What do you call flashbacks inside flashbacks? Flashflashbacks? Doubleflashbacks? Inception?

Also, anyone else thinks that the next few chapters will be about Sasuke?

 

I feel like the most important part of the chapter was Rin's last name.

You guys remember all the reasons we used as to why Obito can't be Tobi? They are all, for the most part, true. Obito was the one to fight Minato. This is way past ridiculous, to the point where it's funny. Like a crackfic.

 

Well, at least the balance of power kind of makes sense in that fight. After all, Minato dominated Tobi in that fight just as Kakashi dominated Team 7 in the first bell test. Seeing that it was his loser student, kind of explains why that fight was so horribly one-sided.

Of course, Obito's behavior during that fight was utter shit with regards to his character, after all, spits the concept of early Obito right in the face even, but still...

Yeah, it is beyond bad. I've read high school Naruto stories that were better than this.

 

I forgot to mention that Hashirama still gets awesomer every time he shows up/is mentioned.

 

So did I fuck up real bad or does this chapter's portrayal of the Kyuubi attack not coincide with Minato's version at all. Minato says Tobi nabbed Naruto and screwed around with him until Minato was away so he could shatter Kushina's weakened seal. Obito says "lol summoning contract."

I just don't understand anymore.

 

Yeah, the kyuubi should have been in Kushina at this time. Where the fuck did he summon him from?

 

I think in this flashback lots of things we already know were skipped, including Obitos attack on Naruto&Kushina. It makes sense for Kishi to skip that part, since we already saw it all when Kushina revealed it to Naruto, and it would have been just boring to see all of it again.

Based on everything, this is what happened and the timeline:

1.Obito learns somewhere and somehow that Kushina is a jinchuuriki of Kyuubi. He also has learned somewhere (information/books left by Madara probably) that the seal of a jinchuuriki weakens during birth. And he also knows that Minato and Kushina are lovers (probably not a big secret).

2.Kakashi mentions that Minato is going to be a father and Obito discovers it. Or he might have discovered it somewhere else. With his abilities it would be easy to spy on things.

3.Obito realises that if Minato is going to be a father, then that must mean Kushina is the mother, and is going to give birth soon.

4.He spies on the situation carefully and when the precise date arrives, he is ready and attacks Minato (and takes Naruto hostage). He then forces Minato to flee by putting explosive tags on Narutos blanket.

5.He grabs Kushina whose seal has been massively weakened and teleports away.

6.He uses the sharingan to contact Kyuubi inside Kushina and basically rips Kyuubi out of her. This would not have been possible if the seal had not been basically torn to shreds by Narutos birth (Minato was supposed to maintain it, but Obito made sure he could not by first fighting him and then driving him away).

7.Once Kyuubi is out of the seal, Obito has control of it. Apparently having sharingan control of Kyuubi also allows you to summon the thing. Another power for the haxringan.

8.He teleports to Konoha and performs the summoning to bring Kyuubi to the middle of the village to destroy it.

9.The rest is history.

Obitos flashback just did not show his attack on Kushina, since we already saw that flashback when Kushina showed it to Naruto.

EDIT:

A bit of clarification on this idea.

It kinda looks like Obito summons Kyuubi right at Rins grave just after Kakashi has left it. The way I see it there are two explanations for this.

First is that Obito actually did NOT learn about Narutos birth from Kakashi here, and Kakashi was talking to Rins grave at the exact same time Kushina was giving birth. That fits with Kakashis words. He is basically telling Rin about Narutos birth publicly, because as far as he knows Naruto is already born (or will be within minutes). In this case, Obito would already have ripped Kyuubi out at this point in time, and Kakashi simply does not know of it yet since Kushina was giving birth in an isolated area. Remember that in Kushinas flashback, people only learned someting was wrong when Kyuubi appeared, Minato did not have time to warn anyone.

The second possibility is that there is a timeskip between Obito spying on Kakashi, and summoning Kyuubi, and that timeskip was not shown to us. Or in other words, Obito spied on Kakashi, then teleported to where Kushina was giving birth and attacked Minato and ripped Kyuubi out and so on, then teleported back to Rins grave and performed the Kyuubi summoning there.

 

From the looks of things, that scene happened between Minato dropping off Kushina and Naruto and him appearing on the Hokage Mountain. Still really weird, though, considering it looks as if Obito summons the Kyuubi right after Kakashi heads for his grave, yet Kakashi apparently has enough time to meet up with Gai in the meantime.

 

He gets more powerful, but to me that's not the same as awesome. Honestly, the more Kishimoto builds this old dead guy up the more I think to myself how far he's let this story run away from him.

First we hear he died young, before his time. Then we hear Kakuzu fought him and lived to tell the tale. Now he's God and Jesus and the only one who could ever lay a finger on him (and who we still are made to believe got his ass kicked by him) is Madara.

Characters that only got cooler with page time, for me, were folks like Minato, Jiraiya, Pain, Itachi, and up until recently Tobi. It's not just about the super powers but about the character.

That's why it doesn't make a lick of sense to me why Kishimoto has waited so long to unveil Hashirama's "true power." I just don't care.

