Board Thread:Versus Debates/@comment-30426414-20170602005649/@comment-30426414-20170603065206

TheNarutoAnalytic wrote: I will simply say that judging by Itachi's performance against Sasuke he does not have a vast array of jutsu's indicating that he continued to train rigorously and learn new moves.

That doesn't mean he can't improve upon the abilities he already possessed.

TheNarutoAnalytic wrote: so he was never really challenged enough to become a great tactician, and it showed when he fought people who were on his level and knew how to counter him. The best feat we've seen Itachi do is predict that planetary devastation can be undone by destroying the core through overpowering it.

You can't claim that he was never challenged enough to become a good tactician when you've only seen a relatively minute fraction of his life on screen. Itachi figured out the rinnegan had shared vision and used his shuriken jutsu to disable the shared vision from blind spots, this is something that took Jiraiya, Fukasaku and Shima to fugure out. Itachi prognosticated that Obito would try to gain Sasuke's trust by showing him his sharigan, so he planted Amaterasu in Sasuke as a way to keep Obito away from his brother.

Itachi considered the scenario in which Sasuke would try to go against the village (which ended up happnening), so he left Kotoamatsukami in Naruto's hand because he knew Naruto would be the one to confront Sasuke. He also knew Sasuke would transplant his eyes so the Koto plan was fullproof had he not been ressurected.

From trapping people in genjutsus before they even realized what happened or before the battle even begins, to luring people into attacking an explosive clone, to predicting Kabuto's thoughts as Kabuto was making them: (1, 2), to figuring out a clever way to escape sound genjutsu in a very short time span as an attack was a few feet away from him, Itachi has shown that he is a master tactician both in and out of battle. The man had backup plans for his backup plans with the Amaterasu tranplant and koto cases, the only characters that have rivalled this level of planing are Madara, Zetsu and Shikamaru. So yes he has more than enough strategic feats to equal Kakashi.

TheNarutoAnalytic wrote: Itachi has been shown to struggle anytime he runs up against an opponent who knows how to get around his ninjutsu and mind tricks

Show me one time Itachi struggled against anyone at all. Choosing to withdraw from a battle that he never intended to fight isn't a valid answer.

TheNarutoAnalytic wrote: I believe there is good reason to make an inference that Kakashi's experience and smartness surpasses Itachi's natural pure calculative capabilities and genjutsu trickery.

Like I showed above, Itachi has strategic feats that put him at Kakashi's level. It's too vague to say who's the better tactician considering Itachi had much less screen time but was still able to pull off a number of impressive strategic feats, so its better to say they're equal.

TheNarutoAnalytic wrote: I agree that Guy did not necessarily give Itachi a problem; however, I do find it odd that as soon as Guy showed up, Itachi told Kisamé to be weary of Guy (even though Kisameé isn't even a Sharigan user)

I don't see anything wrong with warning his teammate to be careful with arguably the most powerful ninja in the village at the time.

TheNarutoAnalytic wrote: and Itachi soon after opted out the battle, as if he knew that Guy was not going to be an easy opponent for him.

Thats not true, Itachi only backed out of the battle after Guy revealed that he had called for reinforcements. He already made it clear that he didn't want a situation where more ninja from the village interfered before they retreated.

TheNarutoAnalytic wrote: Therefore I can infer that Itachi has more trouble with people who are equipped to counter him. Which only makes sense for any ninja. Seeing as War Arc Kakashi knows how to counter him with his weaknesses, and is weary of his genjutsu, I do not see Itachi winning without MS abilities since Kakashi outclasses him in nearly everything else at this point.

Based on the evidence I provided above, this inference is wrong. Moreover, genjutsu isn't the only thing in Itachi's arsenal. Like in all the Uchiha or sharingan related fights, genjutsu is just the warm up stage of the battle. This fight will go down exactly like Obito vs Kakashi, which is a battle of Ninjutsu and Taijutsu. Moreover, Kakashi only has an edge in ninjutsu, Itachi beats him in speed and taijutsu and they're equal in intelligence.

