Quote:
Originally Posted by ZGoten
Now that Itachi undid the Edo Tensei, I am starting to wonder why we haven't seen Jiraiya in this war, though. Kishimoto still must have plans for this character. We have not seen him being used as a path of pain, although it would have been an obvious choice, and we haven't seen him in this war, even though there were countless other pointless revivals and encounters. Why won't Kishimoto bring Jiraiya back from the grave, when it's such an obvious benefitial storytelling method? It's much more benefitial to the story than bringing back Zabuza or inventing totally new characters like the silver and gold brothers, just to kill them off again. I'm nost saying that Jiraiya will come back from the dead and defeat Madara, though, of course. But there must be a reason behind this.
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Kishi's reason was stated by Kabuto in that jiraiya's body was unrecoverable from the ocean floor. it sort of makes sense, but seeing as how some of the other bodies must have been very difficult to find, the readers would have accepted kabuto or nagato recovering jiraiya's body as well. when he wasn't a path of pain (he would have been the summoning one also which makes most sense) I kind of figured kishi just wanted to preserve the memory of jiraiya and that he felt his arc was complete.
I do think it was beneficial to the story to invent new characters for the edo tensei since it made it a more worldy event that effected all the villages. given the fact that there are other ninja villages that haven't gotten nearly as close to as much screen time as konoha, but are just as important in terms of the world balance, it makes sense that they had powerful ninja over the years that could be just as useful in edo tensei and we just hadn't heard their stories yet. i think edo tensei would have been pretty lacking without the new characters