Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-36006024-20180926134241/@comment-34194151-20181002204914

the way I view it you shouldn't take things away from a character. every character is a mix of their genetics and the environment they grew up in, and have the ability to improve their skills abilities and personalities or acquire new weapons to an extent. Naruto had the prerequisites to be a nine tailed jinchuriki just like sasuke hads the prereqs to awaken a sharingan. naruto was given the nine tails at birth yes, but he had to go through a lot to master the power in the end, just like sasuke at birth had the ability to mature a sharingan. It's what you do after that though that mainly defines you. And even though I say you shouldn't take things away from a character, I also believe it's a helpful excerise to measure a character by removing these "externally-granted" abilities. Naruto is more than the nine-tails. I never got how some people claim that the nine tails did everything for him, when the nine tails came with many drawbacks in exchange for the enormous fight. not a SINGLE one of naruto's battles involved the nine-tails being the end -all, be all, to his victory. naruto freed kakashi from zabuza's water prison without kurama's help. naruto mastered shadow clone without kurama's help. naruto killed 5 paths of pain without kurama's help. kurama helped him deal with deva, but in the end naruto finished off deva path by himself. naruto mastered a technique minato, kakashi, and jiraiya could not, when he mastered rasenshuriken, the completed rasengan. He was clearly a talented and intelligent shinobi, despite his challenges in some areas. Even when he is using kurama's chakra in moderate amounts, he is the one making the decisions. power is useless if you can't land a hit on your opponent. Take away the nine-tails from hokage naruto and you still have one hell of a ninja.

And everyone says that guy and rock lee weren't talented yet that isn't really true. they even tell you in the series that having their level of worth ethic takes genius. Kakashi was geniunely surprised that rock lee could open 5 gates as a mere genin, and kakashi himself can only open one. kakashi called rock lee a genius in that chapter. every accomplishment really is a feat of hardwork and talent to an extent.

With hashirama, take away his wood style and he is still a ninja that has all 5 elements. he is still a prodigy of warfare. I doubt he mastered wood style when he was still a kid and yet he was schooling seasoned veterans in the most brtual era of war in the series. while hashirama isn't a highly deceptive fighter for the most part, and is pretty brash, he was clearly a genius of head- head battle, and he has shown finnesse, like clone-feinting madara. Also, who says that his healing factor was genetic? hashirama was also known as a genius of ninjutsu. He could have easily developed that technique, and it's so potent that even his residual cells maintain whatever biological advancement he made, giving people who take his cells a passive healing factor.