Shikamaru

[hiten mitsurugi]

It was discussed in the Naruto anime (episode 66), the jounins stated that Shika had great leadership skills. They commented on how his giving up boosted his leadership skill. They supported this my using the premise "I completed my mission, but lost my whole team in the process." The jounins thought that this would never happen to someone like Shika (i.e. Shika would never allow it). Yet, it is actually happening. Chouji, Neji, and Kiba may be dead. The only ones left are Shika (himself), and Naruto. This contradicts every premise that enabled him to become a chunin.


So I ask you, how did Shika become a chunin? The only answer I could find that would satisfy everything that has happened, is if none of the team members are dead.

[Insomniac]

Sasuke is an Uchiha, which means if he gets away then do all the Uchiha clan secrets, in terms of worth his safety is a bigger priority then the lives of the genins.

although its pointless to discuss this as he obviously deserved to be a chuunin more then the others - which has been explained in both the anime and the manga, you can say he didnt deserve to but its a test made up for the series, so any explaination the series gives on a person passing we have to take as correct.

Their test, their rules (note: those chuunin who were talking about Shikamaru were only discussing, they wernt the people to decide, which means we may never know the extent of reasons why he became chuunin)

[hiten mitsurugi]

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Insomniac @ Jan 28 2004, 08:31 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Sasuke is an Uchiha, which means if he gets away then do all the Uchiha clan secrets, in terms of worth his safety is a bigger priority then the lives of the genins.

although its pointless to discuss this as he obviously deserved to be a chuunin more then the others - which has been explained in both the anime and the manga, you can say he didnt deserve to but its a test made up for the series, so any explaination the series gives on a person passing we have to take as correct.

Their test, their rules (note: those chuunin who were talking about Shikamaru were only discussing, they wernt the people to decide, which means we may never know the extent of reasons why he became chuunin) </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
What you&#39;ve just said contradicts everything the manga/anime series is about.
I just qouted a very important aspect of a mission, your team&#39;s life (completing a mission, but losing everyone on the team). The genin&#39;s lives have meaning too. Don&#39;t forget everything we&#39;ve come to know about Naruto manga/anime like those who leave their comrades behind are worst than trash, etc. You are missing a very important point too, Sasuke isn&#39;t the only Uchiha, Itachi has already escaped and he hold many more secrest than Sasuke.

There was no explanation in either the manga or the anime. What little that was said to support the decision, he just exacerbated during this mission.

More importantly, I just don&#39;t like it when the authors have this many faults in their story-line.

[Hatake Kakashi]

Those guys that said that Shikamaru would make a good leader where not Jounin&#39;s, they were Chuunins. Two of them were from the beggining of the arc, that did there own Unofficial First Test.

Oh and Shikamaru became a Chuunin because he realized that you didn&#39;t have to win to become one. He also didn&#39;t have any kind of personal grudge against anyone. Everone else who actually fought had a grudge and took it to the limit.

Shikamaru just quit because he showed his best stuff anyway, and he got bored too I think.

He just took the smart way out and it paid off.

He is a good choice for a Chuunin too, as shown in his latest outing as the Pursuit Team Leader in the recent manga chapters.

[Insomniac]

If it were anyone but Naruto then friendship wouldnt be a huge deal, the other ninjas have jobs to do and arent expected to be great friends with everyone - just look at the &#39;enemy&#39; states, they&#39;re efficient with little to no ties with their teammates but Naruto teaches us that friendship matters (which is a hole in the story in the first place as ninjas wernt meant to have such ties)

you have to accept that this isnt your average ninja story where everythings literal - the fact is that Shikamaru made chuunin, we dont know the exact reason why because the people to explain it were chuunins just discussing what they thought.

you want to talk about plot holes? talk about how Itachi can be stronger then Orochimaru when Orochimaru can summon the dead, Manda the great snake and possess peoples bodies.
oh and that Kabuto can fight Tsunade, Shizune, summon Manda + two other snakes then take a rasengen in the stomach and survive when hes supposibily Kakashis level.

you&#39;ll just have to take the series&#39;s word for it - if you dont like it that much then theres always the simple answer of not reading/watching

[PSJ]

this talk about &quot;he is leaving the team behind&quot; is just bull. chouji for one did it on his own. he said something like &quot;you guys go ahead ill take care of this&quot; and Neji stayed cause naruto could go ahead and take care of the big fish. Shikamaru have done his job exellent up to this point, at least thats my opinion.

