Now I was originally planning to write a movie review for Avengers: Infinity War but after watching the film, I changed my mind to write this. Before I proceed, there are HEAVY spoilers for both Naruto (Shippuden, specifically) and Infinity War in this blogpost so if you’re trying to avoid spoilers for either of those, stop reading right here.

You’ve been warned…

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Good. To those who are still here, I will first admit that I haven’t read the Marvel comics, so pardon my ignorance of the same. I also realize that a post of this nature is bound to receive criticism and divide opinions. I respect everyone’s opinions here and have no qualms or arguments if you choose to opine differently. I would appreciate friendly discussions about the same in the comments!

So yes, it hasn’t been too long since I watched Naruto and Naruto Shippuden. I saw Infinity War just last night so it’s still fresh in my mind too. I absolutely love the Naruto series and would love to do an independent review of it in the future. Infinity War was again an amazing movie and I really loved how they built the story, characters, the setting, the cinematography and everything in general. Both of these are monumental creations in their own right and I do not intend to discredit or compare either of the two. I merely choose to point out the ridiculously large amount of similarities I noticed between the two.

As I sat watching the movie, I loved how it unfolded and how they took the story forward until a certain point where I realized that it didn’t seem unfamiliar. Giving it a bit of thought, it suddenly hit me that the story was going along the lines of Shippuden to a surprising extent and after a while it started becoming a little predictable purely because of the similarities.

I may miss a few things here and there but these are the similarities I noticed for the most part.

The most striking and important comparison here is in between Uchiha Madara and Thanos. They both had a goal to ultimately improve the state of the world/universe so people can live happily. Thanos wanted to do this by reducing the population to bring a perfect balance while Madara wanted to send everyone under the Infinite Tsukuyomi where everyone will live in their happiest dreams and will be able to thereby live the life they want (in their dreams, of course). Both of them had a very strong will to execute their ideals, even though they were quite messed up on a few levels.

To achieve their final form and execute their mission, Thanos needed to collect all six Infinity stones while Madara similarly had to collect all nine bijuus (tailed beasts). Thanos needed the Infinity Gauntlet to store all stones and finally activate their power while Madara similarly required the Gedo Mazo statue to store all the bijuu he had captured until it finally awakened into the Juubi when all 9 were collected.

Just like Madara raised Obito to set up the Akatsuki in order to collect the tailed beasts, Thanos too sent the Children of Thanos (The Black Order) in order to obtain the Infinity Stones. In the process, all the Akatsuki Members died just like the Children of Thanos (I can’t say for sure regarding Ebony Maw, but if he is somehow alive, that’ll be a striking similarity to Obito then).

Madara and Thanos both had to lose a loved one in order to obtain greater power. While Thanos killed Gamora to obtain the Soul Stone, Madara lost his brother in order to gain the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan (The killing a loved one for greater power can be more effectively demonstrated as being picked up from Itachi and Shisui’s case, since Madara did not have to kill his brother)

Let’s take a break from talking about the similarities between Thanos and Madara for now. For the sake of convenience, I’ll be referring to the Avengers from the first Avengers movie as the original Avengers (Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor etc.) Compare these to Team 7 of Naruto for now (Kakashi, Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura). I’ll be coming to this later on in this post.

Now, to fight off Thanos, the original Avengers as well as a lot of other MCU superheroes came and fought together. Just like the Allied Shinobi forces where the Ninjas from all five countries came together to fight against Tobi, and Madara thereafter. Now the ninjas were stationed at different locations to fight their wars in different groups. When the Wakanda army started running towards the members of the Children of Thanos (Proxima Midnight and Cull Obsidian) and their army, it was quite reminiscent of the beginning of the fourth great ninja war.

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In the fourth great ninja war, after a few battles were fought, the battling came down to two major locations. One location was where Madara was fighting the five Kage, while the other was where Naruto and the others were fighting Obito. This again would remind you of Thanos fighting Iron Man, Dr. Strange, Spiderman etc. on Titan while the Children of Thanos were fighting Captain America, Black Widow, Black Panther, Hulk etc. in Wakanda. Just like Madara defeated all the five Kaga and then proceeded to enter Naruto’s battlefield, Thanos won on Titan and proceeded to go to Earth for the finale.

What was supposed to be the climax for Infinity War unfortunately became very predictable to me because of these similarities. Thanos obtained all the infinity stones and reached his final form similar to Madara becoming the Jinchuuriki of the Juubi (ten-tailed beast) and obtaining his Rinne-Sharingan. Thanos became the strongest creature in existence similar to Madara becoming the strongest character in existence.

Madara achieved his goal by activating the Infinite Tsukuyomi and sending every human into their cocoon where they were left in their dream world, just as Madara had dreamt of. Similarly, Thanos achieved his goal by wiping out half the population of the Universe and “”restoring balance” in the universe. However, the only ones who survived Madara’s Infinite Tsukuyomi were the members of Team 7 (along with Obito and Zetsu, yes). And who survived the population wipeout done by Thanos? The original Avengers.

(Yes, as unhappy about it as I was, I wasn’t surprised that Dr. Strange and Spiderman both died, especially after such good character development throughout the movie)

As we know, Madara was betrayed by Zetsu and Team 7 then fought Kaguya alongside Obito to end one of the greatest series ever created. But what we know is that in the sequel to Infinity War we’ll be seeing Captain Marvel play an important role and we don’t really have a storyline intricate enough in case of the movie for something like the Zetsu betrayal being recreated. I really don’t expect to see any similarities between the Naruto series and Thanos and the Avengers in the next movie (and I’ll be glad if that’s really the case). But who knows? Maybe the Avengers will fight Thanos just like Team 7 fought Kaguya and then everything will be restored to the way it used to be like it happened in Naruto. Gamora will then end up being the only real death just like Neji. xD

Jokes aside, that’s the major chunk of similarities I noticed between the two in terms of storyline. There were a few miscellaneous similarities not really relevant to the story that I might as well mention because why not, but don’t take these as serious comparisons because they’re supposed to be jokingly put out there.

Here goes:

People dying after Thanos wiped out half the population had a similar animation to those being released from Edo Tensei. Dr. Strange using Naruto’s signature Kage Bunshin no Jutsu while fighting Thanos. Dr. Strange and Wong using portals like Obito’s Kamui (Though a better comparison would be Doraemon’s anywhere door).

That’s all I’ve got for now but I’m sure I noticed a few more in the movie. Let me know if there’s something you remember too!

In any case, the movie as I said was great by itself and I had fun watching it. Looking forward to the sequel now!

PS – Boruto please improve your show soon