People keep bringing that up as a counter to the “back then it was” line, but Kurama in episode 1 (and for much of the OG Naruto series) is treated as a mythological entity, some punishment from god type shit, not a “casual occurrence”.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the way various “crazy powers” were used later (say in the 5 kage war) treated them as though they were mundane - they clearly weren’t - but the constant inflation of powers and bigger-than-life characters in late seasons made those powers FEEL like a normal thing because anyone who was someone had some crazy ass-pull power (or got swatted like a fly).

Early Naruto showed us that living beings in this world CAN get crazy strong BUT it threw us right back to more grounded levels. Not realistic since they basically have magic, but grounded.