Ajisai: The Kunoichi Who Became the Animal Path

In the manga, this Animal Path remains nameless: she appears in chapter 407 and no character ever names her. The anime gives her back an identity, that of a kunoichi from Amegakure whose name means hydrangea. From the Hidden Rain Village to the jaws of Gamabunta, the body's journey can be pieced together bit by bit.

A Name Only the Anime Speaks

In the manga, the body Nagato uses as his second Animal Path has no name. It enters the story in chapter 407, "For Naruto's Attention": in Amegakure, the Six Paths of Pain set out for Konoha, the one Jiraiya had captured having been replaced. No character names her. The detail is flagged: the name Ajisai was revealed only by the anime. Written 紫陽花, it means hydrangea, Hydrangea macrophylla.

Ajisai was a kunoichi of Amegakure who died before Nagato added her to the Six Paths. Her profile lists her as deceased, 155.6 cm tall in Part II, a genin in Part I then a chunin in Part II, and affiliated with Amegakure alone. Of the six vessels belonging to Nagato, she is the only female body. The anime grants her a life, a personality and a squad; the manga shows only her corpse and the puppet she becomes.

A Kunoichi of the Hidden Rain Village

Amegakure is a small but heavily industrialized village, wedged between three of the Five Great Nations and turned into a battlefield war after war, to the point that most of its population is made up of refugees. After the civil war that topples Hanzo, Pain takes over the village and is worshipped there as a god. No one ever sees him: his decrees pass through his "angel," Konan, whom the population comes to revere almost as much as him.

The anime places Ajisai among those left in awe by the power of "Pain," as recounted by "Lady Angel," at the start of that civil war. Her profile then describes her as solemn, sparing with words, wholly devoted to her mission and unfailingly trusting of her two leaders. She harbors an open hostility toward the Five Great Nations, which she blames for the misfortunes of the small nations dragged into their wars. In life, she wears her purple hair gathered in a bun, has light green eyes and a forehead protector hidden under her bangs.

Team Ajisai and Konan's Orders

Everything that follows belongs to an anime-original arc covering episodes 394 to 413. After Nagato takes control of Amegakure, Kakashi comes to deliver to "Hanzo" the invitation to the Chunin Exams co-hosted by Konoha and Sunagakure; the figure is in fact Konan in disguise, Hanzo having been dead for a long time. Pain then orders her to send Amegakure's genin teams. Twenty-one genin from Amegakure take part, far more than any other small village sends.

The squad built around Ajisai brings together three kunoichi: herself, Suiren and Fuyo, both of them sensor types. Suiren pinpoints the position of a target's body and wields Water Release (Suiton); Fuyo perceives the exact amount of chakra a person holds. Konan's orders come down to two points: say nothing about Hanzo's death, and spot any jinchuriki — failing that, gather intelligence on the strength of foreign shinobi. The squad appears in episode 395.

Fuinjutsu and Two Summons

The six techniques her profile credits her with are all marked "anime only," and most of them revolve around seals. Like Tenten, she practices fuinjutsu for storage: the Sealing Technique locks objects and even living beings inside a scroll, and the Unsealing Technique brings them back out. She is cited as an example for having sealed belongings not in a scroll, but in a plain sheet of paper. She carries several small talismans holding rope, confetti and shuriken.

Two releases have names. Seal Release — Shuriken fires a volley of throwing weapons straight out of the paper or the scroll. Seal Release — Paper Storm generates thousands of fragments that swallow the target, rob her of her sight and let the user hide right in front of her. She is also credited with large chakra reserves, since she manages to seal away large masses of scenery blocking her path.

As for summons, she has a giant panda and the Rain Gate, the latter dated to episode 404. The gate absorbs a taijutsu attack from Rock Lee, but an explosive tag placed behind it is enough to destroy it. One recognizes the ornate version of an old sluice gate, an ordinary structure under Amegakure's torrential climate. Her profile also credits her with taijutsu and good reflexes, dodging a kunai with the barest movement.

