Naruto

Neither Jiraya or Orochimaru were from any great family.

And while Sakura is really *annoying*, she's probably... sigh, she's probably Kage level or thereabouts by the end of the series in terms of power so I wouldn't say her greatness was an informed ability in that sense.

Edited by Sigilbreaker26 on Jul 4th 2018 at 9:53:31 AM

Sakura being Kage level gives me indigestion.

Huh ironic that Tsundae is the lowest on the Sanin totem pole despite being from a prestigious legacy compared to her nobody counterparts & her student ends being both a nobody & lowest on her totem pole compared to her prestigious legacy counterparts.

Tsunade was very clearly the weakest of the Sannin from her first appearance where she was about par - with Jiraya, who had been poisoned, and Orochimaru, who could not move his arms.

In fairness, she was rusty and does put in some better appearances later on. But the pecking order had been clearly established between the three.

Edited by Sigilbreaker26 on Jul 4th 2018 at 10:00:49 AM

And Orochimaru worked hard, experimented and killed countless people, and now he's immortal. Getting to still experiment on others and puts his son through numerous psychological battles to make him "rebel" and chose his own fate. Just as planned.

The real perfect example of hard work ends with you living the life.

They still keep an eye on Orochimaru and IIRC he's stopped kidnapping people to experiment on. He did help out during the war and he has reformed, so I think that's more or less fair.

In retrospect despite his depravity, the sheer effort & determination Orochimaru went to for his dreams is commendable.

He wanted results & he certainly got them.

The problem is that Sakura has no clue how to use all that power. Her judgment is terrible, her plans make no sense, and she has no powerful jutsu to leverage her strength.

She's not outright incompetent so long as Sasuke isn't involved. (not exactly high praise).

And she doesn't need powerful jutsu really when she can punch that hard. She's basically at Tsunade's level when we first met her - and Tsunade was then made Kage right afterward. (admittedly, that's with very few real options aside from her and Jiraya, who was totally unsuited for the post. But it's still barely into Kage level).

People are a little hard on Tsunade. She may not be the best in combat, but she's one of the most useful ninja alive because she's a beast in combat, stronger than the vast majority of the shinobi world and is a god-tier medic who keeps countless others alive and fighting. Heck, she invented the medic system

And no arms or not, Orochimaru is still pretty beastly with just what he shoots out of his mouth and Manda. Tsunade improved a ton after she got over her phobia and being rusty.

Edited by Lightysnake on Jul 4th 2018 at 5:17:28 AM

I'm not saying she's weak, but when it comes to Sannin power rankings it's always a question of "is Jiraya or Orochimaru stronger". Tsunade being at the bottom of the three is certain.

It doesn't help that a lot of her showings have her completely outmatched and she never really has the speed needed for her to be truly effective.

Shame she couldn't mentor a better student.

All that knowledge & training she imparted on Sakura, pretty wasted for the most part.

A good deal of her fights do end with her gutted for the most part.

Edited by slimcoder on Jul 4th 2018 at 5:25:41 AM

The speed thing is really overstated. Tsunade kept up fine with Madara and wasn't ever worse off against him than any other Kage. At one point, she reacted faster than any other Kage, Raikage included. She's not slow. The only time a guy matched her before that was when she was rusty, tired and fighting a guy stated like three times to be as powerful as one of the strongest jonin alive, and he was still avoiding engaging her head on.

I'm willing to cut her slack on getting stabbed as both times it was abnormal. She was just about paralyzed from her hemophobia and had no other way to block Orochimaru from murdering Naruto, and against Madara's clones, she decided to just forego defense

Edited by Lightysnake on Jul 4th 2018 at 5:25:45 AM

I don't actually mind her getting gutted because at least she has a response to that (and the fakeout sacrifice with Naruto where she just shrugs off impalement and then goes to town on Orochimaru was great).

"stated like three times to be as powerful as one of the strongest jonin alive"

Wait, what? When was Part 1 Kabuto called that?

Edited by Sigilbreaker26 on Jul 4th 2018 at 12:40:08 PM

This again makes me wish Hinata was made the main heroine, because she probably would have been a better student under Sakura.

Like three people say "that guy's as strong as Kakashi"...Kakashi himself included.

Edited by Lightysnake on Jul 4th 2018 at 5:48:07 AM

I know he's as strong as Kakashi, but he's not three times as strong as him.

EDIT: Brainfart, completely misread what you originally said, please ignore. Whew, I completely misread it.

Edited by Sigilbreaker26 on Jul 4th 2018 at 12:48:40 PM

No, Imean it was three times he was strong as Kakashi, not said he was three times as strong as him.

You wrote it right, I misread it, sorry. Yeah, he's Kakashi level strength wise.

In regards to Hinata being a better heroine: I agree strongly for tons of reasons that should be self-evident, but I will mention just to be fair the one good counterargument that I heard: it would undermine Naruto's character if he had a girl by his side who adored him from the beginning. The fact that the first major peer interaction that we see is Sakura ragging on him and drooling over Sasuke really sets up the dynamic of likable underdog Naruto who needs to prove himself equal to his rival.

Now, once Part I finished and he wasn't meant to be an underdog anymore then that excuse disappears.

