I've thought of a decent strategy for Naruto to effectively keep sage mode active for the entire fight with Pein, through the obvious use of his shadow clones.
For those of you who don't believe shadow clones can enter sage mode, here's the page where Fukasaku basically confirms that they can at least gather natural energy, and also the page confirming that Naruto can at least create a shadow sage while already in sage mode.
(It hasn't been 100% confirmed if a shadow clone can or cannot enter sage mode on it's own, even though I believe they can, the strategy doesn't require them to do so.)
Ok, so pretty much the strategy is simple. Naruto enters sage mode, then creates 1,000 shadow sages to fight with. Now he can pretty much fight with his clones for about 2 minutes, then either hide and gather natural energy in secret until the clones fall out of sage mode, OR like 200 of his clones can recharge their sage chakra along the side of Naruto (which hides the real Naruto just as well, if not better) while the other 800 continue to beat on Pein while protecting the 200 sages. Finally, when they've gathered enough natural energy, Naruto can come back to fight for another few minutes, and replenish his army of shadow sages.
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Some of you are probably thinking "What if Naruto can only create one shadow clone in sage mode? Then this strategy is useless!" which could be the case, but the strategy doesn't exactly fail. It just needs to be reworked a bit.
When Naruto falls out of sage mode, he can still create 1,000 regular shadow clones, and use some of them to gather natural energy by his side, while the rest protect Naruto and his "still" clones until Naruto achieves sage mode once more.
For those of you who don't believe shadow clones can enter sage mode, here's the page where Fukasaku basically confirms that they can at least gather natural energy, and also the page confirming that Naruto can at least create a shadow sage while already in sage mode.
(It hasn't been 100% confirmed if a shadow clone can or cannot enter sage mode on it's own, even though I believe they can, the strategy doesn't require them to do so.)
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Ok, so pretty much the strategy is simple. Naruto enters sage mode, then creates 1,000 shadow sages to fight with. Now he can pretty much fight with his clones for about 2 minutes, then either hide and gather natural energy in secret until the clones fall out of sage mode, OR like 200 of his clones can recharge their sage chakra along the side of Naruto (which hides the real Naruto just as well, if not better) while the other 800 continue to beat on Pein while protecting the 200 sages. Finally, when they've gathered enough natural energy, Naruto can come back to fight for another few minutes, and replenish his army of shadow sages.
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Some of you are probably thinking "What if Naruto can only create one shadow clone in sage mode? Then this strategy is useless!" which could be the case, but the strategy doesn't exactly fail. It just needs to be reworked a bit.
When Naruto falls out of sage mode, he can still create 1,000 regular shadow clones, and use some of them to gather natural energy by his side, while the rest protect Naruto and his "still" clones until Naruto achieves sage mode once more.