From chapter 309:
Summary:
Team Naruto (with Sakura, Sai and Yamato) meet up with Team Sasuke (with Orochimaru and Kabuto) amd the two have a skirmish. As Sasuke is about to use his finishing move, Orochimaru and Kabuto appear and stop him, as seen in the panels.
Of note is that Sasuke calls out the reasoning of Kabuto as lacking in magnitude, but he renegs when Kabuto doubles down on the excuse. Perhaps Sasuke read between the lines with regard to disobeying Orochimaru. We assume that particular technique to be Lightning Style: Kirin. On the other hand, particularly with the problems I will be pointing out, why would Orochimaru want to stop Sasuke, when he himself wanted to kill Naruto in the Sannin Standoff?
There seem to be a few problems arising from this excuse by Kabuto.
The excuse makes a few direct and indirect claims regarding the power levels of the present characters. Firstly, that the team of Naruto, Sakura, Sai and Yamato can defeat any Akatsuki. Of course, ambushes (seen in the very next arc) and the like are always a difference maker, but we see from the Kakuzu fight that an arguably stronger team cannot beat one Akatsuki, even with those strategies and more. On top of that, the open-ended plural is applied to the Akatsuki as targets instead of Konoha as aggressors, which implies the team can take down even more than one Akatsuki as oposed to the idea that these four could be part of a bigger team to take down any single Akatsuki. This goes against the trend we saw of Akatsuki requiring many Jonin levels to take down, if at all. Secondly, that the Akatsuki are a problem for Orochimaru. Thirdly, that Sasuke can single-handedly take down that team, and with a single strike.
The fourth and final issue is that putting these implications together has Sasuke being able to take down a team of four who could take down multiple Akatsuki which are individually a problem for Orochimaru. This goes against my own view of the levels of the five as I would consider Naruto as a tough fight for Sasuke while the others could outright beat him in a clean fight, and Yamato quite easily if boss summons are not involved. Besides them, I have Orochimaru easily able to beat any Akatsuki and Kabuto being stronger than anyone but Orochimaru there, which combined means Akatsuki would not trouble Orochimaru.
Taking Kabuto seriously alone would validate the implications, with the assumption of that excuse being the reason for stopping Sasuke adding the weight of the intelligence of Orochimaru to it all.
That seems off to me. What do you think is up with this whole situation?
To me, there are a few possibilities.
Firstly, a counter to these implications is that Sasuke himself called out Kabuto and maybe only reneged to avoid straining his best tactical relations. However, that leaves the question of why they would stop Sasuke in the first place.
Secondly, the implications are only incredible so far as general power scaling is the dominant factor in how things would have proceeded. Even if the team should easily be able to beat Sasuke and be far below any Akatsuki, especially multiples, under normal circumstances, those were not normal circumstances. Firstly, Naruto was extremely tired. Secondly, Naruto and Sakura may not have had the emotional capacity to properly attack Sasuke. Thirdly, all four of the team were seconds from being paralysed by electricity. Finally, a single strike is not restricted in power by levels which are a combination of various factors. Even with levels, they are a balance and it is possible for any single character to be a Jonin level in something like offense while being a Genin level in defence, thereby balancing out at Chunin level as a shinobi. This means the attack Sasuke was planning to use can easily have been a Kage level (or beyond) attack in potency but has Sasuke still being Jonin level because even the attack itself has strict, unlikely requirements which are barely different from an opponent openly inviting you to attack. If indeed the attack was Kirin, even the wiki calls it out as having extensive requirements and limited usage. Nonetheless, those excuses only work for how Sasuke could have killed the team, not for their ability to take down Akatsuki and so on. Additionally, Kirin without setup would be very weak and hardly a threat to a Wood Style user so even the situational idea is lacking.
So what could have been the case? There are three main reasons I can think of, if we say the implications are incorrect.
Firstly, within that scenario . . . Orochimaru may have been sparring Sai on account of his political interests with Danzo . . . Besides Danzo, Orochimaru made specific reference to the location. If Sasuke was indeed planning a mountain busting Kirin, then Orochimaru wanted to protect his hideout, although a weak Kirin and an exposed hideout go against this idea. If there were some sort of documents to collect, why did they leave and with the Konoha shinobi remaining? That brings in the possibility of the Wooden Homonculi watching everything. Orochimaru had knowledge of them and may have wished to keep the full power of his future asset secret. That, and the Homonculi could have fed the secret to Itachi, against whom we saw Kirin be a key secret move. If Kabuto and Orochimaru could secretly watch without Sasuke noticing, then what of them?
