Shin Zangetsu
Member
Hello NB
I made this a few months ago to break down certain points that Kishi is really quite consistent with when it comes to his characters’ development as shinobi and just posted it here for shared opinions with anyone. It has to do with my general views regarding shinobi development and just how consistent Kishi is with it as well as explain certain behoviour patterns in the geniuses. It's longish but relevant and interesting, not for the illiterate. Alright then, enjoy.
The Balance
The first thing one needs to understand is how the shinobi themselves can reach their full potential. A thought occurred to me how Kishi does his best to always bring forward a duality that shinobi need to overcome in order to be more complete. This is what many of them have struggled with since being genin. They generally start with one side in favour usually through heritage and must steadily work towards acquiring the other while still building on their strengths. He has already described these concepts as Heaven and Earth. The strength of mind and strength of body.
Kishi didn’t end it there. He has constantly made parallels between them, some more subtle than others:
Mental and Physical Development
Intellectual Growth
As I once said before, geniuses in Naruto develop very quickly and at younger ages. People, like Kakashi, Itachi, Sasuke and Neji became capable of great accomplishments at the youngest of ages. Kakashi ended up a Jounin and Itachi ended up in the ANBU when their ages were of single digits. While this is good, it presents a tragic problem for all of them, in fact for anyone considered genius level of intellect in this manga. In the ninja system, there is no waiting period for duty. One only fails to serve if they are not capable of such at the time but as soon as they are, they are officially part of the furniture in the ninja world. This is the fate that befell people like Itachi and Kakashi. They had to enter duty at ridiculously young ages and were subsequently exposed to things that nobody of that age should be. No matter how you look at it these guys had not yet experienced life, yet they had to be exposed to death, indoctrination, pain, loss and many other difficulties at young ages. They had to form opinions based on the little in life that they had witnessed simply because they were considered capable. But one thing the elders of the time should have realized was that even the greatest intellect does not equal wisdom, and wisdom is a product of time and experience, there’s no substitute whatsoever. These kids now had to form adult-like opinions of the world without seeing the bigger picture and that’s what resulted in the distortion of personalities. It caused them to be aloof to other children of their age because they were now ‘adults’, because they had responsibilities and because they knew better. Intellectual geniuses in this manga are deprived of childhood. They develop very fast but end up with a narrow view of the world in their younger ages because of lack of real life experience and are exposed to horrors at an early age. Look at them all:
Physical Growth
There also exist people that lean towards the physical end of the spectrum. These characters do not stand out for clear reasons in early life for that specific reason, it’s early life and they are still children. Kishi has done something clever that many manga fail to do and that is he has avoided the typical rapid growth of children physically (Echizen Ryoma, Gohan and many, many more). Here kids in Part 1, no matter how skilled, will never pose a threat to adults (except a few that didn't rely on physical aspects like Itachi BUT before shit storm, I will explain later). In Part One, we saw many amazing genin feats which even outshined lower end chunins but never did we see any child shinobi really and utterly defeat an adult shinobi (except Mizuki_O-) because it was quite frankly, nearly impossible. Even the child geniuses like Neji were easily restrained and the monster Gaara wasn’t even deemed a threat by jounin level shinobi. Gai swatted his sand away and Genma who could have pursued him, considered Sasuke capable of doing the job. Even in the wave arc, against Zabuza, team effort from Naruto and Sasuke could only distract him but not harm him at all. It may seem I’ve gone off on a tangent but it’s quite relevant, this at least shows that physical growth is an important part of being a shinobi and no matter how intelligent one is, if they lack the Earth, the Heaven cannot function alone. This is why the more physically oriented shinobi will always shine later on in life when their bodies have developed enough for their real talents to show. For all the legends we have heard about them Uzumaki/Senju weren't really described as geniuses, they’ve been called great, fantastic, gods, everything but the word genius is used sparingly, with exceptions of course. That’s because their talent arise during the post pubescent period. After all, this is when physical growth really kicks in. As a result, they are not drawn into active duty and actually have a higher chance, if only slight, to be children. This results, it’s fair to say, in individuals with higher wisdom like Sandaime and better long term mental stability. We know two of the slowest starters, Jiraiya and Naruto. We’ve seen what kind of shinobi they’ve become and for both it was far later than Itachi and Co.
