#ninja math

[keepyourpantsongohan]

You know, despite the way that her fight with Obito ends, I really do admire that Konan made 600,000,000,000 exploding tags to kill him, because that is an insane number that shows no reasonable understanding of math.

If Konan had made 100 million exploding tags every day, it would still take her 6,000 days to make that amount of tags, which is equivalent to almost 16 and a half years. This would imply that Konan has some sort of endless resource of production, like that she just has a subdivision of Ame ninja running that do nothing but make exploding tags to kill her coworker that she hates.

(And even funnier than this, if we go back 16 years, Obito is around 14 or 15, which is exactly when Obito joined Akatsuki and took over. Which implies that the moment Konan met this teenager posing as an old man taking over her and her friends' rebel group, she went, "I'm gonna kill this guy," and stuck by that conviction every day for the span of her life.)

[keepyourpantsongohan]

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I can't seem to find a simple answer anywhere I know you did those amazing timelines so I'm hoping you might know. Do we know the age difference between Sakumo and Orochimaru?

Not a dumb question! The short answer is 'no.' Sakumo has no stated age.

The longer answer: He could be Orochimaru's age, or older by less than 10 years.

There is only one moment in the manga that compares them at all, which is in Chapter 240 (see image below), when Minato says in "[Sakumo]'s time, the [Sannin] paled beside him."

To me, there are two ways of interpreting this statement: Either Sakumo and the Sannin were both at their peak at the same time, and Sakumo was that much more impressive, or leaning into the "his time" comment: Sakumo's peak of fame came before the Sannin reached their height of importance, which might imply that he is a little older than them (incuding Orochimaru). I like the second option.

The other bit of timeline information we get about Sakumo is that he considers himself and Kakashi to have "died young" (Chapter 449) and it is fairly obvious he is older than Kakashi, who is in or around 30 years old when he has this chat in ninja purgatory. So if you, as I do in Year 19 of my timeline, guesstimate that Sakumo is in his late 30s at death, then he could be around 4-9 years older than the Sannin.

(If you're curious about the math there: Let's leave out Kakashi, because his promotion timeline is a mess, but take Obito, whose respective ages at Kannabi Bridge and Part II are 31 and 13, and note that the Sannin are ~23 years older than him.

Sakumo died 5 years before Obito turned 13, when Obito was 8, which would mean the Sannin were 31 when Sakumo died. So if Sakumo is older, it is presumably less than 10 years.)

[keepyourpantsongohan]

How old was Naruto when he entered the academy

Good question! I know that for Sasuke, it's implied that he starts the academy around age 7, since that is when all of his Itachi flashbacks take place (see Chapter 145 of Naruto).

So I'd assume for Naruto it's the same entrance age - around age 7?

Worth noting that this seems to vary based on era - Itachi graduates after one year at age 7, so he entered at 6. Kakashi graduated at age 5, and was probably only there a matter of months. I'd guess a typical entrance age for Kakashi's age group was age 5, considering that the most prodigious young students like Yamato or Gai graduated at 6 and 7 respectively, and the supposed "last" of Kakashi's class like Obito graduated at 9.

Itachi Shinden also states that there starts being a minimum age requirement for graduation (age 11) after Izumi graduates!

Which suggests two interesting things:

1) The typical length of academy attendance (prodigies aside) remains consistent around 4-5 years no matter which era.

2) The fact that Naruto is said to have failed his graduation exam twice means that he probably applied to graduate as soon as he was able (age 11), and then failed early twice, rather than being held back for any reason.