I think as a character Hinata in comparison with Sakura has a motive that can better inspired her and can influence her development into a woman who can rival both Sasuke and Naruto. Also delve more into the Huugya history so it ties with the backstory of both Naruto and Sasuke's clans. As well slowly overtime have Hinata inspire to change her clan's destructive policies, especially when it concerns the Branch members. Also slowly grow to become a confident woman as she slowly admits her feelings to Naruto and he recuperates them.

Sakura would have to be more of a minor character, who has a crush on Sasuke but her development is to show that obsessing over boys shouldn't get in the way of her training as a ninja, especially under the guidance of Kurnei. I think ultimately Sakura would realize that giving up her friendship for Sasuke was wrong and she would rekindle her bond with Ino.

not really. Hinata would be one of a handful of people who likes Naruto. Being an underdog doesn't mean you don't have fans.

Re: Sakura and Tsunade. The issue is they lack a lot of variety and versatility in combat compared to Sasuke, Jiraiya, Orochimaru and even Naruto. Being able to hit real hard and fast only gets you so far. We saw that with A. Tsunade and Sakura are linear warriors to the guys' quadriatic wizards.

Edited by windleopard on Jul 5th 2018 at 1:49:27 AM

Again, one night's hard work just doesn't compare to doing the same thing day in, day out. The Shadow Clone technique is meant to be much more difficult to learn that that, it's not that other people don't work hard - or if that is the intent, that's really ridiculous. And Naruto still has his massive chakra reserves to fall back on here.

And this still pales in comparison to the improvements he made later. Also, his handling of the Kyuubi's power is ass, Jiraiya forbids him from trying it because it gets out of hand.

My point, which you completely missed, is that he isn't shown fixing those problems with hard work. He continues to have them after two and a half years of training, and only shows the ability during the War arc without an explanation or any lead up to it.

And you continue to misinterpret the facts. It's a fact that he couldn't use his Rasengan one-handed in base form at the time he was shown using it in Sage Mode. I already said that we see Sage Mode allowing him to use it with one-hand, because Sage Mode gave his Rasengan a variety of boosts - such as allowing him to throw it, or create much larger Rasengans.

My point was that there's not much reason to believe he mastered the Rasengan through hard work, because we never see so much of a hint of this and we know that both of the major power-ups he develops over the series can help him form one-handed Rasengans. He eventually reaches the point where he can use Sage and Fox powers in base through his power ups anyway.

And I have no problem with Naruto using ingenuity or creative solutions to achieve these things. It's just that those aren't examples of hard work.

It's not unfair at all, I'm not disparaging him for it. Using these shortcuts/advantages/efficiencies is absolutely the best move. It's just not one that suggests he's an incredibly hard worker.

I'd also said that he can be a hard worker in short intervals, I didn't dispute that. But that's simply not the same thing as being a consistently hard worker.

Also the Shadow Clone Jutsu is itself a massive advantage separate from Kurama or his heritage. For starters, not everyone would have the opportunity or chakra reserves to learn it, and it's the advantage that enables most of his other achievements.

I also don't know how much you can really call it ingenuity to use Shadow Clones to fix his problems after the first Rasengan. Like it's just really obvious after that point, especially with the Rasenshuriken which was redundant as all hell.

Edited by Saiga on Jul 5th 2018 at 7:41:47 PM

I actually think it's not super hard to fix Sakura - step 1 is giving her an actual skill during part 1 and and she should definitely win her fight with Ino rather than draw. Kishimoto waffles between making her Genjutsu resistant and giving her fine chakra control and I think he should have leaned into the latter since it has more combat applications.

I also appreciate that the hero's unrequited crush... was supposed to be unrequited, or rather was never true love because it was just another way of fighting Sasuke. I think that's actually a pretty decent bit of subtle storytelling that's drowned out by Sasuke and Sakura's relationship being outright dumb, and I think the latter would be fixed by having Sasuke visibly reciprocate her affection so she has something to go on besides a dumb crush. I think that coupled with a few other changes (like instead of Sakura hesistating to kill Sasuke at the Five Kage Summit, he hesitates to kill her - considering how brutal he is in that arc it would really be a good moment for him I think).

Honestly I don't think Hinata would work nearly as well if we got to see way more of her - I think she works a lot better as a solid element of the backup cast.

Edited by Sigilbreaker26 on Jul 5th 2018 at 10:34:48 AM

Wait, what? He improved his chakra control (presumably) by learning his nature transformation, along with his training for Sage Mode. It definitely wasn't out of the blue.

He used it fine against Kakuzu and in his mass FRS training. He was forbidden taking it a step further, but he still improved it. And you mean to say Naruto made some improvements and made more later? That's your counter?

so in your version of the manga, the FRS training arc never happened. His Sage Mode training never happened. His training with the Kyuubi chakra mode never happened? Why yes, I suppose if you ignore the lead up, there is no lead up.

Sage Mode only allows him to throw the FRS. N Aruto never threw a normal Rasengan. Mixing up two different techniques there. Naruto later refined his chakra control, which learnign Sage Mode helped with, because it's about controlling chakra.

So, for this argument you completely ignored Naruto working his ass off to master the Rasengan? There was kind of an arc that involved that. And you also ignore that training for those major power ups involved the same principles of chakra control. In essence your argument is "If I rewrite the manga to say what I want it to, then it happened the way my argument presents." It's not a good argument and it's a textbook moving of the goalposts.