this is the truth behind the Lee/Gaara Chunin battle and im gonna die by this;
the reason why the Lee/Gaara Chunin battle is wildly considered the high point in the entire series is because its (what i’m gonna call) a ‘believable strain’.
we see Lee, a 12-year-old who acts more like a believable 12-year-old compared to the ‘cool, elite, child geniuses’ of Sasuke, Neji. or even Shikamaru. and also we see Lee’s relationship with Gai, who’s one of the few adults in the series to treat the main characters like they’re actually children.
we see the fight start, and Gaara’s crazy sand ninjutsu is treated as it should be - a totally unfair display of magical power that no one should be capable of. Lee’s starting taijutsu is believably human - no crazy 30-feet-high leaps into the air, no spinning around 15 times in a half second before landing a punch with the strength of a nuke. its a scrawny preteen showing off actual moves a human would be physically able to perform.
and when Lee takes off those weights, everybody - including the audience - sees those metal weights and we have a calculated estimate of how heavy those two weights should be, right? so its a huge shock when they hit the floor and demolish the ground like they were 10-meter-wide wrecking balls. that works, because we didnt have to suspend our disbelief in order to acknowledge this display as impressive.
its only after this initial fantastic twist that we see Lee move inhumanly, which is another thing that works because it’s a plot point that Lee can’t use ninja magic. one believable twist directly correlates to another believable twist.
and finally Lee begins to open the Gates, but right from the beginning the audience can see the physical strain it takes on him - his skin is muddied red from blood rushing to his head, veins are popping out, and we hear muscles snap.
if Lee has started the fight by opening those Gates, it’d be much less impressive or memorable. but we’d seen what Lee’s like normally, we’d seen what those weights do. we now know that the Gates are an actual strain.
and when Gaara is slammed into the ground, making a 12-year-old-sized crater in the concrete, it’s believed that he’s dead. because a human couldn’t have survived that. it’s only due to having sand clones and that magical sand armor that he did.
so when the Naruto series continues and we have to witness god-like battle after god-like battle, where characters are thrown into mountains over and over and they wobble to their feet with only a few scratches,
or when characters begin to stomp CAT-8-level earthquakes left and right, or summon entire storms of lightning with a flick of their wrist, we’re so much less into it.
cause it’s not a believable strain.
and to top off the Gaara/Lee battle, we see a more realistic side of all this Shonen-style action - a body going through all those injuries won’t be the same anymore. and Gai’s reaction was so touching and sad, seeing how he had pushed his son-figure to the brink of destruction through his love and dedication.
the Naruto series has a lot of cool battles and action sequences, but there’s a reason why the Gaara/Lee Chunin battle still tops them all off, 15 years later.
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