Naruto Chapter 420

[joker-kun]

It is all Kishi's fault for making Naruto so weak to begin with; the same way he made Itachi so godlike only to be beaten by his emo brother without ever showing his real power (yes we seen glimpses of it but by the time he was ready to go all out he was almost blind, had some sickness, and was hoping for his brother to kill him).

Naruto should have never been as weak as he was just for the the fact that his father was the -the- 4th Hokage (hell even the little bit we've learned about his mom makes it seem like she was even fairly skilled), and that he had the demon fox inside him.

The problem here is Kishi's giant hard on for the Sharingan. Sasuke has a sharingan and this is basically why he's as strong as he is. Naruto has a father who was (I think) the youngest and strongest Hokage, was trained by two legends; Kakashi and Jiraiya, and has the strongest Bijuu inside him. He matches Sasuke in every way (strong father/trained by Kakashi/Sannin, some sort of special power), and Kishi meant for this, except without any real explanation Sasuke is always more skilled, and not by a little but by leaps and bounds. Naruto should be at his current power level but it should have happened gradually since (and during) the time skip.

[Uchiha Barles]

@DeathBoo

I had a huge response (which seems to be the norm as of late) but then I accidentally pressed the backspace button while the cursor wasn't active, and lost message...pissed me off. But I'm back, hopefully with a streamlined version.

Killua arguably may have been the fourth strongest, but I'm pretty sure that there were people there that were both stronger than Gon yet weaker than Killua. For one, that nen user that used the four knives to fight against Hisoka, and died shortly thereafter. Then there were the martial artist brothers, one of which Killua took out. I'm pretty sure Kurapica was stronger than Gon, specially considering that his fighting ability was no less than Gon's when he wasn't pissed off, vastly superior when he was, and that he had all that random knowledge (If we're talking pure fighting ability, there are likely others who didn't make it to the finals that were also stronger than Gon). So this places Gon at around the same relative level that Naruto was at in the Chuunin exams.

Now, Gon is a naturally clever character, with high levels of endurance, and is a reinforcement nen user. Naruto is a naturally clever character, with high levels of endurance, high chakra capacity with high burst chakra output capacity...if you get my meaning. These are their "talents" so to speak. Much of what they can do are direct consequences of these things. I'll give you that HxH explains things much better, and is plain better in every aspect, but that doesn't change the parallel between the characters.

Now, I'll give you that the Itachi shadow cock (lol!) and much of the other things you mentioned did make Naruto look like an idiot, but for the most part, they had nothing to do with his combat ability. There's one thing you mentioned that did though. Naruto screwing up in the Kakuzu fight. That fizzing of his rasengan is reminiscent of his failure to summon Gamabunta the first time he tried in the Gaara fight. This may be Kishi's way of telling us that Naruto's the kind of character that bring's to combat a jutsu that's still in the beta stages of development, and that things could very well go wrong for him when he does. Everything else though, just doesn't matter as far as how he'll perform in a fight. That's how I get my impression of characters strengths. Also, yeah, Naruto only took out two hearts, but he did it in one blow, and that blow could've very well taken out all five hearts, based on its apparent destructive power.

My problem with the Sannin fight, is that I don't really believe Tsunade should've been able to save him. I mean, even the demon fox couldn't do anything. That part just reeks of bs. Naruto realized he was just plain outclassed, by several levels. The "grown up" thing to do at that point would've been to watch and learn. And MAYBE, if an obvious opportunity presented itself to do something, THEN make a move. You don't just pick up your gloves, take two lessons of boxing, and then talk shit to mike tyson before lunging at him. You wait till his back is turned, and you crack him over the skull with a lead pipe. Same situation with Naruto and Kabuto. The fight where he showed maturity to me, was the Gaara fight. He fought someone who seemingly outclassed him, even in his own eyes, used everything he had, discovered he could fight on even ground with the opponent, and then won. Him getting the rasengan on Kabuto was nice, but as far as I'm concerned, he died afterwards, and I have to forget that every time I try to watch an episode of the series. On those times I fail at that, I can't keep watching, I have to try again later.

...this post is actually worst than the first one, and somehow just as long...:-(