Who is the best teacher in Naruto?

[KiSwordsman]

^Well, kakashi taught sasuke how to use lightning element and an A ranked ninjutsu over the course of a month in conjunction with helping him acquire the speed to use the jutsu efficiently. Sasuke was talented as it was but overall I would consider this a feat on kakashi's part.

That's the thing though, he played favorites when out of all the jōnin excluding maybe gai, he had the most responsibility in terms of teaching them all. All the other students had ninja families to go home to, his didn't. One thing that can be said for him is that he passed down the value of team work and his motto to all of them, but that's it. Sakura still hasn't learned a damn thing from that guy. He was a great sensei for Sasuke and when he felt like it Naruto, but helping 2 out of three students grow doesn't make you a great Sensei over all.

One of them grew the way he is as a person, not because of kakashi but because of Jiraiya and Iruka. With Kakashi's connection to Minato you would expect him to have a bigger role in Naruto's life, but no such luck. Sasuke grew because of Kakashi but even with most of his focus on Sasuke he failed to keep him from pulling an Anakin skywalker. Now he's an international criminal. Sakura has barely learned anything at all from kakashi. She gets her abilities as a ninja and mentality from Tsunade not Kakashi.

[Nath Uchiha]

^Well, kakashi taught sasuke how to use lightning element and an A ranked ninjutsu over the course of a month in conjunction with helping him acquire the speed to use the jutsu efficiently. Sasuke was talented as it was but overall I would consider this a feat on kakashi's part.

jiraiya should perhaps be on top of the list though. He actually succeeded in teaching naruto the fundamentals which the academy and maybe kakashi failed to teach him. I am by no means being sarcastic, I sincerely believe naruto is that much of a moron. Lets not forget he trained minato too. Basically jiraiya has been consistently training powerful ninja so to speak.

I think it is not just about being a good teacher though. There is also a matter of being with the teacher you need rather than getting a good teacher. Kakashi for example should be a pretty good teacher but perhaps he simply was not the teacher naruto needed (while seeing the chunnin exams it was obvious kakashi was exactly the teacher sasuke needed). Gai could easily not be all that fantastic a teacher but in turn perhaps lee was the ideal student for him.

Jiraiya had three years of being constantly with Naruto, giving him sole attention. Kakashi had only several months before Chunnin Exams, one motnh waiting period where he focused on Sasuke, and what I assume is only a month or two after to that before Sasuke and Naruto with one being in a coma and the other travelling. Frankly Kakashi had hardly any time with them.

With Jiraiya being the best teacher, I am am doubting sure. We don't know how much of an influence he had on Minato, as for the most part with the exception of the summoning, it was his own techniques or from Kushinas teachings. Nagato and Naruto are fairly obvious, give them a semi decent teacher and they would shine. One has a fabled Doujutsu, and the other possesses the most powerful Bijuu. We can't really be sure about many as we don't know the relative skill level of their students at the start. As for the teachers we were introduced to, they all have flaws. Kurenai with Hinata, Asuma with Shikamaru, and Gai with Lee. So...

I guess I'll have to go with whoever trained Sarutobis team, for the simply fact that they are all loyal and strong.

[kkck]

That's the thing though, he played favorites when out of all the jōnin excluding maybe gai, he had the most responsibility in terms of teaching them all. All the other students had ninja families to go home to, his didn't. One thing that can be said for him is that he passed down the value of team work and his motto to all of them, but that's it. Sakura still hasn't learned a damn thing from that guy. He was a great sensei for Sasuke and when he felt like it Naruto, but helping 2 out of three students grow doesn't make you a great Sensei over all.

One of them grew the way he is as a person, not because of kakashi but because of Jiraiya and Iruka. With Kakashi's connection to Minato you would expect him to have a bigger role in Naruto's life, but no such luck. Sasuke grew because of Kakashi but even with most of his focus on Sasuke he failed to keep him from pulling an Anakin skywalker. Now he's an international criminal. Sakura has barely learned anything at all from kakashi. She gets her abilities as a ninja and mentality from Tsunade not Kakashi.

