Naruto/Page Two/Headscratchers

Uchihas

 * Why didn't Madara and his brother simply TRADE their eyes, thus giving BOTH of them Eternal Mangekyo Sharingans?
 * They're Uchiha. You honestly expect sound logical reasoning from them?
 * Probably because there's some extra mechanism behind it that precludes such a trade, not that any such explanation is likely to come about.
 * Possibly because the eye exchange also involves killing the donor, as Madara's brother is dead (as opposed to just blind), and Itachi notes that many Uchiha tried to get the Eternal Mangekyo by killing their siblings. It's likely that Madara was only looking for a way to replace his own eyes, and only discovered the Eternal Mangekyo after doing so, given that he was the first to awaken it.
 * Actually the 3rd Databook reveals that Izuna survived having his eyes plucked out, though his blindness did lead to his death in battle later on.
 * I guess this is solid Fridge Logic. You never hear anything about Madara or Itachi or Sasuke removing their eyes. As little sense as it makes if we're talking physics I'd always thought there was some jutsu or process that combined your eyes with those of your brother. Which is why it has to be family. It needs to be genetically similar enough to fool your body.
 * And the resulting question is, what the hell was doing a blind guy in the battlefield?
 * Maybe the conditions in war were such that Izuna didn't want to be useless to the clan (look at the number of coffins when Madara describes the losses the Uchihas suffered), or he got attacked by the enemies on the Uchiha's home territory.
 * OK, question. Why the hell was Itachi so hung up on his little brother? I'm sorry, but if I ever decide that yes, I can kill my parents, aunts, uncles, and apparently my girlfriend, too, my brothers are going down.
 * He was the only person Itachi ever really loved? I dunno, the whole thing made way more sense when we thought Itachi was evil and just left Sasuke alive so that he could take Sasuke's eyes and get Eternal Mangekyo.
 * Or the inverse of that, as a Dumbledore-style My Death Is Just the Beginning. "Those b***** ds made me kill my family, and I'm not getting any stronger, but my little bro has potential, so lets just let whoever's stronger in a while get the eternal mangekyo and slaughter 'em all."
 * But Itachi didn't have to kill his family. He did it to prevent a civil war when he could just as easily sided with the Uchiha. Besides, Itachi could've easily taken out the Elders himself. Orochimaru flat out said Itachi was stronger than him and we all saw how the Third fared against Oro, Danzou is missing an arm and an eye, and Koharu and Homura are as old as Sarutobi and never even came close to his level of strength.
 * I'm inclined to be optimistic and say love was involved, too, but there's also the possibility that he was hoping for Sasuke to kill him, in a suicide by proxy kind of way. He was rather protective of him when they were younger, and he did point out where all their secrets were hidden, so perhaps he was trying to protect him as well. * shrug* It's probably going to be one of those unanswered questions because the situation is so messed up.
 * Well, I think it may have been because Sasuke didn't know about the plan, so that made him innocent or something.
 * That's my best guess. Sasuke was an 8-year old kid who knew nothing at the time. Chapter 403 showed that Itachi still believed that Sasuke was pure, even at age 15. The fact that Itachi himself was only 13 when he carried out the massacre is irrelevant here.
 * Madara outright states that Itachi couldn't bring himself to kill Sasuke because Sasuke hadn't done anything wrong and tormented him in hopes that Sasuke would kill him and become a hero of Konoha, both allowing Itachi to experience a Redemption Equals Death and hopefully get Sasuke off any potential hit lists Danzo is keeping around after Itachi's gone.
 * As of chapter 550 it's obvious that Itachi still managed to hide a few things from Tobi (namely, Shisui's eye and the fact that Shisui apparently sided with Itachi) so there's a chance that there were others who helped him out too, then maybe killed themselves out of guilt or something.
 * The real question is: If Itachi didn't kill Sasuke because he was young and innocent, does that mean that there were NO OTHER CHILDREN in the ENTIRE Uchiha Clan?
 * Sasuke was only seven years old at the time of the massacre, and he may have been the youngest of the Uchiha, with many of the adults being too old to have more children, too young or otherwise not ready or willing to have children. It's not as though the clan keeps birthing children every year or every few years, but it's possible that Uchihas come in generations.
 * Since we don't know how long the Uchihas were actually planning the coup (Tobi claims it was after Kurama's attack, but he's not exactly the most truthful guy around) it's possible that the clan agreed to hold off on having children so that women of childbearing age would be fit for fighting and there would be no young children to get in the way.
 * How does one learn Izanagi without going blind? surely there must be an interim stage where it starts to become extremely hazardous to practice it any further.