TheNarutoAnalytic wrote: You are correct in this statement; however, my point is that Kakashi can hold his ground against opponents far stronger than him

So can Itachi, As shown when he was going toe to toe with a perfect sage while only taking one critical hit in his edo state.

TheNarutoAnalytic wrote: Than Kisamé blatantly stated that both he and Itachi put together pale in comparison.

Thats not what Kisame said, he said names like the Uchiha clan and Seven ninja swords man pale in comparison to the title of legendary Sanin, so he wasn't talking about himself and Itachi individually, he was comaring the titles they held.

TheNarutoAnalytic wrote: This heavily implies that Jiraiya >= Itachi + Kisamé, and that if they fought, the best case scenario would be a tie or stalemate (with or without Kisamé's help). This Jiraiya wasn't even using Sage Mode. My point is that Itachi knows his weaknesses, and even Jiraiya is someone he would not like to risk going head-up against. Kisame also said, "He's in a different league" and Itachi agreed. This all shows that Itachi would rather dodge opponents that know how to avoid his tactics and have a strong diverse arsenal of jutsu's. Hence Itachi is not the untouchable battle genius people like to say he is, he's scared to go up against people who are smart + well equipped to counter him (who wouldn't be?).

You're completely ignoring the fact that Itachi never came to Konoha to fight against his brethren, his sole purpose was too meet Sasuke and he had to make it seem to Kisame as if he was hunting Jinchuriki. So fighting Jiraiya would have been completely useless since theres a chance he would have died or suffered injuries that would leave him unable to accomplish his plan with Sasuke in the future. Moreover, his goal wasn't to cripple his villages military strength by potentially killing or critically damaging one of the strongest ninja in the village. This is why he was always retreating, choosing to ends battles quickly, and asking his fellow hidden leaf ninja not to interfere. Kisame even found it fishy in the end. Notice how all your claims of Itachi being scared of fighting strong opponents came from the arc in which his goal was to avoid all fighting completely, and theres no evidence of any of this afterwards.

TheNarutoAnalytic wrote: When I stated the dogs would close the gap in speed, I meant that Itachi's speed advantage would be negligible because the dogs would constantly shout "watch out Kakashi" anytime Itachi tried to pull some sneaky shadow clone speed blitzing tricks.

Callouts don't work when two people are engaged in hand to hand combat. Kakashi can see Itachi's movements so he doesn't need callouts, but is he fast enough to react? The difference in speed isn't large enough to provide an actual advantage in this taijutsu fight but it does give Itachi an edge and since Kakashi will tire faster than Itachi due to Kakashi's sharingan. This difference in speed will start becoming more of an advantage as the battle progresses and Kakahshi starts slowing down as a result of a faster chakra depletion rate.

TheNarutoAnalytic wrote: And yes Itachi can see the dogs, but theoretically, if Kakashi is able to get all his dogs out, Itachi will have a lot of trouble tracking & dodging all of the dogs while trying to fight Kakashi's surplus of jutsu's that Itachi might be ill-equipped to counter, all at the same time.

Not really, a single crow clone could take care of all the dogs effortlessly.

TheNarutoAnalytic wrote: However, the edge Itachi holds in taijutsu and speed will not be enough to compensate for his lack of ninjutsu in comparison with War Arc Kakashi

I agree that Kakashi has an edge in ninjutsu but the diffrence isn't large enough to provide Kakashi a significan't advantage. His only jutsu that puts his above Itachi is the raikiri and its variants. And like we saw in the Sasuke vs Itachi fight, Sasuke used chidori about 5 times and was unable to hit Itachi at all with it. Itachi knows the raikiri well, we've seen him counter it multiple times so I don't see it being a big problem here. For the lightning beast running raikiri, Itachi could just summon a clone to tank it, as for the chain version, its not even worth using as its the most evadable version. Finally, for the lightning clone, thats similar to Itachi's explosive clone so it depends on who uses it first.

Also, for the other guys. The MS is restricted in this fight but the sharingan is allowed