It takes two things to make a powerful ninja in the Naruto universe, and frankly it boils down to nature and nurture.

The first thing you need is a good baseline affinity for the ninja arts - we'll call this it. There's never once been an instance in the manga where a high level ninja we see is shown to lack a natural, shall we say inborn, prowess for being a ninja.

Even a character like Jiraiya, who has no ninja pedigree that we know of, is said to have massive amounts of chakra that put him over and above most ninja.

Even characters like Gai, or Obito, or Naruto, who start off with a rather slow learning curve when it comes to learning ninja skills, have a natural proclivity for being good ninja. Naruto and Obito clearly have the genes, and I'm sorry, but no amount of simply kicking a wooden log or running around Konoha on his hands gave Gai the ability to stomp all over Kisame or Madara's Susano'o.

Powerful ninjas are born with it. I can't tell you what it is with any certainty, but there is without a doubt in my mind some natural ability that all these strong ninja are born with that can't be trained.

Second, a strong ninja needs will. There's not a single strong ninja that doesn't have it. Whether it's determination to protect loved ones, duty to village, or a need to become personally stronger through any kind of fuckery they can think of, all of the strongest ninja are driven by their will to become greater.

There is not a single strong ninja in the manga that simply rolled out of bed one day and became a top tier ninja. They all put in countless amounts of effort to become as strong as they are. They all took risks, suffered setbacks, and muscled through.

This is why when I still hear people talking about "genius ninja" on forums and the like I have to laugh to myself. That may have been a term used back in part 1, but the manga itself has completely debunked the notion that such things exist in my opinion.

Intellectually, I think the notion is sort of insulting - that someone is born with all the skills and talents to be good at something without effort. Intelligent people don't talk about folks in the real world like that. We don't pretend that our sports stars are good at what they do because they were simply born to do it and ignore all of the time and effort they put into it. Not with any amount of seriousness, anyways. Sure they were born with a great affinity for athletics, but to pretend that they didn't train for years to get good at their sport or to get themselves into peak condition is absurd.

Ninja in the Narutoverse are no different. "Genius ninja" is a term used by fodder ninja to describe those they could never hope to hold a candle to. I have yet to see a single example of a character in the manga that was truly powerful "just because."

P.S. - Kakashi is S-rank. Gai is probably S-rank too. Your average jounin is an A-rank ninja, and someone like Kakashi could kill them by the bushel. Like Jon said, S-rank stretches from "I'm better than a jounin" to "I'm going to crush your face with the moon."

Notice nobody talks about S-rank ninja in the manga anymore. What's the point?

 

I'm with Jon. S-Rank is clearly just the designation where there is no upper bounds. Granted, there's been an extreme ramping up of abilities over the lifetime of the manga, which is understandable. Current events make that S-Rank battles in part one look pathetic. The limits on abilities that kept things in check, hand signs, chakra exhaustion, speed, strength, and tactics have more or less gone out of the window. I was pretty much stunned when Kakashi actually used that earth wall technique. I was disappointed when the bulldog faces didn't turn into summons that attacked Tobito.

That said, Kakashi is probably S-Rank. If Hidan and Deidara and Danzo and Konan were, then Kakashi has to be at this point. He supposedly took out most of the seven swordsmen, and its implied he did it largely alone. Gai probably counts too. But they are definitely on the lower end of the scale at this point. Heck, the Sannin and Itachi and most of Akatsuki are probably on the lower end of the scale now that Madara is here, the implications of Hashirama being uber and the insane power up Naruto's gotten and Sasuke's inevitable roflstomp!redemption.

 

You are absolutely right about the manga and S ranks , but we all are fan fiction readers, and most of them, even the good ones do mention occasionally ""genius" and more than occasionally ranks.

 

I think Jiraiya would still be pretty high compared to the manga now. Itachi too, though his sickness might be a limiting factor. It goes, from what we know:
Sage of 6 paths
Hashirama
Madara
Huuuuge gap in ability
Tobi
Naruto
Probably the other kages and Sasuke are here
Kakashi/Gai
That's my opinion anyways.
Yeah, howdy def has the right of it. Awesome ninjas are born good, work hard as fuck, and become awesome through hard work.
That's why I find it funny when sasuke and the sharingan are called haxed. EVERYOne is haxxed. The sharingan, rinnegan, sage techniques, being born with massive amounts of chakra. I can really only think of Minato and a couple of others that werent born with some huge obvious advantage. Though they were all, like howdy says, obviously smart from the get-go.

 

You can't really construct a plausible world anymore from the manga.
Obviously the manga now just introduces progressively more powerful enemies to keep it interesting, even if it breaks the world.

How could the 3rd Hokage defeat a resurrected Hashirama, when a resurrected Madara is so obscenely strong? You have to make up some convoluted reasoning about Orochimarus resurrection technique being much weaker back then or the 1st Hokage fighting the control subconsciously.

