Naruto Uzumaki

Who is Naruto Uzumaki?

When the series begins, Naruto is a 12-year-old Academy student in the Hidden Leaf Village with no family and no friends. He lives alone, eats instant ramen and spends his time trying to get the attention of people who look away from him. Only his teacher Iruka and the Third Hokage treat him kindly. The Third has made it a law that nobody may tell the children about the Nine-Tails, so for years Naruto has no idea why everyone hates him.

He's put on Team 7 with Sasuke Uchiha and Sakura Haruno under Kakashi Hatake, and the series follows that squad through missions, exams, betrayal and war. By the end, Naruto has saved the village, ended a world war, befriended the beast inside him and become the Seventh Hokage.

• Jinchuriki (host) of the Nine-Tails, Kurama.
• Son of the Fourth Hokage, Minato, and of Kushina Uzumaki of the Uzumaki clan.
• Student of Kakashi, then Jiraiya, and godson of Jiraiya.
• Sasuke's rival and closest friend.
• Husband of Hinata Hyuga and father of Boruto and Himawari.

Personality

Young Naruto is loud, impatient, proud and terrible at hiding any feeling. He ends his sentences with a verbal tic (dattebayo in Japanese, "Believe it!" in the early English dub), boasts about things he can't do yet, and blows up at anyone who calls him a failure. The noise is a defence. Underneath it is a kid who has been alone his whole life and has decided not to let that make him cruel.

His defining trait is that he keeps his word. He calls it his ninja way: he never goes back on what he says. He promises Sakura he'll bring Sasuke home and spends years trying. He promises Neji he'll change the Hyuga clan, and Gaara that he isn't alone. These promises are how he wins most of the series' biggest fights. He beats people, then changes them, by showing them that someone with the same pain made a different choice. Fans joke about his "talk no jutsu", but it's the moral core of the story, and it's why so many villains in Naruto get redemption arcs.

As an adult he's calmer and more responsible, but the old Naruto shows through. As Hokage he buries himself in work, misses family moments and has to relearn how to be present for his own son.

Abilities and jutsu

Naruto's strengths are huge chakra reserves (an Uzumaki trait, boosted by the Nine-Tails), unusual stamina and fast healing. His weaknesses, especially early on, are poor chakra control and almost no skill at genjutsu. His fighting style leans on a few techniques he masters completely rather than many he knows a little.

• Shadow Clone Jutsu. A forbidden technique that makes solid copies of himself. Most ninja can manage a few; Naruto can make hundreds. He uses them to swarm enemies and, later, to train faster, since a clone's experience returns to him when it disappears.
• Rasengan. A spinning sphere of chakra created by his father and taught to him by Jiraiya. Naruto first needs a clone to shape it, which becomes his signature method.
• Rasenshuriken. His own invention, adding his wind-nature chakra to the Rasengan. It shreds the target at a cellular level. He first uses it against Kakuzu of the Akatsuki, and it initially damages his own arm.
• Sexy Jutsu. A transformation into a glamorous woman, invented as a prank. It knocks out the Third Hokage and Jiraiya and, later, a surprising number of serious opponents.
• Summoning. He signs the toad contract with Jiraiya and can summon Gamabunta, the boss toad, and other toads from Mount Myoboku.

Naruto's modes and transformations

Most of Naruto's power-ups come from two sources: natural energy, through the toads, and the Nine-Tails, whose relationship with him changes from hostile to equal partners.

For how fans rank Six Paths Naruto against other top-tier fighters, see our power scaling guide.

Naruto's story, arc by arc

The Academy and Land of Waves

A treacherous teacher, Mizuki, tricks Naruto into stealing a forbidden scroll. Naruto learns the Shadow Clone Jutsu from it, saves Iruka with it, and learns the truth about the Nine-Tails the same night. Iruka's acceptance is the first time anyone has told him he matters. On Team 7's first real mission, in the Land of Waves, they face the rogue ninja Zabuza and his loyal companion Haku. Haku's death gives Naruto his first sense of how much the ninja world grinds people up.

