OH NOES MY LEG OF SHARINGAN!

How does a cop out add to Naruto's character? More or less Nagato shouldn't have revived everyone else and have Naruto adapt to the turmoil that ensued Konoha.

It would've helped his character more and give the manga a more dramatic feel to it instead of pulling a DBZ on everyone like nothing happened that led up to his battle against Nagato.

Kishi probably thought that Naruto could've ended up like Sasuke If the other ninja fodder remained dead, trying to survive on his own to achieve the goal he had in mind.

Welcome to the glorious world of Shonen Manga..

The fact that Naruto understood how Nagato felt showed character depth. Your right, it didn't have to end with a cop out. The cop out didn't do anything but reset the playing field. It was dumb. It didn't do anything for Naruto's character.

Thats more or less the reason why the cop out was done. Why would you want another revenge seeking Sasuke running around? I'd just be stupid. In my opinion it was a good decision by Kishi to let Nagato do that. As CaM mentioned, it reset the balance of power. If other nations had learned that Konoha was annihilated by the Akatsuki, they'd probably take over the remaining Konoha forces. With few to none shinobi left it'd be an easy way to strengthen their forces and gain a Jinchuuriki.

Another thing I wanted to add was: Isn't Naruto's ultimate goal to become Hokage? He can't be a Hokage of an annihilated village. I'm sure every fanboy hopes he does become Hokage at some point in the story. If he goes emo, that just goes completely down the drain.

This post has been edited by Rasenganexe on Jan 8 2010, 10:50 AM

Regardless of why.. The arc shouldn't have been written in such a way where a cop out was the only option.. That's bad writing imo..

Not disagreeing with you, CaM (for the first time in a long time), but Naruto knowing how Nagato felt isn't character development.

He knew how Gaara felt, could empathize. It's not a new skill of his.

And blowing up Konoha should not have been done if it would result in Shenron needing to come by... Wait wrong manga...

Hehe, not disagreeing with me is a good starting point Hyo.. Maybe we can re-build this thing we once had

I agree with you that Naruto's skill of empathy is nothing new. However, I think it was taken to a whole new level of sensibility in the way he expressed his empathy. The themes behind Naruto's empathetic words were much stronger than those when he empathized with Gaara. I think that the complexity of that shows that Naruto has grown more in terms of the depth of his empathy and how he expresses it.