by Nekomata-sensei » Thu Mar 20, 2008 11:13 pm
Well, they do say the eyes are the window to the soul. Although in Naruto or Garra's cases not neccesarily their own souls.
Personally, I have liked the direction Naruto manga has been going. And I think it make sense.
One thing people seem to not think about so much is just how far behind Naruto was before the timeskip, he either couldn't read, or was incredibly poor at it, his handwriting was horrible, his taijutsu little more than brawling with some advanced ninja moves sloppily thrown in relying more on Naruto's prodigious strength, stamina, and reflexes than any sort of fighting form, and he generally lacked the grounding in the basics to give him the room to properly advance and utilize his skills.
After the time skip he demonstrates plenty of competence in taijutsu, he seems to be better at it than Sakura, if worse than Sai, he's still good enough that the gap in their power wasn't enough for Tenzou to tell them apart when Naruto made a fake Sai clone until he started using Rasengan.
On top of this, he seems to not only know how to read, but can read adult level literature and if not like it, still understand it, and write nicely enough to make likely delicate things such as seals.
It has been implied that he might possess more Toad summonning related techniques as Jiraiya was sending toads to Naruto.
Also, Naruto has developed enough skill in stealth and strategy to outmanuver Akatsuki's most likely most experienced member, and defeat him with a close range technique that is highly difficult to pull off. Ninja combat is laregly based in these sorts of diversions and stealth use, making Naruto a master in the area ninja most excel at, even Sasuke fights Itachi this way in the current arc.
The key factor to remember is that as powerful as you can get, in Naruto, people don't really get that much tougher. In DBZ there is a need to create more and more powerfull attacks because the enemies become insanely more resilient. In Naruto, even Akatsuki members could be crippled by a well placed exploding tag that they don't notice, which is standard gear for even the lowest of genin. There are also artificial limits on a person's speed, after a certain point, you just don't get faster without the gates, or some sort of speed jutsu, which the existence of such things seems to be mimimal, because the body can only be trained so far. Naruto can break these limits with the Kyuubi's power, this is a wall not even the Sharingan can break now that Naruto is actually skilled at taijutsu, even Orochimaru didn't dare let Naruto get close enough to beat on him. The Wind Element added to rasengan essentially makes it an ultimate attack, you can't really make an attack stronger than the strongest manipulation with the strongest element for attack, there is no point to have any more powerful jutsu for attack now that Naruto has this technique, and defense is largely provided by stealth, speed, regeneration, and shadow clones. Plus, by not utilizing all sorts of high level ninjutsu, Naruto extends his ridiculous stamina, and can wear down even the strongest of ninja if he can survive long enough, and he can no longer be defeated by simple tricks like being more skilled or experienced so that people can grab him or smack him around despite his superior strength and speed, or defeat scores of his clones at a time with anything but wide area ninjutsu.
Naruto's only weakness is currently genjutsu, but as Sasuke, someone who has obviously now mastered genjutsu, is his a soon to be faced major enemy, or at least seems to be so, it is likely that Naruto will soon end that weakness, and become a real S-class ninja.
Plus Naruto has discovered his own version of shortcut/powerup style, with Kage Bunshin learning, to counteract the sharingan, and learn a ton of techniques and master them in a short while.
Even so, it's better to have a good grounding in the basics and a pocket full of ace techniques to pull out against foes that the normal stuff doesn't work on, than 1000 techniques which are mostly redundancies. Kakashi was well on his was to becoming a S-class ninja, allready a jounin, before getting his sharingan, afterwards, he got kind of lazy it seems and became the copy nin whose weakness was stamina and plain old taijutsu, some sort of incredible one hit wonder who wears himself out in a single battle in which his performance is questionable, given his previous talent levels and how much time has passed, it's like he hasn't really progressed since he got the sharingan and first used the chidori with it, except to a limited degree thanks to pure experience, and his regular, seemingly forced battles with Gai, when Kakashi might have once had the potential to have been sannin level by the time Naruto entered the academy, given his own and his father's reputation, and who his teacher was. Intead he became the master of half-copied fighting styles and last-ditch risky assasin moves.
Sasuke and Itachi both seem to have very strict limits to their chakra, much like Kakashi, and they both waste it with overly flashy techniques and contests of their limited power, and all or nothing strategies, Sasuke showing only slightly more wisdom in his strategies, and specific counters which use more energy than the technique they are countering half the time.
While they are capable of wide scale destruction, it's about as much as Naruto could do by going Kyuubi or summoning Gamabunta or a huge throng of clones which all throw a collection of exploding tags, likely for much less of Naruto's overall power. As his foe is not indestructible, and Naruto at some points might as well be, and is skilled enough to avoid all sorts of certain death, Naruto will win if his foe can't stop him from closing and finishing them off, or trap him in a genjutsu.
Personally, I don't think Sasuke was powered up as much as the whiners believe, and Naruto was powered up much more than it seems. All things considered, Sasuke's growth, due to chakra limits, seems to be linear, even if a steep incline due to the Sharingan, Naruto's on the other hand, seems exponential, and they aren't really that far apart if you negate the genjutsu factor, which Naruto allready knows some strategies against.
Sasuke's powerup was to put him at S-level, and was acheived with a bunch of cheap powerups, like the cursed seal and white snake power and drugs and rituals, Naruto on the other hand naturally grew into S-class level, just by filling in the weak areas of his basic skills that should have been learned in the academy.
Also, Naruto is implied several times to have more new jutsu than have been displayed, such as his conversation with Konohamaru about new perverted jutsu, or Jiraiya's conversation with the seal frog, and Jiraiya's comments on Naruto's progress and Jiraiya's personal displayed power and skill.
I think a lot of the arguments going around are un-grounded, Sasuke looks cool in a flasy, fanboy sort of way, but Naruto is the one with the winning abilities.
"Health, Learning & Virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give you a quiet conscience, private esteem & public honor." Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)