Notice the only genius that didn’t make the crazy list at any point is Shikamaru, saved by his lack of motivation and ambition combined with his fairly liberal parents. He ended up growing like any other normal child.
Heaven and Earth – Sasuke and Naruto
Sasuke and Naruto are the two people in the manga that provide the very best examples of their growth and acquiring balance.
How does any ninja reach their full potential? By balancing their physical and spiritual/mental attributes, that’s how.
It’s the same concept for chakra formation on a macroscopic scale, having too much of one or too little of another may not directly cause any problems, but will result in only a fraction of one’s talent showing. If mental capacity covers things such as technique, control, observation, planning etc., then physical capacity can cover things such as speed, strength, stamina, durability etc.
I’ll only mention key points as there too many.
Sasuke’s Balance
Remember Team Seven’s first mission to wave country when they were ambushed by a couple of chunin? What did you see? Sasuke fending them off but failing to actually defeat them. At the time Sasuke’s movements were amazing and there was an assured look in his eyes that lets me believe today that he knew what to do, but the execution said otherwise, though he did hold them off. It’s obvious that while he had the method to defeating both chuunins in his mind, he lacked the physical capacity to act it out. An idea or plan without the resources to carry it out may as well not exist.
The same can be said for the bell test against Kakashi and the fight with Zabuza.
Sasuke later gets the Sharingan and tries it against Lee and you all know how that ended. The observation was there but again he lacked physical capacity to act on it.
In the Forest of Death against Orochimaru, Sasuke was completely outclassed but that’s not important (his opponent was Kage level pedosnake), watch all the things that he does trying to put up a fight. Was that not extremely impressive skill for a genin? It lacked any power to even do more than barely scathe his face but Oro is the judge here and he was impressed by the potential he saw. Also all this time the chakra drain of the sharingan was killing him especially after he got the seal.
Forward to the finals and suddenly Sasuke has acquired speed that can keep up with his sharingan and all sorts of options open up where once he had failed because his taijutsu is fantastic as is his movement and reaction speed. The downside is that even though he is equipped with a powerful new jutsu, Chidori, he can unfortunately only use it twice in a day. That isn’t feasible at all. So while he has speed covered due to ration body enhancement and he had pretty much almost acquired balance he falls back once again.
Let’s stop here and observe for a second. What was Sasuke’s greatest developmental problem? It wasn’t his fitness like most were probably thinking. Sasuke was very much in shape, even better when compared with other genin. It was his spiritual/mental growth that was just too fast and would leap ahead. Every time his physical ability caught up it would jump ahead again, the guy learned elemental manipulation for Chidori in just thirty days. Sasuke’s skills and abilities basically outpaced his own body and this was the source of his frustration. Seeing Naruto’s physical potential as he improved and comparing their strength, knowing that there was someone out there that could offer him a chance at greater strength...well, I’d have taken the Oro deal too. That turned out wonderfully tbh..
Sasuke was like an excellent building blue-print with no good materials. Not much construction going down there. Now his materials have improved, Sasuke in the last two years had improved his stamina, speed and strength drastically. He now has better balance than he ever did.
Naruto’s Balance
Naruto was virtually the opposite of Sasuke. He was absolutely useless initially. I think Kishi did it on purpose, ages like twelve are usually the times when development explodes during puberty, which is exactly what started happening to Naruto as his Uzumaki physical heritage began to kick in. His stamina was amazing and just kept getting better and better. For him, his physical ability left his skill behind and so it was fair to say he didn’t use his body to its absolute potential most times.
Naruto was like a terrible blue-print with excellent, high quality materials. His blue-prints have now improved incredibly and he is also more balanced than ever before, just look at his fight with Pain. Some would say Naruto has always been resourceful, while that is true, his resourceful nature was originally instinctual. He would just dive in head first and if unsuccessful try again and again until he came up with a solution. Now his resourceful nature is more intellectual, he actually plans before hand and is more efficient than he’s ever been...at least when Bee's not around (same goes for Sasuke and Itachi).
Whenever Sasuke gains a technical/skill boost or learns a new justu, his body always needs to acclimatise and get stronger to withstand it. It's how he got used to Amaterasu and Susano'o and now he has truly mastered both. It has always been this way since chibi to MS. Sasuke gets an instruction manual without batteries.