But even then we saw kakashi's students beat the crap out of all the other chunnin. Heck, didn't people actually wonder what had kakashi done to naruto when the kid fought kiba and defeated him? I don't think we can assess how good a teacher is by quantifying how many ninjutsu his students directly learned from him. Under this logic the only good teacher in the manga would be gai, who taught lee everything, and everyone including minato, jiraiya, sarutobi (all of them), kurenai and baki would be less than worthless garbage not worth mentioning and that is putting it the nice way.

Its not like senseis in naruto actually teach specific ninjutsu to their students. Did gai teach the gate thingy to temari or neji? Did asuma taught wind or fire ninjutsu to shikamaru, chouji or ino? Did jiraiya teach fire or earth jutsu to naruto? Based on what we have seen, it is quite safe an assumption that teachers in naruto do not have a duty to teach their students their own personal techniques or secrets. They have the option to do it but only as a personal choice which by no means determines how good a teacher they are. Being a teacher is more than the amount of ninjutsu a teacher passes on to his student.

---------- Post added at 08:34 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:25 AM ----------

Jiraiya had three years of being constantly with Naruto, giving him sole attention. Kakashi had only several months before Chunnin Exams, one motnh waiting period where he focused on Sasuke, and what I assume is only a month or two after to that before Sasuke and Naruto with one being in a coma and the other travelling. Frankly Kakashi had hardly any time with them.

With Jiraiya being the best teacher, I am am doubting sure. We don't know how much of an influence he had on Minato, as for the most part with the exception of the summoning, it was his own techniques or from Kushinas teachings. Nagato and Naruto are fairly obvious, give them a semi decent teacher and they would shine. One has a fabled Doujutsu, and the other possesses the most powerful Bijuu. We can't really be sure about many as we don't know the relative skill level of their students at the start. As for the teachers we were introduced to, they all have flaws. Kurenai with Hinata, Asuma with Shikamaru, and Gai with Lee. So...

I guess I'll have to go with whoever trained Sarutobis team, for the simply fact that they are all loyal and strong.

I don't think jiraiya's accomplishments are limited to minato, nagato or naruto though. How about yahiko? The kid had no special powers whatsoever and he became a seemingly powerful ninja. Konan paraded around konoha taking ninja after ninja after ninja easily almost as much as pains individual papers and later on went to throw 8 billion exploding tags to madara. We actually did not get to see minato's team mates but I would venture a guess and say they were probably skilled shinobi as well. Its not like jiraiya even had paper techniques of his own or was a water or wind user at large nor he uses shadow clones regularly.... jiraiya made his students develop their own moves and heck, he did not even have a single book or resource to teach nagato and co. With this, we get that every single shinobi trained by jiraiya has in some form or another become an elite shinobi, hokage, hokage candidate or a messiah.

[ninjabot]

I'm not sure if we can blame Kakashi for Sasuke's turn to the dark side as he actually was nearly successful in calming down Sasuke. Orochimaru is at more fault as he was the one who bit Sasuke with Cursed Seal and made him desire power and sent Sound 4 to beat Sasuke up, which undid Kakashi's talk with Sasuke. With Kakashi's team, Sasuke was turning more and more of a good guy until he came across Orochimaru and was reminded of his quest for revenge.

Neither do I, I even stated in my second paragraph that I wasn't blaming Jiraiya, Kakashi, or Sarutobi for the mistakes made by their students. I was just pointing out that they have to own up to their own mistakes because while it's not their fault, they not only saw the changes early, but ignored them. Jiraiya left a ninja with the most powerful doujutsu in the world un supervised in a village that was literally a perpetual battlefield. That's dropping the ball no matter how you wanna look at it, and he loses points for that. Sarutobi? He saw Orochimaru gradually becoming more and more depraved but didn't take the necessary steps to correct him, or kill him for the sake of the village. He loses points for that. And Kakashi's whole "Revenge won't make you happy" speech he gave to Sasuke was literally just that, that one time. That's it. Either he put too much faith in Sasuke or he just didn't appreciate the gravity of the situation. Either way, he lost major teacher points not only from playing favorites in the first place, but for letting the student who he was focusing on the most still elude him and go down the wrong path. I could understand Naruto or Sakura slipping behind because he wasn't focusing on their growth, but he kept an eye on Sasuke and STILL screwed up. He regained points for trying to correct his mistake later (when attempting to kill Sasuke), but not enough.

