Complete Konan Analysis
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Introduction
We all know that Konan can turn into paper which allows her to scatter into multiple paper sheets and/or
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. Unfortunately, if Konan gets hit by a
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it
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until it is washed away (
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)(
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) or removed by other means. Tracking Skills
When Jiraiya entered the Rain village,
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to search for the intruder.
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into a large number of paper sheets, then
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which she
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. All in all, this means Konan can have access to many eyes thus she can use shared vision much like Pain can (
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)(
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), thereby making it hard to catch her off guard.
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Countering Sharingan Genjutsu
Konan has showed that she can fight against a sharingan user without getting put into genjutsu until getting too tired and injured to continue fighting. It was Obito's intention to put Konan under sharingan genjutsu from the very beginning (
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). Yet Obito only managed to put her under genjutsu (
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) after she was too weak to fight/react to Obito thus it stands to reason she doesn't get one shot by ocular genjutsu users during a fight. Konan is far too skilled/intelligent to fall for that.
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Countering Sound Genjutsu
In order to sense through her papers, Konan needs to transform them into the correct sensory organs hence why she
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instead of using generic paper to investigate. If she doesn't have any eyes on her paper, she can't see through them hence the same should apply to other sensory organs like the ears. This means that Konan can simply remove her ears and won't be affected by sound genjutsu as she won't be able to hear. Paper (Re)generation
Konan managed to sprout
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so the rate at which she can produce paper is very fast (
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)(
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). Her suicidal attempt ended up destroying everything but
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yet it barely fazed her and
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. Sakura and Tsunade would be jealous of this ability considering they can't take anywhere near that level of damage or regrow their body parts
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. Nor does she have any weak areas like a brain to stab. Furthermore, it doesn't reduce her lifespan.
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Stealth
Konan can transform her paper into all kinds of objects which can even fool the sharingan, despite it having the ability to see chakra, considering the fact
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which Obito couldn't tell. She also formed a
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during the Pain invasion which looked identical to a regular tree. None of the sensors nor Byakugan users were able to pick up the chakra of Konan's paper tree nor was Obito able to sense the chakra of the camouflaged paper ocean thus even sensory abilities don't work against her camo. Then there is the fact that
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. All of this combined with feints and distractions means that she can launch surprise attacks effortlessly. Nevertheless, you must bare in mind the fact that Konan will give off paper crumple noises as she attacks which may give away her position. A way to counter the weakness of paper crumple noises is to use direct paper attacks which give off more noise while utilizing an indirect subtle attack from the enemy's blind spot much like how Shino did against Kankuro (
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). All of this is generally a good way of closing the distance and
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. Kami no Shisha no Jutsu
Here is some commentary by a translator. If you find the actual translation of Kami no Shisha no Jutsu, that would be nice to share.
So thanks to Saist's better scans I could finally read Konan's Paper Ocean (or Paper Emissary) technique properly. So some clarifications. Konan doesn't turn the Water into Explosive tags, rather it's just that she can camouflage her paper as a variety of things, and the camouflage is so good that even Sharingan is deceived by it (hence Obito not noticing he was standing on a sea of explosive tags). It's also said that escape from the jutsu is impossible even with Obito's Space-Time ninjutsu
With the camouflage technique, Konan can disguise herself as allies of her enemies. Moreover, she can place paper tag bombs on the ground so her opponents have no way of perceiving them as they walk on them much like Deidara's C2 mines. This will be even more effective compared to what Hanzo did to Nagato considering Nagato could clearly see Hanzo's paper tag bombs which allowed him to partially dodge it (
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)(
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)(
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). Invulnerability/Logia
Physical Attacks
While utilizing Shikigami no mae, Konan is a logia which means that physical attacks are useless against her. If she can casually split herself into thousands of pieces, it means that cutting her is useless as she can function just fine even if an insignificant number of papers get cut. Blunt damage is also not going to be effective because
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and blunt damage doesn't usually cause paper to get obliterated due to their flexibility.Hot Attacks
As you would expect, katon is a weakness of paper considering the paper covering Ryusui's body disappeared after defending him from the katon. (
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)(
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). Explosions can still kill Konan considering they can vaporize her body if strong enough to do so considering
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explosion which was shown to burn away her paper (
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). From this, we can agree that her logia abilities don't help against heat attacks.
