Naruto Uzumaki

"My dream is to be the greatest Hokage! That way people will stop disrespecting me and start treating me like I'm somebody. Someone great!"

Naruto Uzumaki is the main protagonist of the hit manga and anime series Naruto. Throughout his childhood Naruto has been treated as an outcast, as the spirt of an evil demon that terrorised his , the nine tailed fox, was sealed within him at infancy by the fourth Hokage. Naruto himself has aspirations of becoming Hokage one day; a title given to the leader and most poweful ninja of Konoha village. As the most poorly performing student in ninja school, he strives to prove his worth to his peers and everyone else in Konoha village.

He’s loud, he’s got a catchphrase he runs into the ground called ‘Dattebayo’ (In English this is translated as ‘Believe it!’ but in Japanese it’s basically a way to make what you just said sound tougher) He’s regarded as the #1 hyperactive Ninja, he makes other Ninja always explain things since he’s certainly no genius, and is connected to practically everyone by bonds of friendship or rivalry. Sometimes both, like in Sasuke’s case. To begin explaining Naruto you have to go all the way back to the founding of the Leaf Village because a large portion of what he does is motivated to rule that place as Hokage (or King). In the beginning only scattered ninja clans battles in the world. The First Hokage was a founder, binding his and the second most powerful clan (Sasuke’s clan) together. They gathered others and built the Hidden Leaf Village to protect the Fire County and keep the peace.

Naruto was born here and has several Teachers. His mentor and father figure Iruka. Kakashi will also train him from time to time but his truest master is Jiraiya.

Naruto’s Birth

Born on October 10 and officially named after a Hero in one of Jiraiya’s books, Naruto came into the Hidden Leaf Village with big problems right from the start. A Nine Tailed Demon Fox was attacking the Village. This is basically the most extreme weapon known and typically described as a force of nature. A besat with more tails is more potent, and no animal revealed yet has more tails than the Demon Fox. Because he couldn’t be defeated the Third Hokage did the next best thing and sealed him up inside his newborn son Naruto. Supposedly he died doing so, but remember this is manga you can’t believe someone is dead until you witness the corpse. And even that isn’t good enough sometimes, because Corpses have been known to revive and fight from time to time.

Naruto’s Early Childhood

This Demon Fox basically dooms Naruto to a live where people instinctively distrust and revile him. Basically he’s a boy walking around with a world shattering weapon strapped inside his chest. People don’t want him living in the village, and they are expressly ordered not to tell Naruto exactly why that is for fear of rousing the beast within. Naruto’s whole childhood can basically be surmised in the word ‘Rejection’.

To understand how terrible this is meant to be for him you have to know a little about Japanese culture. Conformity, Being Polite, and Being Productive are all said with a significance that Americans usually hold in things like Freedom, Liberty, and Free Speech. Without having them it’s generally accepted in either culture that not only are you going to be pretty miserable, but it’s hard to imagine you’ll ever be happy. One of the worst things you can say with absolute seriousness in Japan is ‘I will never forgive you’. Clichés like ‘The nail that stands up gets beaten down’ hint that this is a culture based on building a peaceful unity even at the expense of one’s own status. If Naruto was created in America he might have been born into a fictional country where he is a member of a slave class and dreams of one day ruling that society as President.

So he’s supposed to have endured an extreme level of trauma. Gaara has this kind of background as well and it mostly drove him insane. The key difference between the two was Naruto had Iruka. Iruka was someone, anyone, who told him he was a good person. As he proved himself in the series he got more people to say so.

Naruto Pre-Timeskip

Now a 12 Year old and running amuck, the Anime begins by Naruto defacing the Mount Rushmore style monument to the past Hokage. He’s acting out because the whole village hates him, and if it wasn’t for Iruka standing up for him later on in that episode it’s possible he would have turned out alot like Gaara. After it’s revealed he has a friend in Iruka he begins his journey to essentally force everyone to accept him as a good and important person in the only way he knows how. Ruling and Protecting the entire Village as the greatest Ninja of his generation.

Even this early on his greatest talent is readily apparent. By the sheer strength of his convictions he can make people question the way they look at life. Usually this insight occurs after beating them up. It happened to Nejii, it happened to Gaara, and it very well might happen with Sasuke someday.

His signature move is a forbidden technique where he creates clones of himself. Sometimes hundreds, other times just one. To most Ninja this isn't practual because it uses a huge amount of energy. To someone with Superhuman reserves of chi thanks to the Demon Fox, Naruto can use it to its full effect.