Madara

 * If Madara is still (phasing power aside) "powerless" from his injuries from fighting the First Hokage, how was he able to block the freaking Decapitating Carving Knife with one arm when Suigetsu tries to launch a sneak attack on Kisame?
 * I think it's already well established that Madara lies like a rug. It's not too much of a leap to think he concealed his strength from his opponents, including Itachi.
 * But that right there brings up all kinds of Fridge Logic that pretty much ruins the story. Namely being, if he's not powerless, then why doesn't he port in, dimension suck the jinchuuriki into his private dimension, and port out anyone's the wiser? I mean, its not exactly like most of the villages keep that good of an eye on their jinchuuriki, or even care whether or not they even have them, just so long as the other guys don't. So, why waste time with these convoluted plots and minions who can (and have) failed or turn traitor when he could simply do it himself and save himself the unneeded frustration?
 * He presumably didn't want to show off his powers prematurely, since as Kakashi and Jiraiya note, ninja do not just show their techniques to anyone. (In the Haku and Zabuza fight, Zabuza manages to get the upper hand on Kakashi with what he's analyzed of the Sharingan, only for Kakashi to defeat him with techniques he hadn't displayed before in front of Zabuza). It's possible that if they knew he could do that, they'd develop countermeasures, like Kakashi, Yamato, Fuu and Torune did. Another possibility is that Madara doesn't want people to know he's still alive and plotting, since he only reveals himself to Kisame after Itachi dies.
 * Madara is doing the whole thing for the hell of it, in my opinion. It's the same reason he pretended to be Tobi. He's immortal and is just doing this for shits and giggles. The Mooneye Plan? Seriously? He's just messing with everyone.
 * I'm pretty sure Madara is speaking in relative. Compared to what he USED to be, he could well be stronger than any of the Kage and still be 'a shell of his former self.' Plus there's the fact that he's been shown to use Doton, and we've seen how Kakuzu made himself Nigh Invulnerable with that. He could have just used Doton to make his body capable of blocking the sword.
 * Madara personally reminds me of the Major. He likes combat and warfare, even if it's not a good idea for the long run. What, you think he wrote down, 'Wear a swirly mask and act like an idiot with ADHD for a little while' because it was a brilliant strategy?
 * Why does Madara decide to act as Tobi? It doesn't seem to serve any functional purpose, given that he already had a man behind the man thing going just fine. Hiding his identity when going on recon makes sense. Acting like a Genki Girl, no.
 * Senility. And you wouldn't expect an Akatsuki to act like... well, Tobi; it would throw the opponent off guard, they would underestimate you, yadda yadda.
 * While Pain is off doing all of the heavy lifting, Madara gets to use his Tobi persona to take care of some more subtle things, like reconnaissance. Also, there may be things he needs to do that he doesn't want to tell Pain about. All the while, nobody knows who he really is.
 * Because, just maybe - I'm only speculating here - maybe he just finds it fun. C'mon, acting like the village idiot when really you're the mayor don't strike you as an amusing pastime for an immortal homocidal Uchiha? We've learnt from Obito that they're not all born with sticks inserted where the sun don't shine.
 * Not just Obito - even if she had a hand in the coup, Mikoto seemed otherwise a perfectly decent person, along with that woman who I assume is Sasuke's aunt. Hell, even Fugaku had his moments of not-that-big-an-asshole. Aside from the whole coup thing.
 * So, Madara's plan is to put a giant magical eye on the moon and control the world. Now that the Kages know about this, couldn't they stop this plan by, you know, telling everyone to not look at the moon until they figure out how to deal with Madara? As long as they stay indoors at night, they should be fine, right? This just seems like the type of plan that could be greatly hindered if the heroes know it's coming.
 * Given how strong this requires him to be, it might even work without people looking at it (like how Itachi could cast genjutsu by just pointing at people). Plus, I'm fairly certain he's planning on killing the Kages before they leave (not that he's likely to succeed).
 * I got the impression that Madara thought that explaining his plan and how it would result in world peace might actually sway one of the Kage over to his side, which would be enough of an advantage to be worth revealing his plan. Obviously, it didn't work out that way.
 * Has no one discussed the fact that he can teleport? I know that is a standard plot device to allow the villain to escape after they've been beaten; Villain Exit Stage Left. But man, he could have accompolished so much with that kind of ability without anyone being able to stop him. He could teleport into Konoha and plant a couple of million mines as he can also go underground, and everyone would be none the wiser or powerless to stop him. He could abduct Naruto or just about anyone by teleporting close and then sneaking up on them. Heck he could assasinate kage and other ninja that way.
 * It isn't really typical teleportation; He simply has the ability to move things in and out of a pocket dimension. We've seen him sucking himself into it, but it seems that his mask is necessary in order to move things in and out. It may be that if he sucks himself into it, he can only exit at points that he prepared beforehand, which would severely limit its potential.

