eimii wrote:

But, except for the arrogance, a lot of your arguments don't make 
sense.
Assuming Sakura is a good enough actor to fool the Byakugan in the 
heat
of battle, she had to act like she thought she wouldn't get hit, 
which
means she couldn't be ready to defend herself (that would be very
obvious), which just makes it even more suicidal.

Um... exactly. And it's explicitly not suicidal because Neji has 
stated that he does not want to hurt her, so he will not be using 
killing blows when his opponent is _obviously_ too pathetic to even 
defend herself.

Neji, of all the people in the tournament, is easily capable of
disabling without real harm. Lots of pain, but not actual damage.

Your point being? The Gentle Fist _does_ cause grave damage; the 
tenketsu-closing strikes do no damage but impair the opponent's chakra 
flow. It's never been shown that Neji can cause pain without damage, 
though it's probably indeed possible... but that still doesn't change 
the fact that Sakura could be relatively certain that she wouldn't die 
at this point...

Sakura is not a good enough body actor to completely fool the 
byakugan, so her attacks and (lack of) defenses must be real; this 
does not mean she's not good enough to hide a few little things 
behind what Neji is expecting to see. It all comes down to what Neji 
is expecting: he expects Sakura to be defenseless, so she gives him 
'defenseless.' He expects Sakura's attacks to be inneffectual, so she 
gives him 'innefectual.' When everything goes exactly how you expect 
it to, and you're as flat-out arrogant as Hyuuga Neji, you might tend 
to miss things that you're _not_ expecting to see...

It seems a really flimsy hope for the certainty of taking severe 
damage
in the meantime. Neji had the Byakugan activated. I still can not
understand how he could have missed her placing the explosive notes.

Well, then, what hope could Sakura possibly have had against him in that 
assessment ^_^;? Why bother to fight if you convince yourself that 
there's no way to catch your opponent off guard and you have no trump 
card that he cannot counter? The Byakugan allows Neji to see almost 
everything, but it doesn't allow him to _notice_ the ten thousand 
different things happening on a battlefield all at once, and a flimsy 
hope is better than no hope at all...

Er... that makes no sense. She _is_ going to get more tired after 
using that massive combo, probably even faster than Neji would 
chasing her, since Neji is both physically fresh and has better base 
endurance, and her poison impairs chakra control but he has to have 
at least enough basic taijutsu to beat up an exhausted opponent 
without the gentle fist. If she fled, right after utilizing the 
hidden snake hands, she doesn't really have enough chakra left to do 
anything so it just takes Neji a little longer to beat her.

By using everything she has at once, she risks all for a chance at 
victory that she will not see again. The Claw of the Fire Dragon 
probably _would_ have landed too, perhaps ending the fight in her 
favor, if she hadn't retracted the snakes first, thus allowing him a 
moment to perform the kawarimi.

No, it didn't work that way. She was at range when she hit Neji with 
the
snakes. She needed to retract them to draw him back to her, or release
them on her end (is that even possible?) and charge herself. Either 
way,
he got a moment to react.

The range of the Claw of the Fire Dragon is surely greater than point 
blank, and just because she had to retract the snakes doesn't mean that 
she had to make them release Neji so quickly. She made them release 
because she used same hand for both Hidden Snake Hands and Claw of the 
Fire Dragon; if she'd formed the seal with the hand still wrapped with 
snakes, Neji would have had a moment less to time to react because 
Sakura could afford to use the Claw earlier. Now, it's possible that 
Sakura can only use the claw with one hand; to answer that question, 
we'd have to ask the author...

Plus, fighting not to lose would not impress the person she wants to 
impress. She wants to make it absolutely clear in Tsunade's mind that 
she has become stronger, and if that means fighting to win, then that 
is what she is going to do.

Tsunade's a medinin. She is perfectly aware of the idea of avoiding 
risk
when all you need to win is time.

Except that this is not all Sakura needed to do, because if she started 
running away Neji would just catch her and pound her with his 
not-so-gentle fists. You don't need precise chakra control to beat up 
someone who's almost too exhausted to move, and losing like _that_ might 
not reflect well ^_^;...

Ino put her on the ropes with strategy, though, not physical prowess. 
I also disagree that its arrogance on Sakura's part; i think it's 
more akin to Lee's weakness, the desire to test how strong she has 
become...

Well, doing so in the Chuunin exam is either arrogance or not taking 
the
exams seriously. Neither reflects well. Though I admit, if taking the
exam seriously was very important, Shikamaru wouldn't have passed.

The same could be said of the self-same folks that you suggested for 
promotion, except to a much greater degree ^_^;...

That is not what being a chuunin is about. A chuunin is a _command_ 
level ninja. A chuunin must make decisions that will determine the 
fate of entire squads of ninja, not just himself or herself. Though 
combat prowess is valued, clear thinking is far more important. That 
is why Shikamaru was promoted and nobody else was.

I can't think of a single mission except the attempted retrieval of
Sasuke that a chuunin commanded. It's always been Jounin.

Well, how many chuunin do we know on a first name basis? Iruka? 
Shikamaru? When they first describe the chuunin exam, they describe 
chuunin as command level ninja. We haven't been shown any missions in 
the gray area between D level and A level that a chuunin would probably 
be assigned command duty on. Given now few ninja actually become 
chuunin, compared to the number of genin, and considering about how many 
fewer jounin there must be compared to the chuunin, i find it very hard 
to believe that a jounin would be assigned as the commander of every 
single unit of genin that they field... 


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