nezumix22

I mean, I've given up uploading some artworks, though I've created a lot recently... Let's see where this hobby will bring me.. I'm now solely working on a 3 year old Macbook Core 2 Duo and a 3 year old Dell Inspiron laptop.. Not too much creative hardware firepower underneath them but it gets the job done so I just stuck to old versions of apps such as Photoshop CS2 (gasp! I still use it!).

So what happened?? Where are all my artworks?? craparts???

I'm just busy. That's all. And my PC has yet undergone another nth cycle of death and rebirth. I sold my old powerpc mac, so now I'm on a macbook. I'm also on Vista and PS CS3... busy...

This 2 months will probably be the only time when I can properly submit a deviation. It will take me hours to choose an artwork from my personal gallery so I will chose old artworks to upload instead of making new ones. I've decided to share them to everyone, but of course, I'll release in moderation that's why I've chosen to upload at least 1 deviation a day, 2 or 3 at most per day.

It's been a tiring year, being tortured in med school, sleepless nights, emotional breakdowns, etc. As I can see that the last time I uploaded was actually 1 year ago. May 2005. And this year, my first upload happened on May 2006. So I guess I had had  a 1 year hiatus. But that doesn't mean I was doing nothing, since I have been producing works, both finished and unifinshed, but have not decided on sharing them here. Many are of low quality and unacceptable by most standards while many others are of ok-quality. After weeks and days of pondering, I decided, might as well give it a try. I've got nothing to lose right?

But even then, I've been thinking, a deviation a day may even be too optimistic. I will have to scan, edit, scan, edit, delete, edit, etc... Not entirely fun as opposed to creating it in the first place. So, my best guess is I might create something new rather than pick from my collection. But that wouldn't be a deviation a day. So, I dunno, best of luck to me.

Rasengan vs Chidori

These aren't people. These ain't food either. You probably have to be an anime/manga geek to understand or even get the concept. Anyway I won't explain the very basics of the source material, which by now if you're the geek you'll know to be Naruto otherwise you're not.

Rasengan and Chidori look very similar and very few can wield the technique. Yondaime, Jiraiya and Uzumaki Naruto can use the Rasengan among others not mentioned, while Kakashi and Uchiha Sasuke can use Chidori. I'm not sure but if memory serves me right, we saw Chidori first and it was used on the poor Haku when he was dying (more on this one later). Rasengan was shown later in the series when the legendary Saanin Jiraiya (Ero-Sennin as he's called by Naruto) took Naruto on a trip to find Tsunade (who later became the 5th Hokage). As you all know Jiraiya, Tsunade, and Orochimaru belong to the same team when they were Gennin. A good part in the series tells of the training and it's revealed that Rasengan is a terribly hard technique to master, it's even probably the hardest technique to master out there. Jiraiya also trained and taught the same Hokage that sealed the Kyuubi inside Naruto. (Theorists out there claim that Naruto is the reincarnation of the Hokage pointing to evidence such as yellow hair, summoning the giant frog warrior Bunta, mastering the Rasengan, etc...) Naruto managed to master the technique ("master" was the word used by fan subbers but many rejected it because Naruto's way of performing Rasengan isn't as clean and perfect as Jiraiya's) and first used it on Kabuto who was severely crippled even though he used his healing technique.

Chidori, on the other hand, doesn't have a colorful history as Rasengan. Kakashi (the sensei and leader of the 3-man team composed of Naruto, Sasuke, and Saukra) taught Sasuke Chidori and it seems only Sasuke can wield the technique. There's an episode where Naruto asks that he be taught Chidori and Kakashi tells him to make a ball of chakra and he couldn't do it. I don't know if that was a serious episode or a funny moment, you see you can't tell Kakashi if he's serious or not. But considering both Kakashi and Sasuke can use the Sharingan (copy technique which allows the user to copy the techniques of the enemy), it wasn't difficult for Sasuke to master the Chidori. However, there's a limit to Chidori as it uses up massive amounts of chakra. And on poor Sasuke, which Orochimaru has used a technique on, the limit gets worse. There's an episode with Sasuke battling Gaara and Sasuke couldn't force himself to fight, exhausting his own chakra pool after using Chidori on Gaara twice. There's also a theory out there that Kakashi copied Chidori from Rasengan but never was it mentioned in the manga or anime (or did I probably miss it? But I would love to see someone to confirm this). And compared to Rasengan, Chidori has a very strong intent to kill. Many also claim that Chidori looks better because of the lightning effect, while Rasengan has a subtler look being based on water.(based on the training episodes)

Anyway why was I ranting so much about their history when anyone who watched Naruto would have probably known it by now? And I can't simply remember the details of 170+ episode BTW, many of which are fillers which I heard can reach epi. 200 before the search of Sasuke and the return to manga ep. resumes.

Now back to the main topic, which is a more powerful technique? Rasengan or Chidori? Many fans would immediately recall the episode where Naruto and Sasuke fought atop the hospital and that was enough to prove that Rasengan is more powerful than Chidori. I can't describe the episode or that battle here, you just have to watch it to see. But actually that was one of the weaker evidence against chidori. Most evidence points to the amount of chakra that the user can conjure to wield the technique. And it is without a doubt, Naruto has the biggest chakra pool of them all thanks to the Kyuubi (nine-tails fox) that was sealed within him. That chakra pool played a very important part in that battle atop the hospital.

Many fans therefore compare the technique in terms of power and its capacity to kill. As far as I can recall, Naruto and Jiraiya has used Rasengan on a lot of people and they didn't die. Rasengan was designed to cripple the enemy, and cripple it does so well. While Chidori was designed with an intent to kill. Fans claim that Chidori did kill someone and that was Haku, but if you recall, Haku was already dying. He would have died even without Kakashi using chidori on him.

In the episodes 132-133, Valley of the End, Naruto has already used red chakra and even managed to use one tail of the nine-tails, while Sasuke also transformed into level ???. In the last stroke of the battle, Naruto used Rasengan while Sasuke used Chidori and in the ensuing impact, Naruto was beaten. However, this episode doesn't conclude that Chidori is more powerful. It should be noted that Sasuke is very skilled when it comes to close combat and is more skilled than Naruto in many other aspects. What he doesn't have is the massive amount of chakra that Naruto has. Remember that Kakashi can use Chidori only 4 times in a day, while Sasuke can use it thrice or less. Meanwhile, Naruto managed to use Rasengan more than 4 times in a day (Postman ep.). This means that Chidori is a very chakra leaking technique, that chakra can go awry and is easily lost. While Rasengan requires more focus and thus avoids leaking precious chakra. But in the end again, it depends on the chakra pool of the user.

It should also be noted that Naruto mastered only level 3 of the Rasengan since that was the level taught by Jiraiya. Rasengan is up to level 7, (pls. confirm) the level attained by both Jiraiya and Yondaime. And even with that level 3 only, Naruto's Rasengan does considerable damage.

So there it is, there's no conclusion. Let's just wait for the manga series and anime to show us the answer. What do you think?

I would like to thank the people of istorya.net for sharing their views on Naruto, and the Rasengan and Chidori.

After a long hiatus, here I am... I hope I can keep the pace and submit some works .. It's really nice to be part of this community..

Great artists, and great works.. whoa!.. I can never find a place like this ever again..