>>1995Speaking of Naruto fights, something people like to do are VS battles and other stuff - pitting 1 character or group of characters against another. Part of this is, of course power scaling, statements, feats and calcs. This harks back to power levels in DBZ and other media.
Among the common issues of such debates are inconsistencies in a narrative or a character
- PIS = Plot Induced Stupidity, this is when something happens because of plot i.e. Goku getting a sudden power up for no reason
- WIS = Writer Induced Stupidity i.e. Batman KO's superman with a single punch. No other reason is present other than it being batman.
- CIS = Character Induced Stupidity, basically things that happen because of a characters personality. i.e. Flash getting tagged 99% of the time by very slower opponents aka street level guys.
- Gag feats i.e. A character having a huge head or a loud sonic scream for a joke
However one of the biggest problems is that a lot of people take DBZ type power scaling (something also seen in Yu Yu Hakusho with Demon ranks) and apply it to all fandoms, regardless of the type of media. In Fairy Tail, Boku no Hero, One Piece and Naruto there are limitations or complexities 0 power alone has to be significant to make an impact.
Naruto does this really well for a large portion of the story. The 5 elements are set up in such a way that one counters or assists another - wind beats lightning, water beats fire and so on. And then different elements can combine to synchronize; wind empowers fire or kekkei genkai like ice release (water + wind) - and thus, as mastery of all elements was rare, one ninja's strength was another's weakness and vice versa. Moreover Genjutsu, Ninjutsu and Taijutsu focuses meant that masters of one art could be vulnerable to others.
Problem is due to how flashy and powerful one character may seem, another character that ought to be able to beat them due to skill differences is disregarded.
An example of this is the 4th Raikage. Often when compared to someone like Jiraiya, people seem to assume the Raikage would win mid-low diff. The problem is that Jiraiya ought to be a rather good counter to the Raikage - though not quite a hard counter like Kisame was to Killer Bee - mid-diffing him instead.
The feats/statements are what is usually looked at, but lacks important info. The most important part is styles. The Raikage uses Nin-taijutsu, which is why he is backed up by Darui and Cee, to handle long-range combat and genjutsu. His lightning armor defends him against most attacks and boosts his speed to lightning levels, allowing ordinary strong blows become bludgeons with cutting, electrifying ability. Still, he is a close-range fighter
Jiraiya specializes in ninjutsu and a firm taijutsu to back that up. Immobilization and long-range striking would therefore be a major option Example: Swamp of the Underworld, while vulnerable to lightning jutsu, (lightning > earth) would slow done or even halt the Raikage, as it is essentially a bottomless pit capable of swallowing up titanic snakes even when Jiraiya was drugged and weak. Blasting through it would hinder the Raikage's movements and expose him to follow-up strikes - such as a giant rasengan.
This is important because stat-wise Jiraiya matches the Raikage in pure physicals and chakra quantity, meaning that how they use those stats is important in fights, yet people seem to forget that because "lightning beats earth!!!"
You see the same shit with other vsbattles as well, but this exemplifies it well.