Uzumaki Naruto
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Uzumaki Naruto (うずまきナルト Uzumaki Naruto), known in the English anime as Naruto Uzumaki, is the main character of the manga and anime series Naruto. He is a student of Hatake Kakashi's and later on Jiraiya.
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History
Little is known about Naruto's birth or parentage, and it is very probable that he has no living relatives at all. What is known, however, is that around the time his mother was about to give birth to him, the Nine-tails Demon Fox, or Kyuubi, attacked his village, Konohagakure (Hidden Leaf) and the Yondaime Hokage (Fourth Hokage) decided to seal the demon away with a forbidden technique inside him, sacrificing his life in the process. Yondaime's wish was for Naruto to be remembered as a hero by the people of the village.
Things, unfortunately for him, definitely did not turn out that way. The people of the village needed something to blame and channel their bitterness and loss onto, and he was the perfect candidate. The adults of the village, without known exceptions, knew him and treated him as nothing more than the demon fox that has attacked the village; As a result he grew up alone and isolated. It is implied in the manga that he went through very difficult emotional times and often shed many tears, but kept reprimanding himself for doing so and telling himself nothing would be achieved by crying. Eventually he developed into the loudmouth, hyperactive prankster he was at the start of the manga, though the (as Third Hokage (Sandaime) observed and even Naruto himself, in a moment of rare enlightenment, admitted once) this is only an act to cover up for his deep insecurity in a desperate plight for recognition.
Personality and characteristics
Naruto likes Ramen to the point of obsession and dreams of being the next Hokage. He never gives up, and definitely has his heart at the right place. Naruto is naturally impetuous, hyperactive and tends to rush into combat without thinking. However, he is capable of devising some quite clever plans by creative usage of his techniques. He has more than once upstaged what looked like a superior opponent by exploiting the element of surprise an unconventional usage of a technique entails.
Naruto also can call on the huge power and chakra reserves of the kyuubi. While seemingly uncontrollable, the demon fox inside Naruto -- while not exactly nice -- is surprisingly cooperative whenever Naruto meets him in his dimension and makes demands of him; usually Naruto will only meet the Demon Fox when the situation is dire. The Demon Fox's chakra will almost always lend itself to him, if only for the fact that Naruto's death would apparently mean Demon Fox's death, too. The Demon Fox has also saved Naruto many times with his extreme healing ability, rivaling that of Kabuto. However, unlike Kabuto, it does not require any chakra of his own. The Demon Fox's chakra is slowly fusing with Naruto's chakra and over time, they would share the same chakra source. It is already evident with Naruto's stamina as a result of the Demon Fox.
However, it can also be said that this mix of chakra, while giving Naruto great stamina, also causes the chakra instability partly responsible for Naruto's inability to control and focus chakra consistently. This can be seen in the inconsistent results when Naruto tries to summon Gamabunta in battle against Gaara, and in the later battle against Orochimaru and Kabuto. This may also explain his problems performing jutsu during his days at the academy.
Ninja academy
Up to his academy graduation, he had precious little of the acknowledgement and empathy he was seeking. His sensei, Iruka, and to a lesser extent the Third Hokage, were the only positive influence on him in that respect (and though how highly Hinata thought of him would definitely have helped, he had not the shred of a clue about it). He neglected his academy studies so much that he failed graduating repeatedly (though the Bunshin no jutsu (Bunshin no jutsu, literally Replication Technique), the one he was worst at, being the final test every year didn't help much). That is until he was manipulated to steal the scroll of seals (a scroll belonging to the village containing forbidden techniques) by Mizuki. In the events triggered by this he learned that Iruka truly did acknowledge him, and acquired his signature technique by learning it from the scroll. When he demonstrates usage of this technique, Iruka passes him and congratulates him on graduating.
While labeled as dumb at the academy, Naruto shows surprising talent in unexpected areas and often comes up with inventive solutions and strategies. Later in the series, Naruto managed to learn the Rasengan, a technique that took the fourth Hokage three years to develop, in just a week. An example of Naruto's inventiveness is shown here -- at first, he did not fully master the Rasengan. His initial delivery method was slow and required a kage bunshin (shadow clone) to execute it; mastery of the Rasengan results in the user being able to execute the technique with one hand, no preparation, and near instantaneously.
