In the transfer between the old and the new forum, all the pictures in my argument got messed up. So I'm gonna repost it here for convenience's sake. It's been slightly edited though for various reasons...

(If this is in the wrong section and should be in "General", my apologies.)

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 (August 23), 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 35+ish 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.

So I've decided to expand upon my argument 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. But if you look at a photo of Dosu from the anime or 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 corrected, as Oasis added different sprites for asymmetrical characters such as Kakashi or Deidara. (See below)

This leads me to believe that Dosu was initially intended to be playable in the game. 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.

“But Dosu, what if the game got it wrong? What if the devs accidentally thought that Dosu’s left eye is the one that’s covered?”

This is clearly not the case. In his Plot Instance profile sprite, he has the correct eye covered. The programmers and artists clearly weren’t careless with their details here; they even got the cracks on Dosu’s Melody Arm correct, which is really quite commendable. (I would know since I tried to draw the Melody Arm, to limited success)

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 damage and chaos to one enemy. Ninjutsu damage (I even tested it with Tendo and he ignored the damage)

Interestingly enough, this Mystery has no Prompt in the Plot Instances but has Prompt in the Wanted Mission.

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.

What about Road to Ninja characters like Make Out Paradise Shikamaru and Playb0y Sasuke? So Alternate Universe characters are being prioritized over Team Dosu, who are in the normal universe?

Since these characters got changed, this point is slightly different. But still - why do characters like Sasuke, Sakura, and Shikamaru get multiple renditions of themselves, some of which are just joke/collectors, when Team Dosu isn't even playable at all? That's just plain unfair.

Then there are the Hebihimes. To be honest, I'm still really bitter over this one. 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. Or some of the other characters, like Swimsuit Ino, et cetera et cetera.

So what does this mean?

The argument that Team Dosu is too minor to add is void. 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 characters like Mahiru, Taiseki, Gozu and Meizu, Zori and Waraji, and Team Oboro are playable... can any of you recognize those names at all?), doesn’t have Enma as playable.

(This argument was so big that it went over the character limit and had to be split into sections. Please bear with me!)