"Doing God's work" — Naruto fans laud Kakuzu vs Hashirama fan animation as studio-level quality fight scene

A Naruto fan recently did an animation of Kakuzu vs. Hashirama, a battle that readers never got to see in the pages of author Masashi Kishimoto's manga. It was stated by Kakuzu that due to his old age, he was able to fight Hashirama Senju, the first Hokage of the Hidden Leaf Village, during the latter's prime. However, that event was never shown.

The fan managed to make that scene a reality by not only delivering a fight that most readers would expect, but also adding a degree of animation that amazed several people. Since the fan animation was apparently done by a single person, it brought a more surprising element to this project.

Disclaimer: This article contains spoilers for the series. Any opinion expressed here belongs to the author and the people quoted and not Sportskeeda as a whole.

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Naruto fan brings the Kakuzu vs. Hashirama fight to reality with stellar animation

As stated in the manga, Kakuzu was once tasked by the people of Takigakure to take the life of the first Hokage of the Hidden Leaf Village, Hashirama Senju, who was also known as the God of Shinobi. The fight turned out to be a huge failure on Kakuzu's part as he had to run away to keep himself alive. This resulted in great shame for him in his village, and eventually, he deflected Takigakure and became a criminal.

This battle, however, was never depicted in the manga and the actual events can be just fan speculations. A fan of the series, who has a YouTube channel named HADJIME, made an animation of the events of this battle, thus giving readers and viewers of the story to witness this confrontation and envision how things could have happened.

While the result of the battle was fairly predictable as Hashirama (a vastly more powerful ninja) defeated Kakuzu with a lot of ease, the most surprising element of this video was its terrific animation. The fan in question managed to bring this battle to life in a very fluid and exciting manner.

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Reactions online

A fan animation of this quality wasn't going to be ignored by people who have already read and seen Naruto, which is why this project went viral online. It was something that many anime lovers saw coming, especially considering that it had stellar animation and added another element to the series' lore.

Moreover, it was a project that plenty of people appreciated because there wasn't much to see in the manga regarding Hashirama Senju. He was a fundamental character in the story since he founded the Hidden Leaf Village and had a connection with one of the main villains, Madara Uchiha. Despite that, there weren't a lot of moments to see him fight, which is why this fan video was so appreciated by the fandom.

Here are some fan reactions:

"Incredible! way too much respect for Kakuzu," an X user wrote.

"Oh my God! Who would have thought that summoning jutsu using feet would look so cool. I'll definitely check out your channel later…," another person complimented the video.

"Daaaaamn, I’m in love with the cut with tree jutsu camera fly, it’s perfect," a netizen wrote.

Hashirama, the first Hokage of the Hidden Leaf Village (Image via Studio Pierrot)

While the Kakuzu vs. Hashirama fight was probably one of the most one-sided battles in all of Naruto, this fan animation did give the aforementioned God of Shinobi a chance to display his abilities. Moreover, it was also good for the character of Kakuzu as it gave him more time and spotlight than he got in the original series.

"This is fire even tho we all collectively agree he threw a kunai at Hashirama and dipped," an X user wrote.

"As great as this is…kakuzu can’t be doing this well against prime hashirama…it’s just not a thing yk," another person said.

It was indeed a note-worthy fan animation of one fight in Naruto that fans never got a chance to witness. And it deserves the plaudits it has been receiving online.

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