Origin of Pain

The origin of Pain tells Nagato's story: a child of the war-torn Rain, orphaned by the violence of greater nations, who watched his friend Yahiko die and his dream of peace curdle into the conviction that only pain teaches. The episode is the arc's tragic core — the Rinnegan child whose suffering made him a god of judgment, the backstory that explains the nihilism Naruto must answer. Jiraiya's three students of the Rain, and how one became the enemy that killed him. The villain revealed as another broken hope.