Naruto Chapter 384

[Yukimura]

Abdula managed to wedge a rational and well supported point into all of his geneic "you're stupid" comments!? This is unprecedented...

I would have to agree that the Hokage's passing on the title scene was probably more of a "you're going to be next" type thing based on the other occurances in the story at times in the past. However I have to agree with DS about the innate special ability aspect. Having a special ability is cool and all and tends to make a ninja much better if fully mastered, however anyone who can go toe to toe with the best of the people with special abilities when they have only traditional skills, talent for picking things up, and hard work deserves more points.

Having a special ability doesn't automatically make a ninja amazing, but it tends to give them a much higher peak potential than a mundane ninja, as well as give them at least some degree of a natural advantage over a normal person. Even if a special ability user hasn't fully mastered their ability they still get some amount of benefit from it that a normal person wouldn't have through natural ability alone. Sasuke's Sharingan is a good example, seconds after it activated it helped him start turning the tide of a battle he was losing while still working with only a normal skill set. It also allowed him to instantly learn to perform techniques Lee had to train for years to perfect the form of. Sure Sasuke was great without it, but once he obtained it and started using it it cheapened him by giving him a shorter path to greatness than he would have had to follow without it.

Another good example is Hinata, she seems pretty weak and essentially useless as a fighter, however she has an innate special ability and a fighting style that is built around that special ability and these gives her a boost in combat that serve to offset her otherwise poor ninja stats. Without Byakugan and Genle Fist Hinata would just be a dumber pre-skip Sakura.

Then you have someone like Itachi, the Sharingan grand master. To my knowledge the only thing we've seen Itachi do without the Sharingan is cast a genjutsu on Naruto and move his hands very quickly. Since we haven't seen Itachi do anything major without the Sharingan activated, it's hard to guess how capable he would be if it was some how disabled. His accomplishments with the Sharingan are amazing and he has clearly trained it hard and honed it with effort, but it is still gives him a huge natural advantage that a non-user could never duplicate through simple training. When it comes to winning fights of course, having mastered the Sharingan is going to leas to a lot of success, but I don't think that success is as praiseworthy as that of someone like Jiraiya who only seems to possesses techniques he either created himself of learned from others.