I was discussing this with some friends, and what initially started as mere slander jokes eventually bloomed into a whole discussion about Rock Lee and what he actually represents in the Naruto-verse:
YAP INCOMING:
In the story of Naruto, Lee is seemingly meant to represent the 'everyman'. He's the guy who has nothing, who through sheer determination and grit, manages to make something of himself; he does this even in spite of the scorn of his peers. In that way, many people tend to draw a parallel between him and Naruto:
Naruto was born lonely, and was shunned for his entire upbringing. He had little assistance, and seemingly abysmal talent as pertaining to many of the ninja arts. Because of this, he was written off as a loser, despite his big dreams.
Lee is much the same: He lacks talent in any of the ninja arts and is treated like a joke by his peers for lacking any ability in ninjutsu, taijutsu, and genjutsu.
Where Lee stands out, and is eventually recognized enough to be brought on by Gai, is that he is insanely dedicated to Taijutsu, even despite sucking at it. His dedication is such that Gai is willing to actively step in, in his capacity as a jonin, to pass Lee regardless, even though he should never have passed, otherwise. Because of this, Lee is able to become a ninja under Gai and begin his journey to "Become a splendid ninja!"
Many people fell in love with Lee's character. He is earnest, to a fault, and his challenging background makes him appealing for many people who have struggled to find a place in the world purely off their own merits. I have even seen some people go so far as to say that Lee should have been the main character, as he embodies the story's theme of hard work transcending fate and natural talents better than the protagonist, himself.
Personally I think that's a stupid, idiot, cringe, small-brain, stinky, rancid, rank, roach-infested, trash-ingested, go to an optometrist and get your eyes tested, goober shit interpretation that needs to go away... But that's neither here nor there.
What I'm here to discuss, rather, is whether Lee actually even... Deserves the love that he's gotten?
With all of that said, consider this my personal hit piece for Rock Lee:
When we first meet Lee, it is in the lead up for the first exam. He is playing a fool to lower the competitions' expectations of his team by appearing weak. It appears to be working, until Sasuke arrives and shows off a bit to raise Sakura's confidence.
After this, Lee folds under zero pressure to interrupt a fight that has nothing to do with him. When scolded over it, he reveals that he was trying to impress Sakura, who he rather clumsily attempts to flirt with, to her horror/disdain.
Shortly after this, Lee chases them down and challenges Sasuke to a duel, wishing to prove his superiority, and this is immediately where I start having problems with him as a character:
Lee will go on to become known as a kind, earnest character who deeply respects hard work. So his coming after Sasuke here, while absolutely serving to establish his strength, immediately serves as a disservice to his character. What this is, in essence, is an older and more experienced ninja seeking out a junior ninja to beat on to make a point. Of course, Sasuke's ego absolutely deserves to get humbled a bit by this point, but what I really want to focus on is actually how Lee treats Naruto in this scene:
Naruto shows clear ire at being completely overlooked in favor of Sasuke, something that Lee of all people ought to resonate with, being somebody who was constantly overlooked or even looked down on for his lack of talents.
Lee hardly even looks at Naruto, instead immediately writing him off and insisting to fight Sasuke. When Naruto naturally takes offense, Lee swiftly humiliates him before continuing on to his fight with Sasuke.
And this fight is very one-sided. Lee makes short work of Sasuke. However, where Lee ought to have simply ended the fight once it became clear that Sasuke could not fight back, Lee tries to kill Sasuke, in the name of making his point about hard work.
I cannot stress enough how absurd of an overreaction this is. First we need to establish that the primary lotus, which Lee uses, is meant to be used to kill its opponents. This is not an exaggeration. In order to even use it, you must open the first gate, before wrapping a target up so that they are completely unable to move or escape, and slamming them headfirst into the ground. Every time Lee has used this technique successfully, it has been with the expectation that he is ending the fight, and his target's life.
Lee attempts to kill a comrade over the chip on his shoulder. And Gai rightfully appears to punish Lee for doing so, further cementing that Lee's intentions were absolutely to kill or at the very least severely wound or cripple Sasuke.
This will be the only fight that Lee ever wins, by the way.
From here on, Lee appears a few more times. He appears in the Forest of Death to protect Sakura from the Sound team, and gets completely destroyed by what ought to have been inferior opponents on account of underestimating his foe, misreading their techniques, refusing to go all out, and overall lacking versatility to his kit.
