pain: Naruto: All Six Paths of Pain ranked according to power

Pain stands out as one of the most iconic and charismatic villains in Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto series. Originally depicted as the leader of the menacing Akatsuki organization, Pain was revealed to be a group of corpses remote-controlled by Nagato, a shinobi who aimed to bring peace to the world through violence.

According to Nagato’s philosophy, the ninja world would only reject war once it had experienced and truly understood its horrors. Being permanently crippled, however, Nagato couldn’t carry out his will with his own body. So, he used the Rinnegan to animate six corpses that would receive his chakra and act on his behalf, the Six Paths of Pain.

Nagato could control the bodies as he pleased. He was able to see through their eyes to remove any blind spots and coordinate every move flawlessly. Also, he could grant each body the usage of one of the Rinnegan’s basic abilities. The power of each individual body, and even more so, their simultaneous combination, made Pain a force to be reckoned with.

The Six Paths of Pain, ranked from weakest to strongest in Naruto Shippuden

Nagato was an ambitious shinobi from Amegakure who had founded the original Akatsuki with his friends Yahiko and Konan. However, with Yahiko's death, he left his ideals of bringing peace and instead wanted to show the world the true horrors of war. He used his Rinnegan to use the Six Paths and took up the alias of Pain.

The Rinnegan actually bestows seven such techniques on the summoner. Nagato kept the Outer Path for himself and bestowed a single path to each corpse, thus forming the Six Paths of Pain.

6) Naraka Path

The Naraka Path as seen in Naruto Shippuden (Image via Studio Pierrot)

The Naraka Path can summon the King of Hell, a deity that can rejuvenate the bodies of the other Paths, should they be damaged or even destroyed. It can also evoke the King of Hell to interrogate people and detect whether or not they are telling the truth.

If the victims refused to answer the question or lie, the King of Hell would instantly kill them by removing and consuming their tongue. Given these peculiar supportive abilities, the Naraka Path can be considered the most valuable among the Six Paths of Pain. In terms of direct combat, however, the Naraka Path’s feats are unimpressive, making him Pain's weakest body.

To be fair, the Naraka Path could move fast enough to physically dodge Naruto’s Rasenshuriken, unlike, for example, the Animal Path, which wasn’t able to do that. Still, the Animal Path remains overall stronger than the Naraka Path due to possessing much more efficient offensive and defensive techniques.

5) Human Path

The Human Path as seen in Naruto Shippuden (Image via Studio Pierrot)

The Human Path has a genuine instant-kill ability, as it can extract the soul out of its victims, reading their minds in the process. It also has enough physical strength to stop a punch from Sage Mode Jiraiya.

Taking this into account, most ninjas shouldn’t be able to free themselves if the Human Path holds them pinned in order to rip out their souls. However, the Human Path lacks versatility with long-range techniques, meaning that skilled fighters would probably keep this body at a distance and evade its attempts.

It’s worth noting that, when Jiraiya faced Animal Path, Preta Path, and Human Path, he admitted that if he had fought them head-on without running away and using guerrilla-style tactics, he would have been killed helplessly, even though he was in Sage Mode.

4) Preta Path

The Preta Path as seen in Naruto Shippuden (Image via Studio Pierrot)

Among the six bodies of Pain, the Preta Path is especially useful as it can absorb chakra by putting up a barrier all the way around. This power allows it to neutralize all ninjutsu techniques that are made up of pure chakra or created by a pre-existing element infused with chakra.

The Preta Path is only vulnerable to genjutsu, taijutsu, or absolutely peculiar ninjutsu such as Kamui or Shinra Tensei, which are activated through chakra but made up of it. Notably, defeating the Preta Path through taijutsu is not as easy as it sounds. This body is quite resilient and can also absorb chakra upon physical contact with its opponents.

Still, this ability can be a double-edged sword, as certain types of chakra can be dangerous even if absorbed, as seen when the Preta Path absorbed Naruto’s senjutsu chakra. While the Preta Path’s defense is extremely good, however, its offense and versatility are pretty lackluster, which reduces its overall combat effectiveness.

All in all, the Preta Path’s individual strength seems to be a bit above the Human Path’s. Overall, the Preta Path is more useful as ninjutsu users make up the majority of shinobi, and this body works as a quite effective defense against most ninjutsu techniques.

