he's so cool. such a badass ninja. he faltered a for a bit when he decided to hate the leaf for dumb reasons, but everything else about him is godly. XD
i've heard tell that Kishimoto wanted to make sakura more competent but that whenever he sprinkled seeds of that into the story, the manga's popularity plummeted sharply
i've always been the type to assume technology andpractices improve with time, so japan's insistence in series like these that the ancients were inherently stronger always throws me off a bit