[Manga] Naruto Chapter 551 Discussion

[Rahan]

Originally Posted by james0246

I did not doubt the effectiveness of Deva Path’s powers. Shinra Tensei, Bansho Tensho, and Chibaku Tensei are easily in the Top 10 most powerful attacks seen in the series thus far. But, the elemental mastery that the Rinnegan is said to posses has never once been shown (beyond a few hodge podge lower ranking techniques when Nagato was a kid). When we first heard of the Rinnegan's powers, I fully expected to see an uber form of Kakuzu's fighting techniques (rapid fire use of elemental attacks as well as combined elemental attacks). Instead we get a combination of powers with few connecting traits (and of the powers, at least half of them are underwhelming (Summoning, random Cyborg abilities, Human path). There is something truly visceral about controlling the elements, and the Rinnegan is supposedly to be the supreme controller of elements, but we were never actually shown this ability. Hell, we haven't even seen the full extent of the 7th Path's powers yet.

In the end, I will always think that Nagato is always weaker than he should be, if only because Kishimoto never gave a valid excuse for not using all the Rinnegan's powers...

Kishi considers the elemental jutsus as worthless. The only ninja relying primarily on elemental jutsus created in Pt2 is Kakuzu and he was only there to showcase Naruto's elemental training, which in turns was only made because Kishi needed an excuse for "bigger Rasengan" : 4 years and a half later, Naruto still hasn't used one real (non Rasengan) fuuton and probably won't ever.
Kisame was also an element user, but he was created when elemental jutsu were pretty much the only offensive ninjutsus.
Jiraiya and Danzou also had a couple of elemental jutsus, but then, instead of making strong elemental jutsus, Kishi had them combine their elemental jutsus to become more effective. Like he couldn't even think of elemental jutsus being powerful on their own.

When Sasuke used Kirin, Kishi even took the trouble to explain it was better than an elemental jutsu like he thought it wasn't possible to make a true powerful elemental jutsu...
When Sasuke actually became strong (awakened the MS), he nearly stopped using elemental jutsus.

So I am not surprised Nagato didn't use elemental jutsu. Madara should also have all the elements, he won't use them either except maybe for some random Uchiha katons.

[Casshern]

Originally Posted by Detective-san

What the hell was that thing Itachi threw?

I don't think it's been shown before, apparently it's his "strongest ranged attack".
Well, I guess it's cool.

It's the third piece of the legendary weapons he equiped his Susanoo with.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Regalia_of_Japan
It hasn't been shown, but since the sword and mirror were revealed it was just a matter of time until the magatama would show up too. These objects are famous in Japan, hence the absence of any explanation.

Originally Posted by Kafriel

If they ever make another Naruto game, I want this form of Nagato in it

I got a question though, how/why did all the paths merge in one and where did Nagato get the power-up? Naruto had barely escaped chibaku tensei at 8-tails but with the kyuubi power at his command and another 2 powerful allies, they had to combine their powers to negate it this time? Seems a bit much...

Probably thanks to his indestructible undead body and all the bijuu chakra he absorbed. But the abilities were all his to begin with. The extra bodies just allowed him to see everything they see, and be in 6 places at the same time.

Anyway, Naruto and Bee were a bit dumbed down so Itachi could show off a little. Looks like the crow is still in play. Maybe Naruto will find a way to recharge the eye quickly. Personally, I liked the second part better than the first.

[Rahan]

Originally Posted by Casshern

Probably thanks to his indestructible undead body and all the bijuu chakra he absorbed.

He only needed to absorb the bijuu chakra. He could have healed himself anytime he wanted. He only needed to capture himself a jin and absorb chakra before proceeding to the bijuu extraction, like he did with Bee.

Of course, that was before Kishi gave up on his story in favor of pointless fanservice, so now we are without an explanation of why he never did that and chose to spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
Kishi did well avoiding any mention of the matter since there is absolutely no way he could explain it. He only had a summon drop Nagato near Bee to use the jutsu and then, Nagato started running around like there was nothing weird about it.

[tarachi]

Originally Posted by james0246

I did not doubt the effectiveness of Deva Path’s powers. Shinra Tensei, Bansho Tensho, and Chibaku Tensei are easily in the Top 10 most powerful attacks seen in the series thus far. But, the elemental mastery that the Rinnegan is said to posses has never once been shown (beyond a few hodge podge lower ranking techniques when Nagato was a kid). When we first heard of the Rinnegan's powers, I fully expected to see an uber form of Kakuzu's fighting techniques (rapid fire use of elemental attacks as well as combined elemental attacks). Instead we get a combination of powers with few connecting traits (and of the powers, at least half of them are underwhelming (Summoning, random Cyborg abilities, Human path). There is something truly visceral about controlling the elements, and the Rinnegan is supposedly to be the supreme controller of elements, but we were never actually shown this ability. Hell, we haven't even seen the full extent of the 7th Path's powers yet.

