One can almost hear the fans of both Star Wars and Naruto either cheering or groaning as they try to figure out the mechanics of this battle given that a lot of people might think that Kakashi should have won with his impressive arsenal and the fact that anime characters are usually so insanely overpowered that trying to overcome them requires the most powerful of heroes and villains. Well, that argument isn’t too far out there since Obi-Wan Kenobi is in fact pretty powerful, but at the same time he’s not the most powerful Jedi that’s ever lived. Were Kakashi to take on someone like Yoda it might have gone even worse since the diminutive Jedi might have shut the fight down quickly and in a way that reminded the ninja that he still had much to learn. As it is Obi-Wan is still in for a pretty decent fight since Kakashi is insanely powerful and does have a good number of tricks up his sleeve so to speak as he puts the Jedi Master through his paces. What’s really telling though is what’s noted after the fight, that Kakashi is working with an internal force that does have a limit, while Kenobi has command over an external Force that has no limit other than the mastery of the user. What this means is that Kenobi, who is a Master and does have the mental focus and patience to sort out an opponent like Kakashi, is able to step up his game as he needs to in order to win the fight.
The argument of why heroes would fight in a death battle is of course a practical look at this whole mess since thinking that heroes would be on the same side and wouldn’t just attempt to duel each other to the death for no reason is pretty accurate. But in the Death Battle arena, wherever it might be, morals are laid aside in an instant since it’s all about who’s deadlier and whose arsenal is more impressive when it comes weaponry, armor, and overall skill sets. In this case the Jedi is simply too much for Kakashi since the ninja doesn’t fully understand the focus and power that his opponent is working with. The same can be said of Kenobi of course, but the Jedi is versatile enough to be able to move around the defenses and insane offense of the ninja, and as a result Kenobi’s patience pays off since he does end up getting the upper hand. It’s amazing though to think that Kenobi can take on insanely powerful opponents and yet the likes of Count Dooku have tossed him about like a rag doll. We never did get to see how he would match up against Emperor Palpatine, largely because Yoda made it clear that he wasn’t ready for such a match yet. Of course he did go up against Darth Vader, both before and after he’d donned the armor, and he did fairly well. He even took on Darth Maul again and ended him as an old man, so it’s fair to state that Kenobi didn’t really get any worse with age, but instead grew even more patient and more capable of ending a fight in seconds if he knew his opponent well enough. With the ninja however he had to be on his toes a little more and take just enough time to learn what was needed before he could finally best Kakashi with one sure blow.
There are likely a lot of people out there that would say without the Force Kenobi is nothing but an expert fighter that gets lucky a lot, but they’d have to go on to state that without his internal power, Kakashi is a highly-trained fighter that is basically in the same boat. The Force is a huge advantage, that much is true, but it’s used differently by every Jedi and more often than not the warriors are checking themselves more than they’re cutting loose since with the kind of power that some Jedi are able to wield the fight would have been over much quicker had they been given over to bloodlust and thought of little more than destruction. Kakashi versus Darth Vader or Anakin Skywalker would be an interesting fight since Anakin/Vader was on roughly the same level as Obi-Wan despite the fact of what happened in the prequels, and Anakin was all about naked aggression at times. However a person wants to spin it though, Kenobi has always been more inclined to find a peaceful resolution for any problem, but when he’s pushed and there’s no other way forward he’s one of the most deadly adversaries in pop culture, and making an enemy out of him is usually a very poor decision, as Kakashi figured out too late.
