[Manga] Chapter 520 Discussion

[Lunarskylar]

lmfao ther'es no coffin cuz the guy was killed 2 seconds ago, wasn't buried, and didnt have time to go to soul society to register for a coffin license

[Fran~]

Originally Posted by Lunarskylar

lmfao ther'es no coffin cuz the guy was killed 2 seconds ago, wasn't buried, and didnt have time to go to soul society to register for a coffin license

Lol, it would be so d*mn funny a crossover with Shinigamis in Narutoland searching for the one who is messing with death people

Spoiler:

[james0246]

Originally Posted by Nobodyman9

Uh...neat.

Someone clearly doesn't have a scientific background...

Originally Posted by Nobodyman9

Yeah, because it worked so well when they tried to resurrect people in Fullmetal Alchemist.

Spoiler for Fullmetal Alchemist spoilers:

I've only seen the first series, but didn't Edward bring back his brother using his own mind, body and soul?

Originally Posted by Nobodyman9

Edo Tensei couldn't have less to do with equivalent exchange. One human life, some DNA, a minimal amount of chakra and some weirdass ritual for an immortal zombie with limitless chakra. Sense, this makes none.

I do not know if they have limitless chakra, but everything else is correct and does make sense. Edo Tensei is a clearly defined jutsu: Body for body (the DNA fills in for needing a full other body) and soul for soul (and all the sacrifices chakra to boot). Whether it is realistic or not is besides the point (though I do think it is realistic in-universe, considering that there is an actual Death God that you can bargain with, etc...

[Slayerx]

Originally Posted by james0246

A soul weighs 21 grams....

Edo Tensei doesn't bother me. It's a faux resurrection technique derived from Buddhist teachings. Hell, it even seems to work off of the Fullmetal Alchemist principles of Equivalent Exchange: one soul for one soul, one body for one body; everything is equal (unlike Nagato's horrendous resurrection abilities which seem to only require chakra). (It certainly helps that the resurrected person is not really alive.)

I would not at all call it equivalent exchange... As far as we have seen you can sacrifice ANYBODY and get back a ninja with S-class skill and strength. I mean weak little Kin of the sound genin was the sacrifice to bring back one of the former hokages. Kin's body would not have the strength and chakra of a master and as such you are trading a very weak body for a very powerful one. Futharmore, the zombie has infinite regeneration capabilities, a power which is very difficult and limited towards any living person... that regeneration SHOULD require some kind of energy, but it requires none. we have also seen no limitation on chakra...

In every sense, you sacrifice something as weak as an ordinary commoner, and in return get something infinitely superior

Originally Posted by Nobodyman9

They're not summoning a person, they're summoning a soul of a person from the afterlife. I assume that would be quite taxing.

Well technically, the soul is summon and bonded beforehand... when the jutsu is used in the field the prep work of putting the soul in the body and all that is already done... all that's left is to get the body to the location. So even if it's taxing to summon the soul, that's in the prep work... using the technique in battle is doing nothing more than calling the prepared body which would likely take much less chakra

[Ero-Senn1n]

Originally Posted by james0246

^

You have to sacrifice an entire human...that's a greater sacrifice than any amount of chakra (hell, it's an entire bodies supply of chakra).

Kabuto described the technique as having no down side, and from everything we've seen, that seems the most likely explanation.

When saying sacrifice or price i was thinking about the jutsu user himself. But i agree that the sacrifice of another person can do the job, that's why all these jutsu are forbidden.

But i think that independently of that the overall logic in this manga is that for so high level jutsu you always need a lot of chakra too. That's why i assume that there is an indirect sacrifice on Kabuto's part, that is he giving up his human body and creating a monster of himself.

Also i think Kabuto is not telling the full truth here. He is not so stupid to tell all the truth to Madara, he knows that Madara would kill him when he doesn't have any use for him.

Of course we must admit that this jutsu seems to be very close to be a large plot hole I mean the amount of chakra and the level of sacrifice must be proportional to the gained power, to the level of the jutsu. But we see that the sacrificed people were never really strong, we could say that they were some noname grunts, thus the human sacrifice and the invested chakra amount doesn't feel like being proportional to the gained power. Currently both Madara and Kabuto have powers that were not explained, and thus it all feels like a stupid plot hole. But Kishimoto has introduced so many godlike evil guys and then after many chapters he finally introduced their weaknesses, and so the good guys could beat them. It is clear that Madara has some serious weakness, but we still don't know what was the real price Kabuto payed for such a huge level up, he must have a weakness/secret that's even more troublesome than Madara's.

