S Rank means S Rank. There is no SS and SSS. S Rank is the final level.

 

Perhaps not officially, but I feel it has some kind of unofficial merit.

To me, to give someone a S-rank means that they will unequivocally crush 99% of opponents. Doesn't matter if you're a reasonably skilled Jounin or whatever. Come across one of these guys and if they want you dead, you are dead. But even among their S-rank peers, there are still some S-rankers that would demolish the others.

Deidara, I believe was S-rank, as thats all Akatsuki took into their ranks. But I could never imagine him doing anything to someone like Jiraiya or Pain.

S-rank or SS-rank or whatever, it's normally (even in this thread) explained at low, mid and top tier S-rank.

 

Naruto might not have actually killed him, but I doubt Pain was in any shape to get out of the way if Naruto used Rasenshuriken.

 

IMO Konan's not really weaker than the rest of the Akatsuki, it's just that we've only seen her in one fight, and that was against Jiriaya who just about everyone agrees had a massive power advantage over her, not to mention Jiriaya already knew the strengths/weaknesses of her Paper Style. Going up against someone who's stronger than you and knows most your tricks is a bad thing in the Ninja world; any other opponent would have allowed her to give a better showing.

Of course, that will remain a theoretical arguement unless she actually turns up again at some point, which almost certainly won't happen.

 

To me rank is just a pointer on how dangerous ninja A could be to a mission if shinobi B met while trying to complete a mission.

 

I actually meant she may be boosted up a level, but I guess I didn't make that clear. We've seen very little of her outside of talking and that one fight (in which she was merely the distraction until Pein showed up), so we don't have an accurate way to rate her skills.

 

No, no, no. Konan said it herself, Nagato is the 7th path and he exists outside life and death. In fact, she hints he only died when bringing everyone back due being nearly out of chakra.

Don't forget, Naruto used up all his Rasenshuriken to defeat the 6 first ones, and couldn't use another for some time. Nagato however, still had enough juice to bring those death back to life. It would make sense he was still able to kill everyone nearby with an opposite technique, or at least just Naruto.

Naruto also has bring up two bunshin to create the Rasenshuriken, and then manipulate the chakra into the technique, while Nagato only used a single handseal.

tl;dr Naruto strength lies with his ability to make every major bad-ass he comes across into an ally. Heck, even zabuza joined up for a few seconds to take down gato's men. In a kill or be killed battle with no time for talking, Nagato would wipe the floor with him.

Thus, I give my full support to make rule 1: Pein is god.

 

If Pein is god then what does that make Jiraiya?

Pein's exact words:"If we hadnt kept our secret, we would have never won. I can give you no higher praise than that my former teacher."

 

Sorry for the misinterpretation then; like you said, it's hard to get a good measure of Konan's power level from what little we've seen of her fighting ability. However, it certainly seems like her Paper Style has a lot of potential to be really nasty if she's smart about using it (which one would assume she is).

 

Takes the phrase 'Death by a thousand papercuts' to the extreme, doesn't it?

 

Quite. Given what we've seen of her combat style, she could slowly papercut her opponents to death while being almost impossible to score a hit on with her paper teleportation and/or paper wings.

 

Konan is good for 2 things. Taking care of Nagato, and as a poor man's version of Zetsu. I think her greatest strengths would be in the spying area. She can break her entire body into paper, and her ability seems like it's only drawback would be when she's wet and cannot break apart into paper.

It's really too bad that Kishi seems to have a problem with writing females and their fighting abilities lately. Really the last good fight that involved a female in a starring role would've been the Sasori vs. Sakura/Chiyo fight way in the beginning of pt. 2. Though the way things are looking, Sakura might have another fight at the end of her looking for Sasuke thing that she's doing now.

 

The series has generally suffered from a lack of strong female characters; Temari and Tsunade are really the only characters who are consistently portrayed as effective combatants in the manga (the anime, to its credit, has tried to build up the combat reps of most the female characters when doing filler episodes).

Sakura probably has another fight coming up with her hunt for Sasuke, but I suspect it's going to end with her getting her ass kicked in order to send Naruto into a Sasuke-killing rage.

 

As it damned well should. Sasuke is leagues and leagues above Sakura in terms of skill at this point, and it'd be bullshit of the highest degree if she managed to go toe to toe with him considering how many S-Ranked ninja he's fought and defeated during Part II.

 

True; at her current established skill level she's no match for Sasuke and there's no realistic way to make her one at this point. However, it is a bit disheartening that her main contribution to the final battle is going to be getting hurt to induce heroic rage Naruto; as with my earlier post, it's indicative of the general lack of strong female characters in the series.

 

Not too many people I could see taking down Sasuke, Sakura isnt one of them. Aside from Naruto I dont see any of their peers doing anything more than getting their ass kicked.

 

Pretty much.

And about Konan, while we haven't seen her really fight, what we have seen of her doesn't really impress me. Her special ability is to turn into lots of paper. It's all we've seen, and considering how far she's taken it, I doubt that she has any other, high-powered technique. And let's face it, paper is pretty weak. Fire would completely wipe her. Water would slosh and slow her down. Wind would cut that paper into shreds. And I can't see that paper piercing any decent earth jutsu.

Sure, with her special ability she could kill most jounins, but someone like Kakashi would have quite a good chance of killing her. There's probably a reason why she's always next to Nagato and was never sent out to missions, as far as we know.

So, what do you think about Kisame now? I think he's surprisingly badass. His moving water bubble can be pretty damn hard to beat, and he's got massive field advantage there. If only that Samehada hadn't turned against him... sucks for the man, really.

 

It's funny how this seems to be turning into a Naruto Manga thread version 2.

 

Hey, I've just had a brilliant idea! The easiest way to make a Naruto Law thread is to go through canon and systematically note down every plot point and/or power-up Kishimoto uses. Voilà! We have our list.

/sarcasm

 

She does have Lee and Kiba with her, those two aren't any slouches like Shikamaru.

Lee versus Sasuke round 2, amiright?:awesome