Hi there! 👋 I was thinking of a hc that I wanted to share, and that's that I like to think how the sand sibs' friends would be surprised and caught off-guard at how ridiculously smart and intelligent Kankuro actually is.
Now, all their friends know that Gaara and Temari are super smart and all, so Kankuro tends to slip the mind until something happens, and he steps up to prove he's super smart, too. I'm mentioning this because genuinely. No one can convince me that puppetry isn't one of the most complex, complicated, and involved techniques to master in all of Naruto. You simply cannot learn puppets, a technique that can be considered both an art and science at the same time, if you're not a genius. Also, Kankuro must've taught himself most of the things he knows on his own, lmao. His brain is actually super massive, a walking encyclopedia if you will.
Like, imagine, Kankuro and Temari are on a conjoined mission with Ino-Shika-Cho, and they rescue a severely injured civilian, and Ino needs to perform a life saving surgery, but ofc, she needs someone to help her with all that. Cue, Temari, and Shikamaru pointing at a blissfully unaware Kankuro like 'he will help you. He's the closest thing to a doctor who could help you that we have." Just for him to actually successfully help her with the surgery, and she'd be like 'I didn't know you were a medical ninja' and he'd reply that he's not, medicine is just a field requirement for puppet mastery and Ino would be staring like 😮
Imagine Shikamaru and Temari playing Shogi, and Kankuro has never, ever shown interest in the board game, but he just learns the rules from watching them play a few times in front of him, cause he's that perceptive. To the point, he'd be the 1st to point it out if Temari makes a bad move or smth.
Imagine him on a mission with t8, and Shino is super pissed cause not only is Kankuro an innate leader who immediately gets Kiba's and Hinata's trust, his strategies and calculations are nearly flawless every time. Kiba and Hinata be foraging for mushrooms, and Kankuro is in the bg just nonchalantly warning them what mushrooms are poisonous and which ones are good to eat, scientific names at all, with Shino banging his head against the nearest tree.
Idk, I just want Kankuro's intelligence to be more acknowledged. Everyone talks bout Gaara and Temari, and yeah, I agree they're smart. But Kankuro is also a genius and, by all means, should be considered a walking encyclopedia due to the huge array of vast knowledge he needs to possess to be a puppet master, in addition to being an excellent, above average strategist. Sorry for the huge text, unu. I just love my boy a lot and get excited at the prospect of talking bout him.
As the proud owner of the Official Naruto Data book this was a very fun thing to look into!
If you don't know, the data books give stats on each character, breakdowns of their jutsu and other personal info like their favorite foods and silly things like that! The one I am basing everything off of takes their stats from Shippuden so it's pretty close to the final rating, though a lot of the characters have continued to improve and show that in Boruto. Unfortunately we don't have stats for the Boruto age (yet).
So all the stats are based out of 5 with 5 being the highest. Shikamaru is a good character to look at with intelligence since that pretty much his whole thing. He has had his intelligence maxed out at 5 since he was a genin. This is important because as the characters age, their stats change and usually get higher, but because of Shikamaru's stat not changing we know that the data book does not go beyond a 5.
All that being said, let's get into the stats! Kankurou has a 3.5/5 in intellect, which puts him at above average for his age, though behind Gaara and Temari by a small margin since they are both ranked at 4/5.
Kankurou does however out rank characters such as Chouji, Kiba, Naruto, Ino, Hinata, Lee and even Neji! He has the same intellect rating as Sasuke, Sai, and Tenten And is outranked by Shino, Sakura, Shikamaru, Gaara, and Temari.
Looking at these stats, that puts the sand siblings combined intellect at an 11.5/15, making them the smartest team in the series! They would outrank InoShikaCho so I firmly believe they could outsmart Shikamaru if it was the three of them together.
Now to your point about the intelligence behind his jutsu—puppet jutsu do tend to be of higher rank in terms of difficulty so I believe you are absolute correct in that it requires a lot of skill to master!
For example, Sasori's Performance of A Hundred Puppets is considered an S class jutsu which is the highest you can go (E-S with Kekkei Genkai being in it's own category) Even Lady Chiyo's ten puppet jutsu is also rated an S level technique. So it stands to reason that puppet techniques require a lot of skill to learn.
Going off of that, I checked on Lady Chiyo and Sasori's stats and lo and behold both of their intellect scores were 5's!
Now there is a lot of discourse around whether or not Kankurou is considered to have surpassed Sasori and Chiyo, but I think it's safe to say he is at least close to their level as an adult. Since this data book is the last one published (I believe), his ranking sits at 3.5/5 officially, but he has definitely grown since the war and I think it's very possible that he has increased that score to at least a 4.
Sorry if this was long! I really enjoy looking at data and comparing characters so this was fun to do lol.
