Both Pain and the Quincy launch their invasions through a surprise attack. Yes, we know that the Quincy literally attacked Ichigo and the First Division just a couple days prior, and Konoha suspects that Pain will commence an attack based on information from Jiraiya. But that doesn’t change the fact that both of these invaders launch a sudden attack that clearly takes their target by surprise. So which one of the two has the best surprise attack?

Well, the Quincy open up several dimensional gates all over the Soul Society and unleash their armies, along with the Sternritter, to kill every shinigami and steal the Bankai of the strong ones. As for Pain, he doesn’t need an army. The invasion begins when he launches one of the corpse puppets that he controls to pierce Konoha’s defensive barriers. Once it lands, that puppet immediately summons five other corpse puppets, and then proceeds to wreak havoc all over Konoha.

The Quincy’s initial surprise attack is clearly thrilling and exciting to see, but the way Pain nonchalantly slips into Konoha and starts to cause chaos by himself (there are six of him, but they’re technically still one person) is simply epic. So we have to give this round to Naruto.

Both Naruto and Bleach have numerous legendary fights during their invasion arcs. In Kakashi and friends vs Pain, we get to see Kakashi analyzing his opponent and forming the best strategy while in the middle of an intense fight. In Yamamoto vs the Sternritter who’s disguised as Yhwach, we get to see the captain of the First Division unleash the full might of his Bankai for the first time. Both series clearly gave their best to craft multiple thrilling fight scenes for their invasion arcs.

However, Naruto is a bit at a disadvantage here. After all, there are only 40 chapters in Pain’s Assault arc, compared to the Thousand-Year Blood War arc that ran for a whopping 200+ chapters. So it goes without saying that Bleach would have many more great fights compared to Naruto, which only has about two or three great fights during its invasion arc. Not to mention that Captain Kurotsuchi’s fight is easily one of the most exciting fights in the series. So this one easily goes to Bleach.

For those of you who haven’t read the Thousand-Year Blood War arc in the manga, the following paragraph could potentially spoil the story for you. So proceed with caution.

There are a couple of reasons why Yhwach launches this ambitious invasion. First of all, it’s a payback for the last war, roughly 1000 years ago, where the Quincy lost miserably to the Shinigami under the leadership of the young Genryuusai Yamamoto. The second one is because Yhwach wants to kill the Soul King, steal his powers, and then merge the three worlds (Hueco Mundo, Soul Society, and the Human World) into one by erasing the boundaries between the different worlds. Quite an ambitious goal indeed.

As for Pain, well, he actually only has one simple goal. He wants to capture Naruto and extract the Nine-Tailed Beast that resides within the boy. That’s pretty much it. However, since Naruto is not in Konoha at the time, Pain proceeds to gather some intel to find out about Naruto’s whereabouts from the shinobi that are still in Konoha. In order to make his work easier, he decides to create a diversion by causing as much havoc, destruction, and Konoha shinobi deaths as he possibly can.

While the Quincy consider their attack as a long-awaited revenge plot with a noble/ambitious goal at the end, to Pain, it is just another day at work. That smugness and absolute domination is why this round goes to Naruto.