Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-36006024-20180926134241/@comment-27924662-20180928232745

Kirito975 wrote: Okay im reading the replys and you guys make great points.

Gai is def the one who had worked through pure sheer of will and Training. But attributing Hashirama's strength to being an ashura incarnite is all well and good but you have to realize something. Having amazing potential means nothing if you cant realize and work for it Naruto is an incarnate as well but throughout their lives, hashirama has been stronger than him.

Hashirama was killing adult, battle seasoned and hardened uchihas when he was a kid. Naruto couldn't even beat someone like Haku in his youth without Kurama's intervention.

Now, if we look at the lives of Hashirama and Naruto, Naruto directly got a boost from Hagoromo himself. Hashirama didn't. Say what you will about the wood release, yes its hax, but its hashiramas power that caused it to become as strong as it did. Yamato, Zetsu, Obito & Madara all had wood release, and it was said they all paled in comparison to hashirama - the only one to be comparable to him was Madara who had a hashi cell boost and rinnegan.

If you can be taught a skill, its not considered an outside power source because you can work for it. if you have a Bijuu or body mods or power directly received from an individual I.E Hagoromo, then that power is not your own as you can not attain that power naturally. so Sage mode and 8 gates are viable, because you can be taught and trained to use them. It's like that old saying about polishing your best skills or playing along by your strength. Whether you like it or not everyone can work out hard like Guy/Lee. I see many people in this thread dismissing it as though anyone can do it but that's not the case at all. Hard work requires a lot, a belief system capable of fending that exhaustion, systematic work system and grinding even on your lowest. Being a Hard worker like either Lee or Guy is similar or even rarer than some prodigy like Itachi or Minato. If you remove the unique feature of the character, in my opinion that person would no longer be the same character. Hashirama without Wood release would be akin to Guy without hard work and so on. Coming to whole topic where you talk about "own" power and "external" power. The answer is quite difficult one. Usually one would define own power as something you are born with in his case it's almost true if you disregard few hours of birth. Not to mention the things he had to go through for taking Kurana in. He definitely had to work Kurama out eventually reaching the top in 4th Great Ninja war, just like Hashirama would have trained to master wood release at that level and boost his natural endurance. Plus i am not sure why SPSM/Rinnegan is different from Wood release than? Sure Naruto needed help from Hagoromo to awaken his power but that potential was their all along. People might not like the idea of an immediate boost but by than several things had change. The powers they recieve (or at least Naruto) were too similar to his previous ones which he had trained a lot during the war via shadow clones(in fact if i recall, the chakra cloak is stated to be on same principle as that of multi shadow clone) I wouldn't be surprised by sudden gap he showed. As for Naruto without Kurama versus Hashirama, sure on first sight Naruto might seem weaker than Hashirama but i don't think that is the case. Adult base Naruto has shown remarkable feats against someone whose power rival that of TTJ or perhaps even stronger. His Taijutsu feats seem better than hashirama at this point. HE could literally pound Hashirama to death in sage mode.