random animal would find and attack her. So Kakashi really didn't need to stay to keep her safe. Not to mention she's been awake for a few chapters now. Still Sasuke might have stopped him if he'd tried right away but after that he doesn't go to bear witness to that battle? Barring that Naruto and Sasuke were having the kind of battle that literally should have been visible for miles especially the Kyuubi vs Susananoo part so when the world literally stopped shaking Kakashi and Sakura should have gone to the location of the battle to decide the fate of the world. And at this point it's implied that that Sasuke and Naruto have just been lying there for hours. Now for plot reasons it makes some sense because if Kakashi and Sakura came across and unconscious Sasuke and didn't kill him it would be enraging but at this point it seems like two people who due to what was effectively a double knock out could be be the last two people on the planet are sitting on their asses waiting to be told it's over.
  • I was under the impression that the recent use of the double Mangekyou Sharingan that Obito temporarily gave Kakashi took its toll on his body, and that prevented him from following Sasuke and Naruto immediately. We have no indication of the distance between the battlefield and the valley where Sasuke and Naruto fought, so maybe it really took half a day to find them after Kakashi recovered from that. Plus he had to release Sakura from the Genjutsu, because she was the only one that could provide medical assistance to Naruto in case Sasuke gravely injures him, which she indeed did.
• So what happened to the remaining bad guys? We know Sasuke had Naruto and Kakashi vouch for them both but neither of them would have done the same for Oorichimaru, Kabuto or the rest of Team Hebi/Taka. Now given they contributed a great deal to saving the world it would make perfect sense if the Kage collectively decided to not pay attention and let them walk off the field with a just this once. Or not knowing the order people woke up in it's possible they just left and nobody that could stop them were in any position to do so. It seems like a strange thing to leave unaddressed.
  • They weren't present in the final chapter, so I assume they just did a disappearing act, otherwise they would've been around in the village. Why Yamato is nowhere near the final chapter would be a comparatively interesting question, though. I assumed Kabuto met up with the guy with the stubble from the orphanage, maybe even run an orphanage as a way to redeem himself, because that could be a nice ending for him, but that belongs to WMG and is just my imagination running wild.

Invasion of Pain Arc

• Why didn't any of the other ninjas jump in when Hinata was protecting Naruto? IIRC she was only a chunin at that point and not even a particularly powerful one. Yet she landed multiple blows on Pain and her fight must have lasted at least half a minute, given Pain's "once every 5 seconds" limit on his jutsu. Further, since Katsuyu was sharing intel, all the Jounin of the village also knew that limit. Before Hinata stepped in I could see the other ninjas holding back, as Pain had been trashing everybody, but she proved pretty clearly that this final body was vulnerable without the support of the other Paths. Based on that two or three Jounin should have been able to swoop in and turn him into hamburger during one of his five-second windows of vulnerability but instead they all decided to crouch down and watch her and Naruto get killed for no reason.
  • I think most everyone else was to weak and exhausted to help. Some, like Shikamaru even wanted to join her in helping, but were suffering injures severe enough to prevent them from going to Naruto.
  • Hinata's fight against Pain was dragged out in the anime episode. She was OHKO'ed in the manga, so no one would have had time to jump in and help (except for her speech, but Talking Is a Free Action) and nor would they have wanted to after seeing her get one shotted.
  • Hinata jumping in was considered to be a terrible move. From the start of the fight to the end of it, virtually anyone who could get up and fight knew that they'd ultimately just get in the way. The only ones who could really stand up to Pain where either incapacitated or away from the village.
• At the end of the arc, when Nagato uses the gedo rinne tensei thing and resurrects everyone, Konan specifically states that the jutsu would kill him BECAUSE he's already used too much chakra, but yet when it returns later as a SINGLE target resurrection rather than the thousands of the first use of it, it is a guaranteed sacrificial power?? Is this just a retcon or is it something more?