Board Thread:Theories and Speculation/@comment-31338621-20190501030435/@comment-9782468-20190503030310

YD.Ann wrote: Ok the Anbu thing may have been a reach, but I was making the point that at 8 or 13 he was thinking like a Hokage, and as he got older his skills matched the mentality making him a difficult opponent for any shinobi to face.

I suppose we could use part 1 Itachi before he fought Kakashi, because Kisame made it be known that Itachi had limited use with the MS.

I think what gives Itachi the edge is Minato's inability to counter any of Itachi's top tier jutsu(and I'm excluding Izanami/ Izanagi).

No disrespect to Minato, but I think Itachi would be able to figure out the Flying Raijin mechanics which would ultimately be Minato's demise. Yeah. He had Hokage mentality young, then got more skilled and powerful with age. Very quickly. Genius after all.

Itachi always would have limited use with MS. Even Sasuke had limited use with it, and he was an Indra Transmigrant. Sasuke went blurry eyed in one day of overuse. Itachi used the techs very sparingly.

Minato can react to Amaterasu (he's faster in combat than 4th Raikage who dodged Amaterasu), as a Shinobi of Konoha knows not to look Itachi in the eye for Tsukuyomi, and can teleport Susanoo off of Itachi (he can teleport chakra constructs, and Gaara vs Madara proved that Susanoo and its user can be separated). Sword of Totsuka is dodgeable and he also has jutsu like Guiding Thunder for it. Izanami really only works on people who can't accept their own fate (hence its use on Izanagi users who warped reality because they didn't like their results). So Minato, who accepted who accepts who he is and easily accepted eventually that he wasn't the Child of the Prophecy, would be way less susceptable. Also, no indication that Itachi knows Izanami so he doesn't have it in VS debates.

Will Minato pull off each counter successfully? Maybe not. Mistakes happen and he may not think of everything in time. But I just gave that list to prove that he does in fact have counters. How a fight would go down, however, depends a lot on the flow of the fight and their thought processes. But yeah, he does in fact have counters.

Tobi knew Flying Raijin's mechanics and still lost handily to Minato. Keep in mind, Tobi here has already killed dozens of Anbu and Jonin immediately upon awakening his Mangekyo, and could use his Mangekyo indefinitely because of Hashirama cells, and he easily killed the anbu that were protecting Kushina