Also, in Jiraiya's defense, he likely thought the orphans would just use jutsu and protect themselves, never becoming war hardened ninja with killing intent. Even then, to leave a Rinnegan unchecked... AND in the hands of a highly emotional kid... that definately contributed to the fuck-up that was Nagato.

[Gats]

I wrote a wall, then the connection screwed up and my text hasn't been saved...so "shortly" :

In Kakashi's defense : he told Sasuke many times about his path of revenge, even if it's not that direct. He told him to not act alone, he told him that Chidori was meant to protect friends etc. Actually, Sasuke began to be quite fine (even more after seeing Naruto surpassing himself in order to protect his friends) until Itachi's return. Itachi messed up everything when he beat Kakashi. Then Kakashi was in a coma and mentally+physically wasn't able to stop Sasuke to chase Itachi.

Then you know what happened between the two brothers.

After that, Sasuke was in a coma, just like Kakashi, so during Naruto's whole trip to find Tsunade, Kakashi just couldn't speak with Sasuke. They regained their mind when Tsunade healed them. Sasuke just woke up (or almost, it doesn't change anything) and challenged Naruto. Kakashi stopped them just in time and talked with Sasuke shortly after this clash (he discussed with Jiraya about it), then he made his advice about giving up revenge. After that, he let Sasuke thinking about it alone, which is quite normal if you tell me...It's not like Kakashi let Sasuke alone for days or months, only a few hours (or less ? Who knows ?), then the four Sound appeared and definitively pushed Sasuke to the path of revenge. The time was short, I don't see what Kakashi could do about it.
The only thing I'd really blame is that Kakashi should have been more aware of his surroundings and yet. If it wasn't for the Four Sound, Kakashi would have enough time to come back to Sasuke. Even if Sasuke would stay in a revenge mood anyway, he couldn't find Orochimaru alone so he would still be in Konoha, so Kakashi would still have time to correct this.

[M3J]

You can't really single out Kakashi for focusing on Sasuke when he was supposed to. Naruto's reason for being under Kakashi (as far as I recall) was due to Kakashi's knowledge of ninjutsu to help contain the Kyuubi if it went crazy. Sasuke's reason for being under Kakashi was so that Kakashi could teach him how to use his Sharingan and master it for the fight against Itachi.

Hell, Jiraiya told Kakashi to focus on Sasuke while he focused on Naruto. Before the chuunin exams, we saw Kakashi focus on all three, but after the preliminary rounds, Kakashi focused on Sasuke after knowing he was bitten with the cursed seal. Peopel would have a point if Kakashi focused on Sasue before the chuunin exams and way before talking with Jiraiya, but Jiraiya states why both were treated the way they were.

[KiSwordsman]

But even then we saw kakashi's students beat the crap out of all the other chunnin. Heck, didn't people actually wonder what had kakashi done to naruto when the kid fought kiba and defeated him? I don't think we can assess how good a teacher is by quantifying how many ninjutsu his students directly learned from him. Under this logic the only good teacher in the manga would be gai, who taught lee everything, and everyone including minato, jiraiya, sarutobi (all of them), kurenai and baki would be less than worthless garbage not worth mentioning and that is putting it the nice way.

Its not like senseis in naruto actually teach specific ninjutsu to their students. Did gai teach the gate thingy to temari or neji? Did asuma taught wind or fire ninjutsu to shikamaru, chouji or ino? Did jiraiya teach fire or earth jutsu to naruto? Based on what we have seen, it is quite safe an assumption that teachers in naruto do not have a duty to teach their students their own personal techniques or secrets. They have the option to do it but only as a personal choice which by no means determines how good a teacher they are. Being a teacher is more than the amount of ninjutsu a teacher passes on to his student.

Exactly, which is why I brought up who was responsible for Naruto growing as a person. It wasn't Kakashi but Jiraiya and Iruka who shaped him. The excuse use to be that Kakashi might not have known that Naruto was Minatos' kid, that turned out to be a giant load of crap covered with bacon. He knew the entire time and did jack crap about it. Yet he wants to sit there and lecture Jiraiya about what he teaches Naruto? Was I the only one WTF-ing at the hypocrisy of that situation?