Team 7
After his graduation, Naruto has gradually become more acknowledged and appreciated, as more and more people came in contact with the real Naruto behind the "demon" and "idiot prankster" stigmas. He passed the Ninja Academy, but passing the Academy only signifies that you have the potential to become a Genin. In order to become a true genin, one must first undergo an evaluation with a Jonin; if one passes, he will be assigned to that Jonin for training. Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke are assigned to Team 7 under the leadership of Kakashi. The evaluation test was simple. There were three members and two bells: whoever got the bells would win. In the first round, Kakashi easily defended himself from all three, and pointed out their flaws in teamwork. Naruto ended up being tied to a log without lunch, with his teammates forbidden to give him food. However, his teammates feed him anyway, showing true teamwork, and Team 7 becomes the first group that Kakashi ever passed to be Genin.
They do several D-Rank misssions at first, but Team 7 wanted something more exciting (D-Rank missions involve no risk and are generally community service). They are assigned a C-Rank escort mission, which quickly turns into an A-rank mission because their client didn't reveal the true nature of his work. While escorting their client, they are attacked by two enemy chuunins, in which Naruto freezes and couldn't do anything. Sasuke calls him a "scaredy cat", which fuels his rivalry towards Sasuke. Naruto would call Sasuke a scaredy cat several times in the series when Sasuke fails where Naruto succeeds. This exchange would become one of the most important moments in the Naruto-Sasuke rivalry. Naruto also undergoes chakra training in this arc of the manga, another point of rivalry between the two ninjas. They constantly challenged each other to try to outdo each other. Instead, they ended up helping and motivating each other to suceed.
Naruto's "hidden power" is also revealed in this arc. In a particularly ferocious battle in which he believes Sasuke is killed, Naruto loses control and the Kyuubi's chakra takes over him. In this state, he is in a frenzied mode. The power of the kyuubi is so powerful that the chakra is visible, all of Naruto's wounds instantly heal, and Naruto's appearance changes. He completely overwhelms his enemy with this power and speed. Although we are introduced to the power of the kyuubi at this point, we haven't seen the full extent of it yet. Naruto has not communicated with the Demon Fox inside of him; he only subconsciously calls upon this power.
From the state of isolation he was in he developed friendships with all sorts of people, most notable among which are the other two members of his three-man Team 7 -- Sasuke, with whom he shares a friendship/rivalry relationship that gradually grows into a rivalry of epic proportions, and Sakura who used to be just his crush, but now is much more of a precious friend.
Chunin exam
After the Great Naruto Bridge arc, Team 7 returns to Konoha to continue with their lives as regular Genin, accomplishing menial missions. Eventually, whilst playing with Konohamaru and his friends, Naruto meets with two of the three Genin from the Suna (Sand) village, Kankuro and Temerai. After a short scuffle, and being saved by Sasuke, Naruto learns why the three Shinobi are present in their village. The Chūnin Selection Exams are in effect.
Shortly after, Kakashi tells Team 7 that the Exams have officially begun, presenting the team with the proper forms to be signed. Naruto and Sasuke are leave with gusto, but Sakura reluctantly returns with her paper's signed.
On their way to the registration, Team 7 meets Rock Lee who posed as a weakling earlier, but is actually a taijutsu expert. He challenged Sasuke to a one-on-one dual. Naruto, pestered by all the attention going to Naruto, blindly attacks Lee, only to be countered quickly and knocked unconcious for a short period. After this, Sasuke commences to fight Lee but is beaten. Rock Lee, although rivals now, eventually becomes good friends with Naruto and Sakura.
In the waiting room for the chuunin exam, Naruto boldly announces that he will beat everyone. This quickly earns him the hatred of everyone in the room, with the exception of the 8 other Konoha first-year genin and seemingly friendly Konoha genin named Kabuto. A small scuffle breaks out because of Naruto's bold statement, but before it escalates, Morino Ibiki, special jonin and head of ANBU's torture and interrogation division, as well as a panel of elite chuunin chosen to oversee the exam appear. With this, the first exam begins.
