Day 26 - Best Fight

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Naruto vs Sasuke Final Battle

It's been two years since I first watched this animated and three years since I started liking the Naruto series again. I've seen a lot of fights and action since then. I picked up Gintama and saw Gin go against Benizakura and Jiraia, I watched Asta fight Mars in Black Clover, I saw the climatic fight scene in Sword of the Stanger, Tekkadan's last stand in Iron Blooded Orphans and  HeroAca provided plenty of spectacles including the recent All Might vs All for One battle. But if I were to pick something as my favorite or even the best I've seen it would be this one.

Now a lot of people prefer the first fight between Naruto and Sasuke at the Valley of the End; and that's fine, I also preferred it when I read the manga. But this is one of the rare moments where the anime really elevated the source material. I won't recommend the manga over the manga as a whole but there's quite a handful of things I'd say to check out in the anime. This is Studio Pierrot at their absolute best.

The fight is actually really cinematic. It begins with Naruto and Sasuke dropping down and running towards each other, both characters are portrayed in a image of a stage of their life, growing from children to adolescence and then clashing at their current appearance. What follows is a beautifully choreographed fight sequence with no words or background music. There's awesome details in the fight like Sasuke punching Naruto with one hand and then weaving hand signs with his and Naruto's other hand to maneuver Naruto and hit him with a fireball jutsu. He also makes sure to break up Naruto's hand signs for the shadow clone jutsu. The fight escalates rapidly because these two know each other so well. Naruto is pretty much forced into Chakra mode just to save himself from a combo of Universal Pull and Amaterasu.

The story in this fight revolves around the question: "What does it mean to be Hokage?". Sasuke's answer is to take on the darkness in the world and make all the decisions no one else can which would place him as an enemy judge to all. Naruto wants to be Hokage to maintain peace by cooperating and learning from the mistakes of the past. Again the fight escalates quickly but it also deescalates.  They start at the ground, soar high in the sky like demigods, and the fall back down again. Because it's never a giant explosion that ends a fight in Naruto it's conviction. Naruto despite holding back, and Sasuke having more techniques is able to win by proving Sasuke's ideals wrong and having a much stronger will.
The reason I prefer this fight to the first one because Naruto doesn't really have an answer to Sasuke. He's just trying to stop his friend. But in this fight he's a hero, who has suffered, learned lot from the mistakes of the past, is trying to redeem his friend and firmly establish his path as a righteous one. It represents everything I could value in the series and it's still a fight that can glue my eyes to the screen.

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