I give Jiraiya a lot of crap for how he was as a sensei and god father, especially when people wanna talk about how great he was in comparison to Bee. But where the crap did kakashi get off at that point in the story? It's not like he had a big enough role in Naruo's Life to consider himself within rights to try and lecture other people about Naruto.

And even at this point in the story what about Sakura? ignoring jutsu taught to her, all she can take from kakashi is the value of teamwork and that motto the rest of the credit goes to Tsunade. She gained her head strong attitude from Tsunade not Kakashi. Yeah kishimoto kinda pissed on that recently but it's still there. At the beginning of part 2 he acted like he hadn't seen the girl in 2 and a half years, considering his surprise at her development.

If we ignore Jutsu an shinobi abilities we can say that Kakashi taught all his students the value of teamwork and his motto which one of them has just outright abandoned at this point. The funny part about it is, it's the one he was trying to focus on the most. Not just in training but as far as his mentality went. However, that's it. None of them will cite him as being responsible for there over all mental growth. Sasuke looked like he was getting it back there for a second but then he goes insane and abandons jugo and suigetsu and attempts to kill Karin. basically saying 'fuck it' to everything that was left of Kakashi's teachings.

[ninjabot]

You can't really single out Kakashi for focusing on Sasuke when he was supposed to. Naruto's reason for being under Kakashi (as far as I recall) was due to Kakashi's knowledge of ninjutsu to help contain the Kyuubi if it went crazy. Sasuke's reason for being under Kakashi was so that Kakashi could teach him how to use his Sharingan and master it for the fight against Itachi.

He was supposed to from a battle and skill cultivation point of view. Emotionally and mentally he owed all of his students the same attention and respect. Unless it happened offscreen, Naruto and Sakura didn't get it.

@Gats: All of what you stay still comes down to instilling values in the student, because when you instill values in someone the correct way, they remain with them even when you're not there. A perfect analogy would be a parent trying to keep their kid from picking up smoking cigarettes as a habit. They can tell them once or twice that smoking is bad, and leave it at that. But if they're not there all the time, eventually the cool kids and tv will have more chances to make the kid slip up and they will. But if you drive it in their heads over and over again (that you trust them, that you want them to do the right thing, that you're only looking out for them) then you've done your job as a parent, and you can whipe your hands clean of the situation if they actually do start smoking.

Kakashi didn't do enough to help Sasuke avoid his fate, like I said. But that doesn't mean it's his fault, that's all I'm saying. We only see him pin him down and tell him not to pursue vengeance once. The other instances you mentioned were not specific anti-vengeance sentiments at all. The Chidori he taught to him was to be used to protect friends, but he never said it wasn't for avenging family (and Sasuke's not so dumb that he'd waste a jutsu that is perfectly useful for vengeance). As for him "just not being there", we can't use that as an excuse. When a guardian isn't there to guide the child they're tasked with watching they take precautions, especially when they know they're a potential powderkeg of emotions ready to explode.

[rell250]

Killer Bee has been Naruto's best teacher so far. No Seriously he has, why isn't he on this list? But as far as people on the list i'd go with either Asuma, Kakashi, or Jiraiya. Asuma was an intelligent shinobi and look at what Team 10 has become. Their basically a select team in the war so far since on special assignments because of their legendary teamwork? I have no clue why Asuma of all people has 0 votes. Kakashi showed he can be a great teacher, just look at what he taught Sasuke before he fought Gaara and Naruto's FRS training speaks for itself. Lastly Jiraiya greatly improved Naruto from Part 1 to Part 2 and should of brought him to Toad Mountain but whatever. Also Jiraiya taught Nagato, Yahiko, and Konan how to be badass shinobi. Hiruzen also taught the Sannin which speaks for itself. Madara could probably be a great teacher to any sharingan user given his experience.

[M3J]

He did focus on all three from a battle point of view: he taught all three how to control their chakra better by havin them climb trees and taught them the importance of teamwork. We don't know what else he did offscreen as we saw the teams go on many missions and spend time together that WE never saw out of flashback. Kakashi started focusing on Sasuke AFTER chuunin exam started, apparently after meeting with Jiraiya. It's true, he barely gave any focus to Sakura, and the very least he could have taught her was genjutsu, if nothing else, at least after the timeskip when Sakura finished training with Tsunade.