Secondly, proceding from the scenario . . . Orochimaru may have wanted to avoid a full-blow fight. Their sudden appearance tells us that him and Kabuto were watching proceedings. Either of them have enough experience to tell that Yamato was no longer planning to hold back and would have been a serious threat to Sasuke. Besides Yamato, Sai is a most seasoned and trained killer and would no longer have held back either. Even Naruto and Sakura have experience with a killer Sasuke and would have been able to fight wuth serious intent. The seriousness of them all matters because they would not have waited for a Sasuke that Yamato has already noted had killing intent to unleash his attack. This matters more so because a Kirin at that time would have been much weaker than needed to certainly kill four targets. That seriousness alone would have threatened the body that Orochimaru was lookong forward to. Adding on that Naruto had yet to summon, Sakura attack at all and Sai already had experience with the intensity of Sasuke while Yamato had not properly used Wood Style (and we know from following arcs that he can apply much larger scales of attack than what we had seen thus far) it is easy to see the team from Konoha overwhelming Sasuke. This possibility would have forced Orochimaru and Kabuto to get involved, probably killing the team from Konoha. And even if he did not care for them, Orochimaru was on his last legs after fighting Naruto while Kabuto would have been matched by Yamato so the fight was still a troubling possibility.
This lead to the third possibility, which is the out-of-universe issue. If either Naruto or Sasuke suffered serious injury in that fight, it would derail major story plans. Naruto or Sakura dying or being put out of commission during the Akatsuki period would force major concession of idealistic naivete from Tsunade, disrupting the peaceful politics required to have her efficiently take down remaining Akatsuki (Kakuzu, Kisame and Hidan). This would have also forced the series to go from being an idealistic to a pessimistic and dark one. That would obviously be a sudden change well into the story, with all the implications that carries. On the other hand, injury or death for Sasuke would require, probably, the same for Kabuto and Orochimaru. Not only would those three dying derail what we saw later (Kabuto in the 4th War, Sasuke vs Itachi and Orochimaru bringing back the 4 Hokage) but with Kurama having recently introduced the name of Madara, would practically end the story of what has been called, "the Fate Bros". Of course, all this would have required a fitting fight to be scripted and penned by the authors. So from outside the story itself, a full fight would have been a lt of work on its own while its consequences would go against many months of story planning.
What do you make of this whole thing? Was the excuse used by Kabuto legitimate? What other reason could there have been for him and Orochimaru stopping Sasuke? What if they let him strike?
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Summary:
Team Naruto (with Sakura, Sai and Yamato) meet up with Team Sasuke (with Orochimaru and Kabuto) amd the two have a skirmish. As Sasuke is about to use his finishing move, Orochimaru and Kabuto appear and stop him, as seen in the panels.
Of note is that Sasuke calls out the reasoning of Kabuto as lacking in magnitude, but he renegs when Kabuto doubles down on the excuse. Perhaps Sasuke read between the lines with regard to disobeying Orochimaru. We assume that particular technique to be Lightning Style: Kirin. On the other hand, particularly with the problems I will be pointing out, why would Orochimaru want to stop Sasuke, when he himself wanted to kill Naruto in the Sannin Standoff?
There seem to be a few problems arising from this excuse by Kabuto.
The excuse makes a few direct and indirect claims regarding the power levels of the present characters. Firstly, that the team of Naruto, Sakura, Sai and Yamato can defeat any Akatsuki. Of course, ambushes (seen in the very next arc) and the like are always a difference maker, but we see from the Kakuzu fight that an arguably stronger team cannot beat one Akatsuki, even with those strategies and more. On top of that, the open-ended plural is applied to the Akatsuki as targets instead of Konoha as aggressors, which implies the team can take down even more than one Akatsuki as oposed to the idea that these four could be part of a bigger team to take down any single Akatsuki. This goes against the trend we saw of Akatsuki requiring many Jonin levels to take down, if at all. Secondly, that the Akatsuki are a problem for Orochimaru. Thirdly, that Sasuke can single-handedly take down that team, and with a single strike.
The fourth and final issue is that putting these implications together has Sasuke being able to take down a team of four who could take down multiple Akatsuki which are individually a problem for Orochimaru. This goes against my own view of the levels of the five as I would consider Naruto as a tough fight for Sasuke while the others could outright beat him in a clean fight, and Yamato quite easily if boss summons are not involved. Besides them, I have Orochimaru easily able to beat any Akatsuki and Kabuto being stronger than anyone but Orochimaru there, which combined means Akatsuki would not trouble Orochimaru.
Taking Kabuto seriously alone would validate the implications, with the assumption of that excuse being the reason for stopping Sasuke adding the weight of the intelligence of Orochimaru to it all.
That seems off to me. What do you think is up with this whole situation?
To me, there are a few possibilities.