Originally Posted by Shining Celebi

I don't know - I think Kishimoto doesn't really know the difference between minds/souls/chakras in the Naruto universe. I like your principle and agree it should be true if it isn't (otherwise like you say you have ridiculous garbage like Orochimaru's arms talking) but I don't know if the manga really supports it sometimes...like how Orochimaru's Fushi Tensei supposedly moves his soul (according to some translations anyway, I can't find a raw), but if so, why did he recover the use of his arms...?

What do you mean exactly?
I think the story made it all clear. A body's lifespan is always finite, it may be prolonged or naturally long but everybody's body dies eventually. On the other hand the soul seems to be eternal and cannot be destroyed, it is also unique, cannot be duplicated or cut to pieces. The third factor is chakra, it is the glue between soul and body, it is the fuel created by both soul and body, and it can be transformed into any kind of matter. Since the soul is unique chakra cannot create souls, just bodies, so the kage bunshins do not have souls, they only have the chakra copies of one's mind. Same is true for the copies of Minato's and Kushina's souls. That is why the clones can exist only until the chakra runs out, because if there is no soul present then chakra cannot be created, only consumed. I think these are the principles but in specific cases Kishi will not strictly stick to every detail, he will give himself more freedom because that way he can create a more interesting story. For example in the case of Orochi vs 3rd hokage he wanted Orochimaru to lose the battle but survive it, which means the 3rd hokage beating Orochimaru but paying with his life for it, and also Orochimaru being disabled, so that he can't take Sasuke's life so easily as he would otherwise. So Kishi just invented the sealing of the arms, which is not perfectly consistent, but who cares about such minor issues

Originally Posted by Shining Celebi

But, I do think Kishimoto wouldn't have shown the white snakes unless he intended to do something with them. Even if they were all burnt up, there should be a reason for showing that parts of Orochimaru escaped being sealed away.

I think his goal was to show us how incredibly persistent is Orochimaru, it had to be Itachi's soul-slaying sword and ultimate fire jutsu that finally could kill him for good. Now Kabuto has inherited that inhuman power.
If you want Orochimaru's return then you have to hope that there is a way out of Itachi's sword, because Orochi's soul is trapped there right now

[Sabaku Kyu]

Edo Tensei doesn't operate on FMA's the principle of equivalent exchange. I don't think it's particularly accurate to compare it to that. Sacrifices are needed for the jutsu merely so there's an anchor for the summoned soul. They aren't a "price" paid to satisfy some natural law.

Originally Posted by Ero-Senn1n

But i think that independently of that the overall logic in this manga is that for so high level jutsu you always need a lot of chakra too. That's why i assume that there is an indirect sacrifice on Kabuto's part, that is he giving up his human body and creating a monster of himself.

Yeah, but the trick is it's hard to determine how much is "a lot of chakra". Sarutobi was able to use some elemental jutsu, summon Enma, make KB and still perform Shiki Fuujin which is probably one of the most high-level sealing techniques there is. All this came after it was stated that he had nowhere near the chakra he had in his younger days. Since different characters have different chakra capacities you can't really say how much chakra is being invested into the jutsu. And usually even if a character is running low on chakra, if they need to pull off a high-level jutsu in a pinch they will always have "just enough" chakra to perform it.

We know it takes large amount of chakra to call a boss-level summon like Gama Bunta, but Jiraiya, Tsunade and Oro could do it easily and it doesn't particularly drain them. Kabuto could be putting a huge amount of chakra into Edo Tensei, but his chakra pool is probably on par with or even exceeding that of the largest in the series at this point (besides the jinchuuriki that is), so the chakra needed isn't a huge hurdle for him

[james0246]

Originally Posted by Slayerx

I would not at all call it equivalent exchange... As far as we have seen you can sacrifice ANYBODY and get back a ninja with S-class skill and strength. I mean weak little Kin of the sound genin was the sacrifice to bring back one of the former hokages. Kin's body would not have the strength and chakra of a master and as such you are trading a very weak body for a very powerful one. Futharmore, the zombie has infinite regeneration capabilities, a power which is very difficult and limited towards any living person... that regeneration SHOULD require some kind of energy, but it requires none. we have also seen no limitation on chakra...

