Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-27660682-20160128215222

It appears to me that alot of people in the naruto fandom treat this kage level shinbo renowned as the God of shinobi like he is fodder. Many claim he is featless and that him being powerful was just poor writing. I'm making this post to debunk these claims, using evidence directly from the manga. Consider these facts:

Hiruzen was a Master of all 5 elements, not simply just a user of them. No one in the series is as versatile as Hiruzen when it comes to the use of the 5 elements. He, as an edo tensi of his 69 year old self who was close, but not 100  percent full power, was able to effortlessly match the power of the mini shinsenju summoned by Swirl Zetsu, element for element. This is a big feat because you look at the manga panel carefully, you can see how huge the attacks were, they were absolutely humongous and were gonna demolish a good portion of the shinobi alliance. But Hiruzen easily countered the attack.

Tobirama Senju, one of the smartest people in the naruto universe( definitely top 3) and one of the strongest kage, even one of the strongest shinobi period, looked at a young Hirzuen in the middle of War, and told him that he was going to be entrusted with the future of the village. Consider the fact that Tobirama worked pretty hard to build the village with his brother and the uchiha, and that he cares about the village so much that as a reanimation he was willing to kill Sasuke just at the thought sasuke was gonna destroy the village. He died protecting the village in the first place. So the fact that he chose Hiruzen is not only a testament to Hiruzen's character, it was a testament to how powerful Hiruzen was at the time. Hiruzen was trained by both Tobirama and Hashirama, who again are among the strongest shinobi in history itself. This in itself is a pretty large feat for Hiruzen who wasn't even in his prime yet.

Hiruzen was the only Konoha kage to survive his entire tenure, and heck even had two tenures as Hokage and lived to age 70. This is a feat of intelligence and his power, because Danzo tried to kill him multiple times often using assassins and Konoha had been through a few wars. Don't get me wrong, Hiruzen did make many poor decisions as Hokage, but those were due to his emotional weaknesses not because of a lack of intellect. Speaking of his intellect:

Hiruzen was known as the professor of Konoha, had great knowledge on the use and application of all the jutsu in the village, and consider that Konoha has the most overpowered jutsus out of all the villages. So just off of that his arsenal is incredibly huge, adding to his already insane amount of versatility. The Death Reaper Seal+ shadow clone combo alone is pretty deadly, as a ranged and ethereal attack, so yes its very possible for hiruzen to beat people like EMS madara.

A 70 year old Hiruzen was able to fight his former sensi and again among the strongest shinobi in history, the Senju brothers, to a draw and sealed their souls away. Now, yes Hashirama and Tobirama were much weaker than they were in their prime and didn't have access to all of their abilities, however Hiruzen's handicap was even worse, as at least the Senju brothers had immortal bodies, weren't old, and didn't have diminished chakra reserves. Even Orochimaru openly admitted that if Hiruzen was ten years younger, orochimaru would have been dead multiple times over. Hiruzen still was able to muster out the chakra for two shadow clones and cast the death reaper seal. So imagine if he was able to make a 3rd or fourth shadow clone like he did in the war? that would have changed the battle dramatically.

So most of the doubt about Hiruzen's abilities comes from the fact we have seen little of him in action, which can be said about a lot of shinobi in Naruto. But the little he has shown in weaker versions of himself all were impressive feats.

Feel free to comment and give rebuttals. 