Naruto Shippuden Episode 299: The Acknowledged One

“Every jutsu has a weakness!”

Impression

As speculated last week, Nagato does end up having all of the jutsu that his Six Paths of Pain could use – and because this is the real, unimpaired Nagato and not the corpse puppets he controlled from afar, his attacks are all in a different league now. Even in his Kyuubi Chakra Cloak, Naruto can’t stand up to the power of Nagato’s Ningendo, and even while Nagato is busy absorbing Naruto’s chakra, he has the power to restrain and take out Killer Bee effortlessly, despite having to resort to using some scary-looking artificial arms. If he wasn’t willing to talk back during his invasion of Konoha, Naruto would definitely have been in trouble trying to deal with both him and Konan.

Thank god Itachi was there to save the day – and even after his death, he continually proves himself to be as strong intellectually as he is physically, which makes it even more obvious that he allowed Sasuke to kill him on purpose during their battle – had he properly been trying and not hindered through having to remove Orochimaru’s influence from Sasuke, Itachi would have probably still managed to pull off some sort of a victory. Anyway, his Susanoo saved Naruto and Killer Bee from what would have been an anti-climatic ending to two Jinchuuriki, and was pretty central to all the attacks he used from then on – despite managing to release himself from the Edo Tensei’s constraints, as a departed soul brought back to the world he’s still probably bound by its rules, which includes immortality and an unlimited chakra reserve. That makes Mangekyou Sharingan techniques like the Susanoo extremely convenient to use, as it’d have resulted in much pain and chakra draining under usual conditions.

Chibaku Tensei made a reappearance, last used against the Six-Tailed Naruto, who promptly broke out of it using brute force after transforming to an uncontrolled Eight-Tails. It was smart of him to ignore the looming danger and decide to think calmly, managing to come up with a plan to attack the center of gravity using everyone’s most powerful long-distance ninjutsu. Even constraints like aim, that would have prevented Naruto from attacking it at all were subverted by Itachi’s theory that any ranged attack would end up hitting it regardless of where you aimed it, since it’d be sucked in towards the center too. Chibaku Tensei’s strength, powerful gravitational pull, is thus also its weakness as the gravity works against it during ranged attacks. Nagato’s second “death” ended up pretty similar to his first, with him entrusting Naruto once more to complete the “trilogy” that connected himself, Naruto and Jiraiya.

It’s a staple of the shounen genre to prioritise teamwork, yet here we have Naruto trying too hard to do everything himself, which is what Itachi tried to do with the whole issue over the Uchiha clan’s coup and his own actions regarding Sasuke. While he did plan out some very clever moves, his plans failed in the end, which he predicts will happen to Naruto as well should he try to shoulder the entire burden on his own. While he’s strong, this whole war is being fought over him and Killer Bee – it may be better to leave everything to others, and rely on them for a change. With the intellect he has, Itachi will do just fine in breaking Kabuto’s Edo Tensei – and it’s more than foreshadowing when Kabuto’s been going on all this time about how his jutsu has no weaknesses.