I have a lot to say about this, but I'll keep it simple. This is probably the example I look to most frequently whenever people talk about Lee's power level and that he should've become a Chunin or whatever else:
Lee's kit is, to put frankly, kind of ass. In order to understand how bad it actually is, we must first understand that unlike how a lot of fanfiction tends to portray him, Lee does not actually have any kind of medical condition that restricts his ability to use chakra or cast ninjutsu or genjutsu. He literally just sucks. That's it. His inability to do anything more than taijutsu is more of a self-imposed restriction than an actual inability to do so. We know this because Gai, who expressed being similarly untalented in the ninja arts, is able to eventually learn ninjutsu, himself, even if he generally prefers taijutsu.
Lee very quickly has cemented himself as a simple punch/kick merchant, because he has focused so hard on his goal of being a taijutsu-only ninja, that this will consistently become one of the many reasons that he will never take a single win for the rest of part 1. This isn't hard work; this is hyper fixation.
Lee has given up on the other arts in favor of the simplest of them. Gai recognizes Lee's obsession and sees fit to help him by pushing for Lee to pass when his grades and performance up to this point completely do not warrant it. Even now, over a year after, Lee would still fail the academy's graduation exam.
Which brings me to a major point. Lee did not succeed through hard work. He succeeded because Gai gave him an easy out. That is not to say that Lee does not work hard; obviously he does. However, Naruto did not get such an easy out. He had to learn a superior alternative to the one technique that was holding him back from passing; Gai had to pass without any outside help despite being similarly untalented in ninjutsu and taijutsu. Lee, surprisingly, is the one who gets carried here and manages to succeed on some level of luck/privilege.
Moving on:
The next fight we see Lee take part in is his battle against Gaara. This is a wash, as much as the anime especially might have worked to upscale Lee's performance.
Lee learns very quickly that he can't do anything to Gaara's automatic defense. Gai allows him to remove his weights, and Lee is able to do more, but still completely incapable of actually harming Gaara.
And this is where Lee's poor skills actually show. Lee overestimates himself against Gaara by trying to force the primary Lotus. Because he does not properly understand his own limitations, he loses focus mid-technique, and Gaara is able to capitalize with a Sand replacement. This is the exact moment that Lee lost, but it also emphasizes something that I feel isn't spoken about enough:
Gaara was never in danger of losing this fight, because unlike Lee, Gaara was actually planning and strategizing. Lee doesn't lose this fight because Gaara is stronger; he loses because he sucks as a ninja. Gaara recognizes that Lee's stronger taijutsu damages his body, so he makes no unnecessary moves, instead preferring to simply let Lee wear himself out on his defense before closing in for the kill. The tides appear to change for a bit when Lee opens the 3rd, 4th, and later 5th gates, but it's all clearly an act of futility, because Gaara already understands Lee's limitations and knows how to win: He buckles down, holds fast with his defense, and simply bides his time for Lee to burn out because he knows that he will. That's why Gaara is able to simply get up and leave on his own two feet after the fight is over. Lee did not lose because Gaara was stronger; he lost because Gaara was simply smarter, more well-rounded, and actually fought strategically.
You'll notice that this will become a trend. Lee will constantly lose to people who he has an advantage against, because his skills are half-baked or he lacks the core skills actually needed to be a ninja at all.
Fast forward to the Kimimaro fight and that's exactly what we get. Lee is completely unable to breach Kimimaro's dead bone pulse. His answer? Hit him more.
Lee does not increase his force. He does not strategize around stalling Kimimaro to take advantage of his illness; he does not make use of his terrain or perhaps try to steal one of Kimimaro's powerful bones to use against him. He hits him until he starts to lose, then drinks some alcohol and completely relinquishes his hold over the wheel.
Because of this, he is effortlessly defeated, once Kimimaro starts to take him seriously. I would even go so far as to say he lost the moment he needed to rely on sake for a 'buff', even the combat sequence to that fight was very cool.
Okay, so why did I just spend the last half hour doing this write up? Was it just to call Lee ass and that's it?
Kinda, yeah.
But it also leads into something I want to talk about in regards the Naruto-verse and how people tend to misunderstand it.
No, Naruto was not carried by destiny or whatever, and I'm tired of people pretending that he was. Lee is the perfect example of why this isn't the case.
Lee, despite his disadvantages, still had people who gave a shit. His career was paved by Gai, even when he could do nothing. He was dedicated to learning taijutsu, but only because he quit on ninjutsu and genjutsu. What's more, he sucked at even taijutsu until Gai showed up and solved his whole problem for him.
