Shinato
Anbu Operative 🎭
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This is not a fanboy thread, I will discuss and debate for both characters equally.
Me and a friend of mine started discussing Naruto and Sasuke's equality, and because of that we started discussing previous battle these two characters have had in the series. We stopped a little at two fights that altered the two characters a great deal, the first being Itachi vs Sasuke and the other being Naruto vs Pain. These two fights carries a lot of similarities to each other and actually places both our main characters at equal grounds in many ways. I will start with the earliest one on the timeline, Itachi vs Sasuke.
1. Itachi vs Sasuke
Sasuke's Goal: Defeat and kill Itachi.
Itachi's Goal: Incapacitate Sasuke and remove Orochimaru from him.
Now this fight has made two things happen with the fanbase, firstly it made a lot of Sasuke haters claim it as evidence that Sasuke is "weak" and secondly it made a lot of Itachi fanboys/girls claim it as evidence that Itachi is the best. Funny that both of these two points are made out of the same statement. People say that Sasuke would easily have lost if Itachi went serious on him, even though I mean that Sasuke would have lost in that case, I don't think it would have been easy for Itachi. The main reason people say this is because Obito commented that Itachi planned the entire fight, but we know that is wrong. First of all, Itachi had no knowledge of Kirin or how much of Orochimaru's jutsus Sasuke was able to preform.
Another thing, Itachi himself even commented that he would have died if he didn't use Susano'o and he had it activated for as long as he could and he didn't reach Sasuke before it turned off. Meaning that he used Susano'o to the extent he could and he wouldn't do that if his goal was to survive. ( Meaning that if he aimed to win the battle he would most likely not use Susano'o for more than a couple of seconds as a defence. ) Anyways, I am rambling on here.
As I said, if Itachi wanted to win, he would most likely have won with a great deal of injury. But again, Itachi's goal was to remove Orochimaru from Sasuke and that was the only thing he planned in the fight. He planned to remove Orochimaru and die, everything else was more or less random. ( No human is able to predict an entire battle without pre-knowledge of their opponent. )
Fight Conclusion: Sasuke won because Itachi's goal was not to kill Sasuke. But rather to remove Orochimaru.
2. Naruto vs Pain
Naruto's Goal: Defeat and if need be, kill Pain/Nagato.
Nagato's Goal: Incapacitate Naruto without killing him and extract the Kyuubi.
Pain/Nagato's goal was to retrieve Naruto without killing him, meaning that he couldn't use all he had against Naruto or else he would have killed him off. However, besides Pain's goal he had a different reason for fighting Naruto. Nagato wished to fight the Kyuubi and therefore he wanted to drive that power out of Naruto. Halfway through this fight, Naruto loses and is saved because of two reasons; one being Hinata and the other being the Kyuubi's chakra taking over him. Here is the panel where Naruto first lost:
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If Pain wanted to kill Naruto then he could've easily have done it here, he had captured Naruto already. But because of Hinata's actions the Kyuubi's chakra took over Naruto and the battle continued. Because of this Naruto was able to beat Pain in the end after being save by Minato. Here is another thing, this battle fully supports what Hagoromo said in the later chapters about Ashura and Naruto not being able to do much alone but they are very strong with others. ( Naruto was helped by the toads, Hinata, Kurama and Minato all in one fight )
Fight Conclusion: Naruto won because Pain needed him alive and didn't have it as a goal to kill Naruto. He needed Naruto alive to extract the Kyuubi from him.
3. Discuss!
As you can see, Naruto and Sasuke both had the same goals in these fights. While Pain/Nagato and Itachi had the same goals as well. Sasuke and Naruto wanted to defeat their opponent while Itachi and Pain wanted to incapacitate and remove something from their opponent. Another thing to note is that Nagato/Pain is stronger than a sick Itachi. However, Naruto got help in his fight, while Sasuke did it all alone. Another thing to notice is that Kabuto placed Itachi and Nagato in the same duo team, meaning that he valued them equals in some way. I doubt it was in power, but I wouldn't be surprised if Kabuto valued Itachi and Nagato as having equal chance of beating each other. ( The reason I say that he equalled them in some way is that Kabuto is smart and he wanted to create the most efficient teams there is. A team is only useful if each team member can keep up with the other. )
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