Kimimaro: The Last of the Kaguya Clan

CharacterKekkei genkaiKimimaro

His own skeleton is his arsenal. The last survivor of the Kaguya clan, wiped out at Kirigakure, Kimimaro turns his bones into blades thanks to the Shikotsumyaku (Dead Bone Pulse). What follows covers this kekkei genkai in detail, his place at the head of the Sound Five and his fanatical devotion to Orochimaru, which stands in for his reason to live. Then comes the paradox that makes him unforgettable: no opponent ever overcame him, only his illness stopped him.

A warrior who turns his own skeleton into weapons: Kimimaro is one of the most terrifying opponents in Part I of Naruto. The last of his clan and the most devoted follower of Orochimaru, he was defeated only by his own illness. Profile.

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The Last of the Kaguya Clan

Kimimaro is the last known survivor of the Kaguya clan, a clan now extinct, characterized by its archaic values and its savage battle tactics. The line of descent from Kaguya Otsutsuki is not presented there as conjecture: the Kaguya are her descendants (chapter 684, page 16; fourth databook, pages 25 and 66-69), and their Shikotsumyaku a less lethal derivative of the princess's original ability to manipulate her own bone structure. The two characters remain distinct, and the kekkei genkai appears only very rarely among the Kaguya.

The clan went into combat with no tactics at all, starting battles for the sole purpose of displaying its ferocity. That is how it was wiped out attacking Kirigakure: surrounded and outmatched, its members refused to fall back and chose instead to fight to the death to sate their bloodlust to the very end (chapter 216, pages 14-15). Another cause is added: the power of the kekkei genkai had convinced the Kaguya of their own invincibility, and pushed them to pick fights with opponents stronger than themselves.

Two scarlet dots on the forehead and a zigzag part in the hair mark membership in the clan. One recognizes Kaguya's short eyebrows and zigzag, visible signs of her nobility. An interview with Masashi Kishimoto covers only the forehead markings, modeled on those of the aristocrats of the Heian period; the hairstyle, for its part, points to the Yayoi period. The name follows the same trail: "Kimi" (君) is an old title of nobility, "Maro" (麻呂) slang for someone with thin or shaved eyebrows. These design elements would later be reused for the members of the Otsutsuki clan and for Indra.

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The Child His Own Clan Kept in a Cage

Before Orochimaru, Kimimaro grew up locked away. A rare bearer of the Shikotsumyaku, he frightened a clan that was nonetheless in love with war: the head of the Kaguya kept him in a cage and only let him out when he was needed in battle. It is this same patriarch who decides on the night attack against the Hidden Mist village, to make it known what it means to fear the Kaguya name. To Kimimaro he gives a blunt instruction: do not think too much, go down and kill every person he meets, act on instinct. Surrounded later on, he orders the last survivors to take down as many enemies as possible.

Kimimaro is the only one to escape, and the reason is known: he did not share the same barbaric urge to slaughter as his own people (chapter 216, pages 14-15). As a child he is described as gentler, despite a natural talent for combat and abilities that made him the strongest of his clan: he did not want to hurt people he had no tie to, and took an interest in flowers — his dances would later carry the names of plants. After the annihilation, he wanders, until Orochimaru finds and recruits him.

The anime adds an encounter that the manga never shows. Leaving the Land of Water, Haku and Zabuza cross paths with Kimimaro: Haku seems to understand his loneliness and his lack of purpose just by looking him in the eye, but Zabuza urges him to move on and the two of them leave the child there (episode 126). The parallel is explicit: Kimimaro's bond with Orochimaru recalls Haku's with Zabuza, with one difference: Orochimaru loses interest in him the moment he stops being useful.

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Orochimaru's Follower

Taken in after the fall of his clan, Kimimaro finds in Orochimaru a reason to exist: to serve. Nothing settles the nature of this bond, and the two versions stand apart, the manga suggesting an almost religious fervor and the anime a father figure. The mechanism is the same in both cases: his master's apparent kindness stands in for justification, and serving him in any way at all becomes his sole purpose. Being a future vessel does not bother him, as long as it helps Orochimaru.

Orochimaru coveted this body for one precise reason: the Shikotsumyaku, which he held to be the pinnacle of taijutsu and intended to take for himself by taking possession of Kimimaro (chapter 201, pages 16-17). Backed by the powers his curse mark gives him, Kimimaro single-handedly defeats the four members of the Sound Four, who must accept him as their leader; the group is then renamed the Sound Five. Unlike his four colleagues, he is credited with the absence of any flaw liable to hinder a mission, a point Orochimaru relied on.

Illness then destroys what value he still had in his master's eyes. Bedridden to stretch out what little life he has left, he cannot take part in the Konoha Crush, an absence that Kabuto would claim explains the defeat and the retreat. The hardest passage lies elsewhere: on learning that his condition leaves him of no use at all, Kimimaro begins to weep in silence at having lost his reason for being. His place as future vessel goes to Sasuke Uchiha, whom he himself will call his replacement.

