I never noticed all those random casaulties before. Ouch.
Genjutsu blocks and
genjutsu traps seem like an interest concept that never gets explored. I suppose genjutsu blocks are a way of protecting information inside someone's mind by twisting their thoughts and genjutsu traps are meant to counter jutsu that actually delve into someone's mind.
And I wonder: did Pain implant these genjutsu blocks because this genin was involved in
delivering bodies to the tower shrines or does he implant them in
every single ninja of Ame?
It doesn't really matter given how Naruto usually just enters Sage Mode himself in battle or has a clone do it quite quickly but it would have been cool if Naruto had learned how to reverse summon one of his clones directly rather than rely on a scroll.
Though this whole scene seems a tad force. Even if just dispelling the clone doesn't instaneously retrieve the chakra, would the time gap really be so large that everything they did here was actually faster? The fact that the reverse summoning scroll never shows up again doesn't help.
Heh. Pain Master.
Anyway, it's a shame how all of that
investigation went to waste as Naruto figured out the whole thing by himself and even tracks
Nagato's location which is pretty impressive when none of the other sensors managed to do the same. They should have had Katsuyu relay the information first and then Naruto managing the use the chakra stakes for reverse tracking.
Interesting details on those uniforms are the grips on their feet and the clawed gloves. Never noticed that before.
Konan's dialogue indicates that she's seen the Gedo Mazo and specifically doesn't want Nagato to use it. But it's obvious that Nagato couldn't have used its powers before because he was immediately stabbed by the chakra stakes and had his life force drained by it. I guess Obito revealed its existence to them and warned them that it would drain Nagato's life force beforehand.
Hold up, are they actually inside
Ame? Everything about this scene screams Amegakure and none of the other places we've seen in that country look like that place. But these guys aren't actually Ame ninja, they're a separate organisation that Hanzo didn't even know about at first and even operated in
specific hideouts rather than from within the hidden village.
In hindsight, Nine-Tails Chakra Mode could have been
That Jutsu.
A jutsu that Minato and Kushina had been working on together with the intention of using the Nine-Tails' chakra to create something more powerful than a jinchuuriki's standard chakra cloak or something along those lines. Only they discovered that they couldn't use it without first mastering the Nine-Tails' chakra which never went anywhere. Minato passed that jutsu to Jiraiya along with the seal's key when he died, hoping that Naruto would be able to do what they couldn't. Jiraiya taught it to Naruto during the training trip but because he couldn't master the Nine-Tails, he warns Naruto against using it because trying it with that malignant chakra and the unstable mindset would just get him hurt.
Then Naruto finally overcomes the Nine-Tails and takes control of some its chakra which uses for That Jutsu, creating the Nine-Tails Chakra Mode. Abilities like its powerful lifeforce capable of growing trees, freeform shape changing, the ability to share its chakra and other stuff could be attributed to Naruto using That Jutsu.
Hidan might have worked better as a Part 1 villain than a member of Akatsuki. If Kishimoto had followed through with creating more story arcs after the Land of Waves then Hidan could have been introduced as a enemy ninja more powerful and more evil than Zabuza but still within the realm of being beatable by someone of Kakashi's level unlike Orochimaru who'd appear later. Perhaps a mission to the Village That Forgot War that goes horribly wrong.
A feat like this would have been better suited for the next Tsuchikage, Kurotsuchi. Unlike Darui who got a small fight during the Kage Summit and a bigger fight against the Gold and Silver Brothers, all Kurotsuchi does is fail against Kabuto and help her dad capture a bunch of Zetsu. I like to think that she's as good as her dad at Earth Release with Lava Release on top anyway but there's nothing ever shown to us to back that up.
Rather than the
Kinkaku Force being responsible for the Second Hokage's death, it might have had more of an impact if it was the
Gold and Silver Brothers who did the deed. Even now, we know nothing about the Kinkaku Force or their relation to Kinkaku himself but we end up seeing a fair bit of the brothers themselves. Of course, I could have done without the silly tools and just focuses on their jinchuuriki forms but still.Tobirama dying against two pseudo-jinchuuriki he'd fought before to protect his team - and killing them both in the process to explain how they even died - seems a lot more epic and impactful than dying against a force of twenty jounin. The other Kages where we know how they died seemed to die against other Kages, criminals on the level of Kages or just unbelievable odds.
