The franchise Naruto It has been popular for over a decade, and features a ton of awesome ninja battles. The first half of the series featured the main group of characters and focused on setting goals for Naruto and Sasuke. In the second half of the series, Naruto and his friends mainly faced a group of rogue ninjas known as the Akatsuki.
Except for Zetsu, all of the Akatsuki members were very skilled and powerful ninjas, and many of them possessed unique and terrifying abilities. They started out as a group of mercenaries, but their true goal was to gather all the Tailed Beasts. The organization was very successful, but it also failed in some respects.
9 They failed to capture all eight tails twice
Killer B is one of the friendliest characters in Shippuden , and was targeted by the Akatsuki on multiple occasions for being the Jinchuriki of the Eight Tails. The organization first tried to capture him by sending Sasuke and his team after him.
Naruto’s 10 biggest failures, ranked
Naruto: Sasuke’s 10 Biggest Failures, Ranked
It appeared that B had been captured, but when the Akatsuki began to extract the Eight Tails, it was revealed that B had used a very convincing decoy to escape. In the second attempt, Kisame went for it alone, and ended up failing because his sword, Samehada, betrayed him. The appearance of the Fourth Raikage also contributed to this failure.
8 no one bothered to rescue Hidan
Hidan may have been one of the most immature members of Akatsuki, but his ability made him a valuable part of the organization. Thanks to his forbidden jutsu, Hidan obtained a form of immortality, and was able to turn into a human voodoo doll. This ability allowed him to take down a fully transformed Jinchuriki.
After killing Asuma, Hidan and Kakuzu were hunted down, and when Shikamaru finally unloaded his Shadow Possession Jutsu on Hidan, he lured him and blew his body to pieces. Hidan was still very much alive, but he was sealed inside a pit. The pit may be guarded, but Zetsu and Obito could have retrieved it at any time, and Pain could have theoretically healed his injuries with the Naraka Path.
7 they allowed Orochimaru to run free
There are undoubtedly anime villains who are worse than Orochimaru, but that fact does not lessen the impact of his heinous acts. He joined the Akatsuki shortly after becoming a rogue ninja, but left the group after attempting to steal the Sharingan from Itachi.
The Akatsuki wanted Orochimaru dead because he knew about the organization, and Sasori and Deidara were the ones in charge of killing him. However, Orochimaru was allowed to roam freely for years, which was strange considering that Kabuto was once Sasori’s spy. If Sasori had contacted Kabuto earlier, Orochimaru could have been killed, especially if there were more Akatsuki members present to ensure the mission’s success.
6 no one stopped Deidara from going after Sasuke
When Deidara found out that Sasuke had killed Orochimaru before him, he decided to go after the young Uchiha instead. Sasuke overestimated his power quite a few times, but was in full control during his fight with Deidara, so the young Akatsuki resorted to blowing himself up.
Deidara was Akatsuki’s explosives expert, which means that he was actually one of the most useful members of the group, and they allowed him to wage pointless revenge. Pain himself admitted that the loss of Deidara was a major blow to the organization that could have easily been avoided with a simple order.
5 They did not have spies in every town
When Sasori and Deidara attacked the Sand Village, they used one of Sasori’s spies to eliminate the outside security of the village. This turned out to be quite useful, as it allowed Deidara to enter the village virtually undetected. It also allowed him to face Gaara without any other Arena ninja being involved.
Spies can be very useful, especially if they are high-ranking individuals who can provide information on the habits and location of a Jinchuriki. If the Akatsuki had a spy in the Cloud Village, B might have been captured. It was true that Zetsu spied a lot, but he couldn’t be everywhere at once.
4 They had no support members waiting
One of the harsh realities of Akatsuki is the fact that each member is a wanted criminal, but when the group is in full swing, all members have some level of protection. In this case, full strength meant ten members in total, but that number turned out to be a bit of a problem.
It is extremely manageable to have only ten members to keep track of, but when one member leaves or dies, the group loses a large chunk of its manpower. By the time Pain attacked the Leaf Village, the organization had lost half its total staff, and only one member had been replaced. If the organization had had a list of potential members beforehand, they could have filled their ranks without much difficulty.
3 They didn’t capture multiple tailed beasts at once
The Akatsuki’s goal was to capture the Tailed Beasts, and it took them a long time to gather the first seven because they needed to collect them in a specific order. For the most part, each Tailed Beast and Jinchuriki was defeated by a single Akatsuki member, which meant that they could have easily collected more than one at a time.
If they had gathered multiple Jinchuriki at once, they could have simply extracted each Tailed Beast in order while the other Jinchuriki were immobilized. Doing this would have put the ninja villages more on edge because they would all have lost their best weapons simultaneously. This method would have allowed multiple members to go after Naruto and the Nine-Tails later.
2 They failed to capture all nine tails
The Nine-Tailed was the strongest Tailed Beast, so Pain decided to capture it personally. Pain stormed the village with his six bodies, and Konan helped interrogate some Leaf ninjas as well. When Pain learned of Naruto’s location, he destroyed most of the village so that its inhabitants would understand the true pain.
Naruto ended up coming back, eventually defeating Pain. When the fight ended, Naruto met with Nagato, and after a sincere conversation, the latter decided to entrust Naruto with the task of bringing peace to the ninja world. Nagato died shortly after, and Konan decided to leave the organization at the same time.
1 The organization was manipulated by several people
The Akatsuki was a group of villains that no normal person would want to be a part of, and that was because the entire group was manipulated by various individuals. Nagato’s Akatsuki’s goal was to gather the Tailed Beasts to take over the world and establish true peace, but Obito and Black Zetsu had other ideas.
Obito wanted the Tailed Beasts to create the Ten Tails and launch the Infinite Tsukuyomi over the entire planet. Black Zetsu had manipulated both Obito and Madara, as he needed a perfect Ten-Tailed Jinchuriki to resurrect Kaguya Otsutsuki.