Whenever Naruto gains a physical boost, he needs a period of learning in order to be able to control his ability. He spent two years learning to control kyuubi, he needs two of his heads to use rasengan and he has now learned how to control RM which made him so fast he surprised himself at one point. Naruto gets batteries without an instruction manual.
Possible Reason for Itachi’s Earlier Success Compared to Sasuke
This is only something to mull over. There is a possibility that Itachi developed a lot quicker and rose through the ranks faster perhaps because he went the genjutsu route. Sasuke chose the path of ninjutsu as his favoured style which would have required him to develop a bit more physically before really standing out. This is perhaps why chibi Itachi was a cerebral assassin so early making Oro shit his pants. Genjutsu relies far more on one’s intellect than it does on one’s physical stature. This could explain why Itachi became highly ranked so quickly.
External Balance
Some characters often end lower on tier lists because their roles are completely misunderstood. A lot of readers don’t realise that there actually is such a thing as a “team ninja” i.e. one that actually is virtually only suited for team skills.
The most popular example is Shikamaru. This guy has mental aptitude FAR beyond his physical ability to carry through, which is why he can only reach his peak potential as part of a team. Yes, in the correct company, a shinobi themselves is a tool used to fulfil a particular purpose just like a kunai. Shikamaru can only do so much on his own, in which case his otions are limited and he doesn’t use his full mental capacity, but when gifted with a versatile team, he becomes a Kage level threat as a strategist.
The same applies for Chouji, he has incredible physical skills, but sometimes in a pinch his courage wavers and he is no strategist. In order for him to actually reach his full potential he needs a guiding hand and suddenly he can do some really great stuff.
When these two types of shinobi are together, they can bring out the best in one another and do things that neither could do alone to a far greater degree sometimes, than two good individual shinobi can.
I think I’ll just stop there. Agree, disagree? Questions, ideas and comments all welcome.
Thanks for reading.
I made this a few months ago to break down certain points that Kishi is really quite consistent with when it comes to his characters’ development as shinobi and just posted it here for shared opinions with anyone. It has to do with my general views regarding shinobi development and just how consistent Kishi is with it as well as explain certain behoviour patterns in the geniuses. It's longish but relevant and interesting, not for the illiterate. Alright then, enjoy.
The Balance
The first thing one needs to understand is how the shinobi themselves can reach their full potential. A thought occurred to me how Kishi does his best to always bring forward a duality that shinobi need to overcome in order to be more complete. This is what many of them have struggled with since being genin. They generally start with one side in favour usually through heritage and must steadily work towards acquiring the other while still building on their strengths. He has already described these concepts as Heaven and Earth. The strength of mind and strength of body.
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- Heaven and Earth
- Spiritual and Physical
- Yin and Yang
- Dark and Light
- Brains and Braun
- Plans and Resources
- Idea and Execution
Mental and Physical Development
Intellectual Growth
As I once said before, geniuses in Naruto develop very quickly and at younger ages. People, like Kakashi, Itachi, Sasuke and Neji became capable of great accomplishments at the youngest of ages. Kakashi ended up a Jounin and Itachi ended up in the ANBU when their ages were of single digits. While this is good, it presents a tragic problem for all of them, in fact for anyone considered genius level of intellect in this manga. In the ninja system, there is no waiting period for duty. One only fails to serve if they are not capable of such at the time but as soon as they are, they are officially part of the furniture in the ninja world. This is the fate that befell people like Itachi and Kakashi. They had to enter duty at ridiculously young ages and were subsequently exposed to things that nobody of that age should be. No matter how you look at it these guys had not yet experienced life, yet they had to be exposed to death, indoctrination, pain, loss and many other difficulties at young ages. They had to form opinions based on the little in life that they had witnessed simply because they were considered capable. But one thing the elders of the time should have realized was that even the greatest intellect does not equal wisdom, and wisdom is a product of time and experience, there’s no substitute whatsoever. These kids now had to form adult-like opinions of the world without seeing the bigger picture and that’s what resulted in the distortion of personalities. It caused them to be aloof to other children of their age because they were now ‘adults’, because they had responsibilities and because they knew better. Intellectual geniuses in this manga are deprived of childhood. They develop very fast but end up with a narrow view of the world in their younger ages because of lack of real life experience and are exposed to horrors at an early age. Look at them all:
- Neji went crazy with his unbeatable destiny shit despite the fact that he was the most talented hyuuga his age..
