[quote=@Terminal] Anachronism makes the world go round. 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. [/quote] I do agree with that but one major thing about Kishimoto is that despite all of the gratuitous power levels in the story, most of the major victories in the manga are due to using those biggatons intelligently like a ninja rather than going into DBZ-esque beam struggles. Say for example, the fight between Naruto and Pain. The fight is ultimately won, not by Naruto going into Nine-Tails Mode, but by using his intelligence, massive usage of shadow clones, abusing Pain's 5 second timer for Shinra Tensei to activate and just pure effort instead of pure power. Sasuke vs Deidara. One of the most tactical fights in the series that ends in Deidara failing to kill Sasuke after doing a extremely accurate cosplay of Little-Boy. There are many more examples of fights in the manga, especially post-timeskip, where intelligence comes into play more often rather than power. Kakashi v Pain. Kakashi v Obito. Minato v Obito. Kakazu v Naruto. And many more that I don't remember. Naruto veers into this nonsensical power-level territory from time to time but it never relies on it completely, even with the ridiculous power creep in the Shipudden era of the manga. Though I do agree with you on the point that the power creep takes away from the overall core premise of the franchise, I disagree with the fact that Naruto went brawn over brains throughout the manga. Anyway, on the topic of the RP, [@Odin], I'll be stating my interest for now but depending on how RL stuff goes, it will affect whether or not I can join this RP.