Itachi Uchiha

 * What the f*ck is up with those lines on Itachi's face? they start out coming down from the sides like this, which could just be his cheekbones, but then they get longer and seem to have migrated further so they're running right down the middle of his cheeks. What. The. Hell?
 * They're called tear troughs and they typically only show up when someone is really tired or stressed. The massive ball of stress that his life has been seems to have given him permanent ones, which can happen due to bad aging, a high stress life or just as a fairly common facial oddity. As for their growth and shifting of position, probably an exaggeration to show (in hindsight) how severely stressed, depressed, and flat-out exhausted he is.
 * Why did Itachi looks so old during the flashback to the Uchiha massacre? According to the data books he's only 5 years older than Sasuke. Since Sasuke was 8 that means Itachi was 13, but he looks way older then.
 * Might be stress, from the whole "kill my family or let civil war happen" thing, or just his weird cheek marks. Seriously, what's up with those?
 * I chalk it up to fact that Sasuke is replacing the image of his brother as "he was then" with "how he is now" in his memories, rather than it being a rewinding of time.
 * Plus, when has age mattered to how old a teenager appears to be in anime? Gidget is 15, Goku is 14 and Bulma is 16 at the beginning of Dragon Ball, not to mention all of the Really Seven Hundred Years Old characters...
 * He seems to be 13 at the time of the massacre, but he's seemingly as tall as he is when he's introduced in the story at 17, so he didn't seem to age very much in five years.

