Board Thread:Episode Discussions/@comment-25319479-20170920093317/@comment-2112031-20170923110101

AsianReaper wrote: Sage Mode improves the quality of Naruto's chakra so it's easier for him to form the Rasngan. And still, he never made a Rasengan outside of a mode until he was 17. Even when he made it with Sage Mode he was 17 during the Fourth World War. During the Pain fight he still needed clones to create Rasengan. Making a Rasengan massive just means adding chakra to it. He still needed the clone to actually initially form the shell like always. To be fair, it's entirely possible that Naruto did that out of habit rather than necessity. It's entirely possible that Naruto could already produce a Rasengan without a clone by the time Shippuden began, but continued doing it that way because he was used to doing it that way.