((link)) — Naruto Pain Arc

Pain’s logic is terrifyingly sound: "In this world, wherever there is light, there are always shadows. As long as the concept of winners exists, losers must exist. The selfish desire of wanting to maintain peace causes wars, and hatred is born to protect love."

Naruto holds up Jiraiya’s book, The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi. He acknowledges that he has no answer to Nagato’s suffering. He admits that if he were in Nagato’s shoes, he might have become Pain himself. He offers no solution except to break the cycle by choosing not to hate. naruto pain arc

Spanning from Jiraiya’s infiltration of the Rain Village to Naruto’s legendary return to a crater that used to be the Hidden Leaf, this arc isn't just a collection of great fights. It is a philosophical treatise wrapped in a shonen wrapper. It is the moment Naruto stopped being a story about a boy becoming the strongest fighter and became a story about a man trying to break a wheel of hatred that had been spinning for centuries. Pain’s logic is terrifyingly sound: "In this world,