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Jugo, the Friend, and the Legacy Passed On to Sasuke

Under Orochimaru, Kimimaro meets Jugo, a berserker whose uncontrollable fits of rage made him a danger to anyone who came near him and who, cursing his own existence, had withdrawn into caves so as to hurt no one there. Kimimaro recognizes himself in him, and that is the only person able, before Sasuke, to calm him almost without effort (chapter 351, page 7). Since Jugo kept company with almost no one else, the two grow close: Kimimaro's gentleness shows here in the empathy and kindness he displays toward him.

It is Kimimaro who convinces Jugo to submit to Orochimaru's experiments, hoping they will cure him of his fits; the anime puts the scene on screen in episode 118 of Shippuden. The irony is complete, since it is this research that would produce the curse mark that Kimimaro himself would be branded with. Before leaving for the Sasuke Recovery Mission, knowing he will not come back from it, he pays his friend one last visit: despite the latter's protests about his health, he tells him that Sasuke is his legacy and thanks him for their friendship.

The consequence is lasting. On learning that Kimimaro sacrificed his life to deliver Sasuke to Orochimaru, Jugo considers that his spirit lives on in him, joins Taka (Hawk) and obeys him without question. He tells Sasuke that he cannot let him die because he is all he has left of Kimimaro (chapter 414, page 3). Later, he sums it up differently in front of Suigetsu: Sasuke's will is Kimimaro's will, and he obeys it (chapter 593, page 4).

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The Power of Bones

His kekkei genkai is the Shikotsumyaku (屍骨脈), literally "Dead Bone Pulse"; the Viz manga renders it as "Corpse Bone Chain" and the English anime as "Macabre Bone Pulse". It is not a Release in the sense of the chakra natures, but a bloodline that appears only very rarely among the Kaguya. The mechanism is described precisely: its bearer controls his osteoblasts, his osteoclasts and the calcium density of his bones (chapter 212, page 2), and thus adjusts at will both their hardness and their malleability.

Kimimaro claims that his bones are harder than tempered steel. They absorb most of the impact of a chakra-charged blade, cut through ordinary shuriken, and allowed him to survive being buried under two hundred meters of compressed sand. A rarely cited flip side: the body structure of a Shikotsumyaku bearer differs so far from the norm that Kabuto had too little information on his body to attempt to treat him (chapter 216, page 14).

His techniques nearly all bear the names of dances, each one borrowed from a plant, and it is specified that five of them were passed down within the Kaguya clan (Naruto: One Decade, One Hundred Ninja, page 18). Only the Ten Finger Drilling Bullets are an exception: Kimimaro parts the tips of his fingers, releases the hardened finger bones and fires them in volleys of five per hand. It is his only Shikotsumyaku technique not called a dance, and the one he relies on at range.

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The Curse Mark of Earth, Which He Alone Bears

Kimimaro bears the Curse Mark of Earth (Chi no Juin), of which he is the only known bearer. It is one of the two strongest marks of Orochimaru, alongside the Curse Mark of Heaven that Sasuke bears, each one the equal of the other. It takes the form of three slightly curved lines, at the base of the throat, on the manubrium. Activated at the first level, it turns red-orange and spreads over the whole body in parallel, contorted lines.

The second level gives him a reptilian look: dark gray skin, black sclerae, yellow irises, sharp teeth, six large bone spines on his back, a long spiked bone tail and curved black markings below and above each eye. The trade-off is clear. He becomes markedly slower, but his strength increases to the point of smashing through Gaara's sand defenses in a single charge, his skin thickens until it becomes impenetrable to that sand, and the transformation instantly heals torn flesh.

Two technical constraints are recorded. The Dance of the Clematis: Flower requires this second level, the size and density of the bone weapon making it impossible to wield otherwise (To no Sho, page 257); the same level also lets him merge with the blades of the Dance of the Young Ferns to resurface in his target's blind spot (To no Sho, page 227). Jugo, whose body is the very source of these marks, salutes a mastery great enough to allow a partial transformation.

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What the Anime Adds That the Manga Never Shows

The point is stated in black and white: most of Kimimaro's actions prior to the Sasuke Recovery Mission are anime-only. It is the anime, and it alone, that shows him as a herald to the clans of the Land of Sound, tasked with getting them to pledge allegiance to the master of Otogakure, as with the Fuma clan (episode 137). The manga tells nothing of this period and has him appear only in chapter 199, already ill.

The anime also gives him the infiltration of Konoha during the Chunin Exams. With the Sound Five, he kills the three Kusagakure genin of Shiore's team so that Orochimaru can take on her appearance; it is there that he coughs up blood for the first time, and decides to ignore it. The illness fully sets in during the assassination of the Fourth Kazekage and his guards. The point is decisive: the manga never dates the onset of the illness, which occurs at an unspecified moment.

Three other additions deserve to be singled out. The anime makes the Sound Four a group of Orochimaru's prisoners forced into fights to the death, then promoted to bodyguards for having survived (episode 305 of Shippuden); their defeat at Kimimaro's hands, on the other hand, is not an anime addition. It tones down the gore: where the manga has the skin tear open widely when a bone is drawn out, the anime opens only small holes. It finally gives him a wall of white smoke, and makes his bone bullets capable of piercing the armor of the samurai, a capability belonging to the anime alone (episodes 272 and 307 of Shippuden).