The Chunin Exams and Konoha Crush

In the exams, Naruto beats Neji Hyuga, who insists fate can't be changed, and fights Gaara of the Sand, another jinchuriki who turned his loneliness into violence. Naruto wins by summoning Gamabunta and refusing to stop, and he gets through to Gaara. Orochimaru uses the exams to invade the village and kills the Third Hokage.

Search for Tsunade and the Sasuke Retrieval

Jiraiya takes Naruto to find Tsunade, the next Hokage, and teaches him the Rasengan on the way. Soon after, Sasuke leaves the village to seek power from Orochimaru. Naruto chases him to the Valley of the End and loses. He leaves the village for two and a half years to train with Jiraiya.

Shippuden: Akatsuki and Pain

Back home, Naruto helps rescue Gaara from the Akatsuki and creates the Rasenshuriken. Then Jiraiya is killed by Pain, the Akatsuki's leader, and Naruto learns Sage Mode from the toads to face him. Pain flattens the Hidden Leaf. Naruto defeats his six bodies, then goes alone to find Nagato, the man behind them, and talks with him instead of killing him. Nagato uses his last strength to revive the people he killed. The village that once shunned Naruto welcomes him home as a hero.

The Fourth Great Ninja War

Naruto trains with Killer Bee, the Eight-Tails jinchuriki, confronts his own hatred, and meets his mother through her chakra in the seal. He takes Kurama's chakra, joins the war, and eventually makes peace with Kurama. Against Obito, Madara and finally Kaguya Otsutsuki, he receives the Sage of Six Paths' power and seals Kaguya alongside Sasuke.

The final battle with Sasuke

Sasuke plans to kill the five Kage and rule alone. The two fight at the Valley of the End once more, and each loses an arm. Naruto refuses to give up on him, and Sasuke finally admits defeat. Naruto later receives a prosthetic arm made from Hashirama's cells.

Hokage and Boruto

Naruto marries Hinata, becomes the Seventh Hokage, and has two children. Boruto follows his son and puts Naruto in the uncomfortable role of the busy, distant parent. Against Isshiki Otsutsuki he uses Baryon Mode, and Kurama dies to save him. Later in the manga, Kawaki seals Naruto away in another dimension in an attempt to protect him. Because the sequel, Boruto: Two Blue Vortex, is still running, we're not going further than that.

If you're unsure where to start or which filler to skip, our watch order guide covers the whole franchise.

Relationships

Trivia

• The name. Naruto is the name of the swirl-patterned fishcake in ramen, and he loves ramen. It also echoes the Naruto whirlpools in Japan, matching the Uzumaki ("whirlpool") clan's spiral symbol.
• Ichiraku Ramen. His favourite place to eat. Its owner, Teuchi, is one of the few adults who was kind to him as a child.
• Whiskers. The three marks on each cheek come from the Nine-Tails' chakra affecting him before birth. His children inherited them.
• Orange. His orange jumpsuit is one of the most recognisable outfits in anime, despite the obvious drawbacks for a ninja.
• Reincarnation. Late in the series he's revealed to be the latest reincarnation of Asura, a son of the Sage of Six Paths, while Sasuke carries the chakra of Asura's brother Indra.
• Jump peers. He's often grouped with Monkey D. Luffy as one of the defining Shonen Jump heroes of the 2000s. Both started in the late 1990s and both are about outsiders who refuse to give up.

Why Naruto matters to the story

Naruto is a story about the cycle of hatred: the way wars, clans and villages pass their pain from one generation to the next. Almost every major villain is a lonely child who was failed by the system, and Naruto is the same child who wasn't broken by it. His answer to the cycle isn't strength. It's empathy, and the stubbornness to keep offering it.

That's why his arc ends with him leading the village that once rejected him. He doesn't become Hokage to be acknowledged anymore. He becomes Hokage because he was acknowledged, and he wants to make sure no child in the Leaf grows up the way he did.