Board Thread:Theories and Speculation/@comment-25093611-20160821131910/@comment-734582-20160821215438

Ravenlot 27 wrote: Also, by that logic, Sasuke should receive a snake SM I think Sasuke should have regained his Curse Seal ability. It was fine as it was, powerful but not insanely. I don't see him having to lose visual prowess.

GreatestSin wrote: while i agree with everything else you said i would still disagree with gaara Gaara was considered a strong enough weapon to destroy Konoha, and his village had trouble containing him. Jonin were afraid of him even. His biggest weakness was that he was mentally very unstable, so he rarely focused his energy.

Regarding some other things:

I think the biggest problem with powercreep in naruto is not that it happened (it'll happen in pretty much any long-running story), but that it happened so fast. In between Sage mode and effective godmode were just a few week. I think the story would've hugely benefited from Part II ending with Nagato's death (or slightly thereafter, setting up Part III) and a few months later, Part III starts with Naruto having trained a bit.

I think Kishimoto missed a few cool opportunities. Naruto giving his essence to Kurama was a big deal, it could've been used to set up a stronger bond with Kurama, e.g. Naruto being able to sense his anger. I think he could've used his Jinchuriki powers more.

Other things not yet mentioned are that i liked the animal magic theme of the Sannin and Sound Four, but was sad it was rarely used further. Especially the Jinchurki and the weird hybrid animal Biju could've benefited hugely from this. I also liked the theme of a Ninja's body containing many secrets, but later on many ninja seemed to use some tricks, with little explanation what their body's secrets would be. I thought the series would be more about enhancing one's body and taking power for oneself. Curse seal, transplanted Sharingan, etc were things i thought would be more common.

The final big thing is that i liked various weapon jutsu a lot, ranging from Orochimaru's sword-in-mouth to wind-sharpened kunai to elemental weapons. I thought ninja like Tenten would use such techniques, and it's sad that quite a few ninja seemed one-trick ponies.