[Hunter]

Originally Posted by james0246

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.

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.

Originally Posted by Sabaku Kyu

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.

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.

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.

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.

Originally Posted by ChronoReverse

*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.

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.

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

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.