Characters/Naruto Tailed Beasts - TV Tropes

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The Tailed Beasts and Jinchūriki

The nine Jinchūrikinote From left to right: Rōshi, Yagura Karatachi, Yugito Nii, Gaara, Naruto, Killer B, Fū, Utakata and Han.

The Living MacGuffins of the series, at least in Part II. The Tailed Beasts (尾獣, "Bijū") are humongous, primal creatures known for their extraordinary power and immense amounts of chakra (given they are literally made out of masses of primal chakra that has taken a physical form). Most of the Tailed Beasts seen in the series have been sealed into human hosts in order to contain their destructive power — all the beasts are, if not actively malevolent, then at least dangerously feral. It's stated in the series that although the Beasts have massive amounts of power, they cannot use it effectively because of their lack of intelligence — the human hosts, also known as "jinchūriki" (人柱力, lit. "human sacrifice power") are able to make better use of the Beasts' power than they themselves can. Much later, it is suggested that these perceptions of the beasts' natures may not be entirely true, which contributes largely to their bitterness and disdain towards the humans who use them.During the wars, the various ninja villages experimented with trying to use the Tailed Beasts as weapons of war. However, the Beasts proved to be too unstable to use directly. A last-ditch effort to make use of the Beasts involved sealing them into the bodies of humans to create Jinchuruki, giving those humans access to the Beasts' power while also suppressing their influence, but this too was ultimately deemed a overall failure (with some major exceptions), as it was not a foolproof method and had damaging effects on the psyche of the host. Most hosts are lonely people who hate the world; according to one member of the Akatsuki, when some of the hosts were captured, the people in their villages were glad to be rid of them. That said, a given nation's rulers still generally regard their Jinchuruki as vital in keeping the balance of power between nations, if only to keep a given tailed beast from potentially falling into the hands of another nation.The presence of a Tailed Beast usually has some sort of effect, physically and mentally, on their hosts. If the host dies, the Beast does too — at least temporarily — so the Beasts usually have some method of protecting the host's life without the host's knowledge. The reverse is also true — the removal of the spirit will result in the death of its host. The Beasts seem to have the ability to take control of the host's body during periods of extreme stress, anger, or weakness.Akatsuki's mission is to collect all nine of them. When they capture a Beast, they seal it into a large statue. Akatsuki's stated mission is to use the Tailed Beasts to start wars and then immediately quell them, creating a monopoly on shinobi labor that would then drive the other Hidden Villages out of business. From there, Akatsuki can easily take over the world. However, certain Akatsuki members have other designs on the Beasts — Pain and Konan want to use the Beasts' incredible amounts of chakra to fuel a jutsu that is roughly equivalent in power to a nuke, which they will then use to teach the world about the foolishness of fighting. Tobi, meanwhile, wants to collect the beasts to recreate the Ten-Tails and use it to enact his "Moon's Eye Plan.". open/close all folders

In General

Tailed Beasts and their Hosts as a whole provide examples of...

