Caught up with Naruto Shippuden a few weeks ago

[SineSwiper]

They still got it. Despite the slow pacing of the initial episodes, it picked up fast. Naruto in Sage Mode is the fucking shit! That whole battle scene with Pain is among my favorites, along with all of the character development in-between. (I just hope that the rest of the characters can catch up. I'd love to see Rock Lee in Drunken mode again.)

The guy finally got his resolve and acting like a leader now. I hate who they killed off to get there, but overall, it's been really enjoyable to watch.

[Zeus]

Told ya. Non-filler is fabulous. And after the first two manga arcs in Shippudden when they got rid of the inner-ep filler, the manga-based stuff has been awesome

[SineSwiper]

I've actually be avoiding the NS threads. Need to go back and read them.

[Don]

I don't see Naruto being much of a leader beyond having the ability to beat everyone up and generally not getting other people killed needlessly, though compared to other Anime out there I suppose that makes him the equivalent of Julius Caesar. The Pain arc was okay though the way it was resolved was somewhat ridiculous. I expected the ramen shop owner to just come out and take out a Pain, and the whole code thing turned out to be just kill the Pain that can regenerate first, aka 'kill the healer' strategy. And given Pain can't change who is the 'healer' equivalent there wasn't even a point to code that since he can't do anything about it.

[Zeus]

Don, man, remember, not everyone's as far as you. Use the spoiler button. I'm keeping my response spoiler-free for Sine's sake.

The resolution of the Pain arc was great. It's completely in line with what the whole series was all about and what Naruto's real strength is. Much better ending than what I was thinking.

[Don]

Spoiler: show

It's not bad but they portray Pain as this super powerful guy when really Jiraiya plus 5 other good ninjas could've just separated them to 6 1on1s and then it'd be completely trivial to defeat him. Even if the stronger Pains killed some of those guys, whoever matches up with the 'healer' Pain would've won for sure and after you took that Pain out it's just a straightforward fight. I assume originally the author had bigger plans but can't think of anything interesting. I mean based on what they revealed about Pain you could've taken all the Pains out by just pulling these funny sticks they have. Yeah it doesn't solve get rid of them for good but it sure will disable them. For that matter you never even see what's so special about Pain's eyes, and the whole shared vision thing wasn't even a factor in the Pain arc. Besides, you already got 360 vision eyes in Naruto, and we're supposed to believe some shared vision eyes is supposed to be better? It's said that Pain is supposed to be able to use all kinds of nijitsu at the same time thanks to his special eyes but he also never did that. The whole arc just feels like it got cut halfway because the author can't think of anything interesting.

But at least Naruto did a good job protecting the people. By Anime standards that's pretty impressive since the defintion of a hero is generally someone who puts his friends needlessly in danger.[

[SineSwiper]

Spoiler: show

I think overall the individual Pains were still a major challenge to the village as a whole. Two high-class ninjas almost died (one really did) just fighting one or two of them. Yes, they were trying to fight them separately, but when they have shared vision, it's easy enough for the Pains to figure out that one of them is in trouble and to send another in to assist.

Jiraiya is a Sannin, a class that isn't matched by anybody except Tsunade, who was using her skills to heal everybody else, and Naruto, who was the only one who could go toe-to-toe with all five of them. The rest of the Jounin are still good ninja, but they would have some serious problems going even 1-on-1 with these guys. Even with the one skill they have, they are really good at their one skill.

Anyway, it doesn't matter because the Naruto fights were awesome, and I really like the background story about his parents near the end.

[Don]

Jiraiya can fight 3 of the Pains by himself and still come out ahead. The only Pain that is really problematic is the guy that can do gravity and you probably have to throw some bodies at him. The other Pains just don't have very powerful abilities. The only guy that would be tough to separate would be the gravity guy since he can repel people, but it's not like that's impossible. Kakashi more or less got him separated by himself too. Yeah you can't expect to beat him 1 on 1 but just take care of the others and then you can easily just zerg the gravity guy since he can't use the ability continously.

[SineSwiper]

This argument is somewhere on par with "Pain's a pussy! I could have beat him up single-handedly."

[Zeus]

This argument is somewhere on par with "Pain's a pussy! I could have beat him up single-handedly."

Don clearly watches anime with a completely different mindset than everyone else.

[Don]

There's a difference between a guy being tough and being able to take out a nation single handedly.

If he just went up and does one of his big gravity moves immediately the damage is unavoidable but he also loses the ability to use other Pains after doing that so that in case you probably just get a double KO. If he fights as 6 people it is very easy to defeat them at a reasonable loss.

Naruto's standard for 'a guy who can take out a nation' is ridiculously low. I don't know why they keep on stress on that when the characters are clearly not capable of taking out a nation by themselves. Do people forget that the whole point of why Akatsuki exists is so that they can subvert the major powers and stuff and THEN take ovre the world. If they have the power to just take on the world they wouldn't need to operate covertly, but of course any random guy in there says they can take out a nation head on (and then fail miserably).