He’s got a crush on Sakura but isn’t exactly clear about what that means. He wants to spend a lot of time with her certainly, but because he’s considered to be one of the worst Ninjas in the village she has little interest. Gradually as he proves himself she feels more attached to him, but even than it’s displayed in acts of violence. If Naruto doesn’t show a feudal lord his due respect (Naruto treating him like any other person instead of bowing) for example, she’s been known to punch him with all her might and push his head into the ground. But the vigor with which she wails on him is all based on the fact that she wants him to stop making these big mistakes and act respectable.

 His life as a Ninja begins at Gradation. He joins a squad of two other members. One is Sakura, and the other is Sasuke. He’s paired with top ranked Sasuke because he is the lowest ranked ninja around so it’s implied only Sasuke can carry the burden of being teamed up with him. Naruto is constantly trying to be the best, so his rivalry with Sasuke started immediately after they were team members. But his friendship with him started even before that. They shared similarly tragic backgrounds and although it went unspoken were both were secertly happy they were not totally alone in this regard.

His first big mission involves going to the Wave country where he must defend the life of a bridge builder. The builder seeks to build a bridge (shocking) that would break the reliance of his people on trade with a criminal organization. That organization seeks his death beacuse of this, and sends Elite Ninja Zabuza to do the deed.

In the end Zabuza is defeated and the Bridge is built, but not without some battles and Naruto losing some control of the Nine Tailed fox for the first time. He gradually comes to rely on that power more and more to fight for him in difficult situations. This is dangerous for him because if he ever goes too far he’ll essentially be destroyed and the Demon Fox lurking within him will be reborn.

His next challenge comes in the form of the Chunin Exam. The exam is designed to see which Ninjas are ready to advance in rank and which aren’t. This exam was composed of a written part, a string of tactical based battles in the forest of death, and fighting tournement. When it was all said and done Naruto stood among the victors with the right to compete in the final rounds. But as it didn’t happen right away so he had some time to get some more training.

Around his time One of the 3 great Leaf Ninja named Jiraiya becomes Naruto’s teacher. He binds him into a pact with a Godzilla sized talking Frog who carries a knife the size of a building and spits Toad Oil.

Yeah. You heard me.

In the first popularity poll Naruto came in 2nd place.

This was Naruto’s first big summoning skill. And more often than not he messes it up. Another technique he learns is the Rasengan. Rasengan is designed as another very powerful attack that manifests as a ball of swirling energy in his hand. When it connects with an opponent it does massive damage and can throw them into the air spinning in all directions.

When the finals began he won his first match against the genius Ninja Neji, but Konoha was suddenly attacked and the Exam was immediately halted mid-tournament.

The attack is put down with the Help of Jiraiya defeating some Huge Snakes (revealed much later in a flashback), but not before some major damage is inflicted to the village. Sasuke has gone to finish his bout with Gaara, and Naruto and some of his peers are sent after Sasuke. The battles which unfold prove Naruto to not only be a strong Ninja, but even impress Sasuke. Gaara is defeated and his outlook on life completely changes because of Naruto’s words. Naruto’s victory is so total here Sasuke comes to wonder if Naruto is actually the stronger of the two of them.

Right about now Naruto and Jiraiyaare sent tofind Tsunade, the second of the Three Great Leaf Ninja, who has been appointed the new Hokage for the leaf village. Naruto and her don’t get along well at first, but after a brawl with evil Ninja extraordinaire and third of the Great Leaf Ninja Orochimaru, she see’s he’s totally dedicated with achieving a dream other people important in her life had. Namely protecting the leaf village as Hokage. She gives him a necklace that is valued at impossibly high amounts and her hope that one day he can become strong enough to fulfill that role.

Back at the Leaf Village Sasuke is still brooding over the previous defeat with Gaara. That motivates him to fight Naruto and prove he’s still the best. This is easily is the best thing Naruto could have hoped for. Beating Sasuke would prove to him he’s the best in his generation. The fight starts to get out of hand in a hurry and is halted by Sakura and Kakashi. As Naruto and Sasuke were both using their best attacks at the same time, the resulted wasted shots went into a pair of water towers. For a moment it seems Sasuke’s water tower took much more damage and he’s satisfied. When its revealed Naruto actually did much, much more damage to his water tower Sasuke starts to rethink his whole life.

Not satisfied with his current growth he turns to imbrace darker forces for more rapid accession in the ninja arts. His quickest route to power was to flee to Orochimaru. And when he did so it took many by surprise. Naruto and a team went after him, but after another string of battles everyone on Sasuke’s side besides Sasuke and Naruto’s side besides Naruto were left behind beaten up or dead. With only the two of them remained on the edge of a great waterfall, Naruto was toatlly determined to bring Sasuke back into the fold and Sasuke was totally determined to become powerful enough to fulfill his self appointed duties to avenge his slaughtered clan.