If Hashirama and Madara were both such monsters, how could there have been a balance of power back then between the villages? Shouldn't Konoha have just conquered the world? Or did the other villages also have equally strong ninja back then?
Did ninja become weaker over time?

I would agree with the assessment that it is a combination of aptitude and hard work and will to become powerful. (And luck in acquiring random power-ups.)
But then the question is again: if you can spot that very early (by looking for powerful bloodlines or huge chakra pools), why even train those 10,000 cannon fodder ninja?
It seems like a huge waste.
Just do it like Hogwarts and accept only those who have 'it'.

 

Oro's version controlled summonings like puppets, so they were only as good as he was. Kabuto on the other hand let them have much more freedom and use their own experience in the battle. I don't see how that's convoluted.

 

There has to be ninja to do ordinary mission, some gourd duty, delivery of some important documents things like that. Because there is need of this type of mission, there has to be large number of ninja to do as many as can be, big number of mission equal lot of money. You just look from the perspective of war, in peace time it's different. Why use Itachi or other S-class ninja for delivery of some document when Iruka or other Chunin can do the same job, and get the same amount of money from the client. Sorry for not being 100% clear, but I'm in a little bit of hurry.

 

The question is not even about the version but the fact that Orochimaru ,I presume collected the DNA of a large part of the most famous ninja in the century, when ninja supposed to destroy any such DNA on spot, especially of ninjas of that caliber, or at the least do everything in their power to get rid of the body in an acceptable way.

 

Whilst they destroy the bodies when they can and cremation is apparently the norm in the Japanese culture (which is presume is what's done in the Narutoverse), there's no guarantee of destroying all traces of their DNA.

You wouldn't necessarily need a corpse to acquire DNA when shinobi spend their lives fighting all over the continent. And stealing bodies/DNA whenever the chance arises is practically the norm for ninjas so it'd be difficult to prevent that every single time.

 

I don´t remember anyone except Hermione even being worth anything. And she got there through hard work and dedication.

Harry could do the Patronus, big whoop. That was one spell out of the ordinary that later the rest of the DA learned as well. Again, through ceasless practice rather than talent or any sort of inborn power.

Granted i haven´t touched the books in years since the last volume ruined the series for me.

One thing that bugged me about that was specifically how incompetent Harry really was to deal with anyone, let alone Voldemort who was totally dumbed down in that book.

tl;dr don´t think Hogwarts was a good example to illustrate your point.

edit: oh and even Hermione was nowhere even close to the "S Class" wizards in HP to get back to the Naruto comparison.

 

I think he was referring to Wizards and Muggles i.e. it = magic.

 

I think it was a fine example, especially since everyone here knows it. In Hogwarts, everyone has the same potential - there is no magical core with strength X - and the difference lies only in studiousness and diligence.
The equivalent to Naruto-verse would be Hogwarts just taking in the first hundred applicants to the school whether or not they're actually magical.

EDIT: Yeah, see knight504s post above.

In the Naruto universe the best ninja are so far above the average ones, that it's a complete waste to send anyone but the best into combat.

I know that from a story-telling perspective, it's useful to show a character dispatching a dozen enemies easily to show how strong he has become.
But from another perspective it makes the leaders of the respective villages look stupid.

 

I really want Madara to throw a meteor at Naruto before more flashbacks start.

 

I'm quite sure that Madara has surpassed Hashirama already. No reason to keeping saying how strong must he have been and whatnot.

It was an Uchiha thing to want to rule the world by force.


The ninja world relies on excellent teamwork and planning to kill superior ninja. Hidan was bested by Shikamaru and Asuma. Look at how Edo Deidara lost to Sai, Kankuro, and some lightning using guy. An S rank like Kakashi would likely be killed by a decent sized group of A rank shinobi. S rank shinobi might be able to dominate a battlefield but you'd need a pretty strong S rank shinobi(or one that can avoid getting attacked like Deidara) to do it alone.

 

Alright, like this it makes more sense.

My point remains though that among the Hogwarts alumni noone even came close to Voldemort or Dumbledore in any meaningful magical aspect.

So talent > dedication.

But i mean, in the end all this arguing will end up with plot armor anyway.

--------

Who would win in a fight of Batman against Edo Madara? See what i mean?

 

Those examples worked only because they contained named characters and they have plot armor.
Named characters are pretty much by definition not part of the cannon fodder.

I know that I'm pretty much complaining about story telling tropes by now.
If you want to construct a Naruto world that makes sense, you have to disregard at least some part of the manga - or at least reinterpret it quite heavily. When Kishimoto makes up those numbers he uses, he's probably thinking about it as much as Rowling did in her books...

 

If we're just talking about fodder vs main characters then anybody can take out a crapload of fodder and there's no point in bringing in S rank.

 

Naruto, get it while its still lukewarm.

 

Edit: Link above - take it easy Zenzao - it's a link, I didn't specially post it for second time to annoy you or something. I won't post links any more, second week in the row somebody has some problems with me, so whatever.
TLDR: No link any more