• Animal Battle Aura: All of them except Shukaku have provided their jinchūriki auras of red chakra in the shape of their bodies.
• Animalistic Abomination: All of them greatly resemble living animals, except the Ten-Tails, who falls between the lines of Eldritch Abomination and Humanoid Abomination. However, even it has a beast form: a ten-tailed rabbit.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: All of them are gigantic exaggerated versions of living animals.
• Born-Again Immortality: Boruto: Two Blue Vortex reveals that the Tailed Beasts possess this kind of immortality, respawning if their bodies or even their souls are destroyed. Kurama is reborn in a diminished cub form inside Himawari due to her inheriting some of his chakra from Naruto.
• Breath Weapon: All of the Tailed Beasts are capable of charging extremely dense spheres of Yin and Yang chakra called Tailed Beast Balls in front of their mouths, which can either be fired directly as a sphere or ingested and fired as a beam. It can cause devastating explosions enough to wipe massive mountains off the map without losing momentum.
• Cain and Abel: They're the Abel to Indra and Asura's Cain since Hagamoro can be considered a father to the Tailed Beasts as well.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After spending centuries living in horrible conditions and being controlled by humans, the Tailed Beasts get their happy ending in the aftermath of the Fourth Ninja World War, when all of them are allowed to live free of hosts (except for Gyuki and Yang Kurama, both of whom decide to return to Bee and Naruto, respectively).
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • Despite looking like gigantic versions of various animals, they are masses of chakra that drive inexperienced hosts into a mad frenzy.
  • The Ten-Tails, from which they originate from, is closer to this trope in the description.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: They thoroughly believe this of humanity, and not without good reasons. Kurama sums it up as he thinks back on the various reasons or excuses the people who have confined or controlled him in the past gave.Kurama: No matter what words they use, humans always say the same thing. Obey.
• I Just Want to Be Free: After suffering from being captured and used by humans as weapons, this is the goal for all of them.
• Immune to Mind Control: Not the tailed beasts themselves, but one of the advantages of a jinchūriki that has a good relationship with the Tailed Beast sealed inside them is that they can counteract genjutsu without requiring another person to be present, as the Tailed Beast can disturb its jinchūriki's chakra flow to break the genjutsu.
• Jagged Mouth: When their jinchūriki uses the Version 2 Chakra Shroud their mouths appear as jagged outlines.
• Kaiju: Sideways. All of the Tailed Beasts are giant versions of living animals and have the typical stomp-smash behavior of this trope but are thoroughly different in origins, motives, and raisons d'etre.
• Level-Up at Intimacy 5: If a Tailed Beast and its jinchūriki have a good relationship, it carries a large number of advantages for both parties. While the obvious one is that calling on more and more of the Beast's power doesn't cause them to go berserk, it also comes with the beast being able to disrupt their chakra flow to free them from genjutsu.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Most of them have mixes of different animals or human characteristics.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: The Tailed Beasts can give their jinchūriki the ability to create arms of chakra (or in Shukaku's case, sand).
• Multiple-Tailed Beast: From the Two-Tails to the Ten-Tails.
• Pure Magic Being: The Tailed Beasts are literally solid, living, sentient masses of chakra.
• Really 700 Years Old: The Tailed Beasts have existed since the era of the Sage of the Six Paths, over 1000 years ago.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: When any of the Tailed Beasts' jinchūriki enters Version 2, their chakra cloak turns opaque black-and-red. If they don't have a cooperative relationship, the Tailed Beast's emotions/instincts will overwhelm their mind, causing the jinchūriki to go on a rampage.
• Resurrective Immortality: If a Tailed Beast's host dies with the beast still inside, it will die as well for a variable amount of time, but will eventually reemerge sooner or later somewhere in the world. This has happened a number of times but we have never been shown what the rebirth looks like.
  • This was one reason why Minato refused to reseal Kurama back inside the dying Kushina after Obito tore it away. It is also a handicap to Akaksuki members, as they must be careful to not kill the jinchuruki they battle, as it would mean losing the tailed beast within them for an unknown amount of time and having no idea where to search for it when it is reborn.
  • After being transformed into the host of Isobu, Rin committed Suicide by Cop so her body could not be used to unleash the beast on Konoha. It eventually resurrected elsewhere and ended up within Yagura, the Fourth Mizukage. Upon his death it died and resurrected again, going into hiding in a large lake until it was located by the Akaksuki.
  • In Boruto Two Blue Vortex we finally learn more about the process, as well as how unlimited it is. Kurama explains to Himawari that death simply does not last for a tailed beast. While it cannot be predicted how long it will take, or where they will emerge, even if all their chakra is extinguished from the living world they will eventually return via a part of their being that manifests somewhere and grows. In Kurama's case, he was resurrected within Himawari herself (making her in effect a very unique Jinchūriki whose beast was never actually sealed into her with a Jutsu), something that surprised even him, and while he has some theories as to why it happened (Himawari being born with some of his chakra, or some destiny caused by Uzumaki and Hyuga blood mixing together), he ends up deciding it is better to just accept it and move forward. Kurama is also still relatively small and young in appearance even after roughly three years growing within Himawari (given Daemon is implied to have felt him within her before the time skip when he sensed some power he couldn't explain deep inside her), but it is unclear if this is normal for when a tailed beast is reborn.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Excluding the Ten-Tails, when they were young they were adorable◊.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Subverted; the beasts aren't actually evil, just hostile toward humanity after years of being treated as weapons.
• Sealed in a Person-Shaped Can: A jinchūriki carries a Tailed Beast and dies if it's extracted.
• Shrouded in Myth: Many of the Tailed Beasts have legends surrounding them in-story, such as once being human.
• Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: The Tailed Beasts seem like your standard giant animals and/or Mix-and-Match Critters, with Gyūki and Kurama having upper bodies which become more humanoid, with the Ten-Tails being some sort of Humanoid Abomination.
• Super Mode: If the host and beast have a good enough relationship the host can use their chakra to give themselves an aura of chakra and fuse their blood with the beasts chakra to begin to create a new body around their own, thereby taking partial qualities of the beast, or even fully becoming the beast itself. Other than that, a unique ability of Kurama is that it can merge with Naruto without affecting his blood, creating a golden-colored chakra cloak that is far less dangerous than the blood cloak.
• Tanuki/Kitsune Contrast: In full force with Shukaku and Kurama, naturally. The former possesses the least amount of tails and is regarded as the weakest Tailed Beast, while the latter has nine and arrogantly views himself as the strongest of the bunch, leading to a significant amount of animosity between the two. The trope even extends to their respective hosts Gaara and Naruto, the former acting as an Evil Counterpart to the latter.
• Telepathy: They can use this to communicate with one another from within their jinchūriki. They can also communicate this way with their jinchūriki.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Heavily implied to be the reason for their destructive and monstrous behavior, Kurama and Shukaku in particular.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Despite the Tailed Beasts' extreme power, as well as their high intelligence, they are unable to focus their power. Due to this, as Akatsuki demonstrated, even a full Beast such as Isobu (the Three-Tails) can be easily defeated. The only way for them to focus their powers is when sealed inside a human. As shown by Naruto and Bee, with the former being able to overpower five controlled Tailed Beasts at the same time and the latter using ninjutsu in his full Tailed Beast form.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In the original manga, except for Gyuki and Kurama (both choosing to be resealed into their previous hosts), the Tailed Beasts' fates are left hanging after being freed from Sasuke's Chibaku Tensei. Kishimoto himself was vague when asked on the matter, saying, "I would hope they're living happily ever after... they're leading comfortable lives." Boruto reveals that they went their separate ways after the war, wandering the world as freemen (freebeasts?). Since Naruto has some amount of chakra from all nine, he sort of becomes their community center, where the beasts can meet telepathically. It's explained that although the world has become more peaceful, some of the beasts (notably Matatabi, Chomei, and Kokuo) seek to lead lives not beholden to any humans' will and may not attend the meetings even if Naruto asks them to (albeit it's noted it'd be a different matter if he insisted on a meeting).
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Son Gokū reveals that the Beasts find humans abhorrent for treating them as mere animals, using them as tools in their wars and never even giving them the courtesy of learning their names.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Despite being potentially destructive forces of nature, the Tailed Beasts just want to be free. The reason they hate humans so much is because far too many have either enslaved or imprisoned them.
• Yank the Dog's Chain:
  • All the effort that went to releasing the Tailed Beasts from Obito goes straight to hell after Madara is revived.
  • After finally being freed from Kaguya, Sasuke proceeds to cast genjutsu on them and trap them in Chibaku Tensei satellites.
  • And some decades after Sasuke releases them, they end up being targeted by Momoshiki Ōtsutsuki.
• Yōkai: Shukaku, Matatabi, Gyūki, Kurama, and the Ten-Tails are based on youkai from Japanese myth: tanuki, nekomata, ushi-oni, kitsune, and daidarabotchi respectively. The others are original creations by Kishimoto.