Now when Sasuke fled he had been escorted out with the help of Orochimaru’s ninjas. At this point they'd all been defeated, but during his escape he’d been sealed up in a barrel purely designed to enhance his dark powers. So when he emerged he wasn’t at all as weak as he had been was previously.

This battle between these two at this point was among the best anybody ever fought in the whole series. Considering how much this show is about Ninja’s hitting each other in the face, that’s saying a lot. It had a lot of action and it had a lot of drama. They both reached new levels of power in this fight. And unlike the previous match, this one wasn’t about being the best. This was about killing the other person. So somebody here was going to lose this in a big way.

And that was Naruto.

After they again traded ultimate attacks at each other Sasuke’s headband fell to the ground deeply scratched and Naruto just hit the dirt. Headbands are pretty symbolic because the headband represents themselves as Ninjas. So when Sasuke didn’t even put his on at first he was saying Naruto was currently way, way below him. Even after he put it on he told Naruto he wouldn’t even be able to make a mark on it. Naruto proved that wasn’t the case, but not without breaking himself in order to do it.

Sasuke later said he let him live ‘On a whim’ but in that moment where he was staring down at Naruto’s beaten body the unspoken implication was that he just couldn’t kill his good friend. He went off into the dark woods to continue his search for greater power convinced he was doing was the right thing. This event was a devastating blow to Naruto and Sakura both. Even in the Post-skip timeframe they get obviously depressed when someone mentions he’s gone or very defensive of him when somebody calls him a traitor.

After this fight the Anime goes into filler. The anime is based in the manga, and you can’t have Anime covering stuff not drawn in the manga yet. So instead of reruns they make new B-grade material until enough time has passed for the manga to have a bunch of new stories for the Anime to tell. This isn’t uncommon in popular series like Naruto.

What is uncommon was the amount of filler. Like, years of it.

When it was finally over Naruto went into seclusion with Jiraiya to train with the goal of one day being powerful enough to bring Sasuke back to the village.

Naruto Post-Timeskip

Warning: The following contains spoilers for non-Japan viewers who have not yet seen the latest series of Naruto, i.e. Naruto: Shippuuden (Hurricane Chronicles).

Now at 15, Naruto finally returns to the village. This starts out for him very much like he started out Pre-time skip. Naruto is still potentially one of the most powerful Ninjas around, but generally not considered very strong. He’s been away for years now so everyone his age has completed the required tests and moved up a rank or two.

His costume is different, he’s taller now, and generally he’s less hyper and more mature. It’s hinted he’s got some new very powerful move from his training with Jiraiya as well. During that training period when he lost control he nearly killed Jiraiya, which was one of the few times his life was ever in danger. When Naruto loses control of the Demon Fox his powers grow exponentially, but he’s always in danger of destroying himself and anything that happens to be around him while in that state.

His first big mission is to Rescue Gaara. Gaara was kidnapped from his village (which he now rules as Hokage) by a rouge group of Ninja belonging to no country called Akatsuki. Gaara was to be drained of his inner demon entirely for their purposes, which would kill him.

And it did kill him.

But that didn’t happen before Naruto and a new team went out to try and rescue Gaara. Although they failed to get to him in time, they did battle and defeat Akatsuki members along the way. This was hardly enough for Naruto though, who saw the death of someone he had a strong connection with as another great personal loss.

In the very end of this Arc one of the Elders from Gaara’s village named Chiyo stepped in to revive Gaara from the dead at the cost of her own life. She was among the best of her time with a great deal of power and plot behindher and she had accompanied them on this rescue. So when she died this still felt like things had gone badly to Naruto despite he was thrilled Gaara had returned.

With Gaara back on his Throne the team returned to the Leaf Village. Naruto met the partner who was to replace Sasuke for the first time. His name was given as Sai but he really didn’t have one. Sai is in a lot of ways the opposite of Naruto. Reserved, very skilled, secretive, and emotionally it was impossible for him to connect with other people. He introduces himself by attacking Naruto.

The new Team takes intelligence acquired in a battle with Akatsuki and begins again to hunt down Sasuke. Naruto battles Orochimaru along the way and as Orochimaru is the mastermind behind Sasuke’s fall from grace he flies into a rage so complete he nearly loses himself to the Demon Fox. This is the most important battle Naruto has had in a long, long time. Orochimaru is at this point one of the most powerful and most responsible for the most evil. His greatest ability mainly center on the fact he survives through each and any kind of crazy attack thrown at him. So when Naruto is in his transformed state and making him worry about his safety its implying that Naruto has become one of the world’s greatest fighters. Maybe ever.