In every sense, you sacrifice something as weak as an ordinary commoner, and in return get something infinitely superior

As another poster mentioned, Edo Tensei seems to work along the same lines as Fushi Tensei. Just as Orochimaru's power never fluctuates between different hosts (even if they are significantly weaker), the "host", no matter how weak, can be upgraded to a stronger model. In fact, Edo Tensei makes more sense than Fushi Tensei considering that Fushi Tensei is a spiritual technique only, unlike Edo Tensei which draws forth a soul and recreates the original body using the original bodies DNA,

To put it another way, by recreating the body and adding the soul (which contains a persons experiences), the original chakra supply (which is composed of body and spirit) is also recreated. (Personally, I question whether the zombies are using chakra, considering that the body in the chakra equation implies life (the energy found in every cell of the body), and its unknown if the zombies cells are active or not.)

Additionally, the regeneration (which currently has no real explanation), could simply be due to the fact that the soul is confined to Earth, resulting in the constant recreation of "flesh" to encase the soul...that's just speculation, though...

Originally Posted by Sabaku Kyu

Edo Tensei doesn't operate on FMA's the principle of equivalent exchange. I don't think it's particularly accurate to compare it to that. Sacrifices are needed for the jutsu merely so there's an anchor for the summoned soul. They aren't a "price" paid to satisfy some natural law.

I'll admit it's been years since I saw the original series, so I can only blame my bad memory if I'm mistaken.

[Slayerx]

Originally Posted by james0246

As another poster mentioned, Edo Tensei seems to work along the same lines as Fushi Tensei. Just as Orochimaru's power never fluctuates between different hosts (even if they are significantly weaker), the "host", no matter how weak, can be upgraded to a stronger model. In fact, Edo Tensei makes more sense than Fushi Tensei considering that Fushi Tensei is a spiritual technique only, unlike Edo Tensei which draws forth a soul and recreates the original body using the original bodies DNA,

I'm not sure about that when it comes to Fushi Tensei. Recall that Oro doesn't just pick anyone for his transfer. When he had to change bodies, he had a bunch of his prisoners duke it out and used the body of the winner. Unless he was only having them fight for shits and giggles, he wasn't take just anyone, but was taking what was maybe a jounin-level body. Furtharmore, Oro could have just kept Sasuke locked up in a dungeon keeping him barely alive, but instead he chose to train sasuke and increase his strength. He also have to take into account that Oro uses experiments and what not to artificially enhance himself... in short it's not hard to believe that Oro's physical body IS limited by the body he transfers himself into, but he makes up for it through drug enhancements. And one important thing is that Oro's jutsu's relies much on his knowledge... what's telling about Edo tensei is that we have a weak 15 year old genin girl, being turned into a physically strong adult male hokage

thought still, even if both techniques followed the same principle of sacrificing very little to get something powerful in return, it would not matter... It does not give edo tensei anykind of excuse or free pass; it just means that Fushi Tensei commits the same crime. though i guess you could give Kishi credit for being consistant

Additionally, the regeneration (which currently has no real explanation), could simply be due to the fact that the soul is confined to Earth, resulting in the constant recreation of "flesh" to encase the soul...that's just speculation, though...

not really sure about that either...
Though if that were the case then i might ask why Oro wasn't smart enough to figure out a way to adapt the technique for himself... i mean if he can keep a soul anchored to the earth and that in and of itself means that the body that contains that soul will always be automatically recreated, then there's his key to immortality... he just anchor's his soul to his own body and then he has a never dying and always regenerating body

Hell thinking about it, all he may have needed to do is redesign edo tensei in such a way that the zombie retains FULL self control. Then all he needs to do is let himself die, and allow someone to resurrect him... He gets to be the same old oro, but now with an immortal zombie body. heh, he may not even need the full self control, just make sure the person that resurrects him(random weak lackey) gives him his personally (as Kabuto is doing) but then make sure someone else(kabuto) Kills the guy who summoned him; afterall killing the user does not end the jutsu... with no owner and his free personality, he's back to his old self but with immortality

[Sabaku Kyu]

Originally Posted by james0246

I'll admit it's been years since I saw the original series, so I can only blame my bad memory if I'm mistaken.

The original series doesn't actually follow the manga story that closely since it overtook the manga, it's the new series that's more faithful. Still, nothing bad about your memory, just pointing out that we're talking about two different (Edo Tensei vs FMA's alchemy) but similar concepts.

Originally Posted by Slayerx

thought still, even if both techniques followed the same principle of sacrificing very little to get something powerful in return, it would not matter... It does not give edo tensei anykind of excuse or free pass; it just means that Fushi Tensei commits the same crime. though i guess you could give Kishi credit for being consistant

Excuse for what? We saw Pain's Shounten no justu take two random joe's and give them the weapons, abilities, personality and bodies of two much more powerful ninja. They were limited by a lack of chakra compared to the originals but they were, for all intents and purposes, exact copies.

