Naruto Chapter 381: His True Identity

Summary: Jiraiya realizes that all of Pain's bodies resemble people Jiraiya had known in the past. He dismisses his frog summons and decides to leave his barrier in a suicidal attempt to confirm Pain's true identity.

SnowyOwl Says:

Jiraiya is a piece of fried dead meat. All manga tropes point to his demise: the parting conversation with Tsunade and her lingering thoughts and dim hopes, the build up of the rin'negan's power, his own resolution to risk it all -- how can he NOT die after making that kind of heroic declaration? He'd lose face if he didn't sacrifice himself. But I'm putting my bets on him finding a way to communicate what he finds out and it finding a way to Tsunade.

This chapter gave us a really nice twist. It seems to imply that Pain is a concept (heh. wordplay). That is, Pain is not an individual, but perhaps would manifest differently to different people. Jiraiya's confronting him, thus he appears to Jiraiya as people from his past. Perhaps a very elaborate genjutsu to disarm the opponent.

Or, Pain just has real beef with Jiraiya and decided to hunt down people Jiraiya knew in preparation for this day. Man, that would be screwed up.

I only had a small moment of annoyance with this chapter: of course we didn't really see this coming: all these 'past' characters had never been introduced before (like when first!Team Jiraiya was intro'd) but the presence of Yahiko saved it.