I knew this would happen. Look at what they did with hanabi and anbu itachi. Hanabi was through event and anbu itachi in all the other servers was via an event and/or given 5*. Frankly, probably they would have put anbu itachi behind a paywall but too many people knew how he was distributed and would get so much rage so they did the bare minimum with the 3* via monthly sign-in.

But in terms of numbers, it seems like a lot more people knew about itachi than other ninjas that were given.