Edo Tensei is the same way. This isn't someone using their abilities in a different body. The sacrifice is basically just a skeleton. The ash shroud that surrounds them is transformed into the physical body of the summoned person, similar to how a bijuu chakra shroud transforms into the physical body of the demon even though the jinchuuriki still exists in the core. Nothing about Edo Tensei really violates any kind of internal logic set by Kishi in the story. It's just incredibly broken jutsu.

Though if that were the case then i might ask why Oro wasn't smart enough to figure out a way to adapt the technique for himself... i mean if he can keep a soul anchored to the earth and that in and of itself means that the body that contains that soul will always be automatically recreated, then there's his key to immortality... he just anchor's his soul to his own body and then he has a never dying and always regenerating body

That would mean placing enough trust in someone to resurrect him with the jutsu. Oro never fully trusted anyone, not even Kabuto.

[Ero-Senn1n]

Originally Posted by james0246

Just as Orochimaru's power never fluctuates between different hosts (even if they are significantly weaker), the "host", no matter how weak, can be upgraded to a stronger model.

When Orochimaru used a random guy for the host his body became ill, and when trying to fight on his own high level the body broke down, Orochi collapsed after fighting against the 4-tails Naruto. And after that he had to use the highest levels of medicine to be able to survive in that body, and finally Sasuke almost effortlessly beat him. So we see when a weak sacrifice was used for Orochi's soul transfer jutsu the outcome was far more weaker than what Sasuke's body would be. I was merely applying the same logic to Edo Tensei, that is if the summoned soul is placed into a body that is much weaker than the summoned soul's former body was then the summoned guy would use up the body in a short period of time. Which means that someone like Nagato or Itachi should be able to fight on his own level only for a few minutes before the container bodies break down. If this is not true than Kabuto must have done something else too, either insering a larger amount of his own chakra or some other sacrifice needed. And if that's true than he probably needed Orochimaru's monster-snake-body powers to strengthen the summoned bodies. That is he couldn't have done this without becoming a monster himself, and that is the sacrifice on his side.

Originally Posted by james0246

To put it another way, by recreating the body and adding the soul (which contains a persons experiences), the original chakra supply (which is composed of body and spirit) is also recreated. (Personally, I question whether the zombies are using chakra, considering that the body in the chakra equation implies life (the energy found in every cell of the body), and its unknown if the zombies cells are active or not.)

I think the body is used as a temporary anchor for their soul, the soul needs to be bound to a living body in order to remain in this world, otherwise the soul is sucked back into the "pure world" (just like in case of someone's death his soul is immedately sucked away there, it seems a soul cannot exist freely in the narutoverse). I assume that this body-soul pair is not natural therefore it should not produce chakra, just consume chakra, otherwise it would live eternally, which doesn't make sense. If it could produce it's own chakra and also be indestructible then even one man (Kabuto or anyone who knows Edo Tensei) would be able to turn the whole world into zombies.

The zombies must use chakra, since they do the same jutsu as humans, or should Kishi introduce something else instead?

[Alchemist007]

I feel like there's something missing with the villains. Madara's goal and ambition just don't seem like enough, I know he's got the 'haha I kill't yo parents' on Naruto, but he's just not...that evil. Kabuto's just a freak.

[Fran~]

Originally Posted by Alchemist007

I feel like there's something missing with the villains. Madara's goal and ambition just don't seem like enough

It's clear enough to me at least... world domination under his lead... that's all.

[Alchemist007]

I just want to like the villains a little more is all. I really liked Pein (#1!) and even Orochimaru.

Or to put it another way:

Orochimaru: I want to master all everything!
Kabuto: *picks up dead corpse

Pein: Screw the world, I can do a better job.
Madara: *Doppelganger

[Fran~]

I don't know, to me the greatest villain here is War itself.

because Madara and the kages use war as the method to solve their problems, problems like their egos, the desire to be the most powerful, the strongest, etc...

Shikamaru hit the spot when he describes how war works... X kills Y, Y's friends want revenge on X, then X's friend want their own revenge...

Orochimaru wanted to master every jutsu because that allows him to be stronger, Pain wanted to stop war with power.

Kishi did a outstanding job when Danzou dies, telling us Danzou's reasons to his acts. Itachi, same thing. Even the Kages aren't confident enough in their counterparts because they know that they are together in this because Madara is a common enemy, pretty much like the Soviet Union and the Allies in WWII.