Orochimaru

 * Orochimaru's Edo Tensei. Seriously, why the hell didn't he better utilize that? He could have an immortal army of the most powerful ninja who ever lived, even pre-series this could include the First, Second, and Fourth Hokages, the First, Second and Third Kazekages, all of the dead Raikages, Mizukages, and Tsuchikages, the entire Uchiha clan, the entire Kaguya clan, Haku's clan, Sakumo Hatake, Hizashi Hyuuga (given how strong Neji is, I'm assuming he must have been at least mildly badass), Hanzo (if Oro knew he was dead), Shukaku's two previous jinchuriki (who would presumably still have their sand powers), and so many other badass dead ninja that either I missed or we don't know about. Konoha wouldn't stand a chance and the only resource it would cost him are human sacrifices, which could just be random people he snatched up.
 * Doesn't it cost him as much chakra to produce a living corpse as the zombie will ever have? To produce that many long term minions would probably kill him. All he can afford is two or three for an hour or so. Any longer would be hazardous to his health.
 * Please explain, in detail, how the Edo Tensei works? You are making assumptions on how a technique works with absolutely no evidence, and is in fact contrary to the portrayal of how it works.
 * How's this for logic? Chakra is part of a life force and so a corpse can't have chakra unless it is given to the corpse by a living person. Orochimaru has a tremendous amount of chakra, but nowhere near enough to maintain an army. Reasonably, he probably couldn't give up more than 2/3 of his chakra without risking becoming vulnerable to average Jounin level ninja.
 * Doesn't he need the corpse in order to get it to work?
 * Didn't he just summon the corpses?
 * You can find out all about the jutsu here.
 * Kabuto, for whatever reason, does NOT seem to have the limitations that Orochimaru had. He rezs all dead Akatsuki members save Hidan, plus a person that makes the Big Bad VERY uneasy, and he indicates that isn't all he has.
 * And now we have at least one piece of evidence supporting the above: In a recent chapter, Resurrected!Kimimaro says he can't fail because "Orochimaru's chakra is flowing through [him]." This implies that there is some sort of chakra investment on the part of the user, though presumably most of the chakra still comes from the living person used in the ritual.
 * Also, we can make guesses as to how it works, because we do have something to work off of. Remember that jutsu Itachi and Kisame used to make dopplegangers of themselves? The description of how it works is very similar to Edo Tensei, enough so that we can assume that they work on the same principles.
 * Real answer: All of the above is based on speculation (yes, even the wiki link). Every ultra-powerful technique we've ever seen in the manga has some kind of downside/limitation. We just haven't seen edo tensei's yet.
 * The most obvious answer is that he was confident in his minions' ability to take out the Leaf on their own, and only summoned the Hokages to screw with Hiruzen. He didn't summon the Sage of Six Paths because Orochimaru is a troll and he was trying to troll the Third. He greatly underestimated the extent of the Third's Heroic Willpower and by the time he realized that "Shit! I should have summoned the Sage of Six Paths!" He was already caught by the Third's Dead Demon Consuming Seal, by which time he was too busy trying to escape to bother with more zombies.
 * And it's recently been revealed that you need to find a sizable amount of someone's DNA to resurrect them. It's possible Orochimaru didn't think that the extra forces were enough of an advantage to justify making the preparations for the invasion even longer than it already was. Seeing how the invasion needed to happen on a specific date, maybe he just plain didn't have the time. And after the invasion, he was in such poor health that it isn't much of a stretch to assume that he wasn't able to perform the jutsu at all, especially without the use of his arms.
 * Orochimaru's ultimate goal in life is to gain immortality to achieve his goal of learning all jutsu. Seeing as he has full knowledge of the Akatsuki, why doesn't he just steal Hidan's body? During his battle with Tsunade in part 1 he expresses jealousy at her ability to regrow her organs at the cost of her own life. Surely for a sociopath like Orochimaru Hidan's ability to heal via killing outweighs anything Tsunade has? On that note, isn't her ability to regenerate dependant entirely on focusing her chakra into a mark on her forehead. A prodigy like Orochimaru should have the ability to create his own version with very little effort.
 * Hidan is new to Akatsuki, he probably wasn't there when Orochimaru was a member and there are a lot of thing we don't know about Hidan immortality. Hidan can't be killed normally but will he grow old and senile? Orochimaru want longevity, he was pretty hard to killed as he was.
 * Maybe I misunderstood but wasn't Hidan immortal because of a technique? Specifically that blood ritual? It seems to me that it would be rediculously easy to watch the guy for a few weeks/months/years and just copy the jutsu that he uses in EVERY fight.
 * It's possible that you need more than just the ritual we see on-screen to use Hidan's ability. Maybe you need to do a different ritual to give yourself the ability, and then it lies dormant until you use the battle ritual to activate it again.
 * Hidan was decapitated from the neck meaning that his brain remained intact, which may have contributed to his survival. If he had been cleaved in two from head to groin or been scalped or had half of his brain cut off in any way or if he had been chopped into tiny one cubic inch pieces, then I doubt even his immortality would have saved him. The whole point in Naruto is that there is no true immortality, just techniques that will allow you to cheat death by several means (steal hearts to replace old ones, turn yourself into a human puppet with a container for preserved organs or taking over bodies) or negate damage done to you (Genesis Rebirth, Pain's resurrection technique). But if enough damage is done to you so that your body is literally nothing but fine blood splatters or if you have your soul eaten by the Death God, then you will die.
 * As both Sasuke and Itachi prove, he can't perform a hostile takeover on anyone of sufficient strength and/or willpower. Hidan may qualify. As for the Chakra mark thing, doesn't the self-healing Tsunade uses actually shorten her life?
 * The above person was simply wondering why Orochimaru was jealous of not having a technique that he should be able to figure out himself. And yes, it does shorten lifespan, but it's also a jutsu -- and Orochimaru wants to learn every jutsu, regardless of whether he'll use it or not (Because he can use that knowledge to invent new jutsu). Also, even if it does shorten life, his ability to body-swap means that that isn't as much of a drawback for him as it is for Tsunade. He just wouldn't look into it as a possible method of life-extension.
 * As for Kakuzu, it may be that his unique chakra circulatory system makes it impossible for the body-stealing technique to work on him at all. Also, a big reason Orochimaru went for body-stealing is because having an Uchiha's body would allow him to learn any jutsu just by looking at it.

