Remember back in the good ol' days when a character and his transformations was just 1 character? Like in Budokai, Goku was Goku, he could transform into Kaioken, Super Saiyan, Ultra Super Saiyan, etc...but on the character list, it was just "Goku". Now in later games, Goku, SS Goku, SS2 Goku, SS3 Goku, etc are all separate characters. And those games have all been considered to be of lower quality (probably has to do with gameplay mechanics moreso than character lists).
And anime based games have been following this model for a while now too. It's really annoying. It'd make the fighting so much better if all the variables of different transformations and techniques could be thrown into a single match, instead of Naruto being limited to Naruto, Sage Naruto being limited to Sage Naruto, etc. If you could go in as Naruto, then switch to Sage Mode or Kurama Cloak Mode, it would add depth to the gameplay. It's dumb that "Sasuke" and "Sharingan Sasuke" are separate characters.
