Why Naruto Characters Stopped Using Stealth 

Rewrite this Sunday? I need 3k likes on this video

Naruto’s bright orange jumpsuit says all you need to know about the significance of stealth from the very start of the series

Who needs stealth when you can throw a nuke-like jutsu, a meteor or a gigantic kaiju-like summon?

"Naruto characters must use stealth to win !" Madara: Nah I'd meteor

Ironically the reintroduction of stealth and assassination tactics could have been used as a way to soft reset the power levels in Boruto as there comes a point where other Hidden Villages wouldn't even try to keep up with the power levels of Naruto and Sasuke and would likely research ways and techniques to subvert outright fighting people altogether - thus reconstructing the purpose of being a ninja.

Who needs stealth when you end everyone's lives(Madara probably)

Despite them being call "Ninja", there also the consideration that 'Ninja" in the Naruto world is more less considered as regular soldier/marine with "magic" as one of their primary weapon on top actual weapon. So in a way you could see Naruto world is like an Eastern Medieval Fantasy, where everyone have the ability to cast "Magic" and part take in "Knight/Ninja" hood.

Haters: Come on, use stealth! Madara: haha meteors and Megazord slash go brrrrrr

They didn't stop using stealth until the ninja war. Even the kage summit had Obito and zetsu being stealthy by catching the kage and danzo off guard

"Stealth" isn't a theme, it is a potential mechanism we may use, or not, to communicate themes. In other words, stealth is a tool.

I would say it’s less about stealth and more about deception. Keeping your technique a secret is huge, which is why intel can be devastating.

Kakashi: Let's keep it low... Naruto: RAAASEEEENGAAAAAAAAAANNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was fine with the lack of stealth because it would probably get boring from a viewer standpoint. What I wasn't fine with is when their bodies became dragon ball Z levels of durability. I watched Naruto with the thought that these are humans and even someone like Kakashi could get killed if he underestimated his opponent because he's only human. The second Naruto through Sasuke into a mountain and boulders collapsed all over him and it was like....yeah whatever, it was just a scratch... I was upset lol. We watched Rock Lee almost lose his ninja career getting his limbs crushed by Gaara, but Sasuke can tank being thrown into a mountain. After they start getting the powers that they get (KSM, Susano armor) then I was a bit fine with it, but in the beginning I was under the impression that this wasn't dragon ball, a person being slammed into a mountain would end them....but it wasn't lol.

If Naruto was about stealth he wouldnt be wearing a BRIGHT ORANGE OUTFIT nor have Yellow hair.

Having a hundred copies of yourself is stealthy, because enemy will have a hard time on figuring out the real one.

From Ninjas to Super Saiyans

"I sugest you RE-READ..." x infinity 😂

Was stealth ever focused past the written churin exam

I think what people are trying to get at with this argument is that Naruto fails to sell the fantasy. One piece sets up what pirates are and maintains the fantasy throughout, same with dragon ball with top martial artists or even Star Wars with space wizard monks. And even though they all up the stakes and powers the main fantasy is still maintained. It feels like luffy is a pirate and goku is a martial artist. Naruto on the other hand sets up the fantasy and fails to follow through on it. We come in and want ninjas, but by the end it doesn’t feel like the ninjas we expect at all.

"I sugest you wee wee (insert fight here)"

Stealth and traps were important in the beginning that's why the Hyuga clan were strongest since they could see everything.

They're already in stealth. "Ninjas" as we know them weren't wearing all-black with masks and swords on their backs. They dressed to blend in with the civilian population so they could infiltrate the enemy's towns and cities (very dishonorable, and a huge departure from the Samurai nobility who wore full armor and weapons out in the open). Naruto's orange getup makes him look like a typical teen schmuck nobody would suspect, but has the ability to casually level the enemy's stronghold before anyone could react. The perfect ninja.

Bro really said "Or 90 feet in freedom units." Man I was driving, you almost killed me. 😂😂😂

DygoKnight not talk about how much he hates Kaguya: challenge impossible

*Because he wears orange*

Nah cuz the kurama in the intro was clearly presented as mythical. Its defeat was very "disciplined miko overcomes mighty beast with wisdom" styled, which is a classic japanese trope. There is no reason to believe naruto would be consistently using that level of power.