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Lightning Attacks
Generally speaking, lightning attacks are useless because electrocution is useless against someone without a blood stream but extremely powerful lightning attacks should produce enough heat to vaporize parts of her body if not all, but those are rare. One might argue that raiton would cause paper to get crumpled up but crumpled up paper can still be manipulated as Konan herself has already done so.
Water Attacks
Konan can operate just fine during
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so water doesn't impede her paper unlike oil. Konan took
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when she
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. She can't drown nor can she get overwhelmed by blunt damage due to lacking internal organs. All in all, Konan is very hard to put down but wide scale attacks which can obliterate her can kill her as well as attacks that absorb chakra.
Durability
Paper can be hardened to become as hard as metal. Proof is given in the databook entry for Kami shuriken below. Furthermore, Konan's
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into so even the manga confirms that Konan's paper can become harder than rock thus giving us assurance that it can be as hard as metal. In her angel form (
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), Konan is far larger than an ordinary shinobi considering that each of her wings are twice as large as herself. In total, Konan is five times larger than the ordinary shinobi thus her total durability would be greater than that of an ordinary person, if she were made of flesh and bones. However, we know her paper can be enhanced to become as hard as metal so she can become far more durable than the ordinary shinobi. When it comes to heat attacks, however, merely increasing paper hardness wouldn't improve other durability factors such as resistance to heat so Konan is still just as vulnerable to heat no matter how much she hardens herself. While Konan was
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by part of her own explosion, do bare in mind that
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which is why she took so much damage. Sharp Weapons
Even though all her weapons utilize paper, they are chakra enhanced thus much stronger than regular paper and just as strong as ordinary metals. Konan can increase their power even more by transforming it into more lethal shapes. Konan's paper airplanes are strong enough to
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despite being shot at an angle. Databook 3 - Kami Shuriken:
Paper Shuriken (紙手裏剣, Kami Shuriken)
Ninjutsu, D-rank, Offensive, Mid- to long range (5+m)
User: Konan
Scraps of paper, sharpened with chakra become sky-splitting blades!!
A technique that consists of pouring one's chakra into a scrap of paper in a split second, hardening and sharpening it, so it can be used as a shuriken. Its sharpness is equal to that of a shuriken made of metal. The user can further increase the power of the shuriken by making it into certain shapes.
[picture of Konan drawing her Paper Shuriken]
→It's an emergency measure for when one's ninja tools have ran out, but if used by an expert, it becomes a powerful weapon!!
[picture of Konan throwing her Paper Shuriken]
←The accumulation of time and effort put into the paper raises the sharpness to the utmost limits.
Ninjutsu, D-rank, Offensive, Mid- to long range (5+m)
User: Konan
Scraps of paper, sharpened with chakra become sky-splitting blades!!
A technique that consists of pouring one's chakra into a scrap of paper in a split second, hardening and sharpening it, so it can be used as a shuriken. Its sharpness is equal to that of a shuriken made of metal. The user can further increase the power of the shuriken by making it into certain shapes.
[picture of Konan drawing her Paper Shuriken]
→It's an emergency measure for when one's ninja tools have ran out, but if used by an expert, it becomes a powerful weapon!!
[picture of Konan throwing her Paper Shuriken]
←The accumulation of time and effort put into the paper raises the sharpness to the utmost limits.
Her paper chakram (
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)(
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) consists of a large quantity of paper compressed into a much smaller form so it is much stronger than any of her other piercing/cutting projectiles which are only made up of a single piece of paper.Suffocation
Another way of killing her opponents is by restraining them after
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and then
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. Notice how Konan could form a paper spear while doing this? It stands to reason she can form other paper weapons as well.
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Paper Tag Explosions
Using paper tag bombs also works considering they were strong enough to
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. Obito's arm is durable enough to tank the explosion of a KCM rasengan (
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)(
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)(
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) and the impact of
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. Considering the fact that Konan can multiply paper and paper tag bombs, she can achieve a greater amount of destructive power after generating enough of them compared to these usages of paper tag bombs (
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)(
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). Konan could combine suffocation, piercing/slicing damage and explosive damage simultaneously against one opponent to overwhelm them completely!