[Insomniac]

for them to come this far its obviously due to Shikamarus decisions.
they would have had no chance if they just acted on their own.

[Hotsuma]

I think you&#39;re missing the jist of what it takes to be a ninja. And, Shikamaru, OTOH, might have (but, he actually probably didn&#39;t care that much, given his laziness).

When the Chuunin exams ended (albeit, prematurely), I think the higher ranks in Konoha believed that Shikamaru knew what it meant to actually be a ninja. Stuff that a ninja lives by.

A ninja needs to know beneath, the beneath. Err... something like that.

Point is, there might have been more to that tournament, than just fighting. I think he knew that. If it was really just a normal tournament where you rise in ranks, there could only be one Chuunin as Shikamaru mentioned. But, the 3rd Hokage said it was possible that all of them, or none of them could become Chuunin.

When the higher ups made him a Chuunin, they probably judged him, according to what he has done THEN, because as Genma and the other Chuunin/Jounin said, he had what it takes to be a Chuunin then. It&#39;s not like he&#39;s going to become a superb chuunin overnight, but he was still far ahead of the competition, in that he showed some charisma as a potential leader. Obviously, this only improves with actual field experience.

And, it&#39;s unlikely that Neji is dead. Otherwise, his seal would&#39;ve disappeared. I&#39;m 50-50 about Chouji, though. I don&#39;t think he is, however. I seriously doubt that fall would have killed Kiba. It&#39;s possible that he could&#39;ve used chakra to grab onto something on the way down.

This is, of course, speculation. But, still somewhat legit, I suppose.

I think Shikamaru is a good Chuunin. He&#39;s a hell of a lot better than what Naruto or anybody else would&#39;ve been.

[PSJ]

yep you&#39;re right there. kiba and naruto doesnt think at all they just jump into fights and neji seems to think of himself to heroic to run away or something. and what happened to Chouji is unknown but he jumped into a fight to. very unexpected. shikamaru is the reason why they have come this far but its not all thanks to him. its because both Chouji and Neji fought very well against their opponents and i imagine that Kiba will too.

[mage]

if bringing back sasuke is SO important, why the hell did they only send five kids in the first place? youd think theyd send some anbu/jounin along with them. of course its been awhile since ive read that part, but perhaps it may have said they were low on men and had only them to use or something like that

and what the hell? how are they on par with jounins trained by orochimaru? not to mention the sound nins have cursed seal level 2. naruto and the others arent THAT special. I dont see how this can happen unless oro&#39;s henchmen are incredibly weak. the cursed seal was shown to give you super speed/strength when they showed it on sasuke vs the three sound nins, but now these 12 year olds are able to defeate jounins at level TWO curse seal?

[Vagabond]

I don&#39;t think the 4 sound nins are at the jounin level. All four of them could barely beat two jounins while using their level 2 seals. Anyways I think Shika is at chunnin level. All the other genins are good at fighting one on one but they can&#39;t come up with a good plan. When you think about a real ninja hardly ever fights someone one on one. Being able to create a plan is more important.

[Death BOO Z]

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (mage @ Jan 29 2004, 05:10 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> and what the hell? how are they on par with jounins trained by orochimaru? not to mention the sound nins have cursed seal level 2. naruto and the others arent THAT special. I dont see how this can happen unless oro&#39;s henchmen are incredibly weak. the cursed seal was shown to give you super speed/strength when they showed it on sasuke vs the three sound nins, but now these 12 year olds are able to defeate jounins at level TWO curse seal? </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
welcome to the world of anime, where kids who train for a month can defeat experts who put thier whole life into fighting...

