Board Thread:Versus Debates/@comment-26636534-20180830184727/@comment-34194151-20181203233915

Chapter 550 pg 15. Nagato runs ahead and gets behind killer bee. Killer bee enters v2 and swipes down at nagato, and nagato dodges as killer bee hits the ground, shown in the manga and anime. Nagato couldn't dodge the lariat but, it's debatable because he clearly also wanted to absorb killer bee's chakra, rendering a desire to dodge there not as necessary. From the looks of it, killer bee hit him with the lariat, and nagato only started absorbing in the next panel. So that would indicate that killer's bee speed was faster than the activation of the preta barrier?? Mind you though, that was Nagato without any rocket boosters, which I'll come back to later in this post.

The reason I see it as impressive I guess is also because most of the top tier Ninjas in naruto all have incredible reaction times and reflexes, even if they are on the slow side in terms of running speed. Nagato isn't special in terms of running speed, but I personally believe that Nagato could react to a top speed blitz from V2 ayy for example, which is a big deal. V2 ayy is a like a solid benchmark for speed, he is only outclassed by the minato tobirama, and god tiers pretty much). Unless you think the Raikage's absolute speed would dominate nagato, I beleive nagato could react to him, shinra tensei him away, and from there nagato's arsenal is far too varied and hax'd for Ayy to deal with, I see ayy getting caught by the chameleon, having his raiton armor absorbed, being sealed in chibaku tensei, etc. The potential fact that someone at the level of Nagato couldn't react to the totsuka blade is a big deal for me, which is why I have been looking for solid counterarguments to the point. The totsuka blade is still a legendary item. It has incredible hype behind it, and so far, it hasn't let itachi down. Scaling the totsuka blade's thrust to being faster than V2 Ayy would be a big deal. But it also is speculatory because I'm not sure if nagato can react to V2 Ayy or not at the moment.

And Here is the other thing about Nagato. While his legs are messed up, We have seen the ashura path can generate rocket boosters on the feet Chapter 430 pg 16. So the thing is, nagato clearly couldn't move an inch in the time it took for totsuka blade to seal him. Even if kabuto for some reason thought it wasn't worth it to attempt to absorb totsuka blade because it's a spiritual item, and similiarly, if Deva path was on cool down, surely, attempting to move Nagato would be the next common sense thing to do. None of that happened, so it would still constitute a speed feat, though I suppose it isn't quite as impressive given that Nagato isn't exactly top tier in physical movement speed, even with rocket booster support. But still, given the distance Nagato is from the smokescreen, it still is a decent speed feat.

Fair point about Orochimaru. Before Chapter 551 came out, I would have agreed with you 100 percent that it didn't have a solid speed feat, other than the fact that it did seem to abruptly cut off orochimaru's speech. But with Chapter 551 also in the midst, it does really seem like the blade is incredibly fast, even if we give nagato the full benefit of the doubt and claim that both preta path and shinra tensei weren't viable choices.