 

I don't really see how the wood dragon is really a power up from what we knew he could do anyway.

So did Nagato and friends already form Akatsuki in that flashback?

 

Unclear.

Considering that the Rain kids wear Ame forehead protectors, I think it's implied that at some point they were regulars within the Ame hierarchy before they went rogue. Remember that they were willing to work with Hanzou before he set them up.

The degree to which they had distanced themselves from Hanzou's regime before his betrayal is still not certain in my eyes.

 

I still care about Kakashi.

 

The more I see flashbacks of those ninja wars, the more I ask myself: why would you even send anyone below S-rank to fight?

S-rank ninjas seem to be so far above 'normal' ninjas in fighting power, that it's a complete waste of resources to use the normal ones for anything but support roles.

All unnamed characters are just cannon fodder and can be dispatched in arbitrary numbers apparently.

 

Yeah, the jump between S and A rank is insane. There's no way an A-rank could take an S-rank, even in a team situation.

 

Not sure if serious or not, but fodder obviously have their place. 3rd Raikage was killed by a horde of fodder.

 

So he was on a slight disadvantage against 10,000 enemies. He managed to hold them off for 3 days before he was overwhelmed.

I don't think this is a point against my argument.

This gets into a nature/nurture debate in the Naruto verse. Do you produce S-rank ninjas as a village, by training thousands of shinobi until you find a couple who are a genius? Or can anyone become that strong just by training hard and force of will?
If it's the second one (which it certainly looks like from looking at Naruto&Friends), then the point stands: it's incredibly wasteful to send someone to fight in ninja wars until they can hold their own against S-ranks.


EDIT:
If it is nature, that decides, then you have a better argument. Assume you need to train thousands of ninjas until you find that one gem, that can become another S-rank. To keep pace in the arms race with other villages you now train far more ninjas than you actually need in peacetime. That is because the number of ninja tasks available is limited by the size of the civilian economy. How much of their tax income can the noblemen waste on ninja? How much of their profits can the business owners waste? It's limited.
So how can you reduce that surplus of cannon-fodder shinobi? You don't want to let them wreak havoc among civilians by just discharging them.

You just send them out in huge numbers to take on enemy S-ranks in wars in the hopes that they can get lucky and take a few of them down in the process of getting slaughtered.

After the war when you need to recover, you don't have so many surplus ninja to feed and equip.

But as I said, it doesn't look like you need to train thousands of ninjas to discover that one gem in the manga.

 

I dunno. It's always struck me that Konoha just has a bunch more geniuses (read: broken bloodlines/abilities) per square mile than any other village. And really, how many do they even have at this point?

The Hokage have all been S-rank, I'd say. Naruto is definitely S-rank at this point. Jiraiya, Itachi, and Orochimaru were S-rank. And who else? Kakashi and Gai are getting their asses handed to them besides a few redeeming shots here and there, so I don't think they qualify as S-rank, though Kakashi is a lot closer than he was before with his Kamui-spam.

Sasuke might be S-rank at this point depending on how powerful his EMS turns out to be. But that's only because his brother choked and left behind his eyes for him.

It's not like just anyone can make the rank with hard work, either. Lee is probably the hardest worker in the manga and he's disappeared, along with everyone else in the Rookie 9 + Team Gai. I'd say the only Konoha S-ranks that really worked hard and weren't just born with it are Jiraiya and to some extent Naruto, and even that one is debatable.

So, moral of the story, lock down a summoning contract/ultra rare sage arts that don't suck, or dominate a Bijuu? I'd say that's sufficiently hard work to dissuade most from striving for legendary status.

 

Most if not all S class ninja's belong to three ategories:
unique super jutsu.
Even Kakashi who was considered a prodigy at youth is not an S class, why? I think it's because he didn't invent or learn a single or a couple of specialized destructive or otherwise effective techniques instead he copied thousandths of "regular" jutsus. Now he has Kamui, and apperantly he can use it a couple of times, so maybe he's even a S class ninja now.

bloodlines - self explanatory - Sharingan, Rinnegan what not insta S in some cases :/...

Biju - wanna be pals u living in my stomach anyway? sure....

My point is, I dont agree that everyone can get to the S mark with enough will and training. I think that Naruto is preordained to become a powerhouse from the start considering Kurama and his Uzumaki heritage, and maybe as the manga always reminds "the fire will". Why we sometimes think Naruto is a monstrously hard working ninja, which is not true, is because Kishimoto did a good job downgrading Naruto "pure talent", he did this because of Sasuke in my opinion.

Kakashi the prodigy isn't S rank or barely S rank with Kamui, what will he be without sharingan? and he was considered a prodigy before is sharingan.

 

Assuming the kages are s-rank, sasuke is s-rank since he fought multiple on relatively equal grounds. There's no question regarding that. The EMS only solidifies that.

 

It really depends though, doesn't it? Now that I think about it, my previous post might not even be accurate. How in the world can Tsunade or any of the other current Kage be S-ranked if they got demolished so handily by Madara? What does that make Madara? Hell, what does that make Hashirama?