No no no you don't Sir me, I sir you.
No, when I here you people say plot this or plot that its a bash against the main guy, or its because you people have it in your head that this is somehow a persistent world and everyone is real and somehow Naruto is wrapped in this cloak of invulnerability. Plus it just sounds childish.
Yeah all those things did happen, its a story not a tekken game. We could ALL analyze every character with an edge ( I really think the balance is tipped in Pains direction still) and reason them out. Most victories in the manga are hardly solo. Next to none. Yet its usually reserved for the Naruto.
Its like an equation, you have to balance out both sides of the problem.
Your sir must mean something different from the actual meaning of sir which is a sign of respect and acknowledgement of that respect so if your intending the opposite then you have the right to do so but to me its meaningless, since I can't be fazed.
I already explained why I said plot, and you are absolutely wrong if you think he does not have protection by being the main character, in every cartoon/anime/manga/comic the main character is capable of losing just like everyone else but unlike everyone else the main character has a drive that come out of nowhere even when they have been beaten and outclassed seemingly effortlessly they find a way to pull of a miracle an steal the victory. Plot is the story, the main character is part of the plot, every other character is expendable. Naruto can be beaten and has been beaten but he still has help in everything he does even when he fights technically his part 2 self hasn't won any battle single handed.
Naruto is wrapped in a clock of nigh invulnerability, he just like the other main characters are needed for the progression of the story, so why would any writer allow the prize to lose/die prematurely??? The answer is they don't at all, naruto has just recently died, but as soon as he died and we saw that chapter we all knew he was going to come back and come back even better.
But like I said I listed numerous amounts of help he had to fight against the 6 paths so with or without the acknowledgement of plot being a part of this means nothing since he still had a lot of help.
You are the first to say the pains had the advantage when they clearly did not. You forget nagato just used chakra on an entire village worth of shinobi and civilians. You forget that naruto had intel on the pains and kishi made nagato used almighty push just moments before naruto came to konoha. You forget that naruto easily defeated the other paths but when it was just him and deav he got stomped neg diff. Kishi made deva sit out for the first half to give naruto a shot, lmao he didn't give the 7 tail jin that same shot, which is my point exactly. Main > all other characters