which in turn marginalizes the current living crop of characters. the four previous hokages being there makes the titular character seem almost irrelevant. in the very moments he's supposed to be building his own legend they step in and take his shine. when they were doing it back in their day nobody did that for them. they didn't need crutches to become legends.
Interesting point, but I don't think the 4 hokages didn't have to face the insurmountable at such young ages. Even if they did, all the characters develop at different rates. What matters is if they reach the same point, whether it's during adolescence or adulthood. The living characters didn't have enough time to develop. I think they would have been able to in a couple more years.
This war is just too early for the living characters. Many of them are potential legends, they don't suck. I mean, if you go back far enough, you could find a time where the legendary 4 hokages wouldn't have been able to handle this same situation. It's not a fair comparison, the timing is just unfortunate.
However, that's just between the non-hokages who haven't yet reached their primes, and the 4 hokages who have (and kinda passed it). The current crop of hokages are all past their primes and just couldn't do shyt. Sad.