Madara Uchiha, the funny meteor man himself, who got bodied by stealth twice, is one of the stealthiest characters in the Naruto verse. He somehow implanted his Rinnegan onto Nagato completely unnoticed, and his limbo clones are outright invisible to anyone without sage chakra.

Pretty sure Naruto would have lasted longer and held up better if we had missions and development instead of skipping to the chuunin exams.

everyone knows of and where the "hidden villages" are even though by shinobi logic, secrecy and deception are supposed to be their bread and butter. theatrics and superstitions were supposed to be just that, but then rare supernatural phenomena were not rare, they were ridiculously common (bloodline clans/techniques) the whole hard work (true stealth) vs prodigy argument (supernatural & superpowers).

Ninjas wear black in order to hide in the shadows. Naruto: "Hold my ramen! I wear orange! DATTEBAYO!!!!"

Agreed, the ninja are the soldiers, policemen, and spies of their villages. Most of the ninja fall into the soldier category.

I mean in the Naruto universe you have a variety of more viable options of stealth other than just wearing clothing that blends in with your surroundings for example does anyone remember the beginning of the Land of Waves arc where is the demon Brothers had camouflaged themselves as a couple of puddles? Ineffective because of their less than stellar intelligence gathering as a result of not realizing that there was no rainfall recently for there to be puddles on the ground the technique would have still been a viable option in environments where rainfall and wet to rain is more commonplace. Then there's Jiraiya's technique that grants him a camouflage abilities that breaks up his silhouette while also producing a fog further obscuring his presence from view. And let's not forget one of the three basic techniques that are taught to getting in all academies the transformation Jutsu, which can change your appearance to anything you can think of within some reason In a world where there are literal techniques that can hide you in plain sight it doesn't matter what you wear because either you literally cannot be seen or you won't look like you.

I think you're missing the point in Part 1 the demigod fight was supposed to be something rare that happened in the most dire situations of you're trying to take out a whole ninja village or defending against one of those. The lack of stealth comments are more a feedback on how subtlety gets drained out of combat once the scale of power becomes too high, and how if you aren't the protagonist that can talk no jutsu people, everything is solved by a flashy pew pew fight. Basically its an issue of balance, where massive pew pews were more supposed to be finishers when conventional means wouldn't work, or you had to fight in a disadvantageous situation like Haku having to fight multiple people at once. This all feeds back into chakra caps becoming rather arbitrary and irrelevant, in the name of rule of cool, which pushes them more to a cosplaying mage with some melee and ranged weapon capability. Thus a somewhat hard magic system became a soft magic system. Fundamentally though this all feeds back into the wasted potential of Naruto world in order to have flashy DBZ style battles, over what felt like the original intent, which we know the original intent wasn't to just follow the Leaf in a power creep journey.

I would probably reinforce my point from the poll and say early on more strategic and enforced true "stealth" such as techniques used by Zabuza really helped set up an expectation of Glass canons foghting one another being the norm of Zabuza vs Kakashi which lined up fairly well with the fights of the same arc. Early on fights were mostly resolved or took turns with even slight injuries and one taps to injure or kill a foe. Chunin exams really started to stray from that concept but you still have fights that can portray the Naruto verse's fragility with how the shorter more decisive battles, how Neji lost, the shikamaru fights, etc. It started to seem like there was a slight pattern of who could be classified as "tanky" (Tailed Beast bearers and higher ranking shinobi) And this meta kinda lasted up until the final valley fight where they really stretched how much someone could take. Then Shippuden really took that stretch and ran a mile further with it with some of the later moments where they were a lot of "tanks" but when the plot demanded there would be cutscene esque moments where they were glass canons again. So to sum up all that... there was a higher need for stealth, evasion, and deception early on due to the characters being more frail and the universe wasnt as power crept. Later on while sure there is very basic strategy and less dependance on stealth... it was at a point where many fights were a lot more drawn out and the strategies are more base and not as elaborate as they needed to be early on... also substitutions and clone variants are BS lol. Naruto overall isnt really a smart battle manga in retrospect even early on it overly relies on set ups that are very short term with only a few long term fight payoffs that are really rewarding. If you want a series that is as tactical as people like to pretend Naruto was... I would suggest World Trigger lol