Kishimonto doesn&#39;t have enough plot writing experince to make the &#39;super powered kids&#39; sympthome seem half beliveable.
I can stand Neji (a super genious) and Naruto (a monster) winning against all the odds, even chouji can pass with his last resort sacrifice pills, but there&#39;s no way i&#39;m gonna buy it if Kiba and Shikamaru win a one-on-one fight. Kiba is an loud mouth idiot, who is probably the &#39;avarge&#39; male genin, and Shikamaru is &#39;good only in running away&#39;, he couldn&#39;t even beat the sound nins who were after them in the forest, and i don&#39;t think he&#39;ll be able to do shit against any of the sound five, even without the curse seal lvl1.

but still, i&#39;ve seen worse cases of &#39;kid overpower experts&#39;, just think about Flame of Recca (&quot;look&#33; i have a madgou which makes me ultra strong&#33; i can kick you legendary ass in no time&#33;&quot or Dragon Ball (&quot;sure, you are the strongest guy in the world and you won the championship many times, but i trained the last eight months&#33; and so i can beat you in no problem&#33;&quot.

that&#39;s one of the problems of Kodoma animes, you can&#39;t write normal kids as heros if you want it to be a reasonable and intersting story...

[Unidentified]

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Death BOO Z @ Jan 29 2004, 05:43 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> </div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (mage &#064; Jan 29 2004, 05:10 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> and what the hell? how are they on par with jounins trained by orochimaru? not to mention the sound nins have cursed seal level 2. naruto and the others arent THAT special. I dont see how this can happen unless oro&#39;s henchmen are incredibly weak. the cursed seal was shown to give you super speed/strength when they showed it on sasuke vs the three sound nins, but now these 12 year olds are able to defeate jounins at level TWO curse seal? </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
welcome to the world of anime, where kids who train for a month can defeat experts who put thier whole life into fighting...

Kishimonto doesn&#39;t have enough plot writing experince to make the &#39;super powered kids&#39; sympthome seem half beliveable.
I can stand Neji (a super genious) and Naruto (a monster) winning against all the odds, even chouji can pass with his last resort sacrifice pills, but there&#39;s no way i&#39;m gonna buy it if Kiba and Shikamaru win a one-on-one fight. Kiba is an loud mouth idiot, who is probably the &#39;avarge&#39; male genin, and Shikamaru is &#39;good only in running away&#39;, he couldn&#39;t even beat the sound nins who were after them in the forest, and i don&#39;t think he&#39;ll be able to do shit against any of the sound five, even without the curse seal lvl1.

but still, i&#39;ve seen worse cases of &#39;kid overpower experts&#39;, just think about Flame of Recca (&quot;look&#33; i have a madgou which makes me ultra strong&#33; i can kick you legendary ass in no time&#33;&quot or Dragon Ball (&quot;sure, you are the strongest guy in the world and you won the championship many times, but i trained the last eight months&#33; and so i can beat you in no problem&#33;&quot.

that&#39;s one of the problems of Kodoma animes, you can&#39;t write normal kids as heros if you want it to be a reasonable and intersting story... </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
Kiba seems pretty average so I don&#39;t think he can win, but he does know the terrain more than anyone else there and can track people down. Shikimaru isn&#39;t so average he is a super genius after all and I don&#39;t think the sound nins are Jounins.

This is off topic but in Dragon Ball about the tournament thing Goku doesn&#39;t win all the time, he only won the tournament once and that was at the end of DB after 17(or however old he was) years of training and fighting because he has been training all his life(even in teh first episode he goes out when he wakes up and starts training). I agree that Neji and Chouji had a reason to win against them, one being the heir to one of the best clans in his village and the other only winning against the weakest of them using pills. Not sure if it&#39;s mentioned what rank the sound nins are.