In Part I, focusing on Sasuke during and after chuunin exams made sense because Kakashi had to train Sasuke in mastering his Sharingan for his fight against Itachi and needed to give him a way to stand a chance against Gaara in chidori. It doesn't look like he could have helped trained Naruto ALONG with Sasuke like he could with tree climbing. If Jiraiya told Kakashi to train Naruto or if Jiraiya had Sharingan (and Kakashi didn't) and wanted to train Sasuke, I could more easily understand Kakashi singling out Sasuke for his talent; however, circumstances forced Kakashi to focus just on Sasuke. Kakashi has even stated how he and Sasuke were alike.

If anything, Kakashi didn't give enough attention to Sakura. Sure, he couldn't do shit about teaching her about teaching her the finer aspects of medical ninjutsu, but he could have helped her train in genjutsu and how to break out of genjutsu and even help her improve her taijutsu so she'd be faster and harder to hit. Not sure if he should have taught Sakura ninjutsu, but he could have tried to teach her defensive ninjutsu that Kakashi definitely knows, alhtough that'd depend on Sakura's natural affinity.


Still, Minato and Orochimaru could (Minato's case) or would be the worst in my opinion. One had his student killed in battle at young age while the other abandoned his student after using her for experiments. Up until Tobi talked with Sasuke, Sasuke was never evil or truly evil, as he preferred not to kill innocent people. The way I see it, Orochimaru, Itachi, and Tobi caused Sasuke to walk the path he did, it wasn't Kakashi's fault unless he let Orochimaru bite Sasuke and let Sound 4 kick his ass. Though, Kakashi could have taught Sasuke that Naruto improving by leaps and bounds meant nothing on Sasuke's development.

[xXan]

Going with JMan. He trained Naruto and because of his influence on him in the end he was able to get even NAGATO on the path of good. So in the end he never failed even there. He just needed one of his other students to save Nagato. Naruto used JMan's words, book and influence to save Nagato, so credit goes to JMan to.
JMan, teacher and master to the SAVIOR OF THE WORLD. Yeah he is the best. Kakashi was more like a minor teacher and he focused on Sasuke, JMan is the real teacher.


@M3J

Its not because of Minato that Obito died... Hell they where team KAKASHI (after Minato left them as those where his ORDERS). KAKASHI FAILED as he was there leader. I faill to understand how you can trow that on Minato lol. That was also WAR. Of course many more peeps are going to die in the war. The only thing he could do is not agree to the mission and not leave them alone but let's face it that would never happen in the ninja world and Kakashi was already a jounin and team leader. So it would make no sense. To declare that Minato is the worse because circumstances that had nothing to do with him resulted in the death of his student in the middle of the WAR is just wrong.

Going by this whoever was Madara's teacher was the best as Madara lived the most lol. The best teacher is not decided by how long your student lives.

[kkck]

Well, the thing with sakura and kakashi is that given the path she took she would have never been a suitable apprentice to kakashi. Kakashi is a combat and ninjutsu specialist and while sakura has every characteristic to become an fantastic ninjutsu specialist (due to her chakra control which exceeds by quite a bit either sasuke or naruto) but in turn she leaned towards medical ninjutsu which is not something kakashi could have ever even hoped to teach. Its not like the manga did not make it perfectly clear that sakura did not grow significantly stronger while under kakashi when she fought the chunnin exam either though. Thinking about it, tsunade made a pretty good job making sakura into one of the better fighters of her generation and one of the best medic nins in the 5 ninja villages, she does deserve some mention in that regard.

[M3J]

Its not because of Minato that Obito died... Hell they where team KAKASHI (after Minato left them as those where his ORDERS). KAKASHI FAILED as he was there leader. I faill to understand how you can trow that on Minato lol. That was also WAR. Of course many more peeps are going to die in the war. The only thing he could do is not agree to the mission and not leave them alone but let's face it that would never happen in the ninja world and Kakashi was already a jounin and team leader. So it would make no sense. To declare that Minato is the worse because circumstances that had nothing to do with him resulted in the death of his student in the middle of the WAR is just wrong.

