Anachronism makes the world go round.

[quote=@The Bork Lazer]
<Snipped quote by Terminal>

Well, Kishimoto did directly state that there was a giant mountain-busting fox in Chapter 1 of the manga.....[/quote]
Sure, of course, naturally. 

But there is a difference between a [i]Ninja[/i] and a [i]Godlike Entity that throws multiple supernovas as their standard attack.[/i] 

At the beginning of the story, the background threat of the tailed beasts is the actual Godzilla threshold I was referring to, the sort of cataclysmic force that signifies the ultimate eventual threat of the story. The [i]core appeal[/i] of the story though is young ninjas in training going on adventures, getting into ninja battles, and showing off flashy/mystical abilities. That core appeal basically remained the same, at least to begin with, shortly after the time-skip.

At some point, that core appeal was traded away in an escalating series of power-plays until the story is no longer about [i]Ninjas doing Ninja stuff[/i] and becomes more about people screaming at each other while they charge up massive energy rays (hence the comparison to Dragon Ball Z). In the later parts of the story, even the mountain-destroying demon fox becomes comparatively trivialized.

Which was what my question was getting at. Some people may prefer the direction the later parts of the story took, I personally prefer the parts of the story back when it was still about tricksy Ninja with more subdued mystic arts getting into fights and out-scheming one another, and I was asking which direction this particular story would take.