[jing]

by the way, if Neji wanted to stay, do you think anyone else could have stopped him? no. Neji already made up his decision to stay and beat the shiat outta that guy, so why would he listen to shikamaru.

[itachi_]

Shikamaru has really good leadership, and that&#39;s the important and only thing of being a chuunin. He got ton&#39;s of tactics and he think of his teams survival in first hand.

[pandao]

some of the fights were bs,
i dont think neji should have won, i mean he&#39;s 13? and the spider-guy (forgot his name ) is what? 18-20something. so he would have had many more years of training and experiance than neji AND he had the cursed seal.
neji is such an asshat for winning

[jing]

about shika&#39;s mission right now, his whole team is dying(we don&#39;t EVEN know that for sure). but as a leader, that was probably the strategy in that mission, to have them go 1v1, n let them catch up later, shikamaru trusted each and everyone of them. by the way, did you know that the sound were originally STRONGER than the gennins? the sound took down 2 jounins... n they were trained by orochimaru... shikamaru didn&#39;t even know about cursed seal. hes a good leader, but he aint a hokage on a mission. i tihnk you have to know that much...

[itachi_]

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (jing @ Jan 29 2004, 11:48 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> about shika&#39;s mission right now, his whole team is dying(we don&#39;t EVEN know that for sure). but as a leader, that was probably the strategy in that mission, to have them go 1v1, n let them catch up later, shikamaru trusted each and everyone of them. by the way, did you know that the sound were originally STRONGER than the gennins? the sound took down 2 jounins... n they were trained by orochimaru... shikamaru didn&#39;t even know about cursed seal. hes a good leader, but he aint a hokage on a mission. i tihnk you have to know that much... </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
Of course, he ain&#39;t strong just smart... He isn&#39;t as strong as naruto, sasuke, gaara, neji, lee or anyone, but he know how to control a dangerous situation...

[jing]

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (itachi_ @ Jan 29 2004, 11:54 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> </div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (jing &#064; Jan 29 2004, 11:48 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> about shika&#39;s mission right now, his whole team is dying(we don&#39;t EVEN know that for sure). but as a leader, that was probably the strategy in that mission, to have them go 1v1, n let them catch up later, shikamaru trusted each and everyone of them. by the way, did you know that the sound were originally STRONGER than the gennins? the sound took down 2 jounins... n they were trained by orochimaru... shikamaru didn&#39;t even know about cursed seal. hes a good leader, but he aint a hokage on a mission. i tihnk you have to know that much... </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
Of course, he ain&#39;t strong just smart... He isn&#39;t as strong as naruto, sasuke, gaara, neji, lee or anyone, but he know how to control a dangerous situation... </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
you still dont get what i mean, but ok..............
were all talking about the mission now, not shikamaru&#39;s strengths and weaknesses... as the topic starter stated that the mission contradics what it means to be a chunnin, but i&#39;ve just said in my last post that all odds was against the team.

[Boogster]

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (jing @ Jan 29 2004, 11:48 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> about shika&#39;s mission right now, his whole team is dying(we don&#39;t EVEN know that for sure). but as a leader, that was probably the strategy in that mission, to have them go 1v1, n let them catch up later, shikamaru trusted each and everyone of them. by the way, did you know that the sound were originally STRONGER than the gennins? the sound took down 2 jounins... n they were trained by orochimaru... shikamaru didn&#39;t even know about cursed seal. hes a good leader, but he aint a hokage on a mission. i tihnk you have to know that much... </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
That pretty much sums it up I think.

Shika did not wish for his teammates to die, but to allow one-on-one fights was the strategy that he thought would give the greatest chance of the missions success.

As leader, he must always weigh up the options avialiable:

*To siimply run away from the situation in order to prevent lives being lost would have been foolish.

*Then again, to fight all four nins at once would also have been unwise, owing to their strength.

In conclusion, the decision to draw the sound nins into one-on-one fights was the wisest decision that could have been made, verifying the wisdom of Shika&#39;s promotion.