Masashi Kishimoto, the driving force behind Naruto , blessed anime fans with one of the most consequential arcs in anime history with the Pain arc. As he would find out — just as sustaining the plot past this earth-shaking act to a new, satisfying dramatic arc — the greatest, most shaping test of his 11-year tenure.

Join us as we explore why the post-Pain arc era of Naruto was such a watershed moment—not only for the story at hand, but for Kishimoto himself.


The pain arc as Naruto’s creative summit and Emotional Zenith
In fact, the Pain arc, in which Naruto gets his best friend Sasuke back from evil and then fights (and philosophically defeats) the villain Nagato (Pain) is considered the emotional and intellectual highpoint of the whole series. To the audience’s delight, Naruto eventually brings the village’s respect and proves that he not only lived out Jiraiya’s legacy and defeated his childhood demons, but he grew up and really deserved it. It was so much of an end that when asked what he was going to do after this arc, according to Kishimoto, it felt like a wrap-up. It was difficult to top it emotionally, he admitted in post-game interviews. This is because he had developed Naruto, at this specific time, to such a level of maturity that unearthing new inner conflict was a challenge.


Post-pain struggles: Balancing power, story, and Sasuke
After Pain arc, Kishimoto had to find a new big bad to bring the heat and raise the stakes. So go figure, Obito, Madara and Kaguya. Right there, a weird pacing problem, because we needed to keep Naruto’s emotional down-to-earth-ness but have things move forward. Sasuke was still wandering,” he recalled. Crafting Sasuke’s fractured, ambiguous psyche, his equivocal moral compass, and the intensifying stakes and increasingly personal nature of a war against the world proved to be a heavy burden both creatively and emotionally for Kishimoto. In the course of writing, he discovered that the transition between this character-focused narrative to the grand scope of war with its long-lasting implications was tonally jarring and difficult to manage.


Naruto’s final arcs: What Kishimoto learned from the challenge
Despite all these trials and tribulations, Kishimoto knew he wanted to end the saga with an ending that was authentic to the tale. Even in the midst of major battle scenes he focused throughout the script on themes of togetherness, harmony and forgiveness. Looking back on it now, he says that post-Pain stretch was an essential crash course in pacing and in long-form character building. While not every one of its arcs matched the emotional weight of Pain’s invasion, the journey continued to be true to what makes Naruto so special.

In the end, Kishimoto’s failures after the Pain arc are a textbook case of high story telling standards becoming an issue upon themselves. It was in that struggle that his odyssey continued and ultimately grew into one of the most well-liked and lucrative anime and manga franchises on the planet.