Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-3279282-20140413164418/@comment-732150-20140414011715

As cringe-inducing as I find that moment, I must play devil's advocate here. Naruto used many shadow clones to learn wind nature transformation, and the only canonical technique we've ever seen him apply that to is an extremely complex S-rank technique. What the Alliance did was broadcast to every one on the field (at least chunin or higher I suppose), the hand seals to the easiest, most basic earth wall that someone who has probably used Earth Release his whole life knew. The level of complexity is not the same. And just because the entire alliance used Earth Release, it doesn't mean that only the Iwa-nin knew it. There's still some people in other villages who know ER, and probably a few people from Iwa that don't.