Team Hawk/Taka/Hebi

 * Karin's "chakra radar" (the official name is "Mind's Eye of the Kagura" in case you wanted to know) being ninjutsu (as stated databooks) brings up all kinds of issues: if that ability is how she detects chakra and was something she had to learn instead of some sort of inherent ability, how did she detect the people coming to attack her village, thus avoiding death and gaining Orochimaru's interest when there was almost no chance she could have any previous training with chakra?
 * Shinobi parents who died before the attack? Traveller deciding to pass a jutsu on to a capable brat? Jiraiya did it. Or hell, she could have been reading books on astral projection, and wound up finding she could extend her chakra. What I'm interested in learning is why she didn't warn anyone (although...), or why Orochimaru let her put short shorts on the Sound Budget.
 * You must be joking...clearly it was because of the short shorts that she was recruited.
 * Perhaps it's a jutsu that was developed as a result of an inherent ability; Amaterasu is considered a Ninjutsu, and it requires the Mangekyo Sharingan.
 * Personally, I'm inclined to believe that it's a kekei genkai, and that everyone else in her clan did know they were about to be attacked, but couldn't do anything about it, other than hiding the children. Whoever attacked (perhaps Orochimaru himself), somehow missed Karin or deliberately let her live.
 * I just thought that it was a jutsu that can only be used by "sensor-type" ninja, and that her inherent sensor abilities were already strong enough at a young age for her to do all those things.
 * Team Hawk/Snake Just bugs me I can understand Karin, as having a Chakra GPS would be undoubtedly useful when tracking down a wanted criminal. I can even understand Suigetsu as he has knowledge of Kisame's abilities and has a reason to fight and distract him, but that still doesn't explain Juugo.
 * Because they needed a fourth man so the Team 7 expy can be complete? I mean, we've got Karin as Sakura, Suigetsu as Naruto, and Sasuke as, well, Sasuke, all we need is Juugo as Kakashi. Well, that and so he can inexplicably heal Sasuke from having his chest blown open, and Karin already inexplicably healed Sasuke from being stabbed a whole lot, so we needed something new.
 * Also consider their personalities. If Juugo wasn't there to keep the balance - except when he isn't - Karin and Suigetsu would kill each other in 0.5 seconds flat, or Sasuke would leave them both after realising that Team Taka is more trouble than it's worth in such a situation. The big guy acts as a 'earth' buffer between water, air, and lightning.
 * Actually...Juugo has proven himself very useful. To begin with, he is in comparison to Suigetsu and Karin, someone with actual patience that isn't constantly arguing with his teammates (with the minor problem of trying to kill them now and then), he packs an extraordinary amount of power as shown in the third panel here and as far as the original purpose of the team goes, he was the only one to find relevant information on Akatsuki's bases as seen here and stated here. If anything Jugo has proven himself more "multipurpose" than his other two teammates.
 * And in any case, it may just be a simple matter of Sasuke knowing where he is, and deciding that there was no reason not to grab him just in case. And maybe he thought he could use him to give his other teammates curse seals or something.