[qwertyuiopz]

WUT? how did he get deidaras dna and not hidans?

[Alchemist007]

Deer are tough man.

[Sharfan]

The way I see it is that the zombies have to be getting chakra from somewhere, as one of Kishi's first rules: you can't do jutsu without chakra. From what I can remember, this rule hasn't been broken. My idea is that Kabuto has a monster amount of chakra, and the zombies use his chakra for jutsu instead of their own, since they probably can't make their own. If this is the case, then I would be completely fine with this jutsu. But, if there isn't a good explanation on where the chakra comes from, then I'm with Slayerx and the others in saying that it doesn't make sense.

Maybe they use natural energy. . . O.o

[Alchemist007]

Infinite pure world chakra. 500 C3 bombs. Nuke it all Deidara.

[Ero-Senn1n]

Originally Posted by Sharfan

The way I see it is that the zombies have to be getting chakra from somewhere, as one of Kishi's first rules: you can't do jutsu without chakra. From what I can remember, this rule hasn't been broken. My idea is that Kabuto has a monster amount of chakra, and the zombies use his chakra for jutsu instead of their own, since they probably can't make their own. If this is the case, then I would be completely fine with this jutsu. But, if there isn't a good explanation on where the chakra comes from, then I'm with Slayerx and the others in saying that it doesn't make sense.

Maybe they use natural energy. . . O.o

When using summoning jutsu the chakra of the summoned creature is his own, not of the summoner. The summoner needs chakra to summon, but after that he is safe. In the case of Edo Tensei there is a complicated ritual where Kabuto creates the summoned human, that's where he needs to use his chakra to summon the soul from the "pure world", the amount needed is unknown. Also he needs chakra to execute the binding jutsu which binds the summoned soul to the living sacrifice, again the chakra amount is unknown. And while he does the ritual it might be that he also adds his own chakra (powered by the white snake power of Orochimaru) which would then result in a stronger creature, but this is only an assumption here. There's also the question of where in the hell is Kabuto storing all those people between the ritual and the actual summoning, either in an unknown dimension or they always go back to the pure world when unsummoned, that seems to be the most controversial part.

The zombie has his own chakra: the sacrificed man's chakra is there. Apart from that it might be that the summoned soul also has some chakra and also Kabuto might have added some of his own.

The only big problem is that if these zombies cannot be killed that would contradict the chakra consumption rules of Kishimoto. If these zombies really consume chakra when using jutsu and when regenerating that means the opponent only needs to drain their chakra. If they have a fixed amount then it's obvious how to do it, if they also can produce chakra like living beings then the opponent just needs to force them to consume more chakra than what they can produce. For example by constantly destroying their body with kyuubi powered rasenshurikens as long as their regeneration consumes all the chakra and the soul can return to the pure world. If this method doesn't work then Kishimoto has created a large plot hole.

The same questions were asked when Orochimaru summoned the 1st and 2nd. But there was no answer since those were killed quickly, i assume the 3rd hokage's chakra was running out faster than that of the zombies so he had to act quickly. Also i think it was shown there that if the sacrifices are weak (2 sound genins) then the zombies will be weak compared to the originals. Back then i have complained about how weak the 1st hokage was, just remember that the 1st hokage did beat Madara, but he could not beat the very old 3rd hokage? It does make sense only if the 1st hokage's power was limited by the sacrifice body being weak. And i think this is where Kabuto has perfected the jutsu, he probably adds his own white snake monster chakra to make the zombie stronger.

[Sharfan]

That's what I was saying in my last post. The jutsu would be rather impractical unless the zombies had some source of chakra to use if their own ran out. So, I was suggesting that Kabuto would create a sort of link to his own chakra reserves, which I would guess are quite huge since he's turning into (turned into?) Orochimaru, meaning that the zombies could just leech from his which would allow them to stay a much longer time. Otherwise, Deidara would be unable to spam his C0 (?) bomb and continue regenerating after each use. I would guess that after its first couple of uses his chakra would probably become drained, not just from actually using the technique but from having to regenerate from basically nothing. If the actual process of regeneration required a sort of chakra, then full-body regeration would have to require a pretty good amount.

When I playfully inserted the bit about Natural Energy being used, I had an idea that they might be able to replace the Physical Energy portion of the equation with Natural Energy. This would give them the exact amount of chakra they originally had, as they would only be able to use Natural Energy up until it equals their Spiritual Energy, or experience. Not thinking about the implications of such a happening, this would actually be a quite plausable substitute for the (most likely) vacant Physical Energy, since they're really not living.