A Review of the speed of Naruto (Verse)

[KingogKings777]

• Several characters are regularly caught off guard by blinding flashes of light.

Again, my thoughts mirror US69, these would be anti-feats for movement speed, not combat speed.

Why wouldn't this one be combat speed?

 

[LordTracer]

Why wouldn't this one be combat speed?

I don’t know why you’re asking me that when US69 already explained it in his post that I was agreeing with.

 

[Samlex1234]

This is the weird standard placed upon the verse that people complain about. Why do we have mods using and accepting “Free Action“ as evidence? Something that is vastly accepted as a plot convenience tool.

“Remember that lightspeed means a projectile could circle the Earth approximately 7.5 times in one second.”

Even if we were to downgrade the Biju bombs to High Hypersonic + speed (part 1 naruto) it would have covered that distance in roughly 30 seconds, within that time frame anyone that has a speed of Mach 1282 which should be the ultimate lowball for lightning speed would have been able to save them 15 times over. Contradictions everywhere. Heck merely moving at Massively Hypersonic + you can circle the entire earth in 14 seconds. This circle the earth argument is fundamentally flawed and if we are to open this can of worms literally no verse that is rel+ and above will escape.

 

[Godernet]

Sasuke's Kirin and Lightning Jutsu

There's more to take into consideration for the verse as a whole than just the Biju Bombs. A very important technique in Sasuke's arsenal is Kirin.

Kirin has been gone over enough times in this wiki's history that I'm sure almost all Naruto fans here will be familiar with it but I'll provide an overview of it just to illustrate my point at how the speed ratings we've introduced contradict the narrative.

After exhausting his chakra on Orochimaru's substitution technique and several fireballs he fired into the sky, Sasuke reveals that he has one last technique up his sleeve despite his lack of chakra. He used the fireballs to create stormclouds above, and he's going to use them to create a technique that 'lasts an instant' and 'cannot be blocked or evaded'. Sasuke doesn't supply his own chakra to power or speed up the technique (he can't; he's out of it as confirmed by Itachi); he just takes advantage of the enormous ambigent atmospheric energy to launch a Lightning Style jutsu by harnessing natural lightning. As Sasuke himself explains, the jutsu guides the lightning striking down from the clouds at a target of Sasuke's choice; he merely directs natural lightning towards Itachi.

This is the reason why Kirin cannot be evaded, according to Zetsu. It's speed enabling it to cross the distance in 0.001 seconds.The currently accepted calculation for Kirin's speed is Mach 8089, using that timeframe from the manga.

If a Massively Hypersonic+ attack (several hundred Mach off of being Sub-Relativistic) travelling across hundreds of meters is considered to be nigh-undodgeable by not just one but two sources commenting on the speed of the technique making it impossible to evade then a few things about the way we rank speed ratings on the wiki don't make sense and directly contradict the information presented to us in the primary source of the series.

Characters like the Sannin (who Sasuke and Zetsu are more than familiar with) aren't going around fighting at FTL speed. Jutsu like the Biju Bomb (which multiple characters have blocked or evaded) doesn't make sense being FTL if an MHS+ technique is considered impossible to evade.

While it is true that Sasuke's knowledge is limited; for example he was unaware that Itachi possessed the Susano'o that he could use to block the Kirin, and he is unaware of the speed of the upper echelons like Minato who could use the Flying Thunder God technique to teleport out of the way, the statement still remains a strong barrier for the vast majority of shinobi.

Lightning speed jutsu is never considered to be a joke in the series. The databook for Kakuzu's False Darkness jutsu states "It is exceedingly difficult to dodge a lightning bolt flying at high speed." Even in the final arc of the series Madara employs realistic lightning bolts created through Yin Release to attack Naruto and Sasuke. Whilst though both Naruto and Sasuke quite capably react to it without issue, it shows that it is still a potential threat.

This is why it is very hard to accept that most characters are regularly fighting at FTL speeds, or that someone like Kakashi is over twice as fast as Kirin is. By Hidan scaling to Kakashi, and Shikamaru scaling to Hidan, we end up in a scenario where Shikamaru is actually 6.3 times faster than the attack that blitzes him. If we go with the current FTL proposals then we end up in a situation where Kakuzu is "FTL, with MHS+ attack speed", and an FTL Shikamaru was helpless as an MHS+ attack crossed dozens of meters to reach him. It is too contradictory.

Calling Kirin a cap at all suggests that Kirin has a definitive speed that we can point to for a completely objective metric of measuring how fast the bolt is.

Frankly, I never got why Light Speed Kirin was removed completely rather than made a possibly.

The 2 LS Kirin statements were in Databook and Fanbooks made to look at the jutsu in retrospect to when Zetsu gave us his initial hypothesis of what he believed Kirin would be (meaning Kishi or his editor, knowing what they had Zetsu say prior, still decided to call it "light speed" after the fact.)

I'm not saying that LS Kirin or Mach 8000 Kirin is the absolute right method, but I do feel there is enough conversation to be had on either side of the topic to say that Kirin probably doesn't have an objective speed, and if it doesn't have an objective speed, it shouldn't cap the verse either.

Also isn't it interesting that the databook entry for False Darkness highlights that it is "extremely hard to dodge lightning" (not impossible) after we see Kakashi able to move faster enough to intercept that same jutsu. The same person who was renowned for his impressive feat that we were told about 200 chapters prior of being able to cut lightning in half before it could touch the ground (granted the manga doesn't show the feat but, being able to perceive lightning and attack before it can hit the ground is still a nice bit of lore being consistent with a canon feat we are given of him moving at speeds relative to lightning in the Kakazu fight.)

Then we get Zetsu's statement chapters later, saying, "Lightning should be able to travel this distance in 1/1000th of a second; it's undodgeable like Amaterasu." Only for the databook to later say, "Kirin is light speed; it's undodgeable" twice. (not to try and say these were 100% Kishi's intentions but if that isn't closest thing to an author changing what they initially put in a manga to better fit the consistency of their story I don't know what is.)

In my opinion, there isn't any reason why the current fan calc for Kirin should be treated as an objective speed, while we completely disregard the two other statements provided because of something Zetsu said before ever seeing the technique and being skeptical of the two statements and saying "well this doesn't have to mean literal light speed", when one of the statements is almost identically translated to the issen statement, with any flowery language meant to mirror Zetsu's own words in the story of it being "unavoidable".

And it's certainly, not enough reason to completely dismiss one of the only usable speed calcs the verse has when the series already has a severe lack of calculable speed feats.