In the end, I will always think that Nagato is always weaker than he should be, if only because Kishimoto never gave a valid excuse for not using all the Rinnegan's powers...

I think Kishi always avoided making Nagato too effective. So his defeat is justifiable (although honestly most of the results in the manga are beyond justifiable). But still most readers/fans still look at Nagato as strong due to many possibilities he can/may do.

[Shiryuu]

Bad ass rinnegan skills are obviously reserved for Madara.

[ronin myael]

Originally Posted by Ero-Senn1n

We could argue about the being a messiah means someone cannot be stupid issue forever, but it's useless since most of the action shonen manga heroes are like that. Goku, Luffy, and who knows what others. This is a basic concept in these mangas, the loser who becomes a savior. Even in the Matrix Neo is not particularly smart, he does not outsmart his enemies, he overpowers them.

true, but luffy nor goku never asked to play the hero and neither of them accepted that fate either. luffy even claimed that he will not play the hero because heroes are boring and they make sacrifices. he does what he thinks is right and he believes in his friends. he doesn't take on the enemy by himself and say he'll save everyone. oda was never big on the whole "messiah" concept, he always put more emphasis on teamwork.

luffy may be the biggest idiot in the history of shonen but he's not dumb enough to try the same technique twice when he knows it doesn't work. i guess that's why most people bash naruto's actions in this chapter. he doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that rasengan doesn't work on pain, he tried that already once before and it didn't work. he should be aware of that already. it just takes common sense. it's as if he was purposely dumbed out to make itachi and nagato look good.

[Goshin]

Lol. I remember someone telling me that the definition of insanity is doing the sam thing twice and expecting different outcomes. In that regard naruto is insane not retarted

[Sabaku Kyu]

Originally Posted by ronin myael

true, but luffy nor goku never asked to play the hero and neither of them accepted that fate either. luffy even claimed that he will not play the hero because heroes are boring and they make sacrifices. he does what he thinks is right and he believes in his friends. he doesn't take on the enemy by himself and say he'll save everyone. oda was never big on the whole "messiah" concept, he always put more emphasis on teamwork.

luffy may be the biggest idiot in the history of shonen but he's not dumb enough to try the same technique twice when he knows it doesn't work. i guess that's why most people bash naruto's actions in this chapter. he doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that rasengan doesn't work on pain, he tried that already once before and it didn't work. he should be aware of that already. it just takes common sense. it's as if he was purposely dumbed out to make itachi and nagato look good.

You mean the same Luffy who tries to punch Smoker (enemy he knows is impervious to physical attacks) when he sees him?

And Luffy's speech about not wanting to be a hero--complete irony. He only says that because he believes being a "hero" means he has to share his personal belongings with others. Despite that, he's always performing heroics for everyone. In fact, he gave that speech while a character was trying to talk him out of rushing in on his own and performing reckless heroics with no plan. Say what you will, but he's pretty much struck from the same mold as Naruto, except replace "savior" with "pirate king".

It's also kinda funny you mention the lack of teamwork, when Nagato was overcome by a combination attack from Itachi, Killer Bee and Naruto.

Originally Posted by Rahan

Of course, that was before Kishi gave up on his story in favor of pointless fanservice, so now we are without an explanation of why he never did that and chose to spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
Kishi did well avoiding any mention of the matter since there is absolutely no way he could explain it.

That's true. Now, this is only speculation on my part, but I think maybe Nagato chose to remain in that state. He was always so tortured and emo. I mean, the guy called himself "Pain". So maybe living as a crippled, emaciated man with black spikes impaled in his back was just living up to the name. But we'll likely never know the deal with that, so it is kind of a plot hole.

[james0246]

^Truthfully, I expect that the only reason Nagato was able to heal himself recently was either due to the fact that he is a Edo Tensei construct, or due to the Bijuu's chakra (specifically, the amount of chakra he had to absorbed to fix himself was simply too much to acquire via normal means).

[tarachi]

I think its also due to the Bijuu's chakra, maybe the reason he did not choose to do it to heal himself is due to emo reasons.hehehe

[Bari_Phillis]

Just want to clarify something here... no matter how much of Naruto's chakra gets sucked out of him, he can just regenerate a close to infinite amount with the kyubi in him, right?

On note of the story, I think people will be disappointed no matter what happens. We will get a bunch of redundant boss fights where naruto and bee will either a) blow through everyone or b) have some trouble but quickly end it anyway, until the final madara/sasuke/naruto/kabuto battle where all hell breaks loose.