You missed Kisame infiltrating the turtle island when listing infiltration missions 🤔

The ninjas in Naruto are like my rogue in dnd, if everything and everyone is burned to the ground nobody can prove they were there so it counts as stealth 😂

I disagree slightly on the shadowclones, they're a very effective info gathering/distraction tool. Yes summoning them is a bit obvious, but if performed in secret they're an incredibly powerful technique for obtaining info or as a distraction(attack one side of the ciy with a clone, sneak in a different location under cover knowing most guards are going the other way or monitoring key locations because the alarms are going off).

2:00 “30 meters or 90 feet in freedom units” The US don caught a stray😂😂😂

watching people sneaking around is probably visually quite boring. Just turn them into wizards instead summoning nukes and eye triggered moon illusions "genocide".

They don't use stealth because it's too "unethical" and "dishonorable" for a shonen jump MC.

Bro put us under a genjutsu with the video title💀

16:12 The video title isn't a lie, it's deception, something a Shinobi ought to see through.

Good vídeo, I don't agree with some parts, but what is really killing me is waiting for the next rewrite part 😅

Never have I been here so soon

The word “Shinobi” comes from the Japanese word “Shinobu” (忍), which means “to hide”. But it also has another meaning “to endure”. Kishimoto looks to have used both when making the Naruto characters.

It seems like in most shonen, the authors are far too tired to remember all of the techniques they create and their complexities, so instead, they create a new, simple ability for the MC and an equally simple ability the antagonists have to counter the complicated abilities.

Amazing work! How is the rewrite doing?

I love how bro proves that Naruto was never about ninjas

Bruh. One thing is when the very climax for the chapter ends / starts by the tale where some bad-ass giants clash with each other, but another thing is when the whole chapter is about big explosions and countless deaths. In this second option it is clear that writer went for the easiest way to go about his story, you can summarize it as: "me big - nah, me more big - nah, me very mega big - nah, we are almost as big and we have powers of plot armor and friendship on our side". This approach is lame, early to middle of Naruto were much more captivating and intriguing, every figure had WAY more impact and endings like those with Naruto vs Gaara / 4-tailled vs Orochimaru / Sasuke vs Itachi and some others were great and memorable, unlike most battles in the Great War.

And i'll add this: Stealth IS very prevalent. It doesn't mean the situations are resolved via stealth. But how often are people hiding in bushes, hiding in puddles, hiding in fog, hiding in trees and walls, watching from afar, wearing a corpse or someone else's face.... yeah set up that INVOLVES stealth is very, very prevalent in the beginning. We learn one of the mark's separating a genin from chunin is the ability to gather information without being caught. It's a massive plot point and a big, big part of the first half. However, yes I do see it loses prevalence as characters grow but I also AGREE with you that the pieces were all there from the beginning. Meaning it made sense when powers and characters became more bombastic.