Firstly, a counter to these implications is that Sasuke himself called out Kabuto and maybe only reneged to avoid straining his best tactical relations. However, that leaves the question of why they would stop Sasuke in the first place.
Secondly, the implications are only incredible so far as general power scaling is the dominant factor in how things would have proceeded. Even if the team should easily be able to beat Sasuke and be far below any Akatsuki, especially multiples, under normal circumstances, those were not normal circumstances. Firstly, Naruto was extremely tired. Secondly, Naruto and Sakura may not have had the emotional capacity to properly attack Sasuke. Thirdly, all four of the team were seconds from being paralysed by electricity. Finally, a single strike is not restricted in power by levels which are a combination of various factors. Even with levels, they are a balance and it is possible for any single character to be a Jonin level in something like offense while being a Genin level in defence, thereby balancing out at Chunin level as a shinobi. This means the attack Sasuke was planning to use can easily have been a Kage level (or beyond) attack in potency but has Sasuke still being Jonin level because even the attack itself has strict, unlikely requirements which are barely different from an opponent openly inviting you to attack. If indeed the attack was Kirin, even the wiki calls it out as having extensive requirements and limited usage. Nonetheless, those excuses only work for how Sasuke could have killed the team, not for their ability to take down Akatsuki and so on. Additionally, Kirin without setup would be very weak and hardly a threat to a Wood Style user so even the situational idea is lacking.
So what could have been the case? There are three main reasons I can think of, if we say the implications are incorrect.
Firstly, within that scenario . . . Orochimaru may have been sparring Sai on account of his political interests with Danzo . . . Besides Danzo, Orochimaru made specific reference to the location. If Sasuke was indeed planning a mountain busting Kirin, then Orochimaru wanted to protect his hideout, although a weak Kirin and an exposed hideout go against this idea. If there were some sort of documents to collect, why did they leave and with the Konoha shinobi remaining? That brings in the possibility of the Wooden Homonculi watching everything. Orochimaru had knowledge of them and may have wished to keep the full power of his future asset secret. That, and the Homonculi could have fed the secret to Itachi, against whom we saw Kirin be a key secret move. If Kabuto and Orochimaru could secretly watch without Sasuke noticing, then what of them?
Secondly, proceding from the scenario . . . Orochimaru may have wanted to avoid a full-blow fight. Their sudden appearance tells us that him and Kabuto were watching proceedings. Either of them have enough experience to tell that Yamato was no longer planning to hold back and would have been a serious threat to Sasuke. Besides Yamato, Sai is a most seasoned and trained killer and would no longer have held back either. Even Naruto and Sakura have experience with a killer Sasuke and would have been able to fight wuth serious intent. The seriousness of them all matters because they would not have waited for a Sasuke that Yamato has already noted had killing intent to unleash his attack. This matters more so because a Kirin at that time would have been much weaker than needed to certainly kill four targets. That seriousness alone would have threatened the body that Orochimaru was lookong forward to. Adding on that Naruto had yet to summon, Sakura attack at all and Sai already had experience with the intensity of Sasuke while Yamato had not properly used Wood Style (and we know from following arcs that he can apply much larger scales of attack than what we had seen thus far) it is easy to see the team from Konoha overwhelming Sasuke. This possibility would have forced Orochimaru and Kabuto to get involved, probably killing the team from Konoha. And even if he did not care for them, Orochimaru was on his last legs after fighting Naruto while Kabuto would have been matched by Yamato so the fight was still a troubling possibility.
This lead to the third possibility, which is the out-of-universe issue. If either Naruto or Sasuke suffered serious injury in that fight, it would derail major story plans. Naruto or Sakura dying or being put out of commission during the Akatsuki period would force major concession of idealistic naivete from Tsunade, disrupting the peaceful politics required to have her efficiently take down remaining Akatsuki (Kakuzu, Kisame and Hidan). This would have also forced the series to go from being an idealistic to a pessimistic and dark one. That would obviously be a sudden change well into the story, with all the implications that carries. On the other hand, injury or death for Sasuke would require, probably, the same for Kabuto and Orochimaru. Not only would those three dying derail what we saw later (Kabuto in the 4th War, Sasuke vs Itachi and Orochimaru bringing back the 4 Hokage) but with Kurama having recently introduced the name of Madara, would practically end the story of what has been called, "the Fate Bros". Of course, all this would have required a fitting fight to be scripted and penned by the authors. So from outside the story itself, a full fight would have been a lt of work on its own while its consequences would go against many months of story planning.
What do you make of this whole thing? Was the excuse used by Kabuto legitimate? What other reason could there have been for him and Orochimaru stopping Sasuke? What if they let him strike?