3) Animal Path

The Animal Path as seen in Naruto Shippuden (Image via Studio Pierrot)

The Animal Path isn’t particularly strong, per se. However, it can summon a whole lot of powerful animals to fight in his stead. These summonings, which include a multi-headed dog, a rhinoceros, a bird, and more, have no time limit, as they are embedded with the Rinnegan’s black rods.

The multi-headed dog was modified with a special jutsu that enabled it to constantly split apart when struck. As such, this beast could survive even the most devastating attacks by multiplying its body. The only way to permanently defeat this creature was to defeat the summoner in order to make his conjurations disappear.

Despite its relatively poor individual skills, the Animal Path is overall stronger than most of the other Pain bodies. The Preta Path can’t absorb the summoned creatures, and the Naraka Path can’t grab all of them with the King of Hell. The Human Path can remove their souls, but that ability takes time to work and only operates for one target at a time. Thus, he would be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers.

The Animal Path was able to perform the Summoning Jutsu quickly enough to intercept Sage Mode Jiraiya’s fastest offensive technique. With this in mind, this body should be able to use its summoning techniques in time to defend itself from most opponents.

2) Asura Path

The Asura Path as seen in Naruto Shippuden (Image via Studio Pierrot)

The Asura Path can be considered the second-strongest body of Pain, only below the all-powerful Deva Path. A full-fledged battle machine, this body can unleash countless robotic enhancements, including extra limbs, a series of protruding flexible blades and drills, and more.

The Asura Path can fire a cluster of missiles and even release a chakra cannon with enough power to destroy an entire city block. It can also generate additional faces, which grants it increased awareness and shared vision. Of course, the robotic enhancements give the Asura Path formidable physical prowess as well.

His speed is such that, despite being initially blitzed by Kakashi, he was able to dodge the Copy Ninja’s subsequent Raikiri attack. As for raw strength, the Asura Path’s basic physical strikes were strong enough to rip off Sage Mode Jiraiya’s arm and crush his throat.

Its toughness is remarkable too, as it could endure punishment from Kakashi’s Lightning Shadow Clone and Raikiri, as well as hits from Choji and Choza’s Super Multi-Size Technique.

With its speed, raw strength, durability, and firepower both at close and long range, the Asura Path can easily outclass any Pain body who isn’t the Deva Path. It can nuke the Animal Path and his summons. Its missiles and other weapons can’t be absorbed by the Preta Path, while the Naraka Path and the Human Path can’t stop them in any way either.

1) Deva Path

The Deva Path as seen in Naruto Shippuden (Image via Studio Pierrot)

After ending up permanently crippled, Nagato decided to channel the uppermost part of his visual powers into the corpse of Yahiko, his deceased friend. This was the birth of Deva Path, the strongest body of Pain. In terms of techniques, physical abilities, and overall power, the Deva Path stands on a level of its own compared to the other five bodies.

Because of the Deva Path's exceptional speed and taijutsu, this body could keep up with swift characters like Kakashi and Sage Mode Naruto. It could even dodge a Rasenshuriken attack from point blank, and outpace Naruto when he unleashed a large portion of the Nine-Tailed Fox’s chakra.

The Deva Path is already quite dangerous with just its basic skills, but it becomes almost unstoppable when he uses his real powers. This body can manipulate gravity to repel and attract any target at will, with the only limit being the five seconds of cooldown needed to recharge after each use. The repelling jutsu, named Shinra Tensei, is especially effective.

It releases a repulsive gravitational force that wipes out everything around, including enemies, incoming attacks, and the environment itself. When used at full power, the Deva Path’s Shinra Tensei can wipe out an entire village, However, this needs an uncommon effort, which will require a longer cooldown and temporarily hinder Pain’s combat effectiveness.

The Deva Path can also use Chibaku Tensei, another formidable jutsu. This technique generates a black sphere, making it the core of a tremendous attractive force that pulls everything to a black sphere, until crushing the desired target within an enormous satellite made up of rubble and debris.

Owing to its stunning powers, the Deva Path could probably defeat most Kage and Kage-level ninjas in a 1v1 battle. This is all the more impressive as the Deva Path pales in comparison to Nagato, who can use the same abilities, plus those of all the other Pain bodies, but at a much higher degree.

Naruto: All Six Paths of Pain ranked according to power