Okay, so I wasn't planning on writing THIS much, but here's my feels on the matter if you feel like reading. The thing is, throughout the story we're TOLD that stealth is a big part of being a ninja. The Anbu are supposedly the cream of the crop when it comes to Ninja, they're stealthy, they're secretive, they specialise in spying and assassination. The most powerful characters we meet are anbu like Kakashi, Itachi and Zabuza and even those who aren't specifically part of anbu are still sneaky sneakers, like Orochimaru and spymaster Jiraya. We're constantly told that stealth and assassination is what makes a great ninja, so even if that's not what we're necessarily seeing we still expect it to some extent. We're specifically told that Naruto is an exception when it comes to how he operates and since his goal is to become the head ninja of the ninja village, we expect him to learn how to fit in, not to deviate even further from what we've been told a ninja is from the beginning. Even seeing big water dragons being shown in the land of waves arc doesn't make us expect otherwise, because on the actual bridge fight it's still the hiding in the mist technique and the hiding in the ice mirrors technique that make Zabuza and Haku so threatening. Hiding, stabbing you in the back because you can't see where your enemies are attacking from, THAT'S what we come to associate with strong ninjas, cheap shots and distractions. Even the chidori was specifically designed as an assassination technique, because while yes, it's not the most stealthy ability, by the time you hear it it's already impaled you. We don't necessarily expect stealth in the sense of taking your enemies completely by surprise, but in the sense of making sure they don't know where you're coming from before it's too late. That's what clones are supposed to be used for, that's what substitution is for, like what Sakura did in the chuunin exam arc, trickery and deceit are the bread and butter of any talented ninja. That's why the war arc is so jarring, gone are the days of cunning and deception, in are the days of kaiju battles, Naruto Jesus and brute forcing your way through enemies. Yes, we've seen tailed beasts before. Yes, we've seen big showy ninjutsu before, but suddenly it all gets cranked up to eleven and it just gets to be a lot. I'm not saying that the arc is bad, but I feel like I'd we'd just got a little bit less sensory overload, then that would've been perfect. Like just let the tailed beasts be gobbled up and leave it that, we don't need all of them on the battlefield at once. Just let the united forces take a look at the ten tails and be like "yeah, we're not taking that thing down" and backing off instead doing this whole weird white zetsu fun parade. It's too much all at once and it doesn't feel like an epic final beat down, because every time you see the end of the tunnel approaching and you think that this fanservice gigantomachy is coming to an end, there's another tunnel coming after it and suddenly Kaguya exists. I feel like I said this maybe once or twice already, but it's all just too much. It's not like Naruto vs. Gaara, or Kakashi vs. Zabusa pt1, or Jiraya and Tsunade vs. Orochimaru, because there was space between those fights there was time to breathe and to appreciate how big those fights were, but in the war arc it's like all of those fights just happened simultaneously and btw Naruto ascended to godhood while you were looking at the Hashirama vs. Madara fight. It doesn't feel like Naruto, not because big jutsus and tailed beasts don't exist in part 1, but because generally Naruto is well paced and builds up to its kaiju fights, which is no longer the case at the end.

Thanks for adding the freedom units dygo

Bruh they were using giant chakra kaijus by the end of the story, there was no need for stealth

If the power scalling stopped snowballing with pain i would be happier. A story focused in spionage and politics would be more grounded, and the tailed beasts could be properly feared like walking nukes and not just some infinity gems for the revival of some alien. Idk maybe i just playing too much metal gear

Who needs stealth when you can summon a fucking meteor

Ninja mission in Naruto universe is like: *Team Leader:* So, the enemy seems to be hiding in that forest. We have to approach them carefully, identify their correct location and their power strength accurately. Once we've gathered enough info we can come up with a plan to neutralize them quickly, using the correct strategy we can kill them all from the shadows in a definitive move. If everything goes according to plan they won't know what happened until it's too late. *OP Character:* Nah, I'll do this instead. I'll summon a 10-story high Megazord and I will obliterate the whole forest with my special nuke OP attack. That will destroy everything and everyone in a 10Km radius just give 2 minutes and then we can be back to the village by lunch time.

I've heard countless jokes about Naruto being the least stealthy ninja of all time in his bright orange jumpsuit. Being conspicuous is part of his whole thing.

Yeah okay last one lol (Thank you for providing a place for dialogue) I think someitmes you make great points and you have to split hairs on occasion. But Mizuki and Iruka chasing each other/Naruto involves subterfuge but neither of them found Naruto until Naruto heard Iruka's plea from afar and decided to make himself known. I think you can't argue a situation like that as being a sign of anti stealth when the first arc involves the "demon brothers" trying to get the jump on Kakashi, Zabuza's whole deal is being a stealthy silent killer who uses hiding in the mist, Haku being able to be a silent presence and observe their battle, then literally Gaara "sneaking" up on Sasuke etc. The series featured a lot of "masked" presences, stealth, sneaking, and at the very least subterfuge which I can split hairs on and say while not the samething as KCM and summoning Gama Bunta and isn't as direct as stealth still involves trying to sneak or trick or get bait which has "stealthy" elements. Hiding something masking soemthing leading away etc OH Kidomaru vs Neji...... Tayuya vs Shikamaru (who hides a LOOOOTTTT in thefirst of half and that battle) Kiba vs Sakonandbro (Kiba's whole thing is tracking/dogs etc) I mean......... there are a lot of cases where stealth is a big part of a ninja's kit. How to set up the attack and how to track or see through it.

