Well you know, technically Ounoki didn't stop the meteor, even with help from Gaara.

And technically there's no reason Enma couldn't sort of push the meteor at least to the same extent Ounoki did.

Cover of a new volume. Sorry for the low resolution but I believe many will like this one.
http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/92/narutocover.jpg

Now I've got to find that cover with a larger resolution. Thanks for the heads up.

To be fair, Kishimoto is going to have to up Sarutobi if for no other reason than to provide an excuse for why Konoha hadn't been run over long ago considering that Sarutobi had been Hokage for 40 or so years. So, he had to be able to compete against Oonoki and third Raikage and the 3rd Mizukage not to mention Hanzou, even if we have no idea how he could have competed against such monstrous figures.

Is that Neji in the middle?

Keep in mind the Sarutobi that had blocked at least one bijuudama (implied from the again!? exclamation) was still the older one outside of his prime. It was a pretty good job for an old man anyway.

Since the younger version of him was supposed to be a chakra monster, I can see him swatting away bijuudama a la carte.

Actually he did hence why Madara dropped a 2nd on his face and Gaara didn't help on that so what are you referring to?
No he didn't, the Kyubi used 2 Bijuudama and both were stopped by Yondaime, not Sarutobi. He was also never said to be a chakra monster althought this matter little considering everybody has virtually infinite chakra capacity nowadays.
Incidentally Sarutobi wasn't that old during the Kyubi attack, he was about the same age than Jiraiya when he died.
Does he? He could just ignore the subject or quickly evacuate it with a mere comment from the Gokage that Sarutobi used to be the strongest among them instead of showing some monkey glory. I'm all for Sarutobi finally getting some love but if the past taught me something it's that we're more likely to have Hashirama and Tobirama fangasm about Yondaime's skill, wisdom and golden hair.
At the time it was pretty sweet, I prefer the human sized fight rather than the gigantic pokemon onslaught. It's just that in retrospect the fight looks very low level compared to the current power standard.

It's a little detail that's easy to miss. The nine-tails had been rampaging for a while and the ninjas had been fighting it long enough to drive it out of the village perimeter.

When the nine-tails charged up a bijuudama (that ended up being taken care of by the 4th), Sarutobi said "again?" while slumping which implies the nine-tails had fired off at least one more during the time Minato hadn't arrived at the village yet.

I thought this was a neat bit of flavor in that sequence. Of course, this was only about 9 years before the start of Naruto.

I know what you're talking about but you're wrong, of course saying "again" implies that Kurama fired one previously : the one Yondaime also stopped the previous chapter.
Nowhere is it implied that Sarutobi stopped a Bijuudama which is quite a shame because it was the perfect moment for the author to hype Sarutobi while Yondaime was dealing with Obito but he chose to have Minato do everything instead.

*shrugs*

I'm pretty sure the way he slumped at that moment shows how tired he was from the repeated effort including the actual smash that forced the nine-tails out of the village (because seriously, besides Chouji's clan, nobody else in Leaf has that sort of force). He's still facing off against the mouth of the nine-tails all the way up to when Minato teleported it.

But if you say that there's no possibility at all and that your reading is the right one so be it.

That's fine. I don't actually want to see any of the dead Hokages fight, so even a simple quote from a reliable source would be enough to keep Sarutobi relevant.

Sasuke had been pushed to his limits fighting against the samurai the Raikage, Gaara, Mifune, the Mizukage and all their subordinates. He didn't one-hit KO a fresh, full-powered Sasuke. He just landed an opportune final blow against a weakened opponent.

What could Sarutobi do against a meteor? I see no point in asking that. It's like asking what Oonoki do against Amaterasu. You can't use a threat a shinobi has never faced as a bias against their strength. Besides, I'm not talking about abilities and feats. Are we saying someone who can't fly or lift a giant turtle is inferior to Oonoki? I'm talking about what he's done. Hiruzen faced several strong opponents at once and though he may have been beaten pretty decisively, he did hold his ground and effectively saved the village. Oonoki has had some skirmishes against Sasuke, Deidara and the previous Tuschikage. But against Madara he's been completely ineffective, along with all the other current kages. I'm not saying Sarutobi would do better, but his actually doing something to thwart a major enemy is more impressive to me than simply getting swatted like a fly or taking the last shot against a half-dead enemy that had been fighting several other powerful allies.

As I said in my reply to itachi-san, I'm not simply talking about abilities because yes the current character have very impressive techniques. Since day 1 the story has made a steady transition from more "conventional" martial arts and jutsu to bigger, more outlandish abilities. When Sarutobi was shown fighting it was before characters used their 3 bloodline/2 doujustu/sage mode/giant bijuu every battle.

That doesn't simply mean Sarutobi doesn't measure up. The flashier, bigger jutsu is a natural progression to keep up with readers' expectation for each battle to top the last. It doesn't mean that everyone has "surpassed" Sarutobi since he died. Though I agree Hashirama has definitely been revealed to be much stronger.

So what's the disagreement here? I realize Hashirama is insanely strong. But all the feats you mentioned didn't come into the picture until Madara was put in place as a unbeatable force of evil. Hashirama needed to be crazy strong or else there'd be no excuse why Madara hadn't conquered the world decades ago. This is the result of hype from the mangaka, in order for one character's strength to match the other. Prior, Hashirama was simply known as being the founder of Konoha.

I can understand why you wouldn't want that but I find unlikely that Kishimoto brought back the 4 previous Hokage just for Sasuke to have a little chat and since I think it's more than probable that they'll join the fray I'd rather see Sarutobi into real action instead of a boring quote.I don't disagree that Sarutobi is meant to measure up to the Gokage and then some but you said that you haven't seen the likes of Oonoki do anything that trumps Sarutobi and that's simply not true.
It's not just hype anymore when it's actual feat. And really Hashirama didn't need to be that powerful. We already knew his bloodline allowed him control over the Bijuu, this alone could have explained how he had dealt with the Kyubi and there was no real need to match the unworldly power of Edo-Madara considering this was an immortal, invincible, Rinnegan + Mokuton wielding version with infinite chakra.
Instead we have Hashirama casually catching Bijuudama in midair to throw it back into the Kyubi and Madara easily blocking the blow with Susanoo's blades before protecting Kurama with its armor and then destroy a few mountains as a side effect of cutting through Shodai's Mokuton. Those two make the rest of the world look like flies to an absurd degree.
Well yes he was shown tired on his knee facing impending doom before Yondaime teleported there and saved the day but somehow you phrased that more positively. I'll grant you that Sandaime managed to push the Kyubi back 50 meters or so and that's kinda impressive alright but compared to the kind of prowess we've seen from the competition it falls short.
Look all I'm saying is that you interpret a word as an unseen nuclear explosion countered by an unseen and unmentioned counter attack by unknown means that left no visual evidence of ever happening and that no character saw fit to mention to inform the readers of the existence of this series of events whereas it's easily explained by what we've actually seen on panel a few pages before.

Don't tempt fate. Give Kishimoto an inch and he will take a mile. (I can too easily imagine Kishimoto deciding that the Kages must fight Sasuke, and what's worse Sasuke winning...)

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New chapter thread has been started. Please move all relevant discussions to the new thread.

Lol! :D But what's funny is how is Sasuke supposed to be a threat towards Naruto right now. Naruto will probably get one or two more powerups while fighting Obito/Madara/Juubi. Not even Sasuke getting rinnegan will help him much now.

Oh, right. I forgot there were two meteors.