Originally Posted by DarthEnder
You know what bugged me about this episode?
Finding out that Chidori is a lighning element technique.
I know that seems stupid just by looking at it, its obviously electrical.
But in the ENTIRE series, nobody every once mentioned that it was in any way electrical. Every explanation was that it was just like this explosion of raw chakra.
In fact, back when they were still calling it the Lightning Edge, someone asked why it was called that, and Gai said it was because he once used it to cut a lightning bolt.
....really? Are you sure it's not called that because it's a goddamn blade of electricity?
I mean, it almost seems like a retcon at this point.
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No, I think this is exactly whats shown to happen. Almost every fight Naruto gets into he starts out the by making 10-20 clones. Which immediately get destroyed. If his chakra is split evenly amoung them, if he wasn't getting that chakra back when they died, it would mean he was using up 90-95% of his chakra in the first 30 seconds of every battle he's ever had.
Obviously, it takes some chakra to create and maintain the clones, but his chakra supply that is divided amoung the clones will return to him unless the clones themselves use that chakra on Ninjitsu.
It's basically just a plot device for limiting what techniques a clone can use.
For example, if Kakashi has enough chakra to use Chidori 4 times a day, and he makes 10 clones, then each of those clones has 10% of his total chakra, it means none of those clones has the 25% chakra needed to perform Chidori.
And I think thats why in high level fights like Oro vs. 3rd, they say things like "shadow clones would only be useless here and waste chakra". While having more of you should always be useful, if none of them hold enough of your chakra to use your highest level techniques, then yes, they aren't always going to be worth using.
This is just one of those things in Naruto that used to not make sense to me and now it's completely clear.