is this a reference to that one naruto video on recommendeds?

They thought that making characters more powerful would make an interesting story. In reality, is the character development that make them interesting. Itachi is one of the most loved and interesting characters in the series and the most impressive thing he did was the susanoo. That should have been the peak of power in Naruto.

That would make Naruto a boring anime. There's only so many times you can write someone stealthing a mission.

Who needs stealth when you can kill everyone in the area 😂

I think there is very little stealth in the story specifically because main characters busy doing anything else but the regular ninja missions. Think about it, you can cound the number of missions they go to on one hand. Also, while even when ninjas are in the open that doesnt mean they're not doing sneaky bullshit. For example Danzo using Shisui's Sharingan during the meeting between 5 Kage, and the other guy figuring it out thanks to his stolen Byakugan. Another example is Konan setting up that paper bomb trap for Obito, only for Obito to reveal he has another Sharingan to retcon his own death. Sasori and Deidara, who we spend a large chunk of early Shippuden with, use plenty of sneaky dirty moves. Naruto vs Pain. Sasuke vs Itachi.

They use stealth a lot, not to fight, but to achieve their goals. If you think about it, they only people who ever know about ninja battles were ninja and the villains. In the eyes of a civilian in naruto all the fights happened in the shadows, the only thing they notice is the climax (ie 9tails appearance and pains push) which is how it should go. They do a really good job at keeping the fights private or away from the village which is what ninja do

And this is how I would buff the Hyuga-by making it possible for a Hyuga with a jutsu arsenal specialized for stealth to use an advanced variant of Gentle Fist (possibly enabled by an advanced Byakugan variant) to disable bijuu, summons, and Susano’o, and thereby make the battlefield too dangerous for characters to rely on big AOE attacks.

Most stealth moment in narutoverse: Miss sneaky, AKA Sakura saying she finnaly caught up to Naruto and Sasuke

Well, FMA is really a bad anime to have in a picture that's a background for "every shounen series went there". The power established at the very beginning of the series is at a similar level, that they are at the end, the only exception being the main bad guy for a short time. The powers never went to the apocalyptic level for anyone else. Great war tools, yes, but not to the extent typical for other shounen series.

Tbf Pain destruction of konoha is kinda a stealthy assassination because all targets got eliminated and no one lived to witness him

i'm currently rereading naruto manga, and i'm curious if there are any site where i could read it colored as you show at the videos, if someone knows something, please, send me the link

Beginning Naruto wasn't particularly stealthy and was being called out on it by everyone to hammer in the idea that he was bad at traditional ninja things but was going to become the greatest Ninja his own way. This made his clever use of transformation jutsu to fool people more surprising. Post timeskip, he is probably better at fundamental ninja stuff but Tsunade is smart enough to not send him on infiltration missions when that's not his specialty.

Solid video!

Naruto wears bright orange and yells at literally every enemy before fighting This is a show about ninjas! 😂

Ninja in Naturo are in two divisions, the "Light" and "Dark". Light Ninja are soldier in the open that everyone can see and track. They gain money and fame for the village to attract more clients(This was explained by the 3rd Hokage during the Chunin exam). The "Dark" Ninja are the Anbu and Root, they are the shadow Ninja that do everything in darkness like classic Ninja lore.

Yes, Naruto was ALWAYS meant to be about stealth... That's why the MAIN CHARACTER wears an ORANGE jumpsuit.