So this is Naruto. Take notes, people.

But he has no control in this form and Sakura gets hurt with his wild rampage. After this he swears to himself that he won’t be using the Demon Fox to save him anymore, and rely on his own strength.

Soon after this exchange they break into Orochimaru’s hideout and see Sasuke for the first time in years. What’s funny about that is thanks to the filler it’s been years since the fans of the Anime had seen him either. The resulting exchange had Sasuke banter a bit with Naruto, basically showing he has no intention of ever going back or being his friend, starts a fight. In that fight he shows he’s willing to kill Naruto and Sakura both, and escapes easily when Orochimaru’s Assassin of all people tell him to stop. It’s was he who gave Saskue a reason to let them live. He said that Naruto and his friends might further disrupt Akatsuki plans, which was currently in Sasuke’s best interests.

This was another heartbreaking loss for Naruto. He actually weeps after he realizes that he still couldn’t stop Sasuke even after years of training and witnessed how far he'd fallen into the Darkness.

Moving on, Naruto begins another bout of training sessions. Kakashi begins to each him about using elemental power (Fire, Earth, Water, Lightning and Wind) to power up his abilities.

From this point on the Anime ends and the current string of fillers start. Everything beyond this is in the manga.

Naruto learns to take his Rasengan and turn it into Rasenshuriken. The difference being that he’s completed an attack using his untapped innate Wind Element. A complicated and delicate balance of tremendous powers is now at his disposal.

Naruto unsurprisingly wants to begin the hunt for Sasuke right away. To Naruto Sasuke is a vital component. Saving him and brining him back would prove to himself without a doubt he’s Hokage material. Any other result be exactly the opposite. When Naruto learns Orochimaru is dead and Sasuke was the one that killed him to consume his power he was overjoyed. He expected Sasuke to have gained all the power he could want and would return shortly. This is quite the turn around in the manga, because the whole reason Orochimaru kept Sasuke at his side was to do this exact thing to him later on. 

Naruto decides he wants to hunt down Sasuke’s brother Itachi. He knows Itachi is Sasuke’s ultimate goal, as killing him is Sasuke’s singular obsession. He hunted Itachi down with a team of other Ninja, fought briefly with him one on one and was defeated. As Itachi was the one who killed Sasuke’s clan and not only his brother but most directly responsible for his obsession with power and revengeNaruto felt he had quite the score to settle with him. Naruto claimed to Itachi he was more of a brother to Sasuke than he ever was. To reward that Itachi gave him some sort of latent power to use (probably over Sasuke) and said he hoped naruto would never have to use it.

They find Sasuke’s trail right after this and are very close to getting to him when Tobi arrives.

Frankly, Tobi is an Epic Badass.

Tobi is one of the Original founding members of the Leaf village, right there with the First Hokage. So when Naruto can’t even get a hit on him he becomes really frustrated because this man is widely considered dead and nobody knows who he is and how he's achieved such heights of power.

Tobi leaves once he’s stalled a whole squad, Including Kakashi, Naruto, and other Elite Ninjas, long enough for Sasuke and Itachi to have one final battle.

Afterwards Tobi collects Sasuke’s barely living body and escapes so Naruto and his friends can’t continue the hunt. They than return to Leaf Village.

And right when he gets back he learns that his great teacher Jiraiya was killed in a battle with Akatsuki’s leader.

Needless to say Naruto is pretty bummed out at this point. Only Iruka can cheer him up some by telling Naruto how proud Jiraiya was of him.

A talking animal isn’t all that unusual in Naruto, especially a talking frog. Pa is one of the most powerful of these creatures and was the one responsible for teaching Jiraiya his powerful Sage techniques. He was with Jiraiya when he died, delivered the news of his death, and Jiraiya burned a bunch of numbers burned into his back written as Jiraiya lay dying. It was a code that Jiraiya left to expose the weakness of Akatsuki’s leader. When they looked to Naruto to break the code (because Naruto knew him as well as anybody) he pointed out the numbers could be pages in a Book Jiraiya wrote. That was exactly the case. After that Pa takes Naruto to the realm where he comes from to train him the ways of being a Sage.

That’s where he is as of this edit, pouring sacred waters on his hands to open up a latent kind of Nature energy available to Sages. If he messes up he’ll turn into a frog himself. Pa has a beating stick that knocks him back into a human form however.

Naruto Triva

Over 300 Anime episodes and over 400 manga chapters have been produced so far.

Naruto has a Blood type of B.

The name Naruto is drivied in a real City in Japan. And yes, they have a Nartuo Bridge.