One of the most common elements in the story is when a villain fights at a lower level than their full power in order for the heroes to win.
This is because Naruto is based on principles which mean that characters don't just get strong because of motivations, they actually must have skills of high level in order to win. But because the gap is sometimes too big, villains are not only given circumstantial disadvantages like sickness and exhaustion but even psychological reasons such as arrogance or a lack of motivation. There have also been cases where the heroes were given a villain with the precise weaknesses that the heroes could exploit. Simply put, villains always had the conditions stacked against them when fighting heroes.
We saw this multiple times, such as when Haku was struggling with Sasuke simply because he didn't want to kill him, but later on a mindless Haku was easily beating entire platoons of jounin, which means that unless there is a major plot twist and kid Sasuke is secretly more powerful than entire teams of jounin, Haku was holding or held back against Sasuke.
However, is there anything to say that the villains didnt sometimes benefit from conditions outside of direct ability or level thereof?
Consider Kidomaru against Neji. Of course the Sound Elite Guards were much stronger than the kids they fought and as such had a few disadvantages given to them to allow the kids a way to win. Besides that though, they may have had their own advantages. For Kidomaru, it's the fact that Neji had the lowest range of Byakugan Distance Vision. Kidomaru fights from the trees, but he can only be so far away, not too far. This means that if Neji hada slightly better Distance Vision, he would have easily spotted Kidomaru and reacted better to his arrows. If his opponent was Hinata, who could see 800m, he would have been in much more trouble. Of course, the only reason this counts as a special advantage is because Neji just so happens to have such poor Distance Vision compared to other Hyuga.
So in this way, did Kidomaru or some othger villains have some special advantages in their fights? Of course Naruto is a world of counters where each fighter always has some advantages compared to the other, so im talking about advantages that are more coincidental than a reflection of ability or level.
This is because Naruto is based on principles which mean that characters don't just get strong because of motivations, they actually must have skills of high level in order to win. But because the gap is sometimes too big, villains are not only given circumstantial disadvantages like sickness and exhaustion but even psychological reasons such as arrogance or a lack of motivation. There have also been cases where the heroes were given a villain with the precise weaknesses that the heroes could exploit. Simply put, villains always had the conditions stacked against them when fighting heroes.
We saw this multiple times, such as when Haku was struggling with Sasuke simply because he didn't want to kill him, but later on a mindless Haku was easily beating entire platoons of jounin, which means that unless there is a major plot twist and kid Sasuke is secretly more powerful than entire teams of jounin, Haku was holding or held back against Sasuke.
However, is there anything to say that the villains didnt sometimes benefit from conditions outside of direct ability or level thereof?
Consider Kidomaru against Neji. Of course the Sound Elite Guards were much stronger than the kids they fought and as such had a few disadvantages given to them to allow the kids a way to win. Besides that though, they may have had their own advantages. For Kidomaru, it's the fact that Neji had the lowest range of Byakugan Distance Vision. Kidomaru fights from the trees, but he can only be so far away, not too far. This means that if Neji hada slightly better Distance Vision, he would have easily spotted Kidomaru and reacted better to his arrows. If his opponent was Hinata, who could see 800m, he would have been in much more trouble. Of course, the only reason this counts as a special advantage is because Neji just so happens to have such poor Distance Vision compared to other Hyuga.
So in this way, did Kidomaru or some othger villains have some special advantages in their fights? Of course Naruto is a world of counters where each fighter always has some advantages compared to the other, so im talking about advantages that are more coincidental than a reflection of ability or level.