- Sasuke lost his mind for the best reasons out of all them but he still experienced the type of horror that a child genius shinobi would.
- Kakashi in trying to run from what he thought were his dad’s mistakes that lead to his suicide chose not to think for himself until Obito turned him around.
- Itachi was ultimately a good guy, but he did also make mistakes, something that he recently admitted to.
- Orochimaru became excessively ambitious and turned evil despite not being born that way.
- Madara genuinely doesn’t know how to live for anything but war and threw a hissy fit when his brothers and sisters refused to fight.
Physical Growth
There also exist people that lean towards the physical end of the spectrum. These characters do not stand out for clear reasons in early life for that specific reason, it’s early life and they are still children. Kishi has done something clever that many manga fail to do and that is he has avoided the typical rapid growth of children physically (Echizen Ryoma, Gohan and many, many more). Here kids in Part 1, no matter how skilled, will never pose a threat to adults (except a few that didn't rely on physical aspects like Itachi BUT before shit storm, I will explain later). In Part One, we saw many amazing genin feats which even outshined lower end chunins but never did we see any child shinobi really and utterly defeat an adult shinobi (except Mizuki_O-) because it was quite frankly, nearly impossible. Even the child geniuses like Neji were easily restrained and the monster Gaara wasn’t even deemed a threat by jounin level shinobi. Gai swatted his sand away and Genma who could have pursued him, considered Sasuke capable of doing the job. Even in the wave arc, against Zabuza, team effort from Naruto and Sasuke could only distract him but not harm him at all. It may seem I’ve gone off on a tangent but it’s quite relevant, this at least shows that physical growth is an important part of being a shinobi and no matter how intelligent one is, if they lack the Earth, the Heaven cannot function alone. This is why the more physically oriented shinobi will always shine later on in life when their bodies have developed enough for their real talents to show. For all the legends we have heard about them Uzumaki/Senju weren't really described as geniuses, they’ve been called great, fantastic, gods, everything but the word genius is used sparingly, with exceptions of course. That’s because their talent arise during the post pubescent period. After all, this is when physical growth really kicks in. As a result, they are not drawn into active duty and actually have a higher chance, if only slight, to be children. This results, it’s fair to say, in individuals with higher wisdom like Sandaime and better long term mental stability. We know two of the slowest starters, Jiraiya and Naruto. We’ve seen what kind of shinobi they’ve become and for both it was far later than Itachi and Co.
Notice the only genius that didn’t make the crazy list at any point is Shikamaru, saved by his lack of motivation and ambition combined with his fairly liberal parents. He ended up growing like any other normal child.
Heaven and Earth – Sasuke and Naruto
Sasuke and Naruto are the two people in the manga that provide the very best examples of their growth and acquiring balance.
How does any ninja reach their full potential? By balancing their physical and spiritual/mental attributes, that’s how.
It’s the same concept for chakra formation on a macroscopic scale, having too much of one or too little of another may not directly cause any problems, but will result in only a fraction of one’s talent showing. If mental capacity covers things such as technique, control, observation, planning etc., then physical capacity can cover things such as speed, strength, stamina, durability etc.
I’ll only mention key points as there too many.
Sasuke’s Balance
Remember Team Seven’s first mission to wave country when they were ambushed by a couple of chunin? What did you see? Sasuke fending them off but failing to actually defeat them. At the time Sasuke’s movements were amazing and there was an assured look in his eyes that lets me believe today that he knew what to do, but the execution said otherwise, though he did hold them off. It’s obvious that while he had the method to defeating both chuunins in his mind, he lacked the physical capacity to act it out. An idea or plan without the resources to carry it out may as well not exist.
The same can be said for the bell test against Kakashi and the fight with Zabuza.
Sasuke later gets the Sharingan and tries it against Lee and you all know how that ended. The observation was there but again he lacked physical capacity to act on it.
In the Forest of Death against Orochimaru, Sasuke was completely outclassed but that’s not important (his opponent was Kage level pedosnake), watch all the things that he does trying to put up a fight. Was that not extremely impressive skill for a genin? It lacked any power to even do more than barely scathe his face but Oro is the judge here and he was impressed by the potential he saw. Also all this time the chakra drain of the sharingan was killing him especially after he got the seal.
