EDIT: Since I got Tendo, I was able to test out Dosu some more. I can testify that his Mystery is pure Ninjutsu...

Well, it's June 12, which means that it's Dosu Kinuta's birthday. Perfect timing for what I have to say.

A while back, it was suggested that Team Dosu were to be implemented into the game as playable. (Original thread here) The development team should know about this suggestion, but they have not responded concerning its status for more than half a year. Within that time, we've gotten two new treasures (and a third one coming up), about 35ish other new characters, and all sorts of other new features (like the Bond system, Space-Time, monthly event), but still no news on Team Dosu's status.

I've decided to expand upon my case on why Team Dosu should be added to the game, even just as collector-type ninjas like Konohamaru Corps et cetera. I'm first going to point out the most obvious reason: in at least one other version of the game, Zaku and only Zaku is playable, albeit as a collector character. Adding just one of the three as a playable character seems downright incomplete; why just add one and not the other two?

I’m going to focus solely on Dosu for my next couple points.

There are several clues that Dosu was programmed in a similar or identical fashion to a playable character. The first of these clues is his in-game sprite.



Seems pretty normal, right? There’s one important thing I noticed here, and it’s that Dosu’s bandages cover the wrong eye. On the sprite, his left eye is covered. If you look at a photo of Dosu from the anime and manga, it is evident that his right eye is the one that the bandages cover, not the left.



So what does this mean?

In the 2.0 update, Oasis fixed the “ambidextrous sprite” problem. Before, whenever a player fought an asymmetrical enemy, the enemy’s sprite would just be the flipped version of the regular sprite. However, after 2.0, this was mostly corrected, as Oasis added different sprites for asymmetrical characters such as Kakashi or Deidara.



This leads me to believe that Dosu was initially intended to be playable in the game, but this was canceled for unknown reasons. The only sprite we see of him - as an enemy - is a flipped version of what should have been his playable sprite, where the correct eye is covered by the bandages.
Why this wasn’t fixed in 2.0, I have no idea.

There’s one other clue that hints towards Dosu being originally programmed as a playable character. In the Plot Instances and the Kabuto Wanted Mission, Dosu has a full set of abilities. By a full set of abilities, I mean a mystery, a standard, and two to three passives or chases.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Dosu is the only Plot Instance enemy who has a full set of abilities that we CAN'T recruit or play. Almost every other character with a full set of abilities is recruitable, from the two different Zabuzas to the Sound Four to the Akatsuki, and so on. The only exception here is the first Animal Path, but since his skills are identical to the second Animal Path, I’m not going to count him.

So what is Dosu’s full skillset?

Mystery: Resonating Echo Drill (40 chakra, 3-round cooldown, either 0 or 1 Battlefield Cooldown)
Causes slight Ninjutsu damage and chaos to one enemy.

Interestingly enough, this Mystery has no Prompt in the Plot Instances but has Prompt in the Wanted Mission. The Cooldown might be different as well, but I haven't had the chance to check.

Standard: Taijutsu Attack
Attack the front enemy and cause 2 combo, chance of High Float.

Passive: Substitution Jutsu
Increase evasion and has a chance of avoiding the enemy.

Passive: Unyielding
When you die, there's a chance of resurrection and returning to battle.

There was one other thing that I noticed, either Dosu or Kin could have this one. I bet Kin has it, though, since Team Dosu seems to only have 4 total abilities instead of the usual 5 (similar to collector characters such as Boy Kakashi/Boy Obito)

Passive: ???
At the beginning of the battle, increase 10 Chakra points for your own team. (Sounds useless xD)

Now there are two possible arguments that I thought about that would be AGAINST adding Team Dosu as playable:

Reason 1: "Those guys? They're too minor. They're insignificant characters!"

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT THE PRESENCE OR PLAYABILITY OF ANY OF THE CHARACTERS MENTIONED IN THE BELOW SECTION. I'M JUST TRYING TO PROVE A CERTAIN POINT BY CITING THESE CHARACTERS AS EXAMPLES.

So, uh... you're saying Enma the Monkey King isn't minor? Enma, who only appeared in the Third Hokage vs. Orochimaru fight during the Konoha Crush, and then one more time again when Edo Tensei Hiruzen summoned him to free Naruto from the Ten Tails? He only appeared in two fights, and he only actually fought in one of them. I'd say he's pretty insignificant, and yet he’s still a playable character.

What about Hanabi Hyuga, who is playable in one of the other versions? She started out as motivation for Hinata to grow stronger, and then practically spent all of her screen time as a background character marveling over Hinata's progress as a ninja. If I remember correctly, her only fight was a sparring match against Hinata... in a flashback.

Then there are the Hebihimes. To be honest, I'm still really bitter over this one personally. As far as I understand, the Hebihimes have never actually appeared in the Naruto series, yet they are still playable while Team Dosu is not. So why does Oasis prioritize the non-canon characters over the canon ones? This was advertised as a Naruto game, not a "Naruto plus random non-canon characters" game.

Technically, I could also make this same argument for Fukurokumaru, who is also a non-canon character.

So clearly, the developers are fine with adding minor characters. This is actually one of my favorite parts of the game, since few other Naruto games give the same character variety. Even Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Blazing, a mobile character-collector game which covers almost every single minor character, (even Team Oboro is playable!) doesn’t have Enma as playable.
(I'm not done yet... since my argument is too long I needed to split it up into multiple posts. Sorry for the inconvenience.)


This post was last edited by Dosu at 2017-6-12 17:20 This post was last edited by Dosu at 2017-6-13 11:24