Naruto Fans, Stop Idolizing Pain: Hidden Rain Exposes a War Criminal, Not a Hero

Let me cut through the cool factor right away: Pain looks slick, talks like a prophet, and pulls off god-tier jutsu. But if you stop romanticizing the speeches and the deity complex, what you actually have is a tyrant who turned a village into a fear machine and moved civilians around like disposable pieces. Naruto Shippuden does not ask you to agree with him. It uses him as a red flag for what happens when trauma hardens into an ideology and nobody puts a leash on power. Once you run his choices through basic human decency, the hero worship gets real awkward.

Reading Pain like he is subject to modern law (yeah, I know)

Applying something like the Geneva Conventions to a ninja anime is technically the wrong tool, but it is a useful lens. Those rules exist to prevent exactly the stuff Pain relies on: mass civilian deaths, wrecking non-military targets, and ruling by terror.

Shippuden does not hide this. In the Hidden Rain, Pain does not lead so much as suffocate. Amegakure becomes a quiet surveillance state where people have no real agency or safety. Step out of line and you are done. Then there is his sledgehammer move: the total wipe of the Hidden Leaf with Shinra Tensei. In seconds, he obliterates homes, hospitals, infrastructure, and a lot of people who were not combatants. That is not smart tactics; that is collective punishment on a massive scale. Even by Naruto standards, it is extreme — and that is the point.

• Protect civilians vs. Mass deaths in Konoha
• No collective punishment vs. Entire villages punished for ideology
• Limit destruction vs. Shinra Tensei flattening non-military zones
• Humane governance vs. Fear, surveillance, and zero dissent
• Justice vs. deterrence vs. Violence used as a lesson

From a modern perspective, that checks way too many boxes. The Naruto world does not have courts in The Hague, but morally, this is monstrous behavior, not something to admire.

How Nagato became the thing he hated

It did not start this way. Young Nagato trained with Jiraiya alongside Yahiko and Konan, genuinely believing peace did not have to be forced on anyone. Yahiko just wanted the endless wars to stop chewing up small nations. Then Yahiko dies, Nagato breaks, and the mission mutates. Peace stops being a choice and becomes a mandate Pain will impose.

By the time Naruto faces him, Pain is not a revolutionary anymore. He is the system he used to resent. The fight is not just fists and jutsu; it is an argument about what ends cycles of violence. Naruto does not win by pure power. He wins by poking a hole in Pain's thesis:

'Suffering does not end hatred; it makes it bigger.'

In the end, Pain tries to atone in the only way he can — he reverses the devastation of Konoha, bringing people back and undoing what he did. That is not the show asking you to praise him. That is a confession wrapped in a final jutsu. The series wants you to understand how he got there — and then reject his logic. Pain is a brilliant character specifically because he maps how good intentions curdle into violence, and why choosing compassion over domination is harder but necessary.

If you want to revisit the arc: Naruto and Naruto Shippuden are streaming on Crunchyroll.