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Defeated by His Illness Alone

During the Sasuke Recovery Mission, Kimimaro faces three opponents in succession. The first is Naruto: he defeats without difficulty several hundred clones boosted by the chakra of Kurama, without letting himself be hit a single time, before the arrival of Rock Lee, in whom he immediately sees an opponent stronger than Naruto. The fight turns when Lee switches to the Drunken Fist: unable to read such irregular movements, Kimimaro admits it out loud once he is hit.

He shows in this fight a sense of honor his colleagues lack: he breaks off to let Lee take his "medicine", without knowing that it is alcohol and that it will make his opponent stronger. Then Gaara arrives, saves Lee and takes his place. Kimimaro pulls his bones back in, recognizes a stronger opponent, is crushed by the sand, survives it by forming a layer of bone under his skin, then frees himself by activating the first level of his mark.

His Dance of the Clematis does not break Gaara's absolute defense. Buried two hundred meters underground, where the pressure crushes steel, he raises a forest that can number up to ten thousand bone blades, emerges from one of them to strike, and dies on his feet: the illness takes him at the precise instant he was about to kill Gaara. This ailment is never named in the work, and Kabuto had failed to treat it. Gaara compares his eyes to Sasuke's, the eyes of someone who seeks only to prove his own existence.

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Brought Back by Edo Tensei: His Posthumous War

Reincarnated by Kabuto to fight the Allied Shinobi Forces during the Fourth Great Ninja War, Kimimaro comes back as he was at his death, with one exception: the gray sclerae common to all the reanimated. Called up, he joins the group Chukichi asks for backup, alongside Chiyo and Hanzo; their improvised formation then comes upon the remnants of the Surprise Attack Division holding Deidara prisoner. During the pursuit, he reflects that Orochimaru's chakra now flows in him, by way of Kabuto.

When the Fifth Division comes to swell the enemy ranks, he attacks with the Shikotsumyaku and pierces even the samurai's chakra-charged blades, fatally impaling several of them the next day. A clone of Naruto then arrives, telling him the outcome will not be that of their first clash. Kimimaro merely notes that his appearance shows that time has passed, then dodges the Wind Release: Rasenshuriken by leaping out of its range. He escapes the sealing and cuts through the enemy ranks.

It takes Itachi forcing Kabuto to lift the Edo Tensei (Reanimation Jutsu) for that to stop: still in the middle of the fight, Kimimaro is enveloped in a light, and his soul leaves a body that comes apart to return to the Pure Land. The aftermath is posthumous. Kabuto had assimilated his DNA along with that of the rest of the Sound Five and could, through the kekkei genkai of Sakon and Ukon, bring forth a double of Kimimaro endowed with the Shikotsumyaku (chapter 585, page 6). Orochimaru would recover this power by absorbing it from Kabuto.

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What the Databooks Record About Him

The second databook, the To no Sho, gives him 4 in ninjutsu, 5 in taijutsu, 3 in genjutsu, 3.5 in intelligence, 3 in strength, 4.5 in speed, 4.5 in stamina and 3 in hand seals, for a total of 30.5. Taijutsu is his highest score, which matches the judgment of Rock Lee, a specialist in the field, who recognizes him as a master who wastes not a single movement. The databooks count 22 official missions: no D-rank, no C-rank, 15 B-rank, 5 A-rank and 2 S-rank.

The civil data fits on one line: born June 15, blood type A, fifteen years old in Part I, 166.1 cm for 49.8 kg. Outside the databook, he was 147 cm tall when he met Jugo. His favorite word is 無我 (muga), which renders as "Selflessness" and ties to anattā, non-self: a Buddhist concept according to which there is no intrinsic self. The phrase is to be set alongside what is said of him elsewhere, that he saw in his abilities only a means of being useful to others.

The entry points are dated as well: chapter 199 and episode 118 of Naruto for the character as for his Curse Mark of Earth, chapter 201 and episode 119 for the Shikotsumyaku. Beyond that, there is nothing to cite: only one line of statistics is known for him, that of the second databook, and no other volume comes to complete or correct it.

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Summary Table

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FAQ

• Who is Kimimaro in Naruto?
  The last survivor of the Kaguya clan and Orochimaru's most loyal follower, holder of the bone manipulation kekkei genkai.
• What is Kimimaro's power?
  The Shikotsumyaku, the Dead Bone Pulse: he manipulates his skeleton to turn it into weapons and armor, through techniques named "Dances".
• Is Kimimaro related to Kaguya Otsutsuki?
  They are two distinct figures in the story; later texts suggest a distant line of descent, to be taken with caution.
• How does Kimimaro die?
  Not in battle, but from an incurable illness — never named — that takes him just as he was about to kill Gaara.
• Why did Kimimaro not become Orochimaru's body?
  He was meant to be, but his illness forced him to give up that role to Sasuke.

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In summary

A perfect weapon broken by his own body, Kimimaro embodies absolute loyalty — and the tragedy of a life entirely devoted to an unworthy master.

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