The Tailed Beasts and their Jinchūriki Are:

One-Tail

Shukaku

Voiced by: Hiroshi Iwasaki (JP), Kirk Thornton (EN),Foreign V AsEduardo Garza (Latin America)

Debut: Naruto Chapter 134 (Manga), Naruto Episode 78 (Anime)

My motto is absolute defense. That is what I, Shukaku, pride myself on.

Host: Bunpuku; Gaara.The only Tailed Beast to be referred to by actual name instead of just referred to by what animal it looks like or its number of tails, at least, up until Chapter 568. According to the (untrue) legends of the Hidden Sand Village, Shukaku was once a man, a corrupted monk who was sealed into a tea kettle. It was sealed into Gaara upon his birth by Chiyo on orders from the Fourth Kazekage, using Gaara's mother as a sacrifice.

In contrast to Gaara's sullen, morose personality, Shukaku is childish and short-tempered, and often speaks in a bombastic and incoherent manner, giving it the demeanor of a drunkard (this fits in with typical depictions of tanuki in Japanese mythology). Like all Tailed Beasts, it has an immense blood-lust and hunger for battle and relishes a chance to kill opponents.

Shukaku has the ability to levitate sand via the Magnet Release (which normally only affects metals such as iron and gold), which allows its host to manipulate it for both offense and defense, doing the latter to automatically protect Gaara (and its previous hosts) from all harm. This prevents even self-inflicted injuries — Gaara had never known physical pain before the series. Gaara's famed sand shield is even long thought to be Shukaku's doing until it gets extracted from Gaara yet the latter still exhibits his power. Unlike other Tailed Beasts, whose transformations are formed of red chakra, Shukaku's hosts transform by covering themselves in sand. When angry or consumed by bloodlust, Gaara can give himself over to Shukaku, allowing the spirit to take its true form. In this form, it is so large that Naruto was forced to summon Gamabunta in order to defeat him. Shukaku is associated with the Wind element.

