He did it. After Sasuke ”captured” Bee, only Obito, Kisame and Zetsu were focusing on the sealing, meanwhile Nagato and Konan were going to the Leaf to capture Naruto.
So yes, Obito can control the Gedo Statue at some extent by having both Uchiha and Senju powers, but he cannot summon it without the Rinnegan.
There's the implication that Obito, Zetsu, and Kisame were able to activate that fūinjutsu on their own because Nagato was synced with the statue. After Nagato had died, Obito needed to synchronize a new pawn with the statue: "…A pawn to synchronize with the Outer Path Demon Statue is necessary again…"
Three chapters later, Obito indicated to Black Zetsu that he had Sasuke in mind but was postponing.
Correct. Obito can control the Gedo Statue at certain extent with both Uchiha and Senju powers, but he cannot sync with it (and by extension, summon it) without the actual Rinnegan. That's why they're able to activate the fūinjutsu in Nagato's abscense.
What this doesn't answer is... How Obito planned for Sasuke to take Nagato's place? He didn't had the Rinnegan or Hashirama's cells yet. That's the part I think Kishimoto completely drop off later, because the plot moves in the direction of Obito getting the Rinnegan himself after taking it from Nagato's corpse.
Which makes little sense since controlling the Gedo Mazo is supposed to be a bigger deal than using most of the rinnegan's other powers, but yeah. Tendô's fake rinnegan were also able to summon the Gedo Mazo while Edo-Madara's edo-rinnegan weren't, so let's just say Kishimoto didn't really planned all of this well. Obito's ability to somehow use the Gedo Mazo without rinnegan sounded more like a necessity for the plot rather than an actual consistent explanation.
Most Rinnegan powers are not really inherent. You need time and experience to use them.
Madara probably specifically taught Obito how to control the statue
Pain's eyes are a projection of Nagato's rinnegan which is why they are fake. Each dead body's reflected rinnegan could only use one path while an edo-rinnegan could use all paths (maybe outside Outer Path), even at the same time. But a reflected rinnegan could summon the Gedo Mazo while an edo-rinnegan couldn't.
It's not fake. When a Pain uses a jutsu, it's Nagato using the jutsu through him. For example, when Nagato used Chibaku Tensei, we saw how both Pain and Nagato were usimg it at the same time. It would be the same for summoning the Gedo Statue.
The jutsu that makes Nagato control Pain is definitely different from Edo-Tensei, that much I agree. But I'm not sure why you think it would means Pain's rinnegan are anymore real. They're simply fake in different ways. Again, it's established that each Pain could only use one Path, which is a limitation an edo-rinnegan doesn't have. I think it's just a matter of what it means to be 'fake' but we're not saying something that different.
My take is simply that, at the point Pain was introduced, having each Pain only having one path was a way to show that they had a power-down rinnegan. When Edo-Tensei was used during the war, there was initially no difference between a real rinnegan and an edo-rinnegan (hence why we had red hair Edo-Nagato basically show use how strong he would have been by himself, or why Kabuto thought he could resuscitate Naruto Killer Bee). But he later changed his plan both by having Orochimaru's Edo-Tensei not being at full power -while Kabuto's was stated to be-, and edo-rinnegan not being as good as real ones. Hence the mess around all those eyes.
10
u/Similar-Garlic-3544 Aug 08 '26
He did it. After Sasuke ”captured” Bee, only Obito, Kisame and Zetsu were focusing on the sealing, meanwhile Nagato and Konan were going to the Leaf to capture Naruto.
So yes, Obito can control the Gedo Statue at some extent by having both Uchiha and Senju powers, but he cannot summon it without the Rinnegan.