Forward to the finals and suddenly Sasuke has acquired speed that can keep up with his sharingan and all sorts of options open up where once he had failed because his taijutsu is fantastic as is his movement and reaction speed. The downside is that even though he is equipped with a powerful new jutsu, Chidori, he can unfortunately only use it twice in a day. That isn’t feasible at all. So while he has speed covered due to ration body enhancement and he had pretty much almost acquired balance he falls back once again.
Let’s stop here and observe for a second. What was Sasuke’s greatest developmental problem? It wasn’t his fitness like most were probably thinking. Sasuke was very much in shape, even better when compared with other genin. It was his spiritual/mental growth that was just too fast and would leap ahead. Every time his physical ability caught up it would jump ahead again, the guy learned elemental manipulation for Chidori in just thirty days. Sasuke’s skills and abilities basically outpaced his own body and this was the source of his frustration. Seeing Naruto’s physical potential as he improved and comparing their strength, knowing that there was someone out there that could offer him a chance at greater strength...well, I’d have taken the Oro deal too. That turned out wonderfully tbh..
Sasuke was like an excellent building blue-print with no good materials. Not much construction going down there. Now his materials have improved, Sasuke in the last two years had improved his stamina, speed and strength drastically. He now has better balance than he ever did.
Naruto’s Balance
Naruto was virtually the opposite of Sasuke. He was absolutely useless initially. I think Kishi did it on purpose, ages like twelve are usually the times when development explodes during puberty, which is exactly what started happening to Naruto as his Uzumaki physical heritage began to kick in. His stamina was amazing and just kept getting better and better. For him, his physical ability left his skill behind and so it was fair to say he didn’t use his body to its absolute potential most times.
Naruto was like a terrible blue-print with excellent, high quality materials. His blue-prints have now improved incredibly and he is also more balanced than ever before, just look at his fight with Pain. Some would say Naruto has always been resourceful, while that is true, his resourceful nature was originally instinctual. He would just dive in head first and if unsuccessful try again and again until he came up with a solution. Now his resourceful nature is more intellectual, he actually plans before hand and is more efficient than he’s ever been...at least when Bee's not around (same goes for Sasuke and Itachi).
Whenever Sasuke gains a technical/skill boost or learns a new justu, his body always needs to acclimatise and get stronger to withstand it. It's how he got used to Amaterasu and Susano'o and now he has truly mastered both. It has always been this way since chibi to MS. Sasuke gets an instruction manual without batteries.
Whenever Naruto gains a physical boost, he needs a period of learning in order to be able to control his ability. He spent two years learning to control kyuubi, he needs two of his heads to use rasengan and he has now learned how to control RM which made him so fast he surprised himself at one point. Naruto gets batteries without an instruction manual.
Possible Reason for Itachi’s Earlier Success Compared to Sasuke
This is only something to mull over. There is a possibility that Itachi developed a lot quicker and rose through the ranks faster perhaps because he went the genjutsu route. Sasuke chose the path of ninjutsu as his favoured style which would have required him to develop a bit more physically before really standing out. This is perhaps why chibi Itachi was a cerebral assassin so early making Oro shit his pants. Genjutsu relies far more on one’s intellect than it does on one’s physical stature. This could explain why Itachi became highly ranked so quickly.
External Balance
Some characters often end lower on tier lists because their roles are completely misunderstood. A lot of readers don’t realise that there actually is such a thing as a “team ninja” i.e. one that actually is virtually only suited for team skills.
The most popular example is Shikamaru. This guy has mental aptitude FAR beyond his physical ability to carry through, which is why he can only reach his peak potential as part of a team. Yes, in the correct company, a shinobi themselves is a tool used to fulfil a particular purpose just like a kunai. Shikamaru can only do so much on his own, in which case his otions are limited and he doesn’t use his full mental capacity, but when gifted with a versatile team, he becomes a Kage level threat as a strategist.
The same applies for Chouji, he has incredible physical skills, but sometimes in a pinch his courage wavers and he is no strategist. In order for him to actually reach his full potential he needs a guiding hand and suddenly he can do some really great stuff.
When these two types of shinobi are together, they can bring out the best in one another and do things that neither could do alone to a far greater degree sometimes, than two good individual shinobi can.
I think I’ll just stop there. Agree, disagree? Questions, ideas and comments all welcome.
Thanks for reading.
