Oh , I didn ' t know Budweiser was made there . <| sep |> Kante all day <| sep |> My Fry ' s had around 15 black and 8 white . <| sep |> Yeah I agree , things got pretty ridiculous after sasuke got the mangekyo and naruto started to master kurama ' s chakra . Unfortunately I think kishimoto realized that he was getting to the end of the story where he had already planned for sasuke and naruto to be able to beat these godlike people . This resulted in him needing to do a lot of asspulls and sudden powerups rather than having them both of them progress naturally the through hard work and determination . IMO , the last 2 truly great fights that stayed true to the message and ideals of the series were Naruto vs . Pain and Sasuke vs . Itachi . To me , all the events that happened up until these points which happened roughly around the same time , were still believable and stay led true to the series . Both of them trained for months under kikashi let ' s call it roughly 69 months or so before the events of shippuden . Here they had the benefit of having kakashi one of the strongest ninjas in the village and best teachers around as their teacher . They then had to fight zabuza and haku an unprecedented mission that was probably A rank and they participated in what was probably the most difficult chunin exams that was ever hosted the number of talented and genius level ninjas that participated were crazy . After that , sasuke and naruto had to fight gaara and shukaku who they only beat because of the fact that naruto had enough chakra to summon gamabunta . Otherwise gaara would have won . All of these situations became natural progression where it they were forced to either grow and learn or die . The end result showed that in their base forms and naruto with the 1 rail cloak and sasuke with the curse mark that Sasuke gt Naruto They then both had 3 straight years of direct tutelage under the Sannin Jiraya and Orochimaru where they did nothing but train . Its natural that both of them became unprecedentedly strong for people their age here . After this , they both started off by only fighting the weakest members of akatsuki . Naruto was able to beat 30 % itachi and deidara with the 3 tails cloak and kakashi ' s help with his mangekyo . Naruto then got put under yamato . Here he wasn ' t even able to beat a deteriorating orochimaru even with a 4 tailed cloak he couldn ' t beat jiraya either . He surprised and injured jiraya and gave him that huge scar , but in the end jiraya beat and calmed down 4 tails naruto and sasuke was shown to have been naturally even stronger than naruto at this point after his training with orochimaru which isn ' t surprising seeing as he had the sharingan and curse mark . After this , sasuke waited until orochimaru was at his weakest point he was still unsure if he could beat orochimaru even with his new powers , and he beat and absorbed orochimaru ' s chakra by turning his own Jutsu on himself with genjutsu . After absorbing the chakra and getting stronger , sasuke then formed taka and started to hunt down akatsuki members and their followers . He eventually found and killed deidara , but he came to the brink of death and had to sacrifice Manda snake equivalent of gamabunta just to do it . Afterwards , he went back to planning how to beat and hunting down itachi . Naruto meanwhile , was spending 1 or 2 months doing direct training under kakashi and Yamato learning how to better control his clones , learn wind nature chakra control , and create the rasenshuriken . He was then able to beat kakuzu , only after team 9 and kakashi had killed 2 of his hearts , fought him for an extended period of time , and separated him from and beat his partner . After jiraya ' s death , Naruto spent months just training in sage chakra , frog kata , and perfecting the rasenshuriken . Sasuke then fought against Itacho where it was clear that even a blind and sick Itachi on his death bed was still stronger than Sasuke . If itachi had wanted sasuke dead , then sasuke would be dead . Naruto then fought against NagatoPain . Even with sage mode , frog kata , and the rasenshuriken , naruto could not win . The only reason chibaku tensei didn ' t kill him is because he went 8 tails and almost released the seal of not for minatos lingering chakra . Also hinata jumped into to save him and sacrifice herself which was the trigger for naruto ' transformation in the first place . Even though Naruto and Sasuke both technically won these battles as they were the 2 that came out alive , neither he one of them were actually stronger than Nagato or Itachi at this point . And here ' s where the asspulls started coming into play rather than training natural progression and hard work lol . Also Naruto was 18 when they beat kaguya , just remembered that lol .