The first exam is a written test, Naruto's weakest subject. The format of the test is simple: 10 questions, of which 9 are on paper, and the last one is given 10 minutes before time is up. The panel of chuunin will mark every time they catch you cheating, and after three marks you and your entire team fail. It grows even worse when Naruto (and everyone in the room) realizes that the questions are too hard. What Naruto doesn't realize is that the purpose of the test isn't to test their knowledge, but their information extracting (cheating without getting caught) skills. Growing desperate, he searches around for someone to cheat from; however, he planned to do it the "normal" way and not using his ninja skills. Hyuuga Hinata, another first year genin from Konoha with a crush on Naruto, offers to let him copy from her paper, but he declines because he notices an examiner marking him. In the end, he is left with a blank paper and his only hope is in the tenth question. The tenth question was this: If one member refused to take the question, then the entire team fails. However, if they take the question but don't get it right, they forever forfeit the right to take a chuunin exam again. Sasuke and Sakura were hoping that Naruto would refuse to take the question -- even though they could get it right, Naruto wouldn't. Naruto raised his hand as he was going to quit, but then he slapped it down on the desk and exclaimed that he will not run away and he isn't afraid. This exclamation gave everyone confidence and took away their fears. Morino Ibiki remarks that this is an unusually high number of genins left. He then reveals that they all passed; his reasoning is that in real life, you don't have a choice whether to do life-threatening missions or not. As everyone left, Morino was picking up the answer sheets and noticed Naruto's empty sheet and remarked that he was an interesting guy. And with that, we move onto the next exam.
The second exam was a survival exam. All of the exam takers were put in a huge forest, each with a Earth or Heaven Scroll; only by taking both scrolls could a team advance (thus, eliminating at least half of the people). Naruto's personality and predictability is presented during this exam. Sasuke makes a ridiculously long password system in case enemies tried to use Henge no Jutsu (Art of Transformation) to look like one of their team members. Team 7 gets seperated and Sasuke and Sakura see Naruto; when challenged, Naruto answers perfectly, and Sasuke attacks him. Sasuke's rationale is that Naruto isn't the type of person who could easily memorize such a long password. Sasuke correctly predicts Naruto's reaction to the long password.
Naruto also shows true strength during this exam. When attacked, Sasuke gives up in face of a superior enemy. As he is about to be crushed by a giant snake, Naruto intervenes and returns the favor that Sasuke did much earlier in the series by calling him a "scaredy-cat".
They eventually get two scrolls and make it to the third exam.
During the third exam, there is a preliminary since too many people passed the first and second exams. The preliminaries are a series of one-on-one challenges, which take place immediately afterwards leaving no time for recovery or preparation. During Naruto's match, he uses his Kage Bunshin no Jutsu to make several copies of himself and use a "new" attack that he mostly copied from Sasuke who himself made the attack only a few matches ago and was copied off of Rock Lee. Naruto wins his match and advances to the real third round, however there is one month for preparation for the real third round.
Kakashi secures the services of Special Jonin Ebisu to help Naruto train. Ebisu begins with advanced chakra control training by making Naruto walk on water with chakra. However, their training is interrupted by Jiraya, one of the Legendary Three Ninjas of Konoha. Jiraya knocks Ebisu unconscious, so Jiraya is forced to become Naruto's teacher. Jiraya teaches Naruto how to use the Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Technique) and helps him to make a blood contract with the frogs. He also teaches Naruto about the Demon Fox living within him and how to call upon it at will.
In order to fully utilize both of the above techniques, Jiraya decides that there is only way one to do it: a life or death situation with a paper-thin margin of survival. Jiraya throws Naruto off of a cliff near a waterfall; Naruto is unable to use any of his techniques to grab onto the wall, since it is so slippery. His only chance is to use the Demon Fox's chakra to summon a giant frog to his aid. He accomplishes this and in fact summons Gamabunta, the leader and most powerful of all Frogs. He also manages to stay on the back of Gamabunta until sundown, and in doing so, secures Gamabunta's cooperation in the future.
During third round of the chunin exam, he is paired against Hyuga Neji. Neji's view of the world is that everything is already predestined. Man cannot change his fate and must simply follow it. Part of the reason why his view of the world is so pessimistic is that his father and uncle are twins. However, his uncle was born first, making him part of the Main House, while his father and he is part of the Branch House (See here for more information]]. Because of this, his father died in place of his uncle, which makes him bitter to the Main House and the world in general. During the fight, Neji's reputation as a genius is revealed. He uses several techniques that only a Main House member would normally know; he actually managed to figure out how to perform these techniques on his own, and he possesses a very advanced Byakugan. He hits Naruto's tenketsus with his attack, leaving him unable to use chakra. To the surprise of everyone, including the Hokage and Kazekage (who is really Orochimaru in disguise), he uses the chakra of the Demon Fox to open his tenketsus and becomes "supercharged" with Demon Fox chakra. Neji and Naruto collide in a final attack and in the end, it seems only Neji is still standing with Naruto lying on the ground. Suddenly, Naruto bursts out from underneath the ground and punches Neji to win the fight. The Naruto that was lying on the grond was really a Kage Bunshin that was covering the hole that Naruto used to dig underneath; Naruto's unpredictability is once again revealed in this fight, as he thought two steps ahead to make the Kage Bunshin. Neji mutters that Naruto's best technique is Kage Bunshin, and Naruto responds that his worst technique in academy was the Bunshin technique. Naruto changes Neji forever by changing his outlook, saying that nothing is predestined. He says that when he becomes Hokage, he will change the Hyuga for Neji.
