Board Thread:Theories and Speculation/@comment-34656247-20180531072459/@comment-734582-20180605070544

FlatZone wrote: Obito made it clear afterwards that if Itachi wanted to kill Sasuke, then he would have, this is literally stated by Obito in the manga. Itachi was holding back even while sick.. So there goes your headcanon. Of course he could've killed Sasuke. Right at the opening, with the Genjutsu battle, he simply could've used any of the 4 or 5 openings to kill Sasuke. Every step of the fight he simply awaited Sasuke's next move, rather than moving on his own. But what he fought with, what he used, was absolutely serious.

Jason of the Mangekyou wrote: When did he want to defeat sasuke? i stated that he wanted to get orochimaru out of sasuke so how is that the same as defeating sasuke lol. He needed to defeat Sasuke in order to bring out Orochimaru. In the end, Sasuke was out of chakra, out of ideas and Itachi still had fighting spirit, chakra and a powerful jutsu left. Itachi won the battle. Jason of the Mangekyou wrote: Also you would've noticed the difference but you didn't and here we are ;_; He used tsukuyomi 4 times in the anime yet you did'nt notice the difference? tsukuyomi was even used as a command type genjutsu, this is when itachi used it against kabuto. This is proof that the genjutsu can be altered as the user see fit. Uh? Itachi never used Tsukuyome against Kabuto. That was Kotoamatsukami. A jutsu which works very differently. It's easy to break, the difficulty is discovering that you're under it in the first place. As for Tsukuyome:


 * Against Sasuke 1: Time dilation, horrible visions
 * Against Kakashi 1: Time dilation and space manipulation, physical torture
 * Against Sasuke 2: Time dilation, horrible visions
 * Against Kakashi 2: Time dilation and space manipulation, physical torture
 * Against Sasuke 3: Time dilation and horrible visions.

See the trend? Obviously the last 2 times didn't work (Kakashi was really a clone and Sasuke broke out), but it's consistent. Jason of the Mangekyou wrote: Funny, cause kakashi thought the same...calm down this is a genjutsu but yet he succumbed to it. Don't think and eye rip and getting stabbed for 3 days falls in the same planet. There's a difference between the power and effect of a genjutsu though. Genjutsu is a foreign control over your chakra flow. What the genjutsu shows has no effect on this. Genjutsu is broken if the victim's ability to rouse chakra is greater than this foreign control. Obviously the victim's mental state influences how well they can rouse their chakra etc, but it has no effect on the actual power of the genjutsu. Jason of the Mangekyou wrote: when a genjutsu hold is present it seems more difficult for a person to break free by themselves: Mental struggles are typically depicted as physical struggles in the mental plane. Like Naruto v Kurama for instance. Seems to me that a bind is simply meant to depict that the genjutsu is strong.

Alternatively, one could say that it reveals the nature of the genjutsu. Bindings tend to leave the victim free to think but not act. We've seen other illusions that tend to alter the victim's perception but not movement (e.g. forest illusion, extra Sharingan on their hand). Then there are genjutsu that alter a victim's mental state (sheer terror induced by visions, e.g. Itachi against Sasuke).

Note that space manipulation happens against Kakashi with Tsukuyome, indicating Itachi thought he couldn't mentally break him, whereas against Sasuke he doesn't but uses hellish visions instead.

FlatZone wrote: Also, later information retcons conflicting older information btw I think people forget often that a number of statements are made in the context of the time. E.g. Itachi was called Invincible at a time that anyone who would defeat him (with various degrees of ease) was dead. Same for his "only someone with the same blood can defeat the Tsukuyome". He didn't know about Nagato (or at least the true nature of his Rinnegan), but he did know about Obito (fullfils the condition) and someone like Hashirama was long dead.