Miscellaneous

 * Why is Madara keeping a grow your own Hokage in his basement?
 * Because he is old, bitter about how the First ultimately beat him, and completely insane. Also, Mokuton harvesting, which has just about as much godmod potential as Sharingan; he probably intends to use them to help keep the Jyuubi under control.
 * Furthermore, it's implied that him having that is what allowed him to, which means that it may actually be one of the most useful tools at his disposal.
 * Orochimaru's dead, right? So what happened to Anko's curse seal? Did it even do anything like Sasuke's?
 * More than likely, yes. However, as of the latest chapters, she still has the snake abilities. Probably because she was, in fact, Orochimaru's protegee for awhile.
 * I seem to remember it being asked once (and has disappeared during the restructuring), but if the Aburame clan insects are referred to as "parasitic insects," why do we never see them acting like parasites? They're clearly symbiotic with the Aburame, naturally, but all their other behavior seems to show them as straight-up carnivorous (or...thaumavorous) predators.
 * It's possible that they used to be parasites, but stopped being parasites once the Aburame got their hands on them. It's strongly implied that the Aburame clan's inherent power has to do with all bugs, not just the ones they use, which would mean that they are the only ones who could use them like that -- meaning that, outside of the fire country, they actually are parasites.
 * Kabutops recently zombified the Aburame from Madara's head. How is he supposed to fight? They use bugs. Are the bugs going to be zombified, or are they somehow normal even though he's zombified, or can't he use them now, or what?
 * Remember, the Aburame's corpse was right there. Maybe the bugs weren't zombified, but simply moved from the corpse to the new host.
 * Did Zabuza's sword fix itself, or is that a zombie sword? Kabuto could have stolen it and fixed it...?
 * Suigetsu explained that Zabuza's swords special ability was that it can pull the iron from the blood of the people it slays to reform itself if the blade ever dulls or is damaged.
 * that explanation was given after the complaint had been made by at least a week. So, while that bugs me less, I am mildly suspicious that Kishi reads Tvtropes.
 * ...Except he speaks Japanese. And in any case, if you're paying attention, you'll notice that the sword is broken when it gets handed to Zabuza, and is actually shown repairing itself. The only thing explained after the fact was the mechanism.
 * So the man can't learn to read and speak English?
 * If genin are promoted to chunin based on their leadership qualities, why is the main part of the exams one-on-one fighting?
 * Not just leadership abilities, but their ability to strategize. Though since leadership is a part of it, still makes little sense, just to a lesser degree.
 * Zetsu can travel great distances and sneak up on people so why isn't he used as an assasin or try abduct Kyubi whilst they sleep?
 * It's strongly implied that while Zetsu is good at spying and such, he is terrible at actual combat. If a Jinchuuriki woke up while he was trying to kidnap him, he would definitely lose the ensuing fight. Simply having him spy so that they can send in other Akatsuki members when the Jinchuuriki is alone is a much safer bet.
 * Anyone else think the Naruto World is kind of . . . weird? They have all kinds of modern goods and services, but no transportation infrastructure to support it aside from animal-drawn carts so far as we've seen. Ninja are subservient to Feudal Lords, even though ninja have no counter except other ninja and could presumably rule the territories they dwell in outright. I get that it's a character-centered story, but the world does seem kind of off at times.
 * Why does Kishimoto call Kabutowari (Helmet Splitter) a "blunt sword", when it is obviously an ax and a hammer? And since it's quite obviously not a sword, why is it even a part of the weapons of a group called the "Seven Swordsmen of the Mist"?