Scale of control
Her ability to control billions of sheets for ten minutes straight is very impressive. She used her chakra to set off many paper tag bombs while
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. Previously,
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. Also Konan can control paper distributed in different parts of a village so her range of control is village level and can simultaneously affect billions of paper creations.Guided attacks
Konan can change the trajectory of her attacks as shown when she freely manipulated paper tag bombs towards Obito while he was in a state for free fall (
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)(
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). Not to mention her paper butterflies all went in different directions and her paper airplane has shown to travel in a curved trajectory (
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).
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The Speed of Konan in her Paper Form and the Speed of her Attacks
Jiraiya barely dodged Konan's paper projectiles and ended up
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which means he couldn't dodge the attack properly because he had to dodge it in a desperate and risky manner instead of an upright manner. When Konan's paper were much closer to the fodder who Jiraiya was controlling, Jiraiya couldn't avoid Konan's paper blitz from a much closer range (
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)(
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). Then there is the fact that
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than
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. These feats prove that Konan and her attacks travel far faster than your average kage level shinobi. Even if her opponents can react to her coming towards them, as long as she's faster than them, she can easily close the distance and surround them regardless, much like Shino's bugs (
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)(
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)(
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)(
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). Konan doesn't require hand seals to attack her opponents so her jutsu execution is very fast which is proven by how
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with kamui. This allows her to stop her opponent from completing hand seals much like
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by
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. Konan's Reaction Speed
1. She was fast enough to mostly dodge a surprise katon attack
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based on the fact she moved all the way
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right after the attack. In case you claim that she tanked the brunt of the attack, bare in mind it was powerful enough to burn the papers on Ryusui's body completely yet
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considering she has roughly the same amount of paper
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and
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the katon attack. We also know for a fact that Konan didn't use the paper on Ryusai's body to intercept Jiraiya's attack because the
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so he was also obviously within Jiraiya's attack as well and hence was protected by those paper that he was previously wrapped up with. What makes this feat even more impressive is that she was busy attacking the captured victim when Jiraiya suddenly popped out of the ground unexpectedly with a katon.The anime also depicts Konan backing off when Jiraiya uses the katon.
2. Konan physically moved herself in front of Nagato when
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charged at him with
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. Not to mention
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so she was also caught by surprise yet still
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. 3.
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when the Aburame clan came in with their bugs to rescue them. While they managed to
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, they
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. While it is true that
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, you have to bare in mind she was firing off a
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which probably interfered with her vision. The reason I say this is that we've seen her being able to physically react and move from a much closer katon as well as react to KN0 SM Naruto. Therefore, if she had seen Jiraiya attack her, she would have been able to dodge if she wasn't on the offensive. Intelligence
From a young age, Konan showed great analytical ability. Jiraiya explained what the Ame orphans had to do (
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)(
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) and Konan was able to tell the purpose behind the hop in and hop out system which amazed Jiraiya(
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).
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with an agonizing expression which would make one think she's screwed even though in fact all was going according to her plan.
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She also
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considering how she managed to tell that Obito has to solidify before absorbing himself and that the speed at which Obito absorbs others is greater than the speed he absorbs himself. Furthermore,
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until his kamui has to reset. On top of her skill in deception, observational and analytical prowess, Konan is also a skilled planner/tactician considering she used all her acquired knowledge to form a trap that exploits Obito's weakness and
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to perfect her scheme. Chakra Reserves
Sometime during the Pain invasion,
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to hide Nagato. She had left a paper clone (
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) with Nagato while she went on to attack Konoha and interrogate/kill Konoha shinobi. She ended up producing more than enough paper to
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. Later on she was ambushed by the Aburame clan but Pain summoned her back. After Nagato sacrificed himself, Konan produced enough paper to
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while
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. She never showed any hint of running low on chakra during all this time despite producing a lot of paper to make the tree. This proves producing paper out of thin air is effortless to Konan. In her fight against Obito, she used a bunch of
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. Went on to
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and
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. She blew most of herself up hence
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which all contain her chakra yet she goes on to
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by moving
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. Then
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for the next ten minutes before finally running out of chakra. Clearly Konan can fight on for a long period of time so it isn't easy to outlast her especially when she's very confident about her chakra reserves (
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). This is especially true when Konan doesn't usually doesn't have nor use so much paper.
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Summary
I think Akatsuki fans have overlooked Konan and instead have focused on exploiting the other members of Akatsuki. Despite not having many feats, she has shown that she can utilize her paper in a variety of ways much like how Sasori can utilize iron sand in a variety of ways which we haven't seen him use.
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