The Best Teacher In Naruto According To Fans
An important part of many shonen anime is the gradual improvement of its main character. Like any story, the protagonist of a shonen needs to learn hard lessons and become a better version of themself to complete their journey. A common method of showing this process are "training arcs," sections of a shonen story dedicated to the development of the protagonist's skills as opposed to facing the main threat. You can see this in shonen like "My Hero Academia," "Dragon Ball Z," and, of course, "Naruto."
However, the protagonists of any of these shonen rarely ever complete their training on their own. Even experienced fighters like Goku need a coach. "Naruto," however, sets itself apart from other shonen due to the sheer number of "teacher" characters present throughout its story. Almost every character in the story gets their own teacher at some point and improves due to their training. This begs the question among fans, who is the best teacher in "Naruto"? Well, according to fans on Reddit, the answer to that question isn't so simple.
Fans voted for Jiraiya, but not everyone agrees
In a popular fan poll posted to the r/Naruto subreddit, "Naruto" fans determined that Jiraiya, the expert shinobi who teaches Naruto skills like the Summoning Jutsu, his signature Rasengan, and the ability to tap into his latent Nine-Tails Chakra, is the best teacher in the series. By a wide margin, Jiraiya received the most votes, a staggering 3,500 or so. That's roughly 1,000 more than the next-best teacher, Kakashi Hatake, and it's roughly 10 times the number of votes that Tsunade received. However, not all fans agree with this conclusion.
"[Orochimaru], Tsunade, and Madara gave their students the biggest buffs," wrote Redditor u/dryduneden quite simply. Many fans agreed with this statement, pointing out that all three teachers seemingly stand out for teaching more abilities to their students than Jiraiya ever teaches Naruto. Tsunade, especially, gets praise because her student, Sakura, is neither a genius nor a main character, and arguably improves the most between "Naruto" and "Naruto: Shippuden."
"[Tsunade] teaches powerless Sakura her medical jutsu plus her super-strength Taijutsu WHILE she also led and managed the village after Orochimaru's attack," observed one fan, u/KarnaMySun. However, many fans still stand by Jiraiya. Though he teaches Naruto less jutsu than other teachers, he still helps Naruto — who becomes strong regardless — along his path in a philosophical sense. As u/sunofa put it, "He guided Naruto to be the man he is today," and that is arguably just as important.