Lee never had to learn the core skills that are fundamental to being a ninja because Gai made it so he did not have to. Because of that, Lee loses every major fight he gets into because he never actually had to work to fill those core gaps in his skillset. Compare that to Gai, who did learn a variety of skills on top of his taijutsu, and even developed specific taijutsu skills to round out his kit. Skills which, even moving into adulthood, we never see Lee perform.
Lee didn't cap out because of destiny or whatever. He capped out because he didn't have the drive to actually do any more than what he did. He wanted to become skilled at taijutsu, and he became skilled at taijutsu. That's as far as his goals went, and that's as far as he went. He wasn't robbed, and his bummery does not prove even remotely that Neji was right.
Now compare this then to Naruto, who got no easy outs, and who had to make every solution he got, himself:
If we look to many of Naruto's fights throughout the series, he always wins, not by overwhelming his foes with raw strength and force, but by being smarter than them. He works to understand their techniques, and develops counters for them; he uses his shadow clones to create distractions or manipulates their expectations to create advantages. This is because even though Naruto has the power of the Kyuubi sealed inside of himself, it is explicitly not a benefit to him until he learns to make it so through his own efforts and force of character.
Look at Naruto's fight versus Gaara actually, and how he immediately understands Gaara's strengths, drums up a potential weakpoint, and manages to create an advantage that allows him to take the driver's seat of the fight right after. It is only after Naruto has managed to overcome Gaara by himself, to the point that Gaara has to metaphorically sell his soul to measure up, that Naruto uses the Kyuubi. Even then, Naruto has matured enough by this point that he calls the shots on how that power is used, and he uses it to demonstrate mastery over a technique that most ninja will never achieve out in their entire lives.
Naruto, unlike Lee, did not settle for simply sucking at the ninja arts. Naruto continually worked to improve himself in many facets of the ninja arts, even when he sucked at them, and even with or without a sensei to guide him- let alone somebody to just hand him all the answers to his problems. Lee does not embody the theme of hard work that doesn't actually exist but for the sake of discussion lets pretend that it does.
Naruto does. Naruto works harder, and he works smarter. More importantly than that, Naruto dares to dream bigger than anybody else, even when he had nothing to help him.
His huge chakra was more a detriment, due to Kurama interfering with his control. Naruto worked harder anyways, and never gave up on learning ninjutsu or genjutsu. He learned how to cast numerous powerful ninjutsu, and even learned how to disrupt high-level genjutsu.
Side note that I added in post: You'll notice that Naruto never wins his fights by overwhelming his enemies with clones. Although his huge chakra eventually gets to be a boon to him, it is only after he has achieved mastery over the technique that it even starts to move the needle. And even then, it only serves as one of the tools in his toolbox that he uses to outsmart and outmaneuver his enemies.
Naruto was considered stupid, to the point that people constantly clowned him for it. That didn't stop Naruto from becoming one of the largest battle IQs in the verse. Virtually ALL of his fights are won by him just outthinking his opponents, even if he's often treated like a dunce. The only times he doesn't is when Kurama is in the driver's seat, and those are actively treated as narrative losses for him, where it matters most.
Naruto by his and the Sage's own admission inherited none of the talents of his parents, and yet managed to master both of their legacies regardless. He tamed Kurama's hatred where Kushina never could, and he completed the rasengan and became even faster than Minato ever was, even without the teleportation of Hirashin to make use of. He only managed to gain six paths powers from Hagoromo because Naruto had put in the work to defeat Kurama with his own strength to gain his strength, then earned his respect, then earned his trust/friendship to gain his allegiance, then earned the trust and respect of all the other bijuu, then essentially died trying to protect Kurama and in doing so proving his strength of character once and for all.
Naruto may have grown into a number of advantages that Lee did not have, but he had to earn every single one of them, despite being born into a position that was even lower than Lee's was, because at least people gave Lee the time of day.
Naruto is a better protagonist, a harder worker, and a much better example of hard work than Lee ever was and will ever be. He surpassed all of his senseis and built on their legacies with or without help, even when the whole world was against him.
Lee, on the other hand, is just a weaker, less interesting, and far less charming Gai who never measured up to the legacy of his mentor. He sucks, and I'm tired of pretending that he doesn't.
Thank you for coming to my ninja TED talk, and letting me yap about a topic nobody cares about for however long this was.
Do you agree? Disagree? Let's talk about it!