There's a long way to go with this redundancy thing haha

As for Pain loosing so fast... there's no other explanation other than Kishi's fan service with itachi. Imo, this fight should have at least taken 6 chapters. But what can I expect when the development of the story is so poor

[Shining Celebi]

...How did Itachi hit the invisible soul-sucking monster only the victims can see?

[Ulquiorra]

Originally Posted by Bari_Phillis

On note of the story, I think people will be disappointed no matter what happens. We will get a bunch of redundant boss fights where naruto and bee will either a) blow through everyone or b) have some trouble but quickly end it anyway, until the final madara/sasuke/naruto/kabuto battle where all hell breaks loose.

There's a long way to go with this redundancy thing haha

I don't know. I think Kishi just ran out of boss fights unless he pulls some more villains out of his butt. Other than the ET Jinchuuriki and Madara himself, Nagato was the only character on the battlefield that could of defeated Naruto and Kirabi. And he was defeated in about two chapters. So now what is left?

[GDB]

Originally Posted by Ulquiorra

I don't know. I think Kishi just ran out of boss fights unless he pulls some more villains out of his butt. Other than the ET Jinchuuriki and Madara himself, Nagato was the only character on the battlefield that could of defeated Naruto and Kirabi. And he was defeated in about two chapters. So now what is left?

Kabuto himself. He was formidable before he got Orochimaru'd, so he might be at bijuu level now.

[mrShady]

Naruto still has his clones running around right?
Doesn't that mean that Naruto wasn't fighting at full strength....
Even though he was acting retarded he should be able to suprise us because he hasn't shown his true strength.
Also why did the fuuton rasengan not explode? I thought that when in kyuubi mode he imitates a bijuu bomb when forming a fuuton rasengan thus making that move impossible.

[Essenar]

Originally Posted by Shining Celebi

...How did Itachi hit the invisible soul-sucking monster only the victims can see?

"Because THAT jutsu will never work on THESE eyes."

The game breaker of any battle. "How did he know that?" because Kishimoto made a broken blood line with the Uchiha eyes. They can see everything apparently.

[Ero-Senn1n]

Originally Posted by james0246

In the end, I will always think that Nagato is always weaker than he should be, if only because Kishimoto never gave a valid excuse for not using all the Rinnegan's powers...

Well he is just a corpse now that is being controlled by Kabuto, not the real thing, so there's an excuse for that. Considering how poor the other zombie's performances were i think both Nagato and Itachi are really strong as zombies.

Apart from the mastery of all elements wasn't it said that the rinnegan can master all jutsu there exists, considering that the sage of 6 paths created the whole ninja world i'm assuming he created all these chakra based jutsu types too, and one of them is genjutsu, but Nagato never used genjutsu, Kishimoto conveniently left out genjutsu from Nagato's powers since then Naruto would have no chance at all.

Seeing how many complaints there are about Naruto's current bad performance i think my old training idea would be really good here, the idea was that when there's no time a training place like the one Goku and Gohan were in would be nice, Itachi could train Naruto for months or even years inside Tsukiyomi while in the real world it's just an instant. That would be a great way to power up Naruto to fight Madara and Sasuke, since Itachi knows their sharingan powers so much. And more importantly we would have some Itachi chapters in the manga, this cool character deserves some more screen time as a good guy before he goes back to the realm of the dead. To teach Naruto how to use the crow's powers to counter Sasuke's genjutsu, to make Naruto smarter in fights, to have flashbacks about what really happened, to become friends with Naruto, to become Naruto's last "sensei". And of course to have a little time-out from this war, some relax time inside an illusion world before Naruto goes to war.

[Hanzoman]

I really can't believe people are still asking for more boosts and training for naruto; amazing... When I read Naruto ask Nagato to teach him, I was like "you gotta be kidding me". I really hope we're not going to have to sit through yet another training arc where he gets yet another sensei/teacher that hands over some powerful secret technique that we have to sit and watch him struggle with, and finally suddenly master it with some melodrama and of course the goofy humor. Its crazy that people still arent satisfied at this ridiculous level of power.

[Sabaku Kyu]

Itachi will probably be following Nagato soon. He's already played his part to help Naruto so he can rest easy. Some parting words of wisdom then he goes poof...

Naruto's clones have likely spread out and taken care of most of the white Zetsu by now. So there's still Mei and Black Zetsu , then maybe Gaara's division is revisited to show Oonoki vs Muu + other Kages vs. Gaara's division. There'll probably be some snatches of what the Konoha kids are up to in-between.

[Xagzan]

Huh. I was hoping Nagato would somehow find out about Konan, but I guess no such luck.