Sasuke arc
Naruto's influence, however, was powerless to help Sasuke decided to become a renegade ninja and left the leaf to receive training from Orochimaru. Sasuke's decision to leave was the result of a chain of events that rekindled his hatred and desire to avenge his clan so much that it overshadowed all other influences in his life. This experience was traumatic to Naruto, as he had promised Sakura to bring Sasuke back and this was the first time he was unable to live up to something he promised to an important person. Unlike Jiraiya, however, who from his own experience with Orochimaru believes that Sasuke is too far gone and that Naruto should forget about him and concentrate on his own survival, Naruto believes that there is hope for Sasuke yet. He tells Sakura that he will, one day, bring Sasuke back to the village and live up to his promise.
Naruto II arc
After this failed attempt to rescue Sasuke Naruto trained under Jiraya for three years, as did Sakura under Tsunade. This follows tradition, in which the current Hokage or a Sannin member trained the next Hokage or Sannin member. This places Naruto in a very good position to fulfill his dream to become Hokage. This training is partly a response to the secret organisation Akatsuki's attempts after the Demon Fox inside of Naruto. This generous three year time period is granted because Orochimaru switched bodies prematurely. The body switching technique only works once every three years, so there is a three year time period where they can train before they need to attempt another rescue mission for Sasuke. When Naruto returns to the village two and a half years later he finds out, much to his chagrin, that he is the only one of his former-genin social circle (known as the "Rookie 9") who is still a genin at this point of the story. During his absence, the rest have become Chūnin (and Hyūga Neji even made Jōnin).
In this new arc of the story, dubbed Naruto II, we see the growth of all of the characters, including Naruto. Naruto shows physical growth, sports a new outfit, and appears to not only have increased in strength and technique, but intelligence as well.
With Naruto's return, Jiraiya's information sources indicate that Akatsuki has been growing impatient and another attempt on Naruto in the near future seems inevitable.
Quotes
- "He is, after all, the number one ninja in surprising people." - Hatake Kakashi
(unofficial translation) - "For him, I have nothing but respect.... he is an excellent student.... he works with all his might.... but sometimes, even so, he's awkward, clumsy.... a screw-up.... people have mocked him and shunned him.... and it's given him empathy. He knows what it is to be in pain. That boy is no longer your demon fox. He is a citizen of Konohagakure.... Uzumaki Naruto!" - Umino Iruka
(Viz translation) - "Naruto is the boy who will one day become the Hokage!" -Tsunade (5th Hokage)
(unofficial translation)
Trivia
- The surname "Uzumaki" translates to "spiral". The Konoha leaf symbol is drawn with an arrow attached to a spiral, the seal on his abdomen is a spiral, and one of his attacks is Rasengan which means "Spiralling Sphere". One wonders if the spirals surrounding Naruto are a reflection of the main character, or if Naruto's last name is a reflection of the spirals of his village. For Uzumaki may be a generic last name representing the village given to those without a family name.
- "Uzumaki" can also mean "whirlpool". The Naruto whirlpool, named after the city of Naruto, lies between said city and Awaji Island.
- Naruto is also the name for a sliced stick of Kamaboko with a pink whirlpool design in the middle, which is used as a topping for Ramen (Naruto's favorite food).
- The Kitsune is a well-known character in Japanese myth, and the influence behind not only the Demon Fox a.k.a. the Kyūbi but many other reincarnations in modern Japanese culture. It likes to play tricks and pranks on people, and on occasions transforms itself into a beautiful woman and seduces a man (obviously the inspiration for Ninja Centerfold (Oiroke no Jutsu, literally Sexy Technique), which is often called "Sexy no Jutsu" by people in the North American Naruto fanbase.
- October 10, Naruto's birthday, was "Taiiku no hi" (Health and Sports Day) in Japan when his character was conceived - a holiday full of physical activity fit for a hyperactive kid. The holiday, however, was moved to the second Monday of October during 1999.
- According to the GBA game "Naruto: The Will of Inherited Fire" one of Naruto's hobbies is gardening and he is the one who gives Kakashi, Mr Ukki, the plant seen on Kakashi's windowsill. According to the official databooks his hobbies are playing pranks and watering plants.