Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-35024407-20180405035717/@comment-2120712-20180526005037

I agree, the Hokage are always deemed the strongest among the kage & the series has focused on them the most, so our perception of Kage level is pretty skewed towards the high end, not to mention Naruto being a congruence of various OP bloodlines + jinchuriki of the strongest non-fused tailed beast. Darui seems like a foil to Kakashi being trained by a previous Kage(he learned black lightning from the third raikage), laid back demeanor, & he can boast being a former right hand/bodyguard for his predecessor. Gaara got enough showing to be proven to be Kage level. Kurosutchi is where the problems begin, we were shown some of her abilities but what probably pushed her up to being Tsuchikage is her lineage. Kishi making her the best genjutsu user among the 5 Kage is making up for the lack of feat showing. Problem with Chojiro is that we don't get to see his growth from start to finish. While Naruto & co were maturing, Chojiro was going through his own tale of from being a scared ninja with notable talent in Kenjutsu to being strong in character & ability to be Mizukage. It hurts that we got a much more impressive showing from the 2nd Mizukage, aka Awesomekage, to the point that he was arguably strong enough to beat 2 Kage backed up by platoons of shinobi.

I have no doubt that Chojiro grew into a powerful shinobi, but given that this is a hidden leaf village focused franchise, we don't get to see his story before our eyes. Kind of wish they would use the novels for that. Give us the stories of other villages that the main stuff(boruto manga & anime) doesn't have time for.