Going by this whoever was Madara's teacher was the best as Madara lived the most lol. The best teacher is not decided by how long your student lives.

I know that, I've said it was Kakashi's fault, if anyone was to be blamed. However, we're comparing stuff as to why a teacher was the worst, and I felt that I should point out that every teacher named so far but Minato (Jiraiya is unknown though) had all their students survive up until now or 20+, even if some of them did go the dark path.

Kakashi could have done better training Naruto and Sakura? From the looks of it, MInato should have trained Obito harder, seeing how he performed in the war. Out of Minato's team, only Kakashi made it past 20.

Well, the thing with sakura and kakashi is that given the path she took she would have never been a suitable apprentice to kakashi. Kakashi is a combat and ninjutsu specialist and while sakura has every characteristic to become an fantastic ninjutsu specialist (due to her chakra control which exceeds by quite a bit either sasuke or naruto) but in turn she leaned towards medical ninjutsu which is not something kakashi could have ever even hoped to teach. Its not like the manga did not make it perfectly clear that sakura did not grow significantly stronger while under kakashi when she fought the chunnin exam either though. Thinking about it, tsunade made a pretty good job making sakura into one of the better fighters of her generation and one of the best medic nins in the 5 ninja villages, she does deserve some mention in that regard.

Kakashi could have trained Sakura in genjutsu though, as he himself said Sakura had a talent for genjutsu. She has the chakra control to be a great genjutsu user and even break out of genjutsu. ANd as a medic ninja, her main priority is to avoid damage. With Kakashi's ability in taijutsu, he could have taught her taijutsu and helped her increase her speed and even increase her natural strength.

But Tsunade is definitely a great teacher, she helped turn Sakura from lulzninja into a very good ninja, as seen against Sasori and ZetsuNeji.

[kkck]

Well, I would question kakashi's proficiency with genjutsu outside of sharingan. Its not like he can teach sharingan genjutsu... From the chunnin exam it does kinda seem like her taijutsu improved though. Kakashi made a mention of how sakura perfectly used her chakra to take her speed and physical capacities to the maximum.

Another issue with genjutsu is that genjutsu in itself is extremely complicated. Overall, genjutsu has been mentioned to require extreme intelligence and skill, more so, if an attackee frees himself from a genjutsu the caster is overall exposed. In this regard, it is not something quite fit for a young and inexperience ninja nor it is something which could be learned nor properly developed over the short 6 months over which kakashi had sakura as his student. Tsunade made a terrific job turning sakura from a genjutsu type that avoids combat into an accomplished close range fighter with one hit KO punches and a capable doctor which puts a nations doctors to shame. Seriously, kankuro had kazekage connections and still not a doctor could be found to cure him and sakura developed an antidote in half an hour....

[xXan]

@M3J

You can't judge a teacher's performance based on how long a student lived.
Example.
I got X student and you got Y student.
My student after finishing his training saves the world and dies in 3 days.
Your student lives a useless life where he does close to nothing for 120 years.

Who was the better teacher and student?

Now we don't realy know when Rin died. We just know that she died. We also need to know the circumstances on how she died. What if she sacrificed herself to save some 10000 ninjas? Would you state this is a bad teacher feat for Minato?

The only one from team Minato that was somewhat bad was Obito as he was not realy in the game (like Shika in a way). But once he dicided to fight for a good cause (save Rin) he was very good and worked great with Kakashi as a tag team. To change someone mentality is not that easy and we got no idea if MInato even had years to develop that.

Bottom line is Obito died in circumstances that had nothing to do with Minato's training (sacrificing his life to save Kakashi) and Rin we got no idea what happened.

Minato was a bloody genius its imposible for him not to be good at teaching. Problem is his team had big moral/mental problems. Kakashi had his father and Obiito his avoidance of fighting. Still in the end his team showed great caracter and they saved one another. His team acted admirable in the end.

Also it is good to remember that only when team Minato disbanded and Minato was not realy there leader is when they died because of Obito refusal to follow Konoha rules and Kakashi to save his friend and this leaded to the team braking up. Its because his students refused to follow what they learned from Minato.

Still its obvious the best teacher is JMan as his student is going to save the world and has already done so much including saving Konoha based on what he learned from JMan and not direcly what he learned from Pain that was JMan student to.