Quote:Our two interpretations aren't neccessarily mutually exclusive.
Itachi himself... I think he was pushed too young into the life of a ninja and then ANBU - a kid who's put on the assassin squad at eight should suprise no one when he turns into a twisted freak who doesn't care who he kills, and tortures for the fun of it.
Anway, because a particular bit of The Fight Scene is being troublesome, I'm gonna take a moment to explain my take on elemental jutsu.
See, most of the different elements we've seen have actually been doing the same thing - Ryuuka and Suiryudan, for instance, are both extremely destructive chakra hogs that can absolutely annihilate a single target and cause some noteworthy collateral damage to anything next to the line of fire. So, once you pick a given element as your focus, you can rely on being able to do -most- of the same things that you'd find in another element... the distinction is sort of their style of doing things.
So, Fire and Lighting are raw offense, with Earth being best suited to defense and Wind and Water somewhere in the middle. On top of these aptitudes, they've got their own demands on the user - for instance, Water is energy (chakra) efficient, but requires fairly complicated manipulation of the user's chakra, ie, a lot of seals, while Fire trades some precision and efficiency for being a -lot- simpler to handle.
Lightning, BTW, doesn't actually have to do with moving electrons - instead, it's concerned with manipulating raw, unfiltered chakra... Which means that it's very simple (since you only have to do one thing to your chakra to perform the technique) and eminently controllable (since it remains in a form extremely close to the user's own natural chakra), but requires a -lot- of stamina to perform effectively.
And, of course, there're always people who have a particular aptitude for one or the other kind of chakra - Like the Uchiha clan's fondness for Fire jutsu.
Ja, -n
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."