The 2nd meteor was pretty stealthy

If Kishimoto knew from the beginning that giant spirit foxes and huge battles will exist, then he should have never called the characters ninjas and all would have been fine with the world.

Stealth was a joke from chapter 1. People always joked about Naruto wearing a bright orange jumpsuit not being very stealthy

I think that a lot of the reason, honestly, is that it's just kind of hard to sneak up on an experienced shinobi. Fighting other shinobi isn't a ninja's only job. If they're taking out some kind of high-profile target who isn't a shinobi, or just isn't that capable in general, then stealth absolutely could be used. To avoid being spotted and having someone call over an actual shinobi who can deal with them. But realistically, are you really going to sneak up on someone like Itachi, Kakashi, or Hiruzen? There's absolutely no way someone like that isn't gonna know you're coming if you're going to attack them, especially when they're constantly on guard and on the move doing missions. Of course, you do occasionally see stealth being used as a tool when ninjas fight one another. But it's really just not the primary means of doing that.

Naruto defeated Neji by hiding underground. Naruto also defeated the two samurais by kicking them from behind.

Naruto never had stealth in the first place

Naruto stopped being stealthy when the main character decided to wear a bright orange outfit to battle😂

Based take. Rewatching Naruto rn and the absence of stealth was the first thing I noticed 😂 it’s not a bad thing tho

Stealth is just a tool in shinobi arsenal. They use it when it's appropriate.

ninja=stealth,naruto=ninja,naruto≠stealth

I guarantee the regular ninja and the Anbu are still using stealth tactics. When the main cast were of those levels, they used those tactics. Once the main cast graduated to fighting with the big boys, they stopped. The first episode, we saw the 9 tails released… nothing stealthy about that or the ninja fighting them. So it was always established that once you get to the peak of the verse, you are no longer stealthy. So we watch the main cast get to that level

went from ninja to dragon ball. power system is trash in naruto.

Know what, that's fair. They really were doing a bit of everything even in the beginning. Stealth was optional in Naruto for the longest time.

Why need stealth when you can conjurer giant chakra avatars

Tell that to Black Zetsu. The strongest stealth attack in the story.

Did anyone expect stealth whe we seen kakashi and zabuza idk how to spell his name throwing dragons at each other

There is value for imposing restraints in abilities to force more clever tactics, thus, in turn better writing

It's not about stealth but about power creep and bad writting. Shippuden lost the charm when it became a show about DBZ fights combined with the power of friendship, remember how Pain and Obito, the main antagonists changed their whole life philosophy because of some weak ass talk no jutsu? Imagine the same thing with Orochimaru and Itachi in part 1 (before the retcon). Yeah, It wouldn't work. OG Naruto was a dystopian world where teenagers were raised to be merciless killers. It felt like the stakes were high because there was a general plot happening in which the small subplots of our characters played their small roles which made the world feels bigger. The plot used to happen around the characters, but by the end, it happened for the 2 main characters...

The protagonist has exposed blond hair, wears a bright orange track suit and everybody wears a shiny reflective metal band somewhere on their body... typically their head. Not that stealthy if you ask me

Stealth is only viable when there is a skill gap, that’s why it doesn’t work when in a story where everyone is a magic ninja, it falls into the logistics that any credible threat isn’t going to fall for stealth tactics, it gets so crazy in Boruto that Ada can see everything that ever happened that’s that makes you understand how useless information gathering and classic stealth is to the story.

Let’s be honest, Naruto was never about ninjas. Literally first page there’s a giant fox with 9 tails

I feel like sensory based abilities watered down stealth even more than it already was, year there’s the flashy designs and techniques but people don’t really talk about the sheer amount of sensory bs In the story

Notification squad! Love your content 😊😊😊

Most of Naruto's battles are won through Stealth and deception. Fans are just ignorant about what Stealth actually is.

Love the videos especially since you’ve admitted to Boruto being a Naruto series 😂, but I think a better clickbait title would have been “Naruto Characters barely used stealth and I can prove it” but great video

They used stealth? Trickery sure, but I swear there was all of 10 panels of character sneaking in the first 100 chapters.