Shukaku manifests itself on Gaara's body by way of dark, raccoon-like circles that appear around his eyes.

Deidara is assigned to capture Shukaku. He does so, defeating Gaara and transporting his body to an Akatsuki hideout to extract the spirit. Although Shukaku is successfully extracted, resulting in Gaara's death, Chiyo used a forbidden jutsu to repent her old sin and revive Gaara at the cost of her own life.

As once stated by Gyūki, Shukaku has a bitter grudge against Kurama, in response to judging the power of the Tailed Beasts by the number of tails they have. Kurama, having the most tails, and Shukaku, having only one, causes the fox to view itself as the strongest and the tanuki as the weakest. Ever since Kurama made that scathing insult, Shukaku strives to find any opportunity to surpass its arrogant rival.

Later, as with Kurama, Shukaku comes to respect humans again, more specifically Gaara.

• Attack Its Weak Point: Shukaku can only assume full control of its host if they're asleep but has to keep the host out in the open so they don't suffocate from its sand-composed body. Should the host be woken up — say, by a sudden blow to the head — Shukaku will be re-sealed, leaving behind nothing but a giant sand sculpture.
• Ax-Crazy: The worst example among the Tailed Beast for this sort of behavior, acting like a battle-happy drunkard.
• Blow You Away: Uses Wind Release to fire wind bullets.
• Breath Weapon: While it can use the Tailed Beast Ball, it has never been seen doing so aside from a filler episode in the anime. During its fight with Naruto and Gamabunta, it used the Wind Release: Drilling Air Bullet instead.
• Canis Major: Even if they're akin to raccoons, tanukis are actually canines.
• Driven by Envy: It hates Kurama for viewing it as an inferior due to its single tail.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Discounting the partial and full transformations, Shukaku doesn’t grant Gaara the signature red cloaks that would make up the Versions 1 and 2 Jinchuriki forms. As detailed in Retcon, this is due to the fact that he and Kurama weren’t initially related.
• Fat Bastard: Shukaku appears to be grossly obese, fitting with the legend of the tanuki it's based on.
• Jagged Mouth: Shukaku's fangs are an extension of his mouth.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Turns out it actually warned Gaara to not fall asleep in early childhood. And despite not supposedly liking Bunpuku (the old priest who he was originally sealed in), it was kind enough to say that he was like the Sage of Six Paths.
• Large Ham: Shukaku speaks bombastically, much as a drunkard would.
• Laughing Mad: When it's having fun during a battle, it laughs like a maniac.
• Power Tattoo: The markings on his body are Cursed Seals.
• Put on a Bus: Gaara doesn't summon it during his fight with Deidara and because he is resurrected by Chiyo after being killed, Kabuto is prevented from turning him into his zombie, unlike the other deceased hosts. Therefore, Shukaku is the only Tailed Beast who does not participate in the jinchūriki battle near the end of the Fourth Ninja World War arc. Its appearance in the later stages of the Ten-Tails arc is actually its first appearance in Part II and the first since way back in the Invasion of Konoha arc, over 500 chapters and a decade earlier.
• Retcon: As mentioned above, Shukaku was originally believed to be a monk that turned demon with no connection to the Nine-Tails. In fact, it wasn't until Part II that Shukaku was even referred to as the One-Tail, being referred to as Shukaku the Sand Spirit instead. Hell, even its name is worth mentioning because before their past was revealed, Shukaku was the only Tailed Beast referred to by its given name. He was sealed within a priest for much of his life, the kindly old priest being the jinchūriki before Gaara. It was sealed for so long that the villagers came to see the priest as Shukaku and thus the old belief.
• The Rival: Touts himself to be Kurama’s which is based on Japanese legends about Kitsune and Tanuki.
• Sand Blaster: Its most noticeable trait is sand manipulation, which it uses in a defensive manner.
• Selective Magnetism: While its sand manipulation is more well-known In-Universe, Shukaku has access to Magnet Release.
• Sleep-Mode Size: In Boruto, to prevent Urashiki from detecting and capturing it, Shukaku enters a magical teapot and becomes chibi-like. Himawari, however, sees it as a toy and happily plays with it, much to its chagrin.
• Stone Wall: Shukaku declares that it prides itself on its defense.
• Tanuki: What it's based on, down to its rivalry with Kurama, a kitsune.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Changes its attitude towards Bunpuku and Gaara, even giving a Declaration of Protection to the latter.
• Tsundere: Shukaku helps Gaara seal Madara because it wants to, not because Gaara asks.
• Wave-Motion Gun: The Tailed Beast Ball, though it doesn't use the technique in the manga.
• Worf Had the Flu: The only reason Gamabunta was able to fight him is because the Shukaku was not at full power.