[Discussion] Naruto & Sasuke | Pain & Itachi

[Chie]

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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.

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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.

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He stated that Itachi planned out the fight, even the contigencies (planned for Sasuke to break out of Tsukiyomi, used amaterasu to cause Sasuke to push himself, etc). Just because Itachi didn't know exactly to what extent Sasuke could perform Orochimaru's jutsus does not mean that he didn't have a good idea of what he had to do. Besides, the only real things Sasuke did during the fight involving Oro's jutsus was use snake summons' and oral rebirth. Itachi knows that Sasuke's been training with Oro for the past 2.5 years, it's not that hard to have a good idea of what he can do and at least know how far he needs to push him in order for Oro to be released.

As for Kirin, yes he wasn't expecting it. Sasuke is the one who invented it. But that doesn't mean that Itachi didn't plan out the fight. Did he know how Sasuke was going to react every single second? No, that's impossible. Obito just meant through that statement that Itachi had the end result in mind and knew how many techs would be needed to push Sasuke that far & had a good idea of how he would react...which he did and it worked. That basically is planning the fight. Planning out the fight doesn't mean that he can read Sasuke's mind and knows exactly at what moment he is going to use a certain tech, just more that he had a decent idea of how Sasuke would react to his and that he had counters for the things Sasuke threw at him.

As for Itachi having been serious and still getting alot of injuries...I doubt that. He had numerous chances to kill Sasuke quite easily, especially towards the beginning of the fight.

Spoiler

All it really takes is a kunai to stab someone. There were numerous moments when Itachi could have just thrown a shuriken at Sasuke's head and that would have been the end of it, with nearly no effort on his part.

Itachi could have killed him when Sasuke was caught in his genjutsu. Like here:

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Or fooled by his genjutsu. Like here:

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Or fooled by his genjutsu initially once again for a few moments until he realized he wasn't really talking to the real Itachi. Like here:

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Or when Sasuke was fighting Itachi's clone and thought it was really him. That clone could have killed him the moment that it grabbed him and threw him onto the floor. Or Itachi from his throne (where he was watching the exchange) could have just ended the fight from where he was sitting by throwing a shuriken/kunai to Sasuke's head when he was distracted.

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Also, when Sasuke broke out Kirin, he spent quite a bit talking about it. Itachi could have just put up his susanno earlier. However, if Itachi were serious, the fight wouldn't have even gotten to that point. (It honestly wouldn't have.) And if Itachi really wanted to kill Sasuke, he would have just killed him as he was preparing Kirin.

Also, when they are using firestyle jutsus, Itachi has suiton techs. He could have just put out Sasuke's.

The point of this was not to say that Hebi Sasuke was weak. He was not. However, it would've taken nearly no effort on Itachi's part to kill him if he were serious. He probably wouldn't get a scratch on him. (And that's not exaggerating...it's just the truth). Itachi was just a bad matchup for Sasuke at the time and outclassed him nearly every category. Also, most people do not say that Itachi would have won easily at that point against Sasuke, because of Obito's remark. We say it because of what actually occurred in the fight that made this blatantly obvious.

As for what you said about Naruto and Pain...I agree.

Power Wise: Nagato > Itachi
Intelligence: Itachi > Nagato
Overall Battle Ability: Itachi = Nagato

And I agree with this too.
Nagato was by far the most powerful out of the Akatsuki, while Itachi seemed to be the most intelligent.

 

[Itachitruebauss]

Just because Itachi didn't know all of sasukes abilities. That in no way means he didn't plan on fighting Sasuke. Sasuke just exceeded his expectations but it was obvious he went out of his way to not kill him.
He planned the fight and to extract orochinmaru and dying. He didnt plan the path sasuke chose, he regretted it had to resort to sasuke choosing to fight evil with evil.