And this is exactly why you can't say he isn't the strongest hokage. We have no idea what he was capable of in his prime but by reputation he's the strongest hokage and I've been shown nothing that contradicts that.
I'm a fan of Minato but he's never been stated to be the strongest hokage as Hiruzen was. Do his feats exceed Hiruzen's? Obviously but as I said we have never seen a prime Hiruzen fight and based off repuation he was considered the strongest of all hokages and until proven otherwise my stance on that matter doesn't change.
Dude you are clearly ignoring all the facts, you act like everyone in the narutoverse believed Hiruzen to be the strongest when it was only Orochimaru and Iruka who said it, both of whom had emotional attachments to Hiruzen. Iruka, like Naruto saw Hiruzen as a grandfather figure, just look at the flash backs of Iruka after he lost his parents, Hiruzen was always there for him and Orochimaru was Hiruzen's prized student, he would obviously hype his master.
Think of it this way, why has no one outside of Konoha hyped Hiruzen, and how is it that he was the strongest kage in the five great nations when he never fought even one of them? The third Raikage was only ever injured once by his own tech and then died of chakra exhaustion after three days fighting 10 000 shinobi, when the people of konoha say that Hiruzen was the strongest of his genration, how do they know that when he clearly never faced or beat this guy?
The third Kazekage was said to be the strongest kazekage of all time and people were shocked when he disappeared, not believing anyone could beat him when sasori killed him, so when would Hiruzen have faced him?
The third Mizukage was Tobi and Hiruzen never faced him and Onoki has never mentioned anything about facing Hiruzen or anything about Hiruzen's strength, in fact, it is more likely that he faced Minato since Minato was the one to take out Iwa.
Point is, Kakashi and Iruka hyped hiruzen as the strongest of his generation and kakashi and people have said that he was the strongest of the five kage but evidence seems to point towards the fact that it would have been impossible to know that because he hasn't faced the other five kages of his time and no one outside of konoga seems to even know the guy (exaggeration) and certainly to speak about him or his so called strength.
If you wana base your opinion on what Iruka and Oro said, consider these few points about Oro's statements about Hiruzen.
Oro said that Hiruzen mastered all the jutsu in konoha.
Do you think Hiruzen has mastered the aburame's bug jutsu? Since it is required that a person grow up with the bugs living inside them to do it?
Madara's EMS techs? Since you would need to have a Mangyeko sharingan to do it?
Hashirama's would release? Since you would need to know how to mould Yin/yang chakra to create life? Or considering the fact that he didn't use it to stop the fox when it escaped from Kushina and would obviously have used it if he knew how?
Do you think he knows how to create water from the atmosphere like tobirama, since it was stated that Tobirama was the ONLY one to EVER be able to do that?
Inuzuka's man beast mode?
Danzo's vacuum techs?
If you think rationally, then you can clearly see that Oro's statement was garbage and a complete lie.
Another thing you need to consider is the consistency with which people in the naruto series have overhyped characters that are closely related to them or have simply overhyped themselves.
Chojuro, a fellow member of the swordsman of the mist overhyped Kisame and basically called him unbeatable, making it seem like Kisame could even take on all the five kage and win.
Naruto said that Kakashi, his BELOVED sensei has a batter nose then Kiba during the second bell test but only a few arcs later Kiba demonstrated a feat that kakashi and his ninken, and even Akamaru all admitted that they couldn't match when he tracked down sasuke even though he there was no trail since he used an ST jutsu to escape, so we see that Naruto wasd over hyping his sensei.
Naruto also said that Kakashi has a batter sharingan then sasuke, but Orochimaru and Kabuto and even Tobi have all hyped sasuke's sharingan and even went as far as to say it was the best they had seen and that it is batter then Itachi's sharingan, which is batter then Kakashi's, Tobi even refeered to it as out of this world, so should we believe Naruto, who said that just after returning from his three year trip even though he hadn't even seen sasuke for a whole three years and had no idea how much sasuke's sharingan had developed in that time, should we believe naruto who in the same sentence lied about kakashi's nose being better then Kiba's?
Naruto also said that Kakashi is smarter then shikamaru, but asuma said that shikamaru is the smartest person he knew even when he was a genin, and asuma knew kakashi, they are comrades from the same generation just like Naruto and shikamaru are, so who do we believe?
Also Kakashi asked shikamaru for a strategy against Kakuzu and hidan before the fight and asked again during the fight when things got hectic despite being the leader and superior in the mission, what does that tell you?
Tenten said that Neji's defense was unbeatable but Kidomaru was able to defeat it by slowing it down with his spider webs and using super fast arrows to attack his blind spot so that Neji didn't know when to activate it. Naruto also beat it by moving too fast for neji to fully activate it.
Temari and Kankuro said that gaara could never be defeated and he was defeated by genin naruto just a few arcs later.
They also said that Gaara's defense was impenetrable but sasuke, a genin pierced it with chidori.
Jiraiya said that no one could escape his toad oso****us technique but Itachi pawnedit with amaterusu, a fire tech that accorsing to jiraiya, should be impossible to burn through the FIRE BREATHING toads stomack, overhyping himself again.
Darui and C said that no one could survive A's liger bomb but sasuke survived it with sasuno'o.
Nagato said that Jiraiya would have won if he knew his secretes, even though he himself didn't know shit about sage mode and frog song, which is, he didn't know Jiraiya's secretes too. Also a strange comment, given that Jiraiya was getting beat around by animal path alone before he actiavted sage mode, and then forced to retreat against only three paths and admitted that he would lose if he carried on fighting the three paths. We now also know that real nagato is batter then the six pains with the jutsu, they are much stronger and much faster when he uses them himself and he can also share vision with his summons and the hell king, what choice do we have but to conclude, that like everyone else in the manga, Nagato was just babling pull shit to hype his sensei.
The fact of the matter is that if you are gonna take Oro and Iruka's words for it despite the obvious lies or ignorance that the characters have shown in their attempts to hype people important or associated with them, then you are gonna be misinformed a lot.
A said that Minato would never be surpassed and Kakashi said that Naruto was the only one that could surpass the fourth, does that make Minato the strongest, should we take their words at face value, Naruto has also many times hyped Minato as the greatest of the hokages and hence his role model, should we say that he is the strongest hokage?
Now let us sort out this PRIME hiruzen nonsense, am I right in assuming that the word 'prime' denotes to the time that the person was at their absolute peak?
If so, wouldn't Hashirama's 'PRIME' be the time that he had ALL the NINE bijuu under his thumb and treating them is his pets like kiba treats akamaru?
Do you then believe that Prime Hiruzen could beat someone who has nine bijuu under his control, including the great kyubi?
If you do, then kindly check yourself into a mental institution.