Beneath the Ruins, with Tenten

In the first stage, held in Konoha under Shikamaru's supervision, the three teammates are split into different rooms — Suiren in room 1, Fuyo in room 2, Ajisai in room 3. Their combined score reaches the 100 points required and they leave the bonus question unanswered, the one asking them to name a decoy: it is a trap, and their silence gets them through. A preliminary round follows, a race to Sunagakure where only the first thirty teams advance. Ajisai's makes it and reaches the Demon Desert.

On the second day, the squad flees Team Komugi, finding no jinchuriki among them. The next day, it runs into Team Guy: the chakra levels do not match, the Amegakure ninja break off, but the Konoha ninja give chase to take their scroll. The floor of a ruin collapses and swallows Ajisai and Tenten Ajisai feigns unconsciousness in order to strike at point-blank range, but Tenten calmly asks her to put her weapon away and offers her water.

Ajisai refuses "charity" from one of the Five Great Nations and summons her own water, then accepts a truce. Underground, they come upon a colony of giant ants; Ajisai says she wants to capture one to summon later, releases her panda to hold them back and seals the rubble until she is exhausted. It is Tenten who clears the way by unleashing a mass of water. Ajisai comes to respect Tenten, and the two teams promise each other to meet again in the third stage.

A Promotion, Then an S-Rank Mission

The third stage never happens: after the controversy of the second, Gaara decides to cancel it for the year and to send each village a report on its participants, leaving each leader to settle the promotions. Back in Amegakure, Konan declares herself satisfied with the report and promotes the three kunoichi to the rank of chunin. Ajisai is delighted and looks forward to her first S-rank mission. The three new chunin are sent on one right away.

It is that mission that kills her. Little is known on this point, and one has to stick to it: she was assigned an S-rank mission despite her young age and poorly prepared, and that she died in battle. Neither the opponent, nor the place, nor the course of events is given. It is not even known whether Suiren and Fuyo survived the fight, or whether the squad is still active today.

One point deserves to be stated plainly: Ajisai does not die facing Team Guy. Her encounter with Tenten ends in a truce and in a mutual decision not to fight, eight episodes before her promotion. Episode 413 describes no fight between that promotion and her death; the story only finds her again later, as a corpse delivered to Pain's tower.

From the Amegakure Morgue to the Fourth Vessel

The tallest tower in Amegakure serves as Pain's base, and its height lets Nagato reach his bodies wherever they are in the city. A chamber hidden behind a solid wall holds the six capsules where the Six Paths of Pain rest between uses, numbered one to six in daiji characters following the order of the Buddhist paths of rebirth — the Animal Path bears the number four. Above all, the tower houses a morgue, which makes it possible to replace a vessel that has become unusable.

That is where Ajisai's body arrives, delivered along with others by two Amegakure genin, Ryusui and Yudachi, before Konan; the scene is in the manga, chapter 424, pages 5 to 8. The body is then fitted with chakra receivers: one above the nose, two on each side of the neck, three lined up vertically on each cheek and two studs per forearm. Her hair is dyed orange, like that of all the Paths, to match the hair of Yahiko.

One nuance nevertheless sets her apart from the five other bodies. Nagato's first six vessels belonged to individuals whom Jiraiya had met while they were alive; Ajisai, for her part, enters the arrangement only after the Sannin's death, replacing the first Animal Path — a shinobi of the Fuma clan captured during the battle of Amegakure, then sent to Konoha to be studied.

The Voice, the Interrogation, and a Color Error

One peculiarity sets this vessel apart from the others, and it belongs to the anime: Nagato's Six Paths speak there with Yahiko's voice, with the sole exception of the second Animal Path, which keeps a female voice because the body is a woman's. In Japan, Shiho Hisajima voices the character; in English, the profile credits Stephanie Sheh. The manga, silent by nature, could not mark that difference.

In episode 160, which adapts chapters 424 to 426, Inoichi probes Yudachi's mind and finds in it the memory of a corpse delivered to Konan. When the Animal Path attacks the interrogation unit, he recognizes that body in her and flees with Ino and Shizune. Ibiki stays behind: he traps the summoned rhinoceros in an iron maiden, binds the Path in a torture chamber, then realizes he is bearing down on a cold body that feels no pain.

There finally remains a production inconsistency. In that same episode 160, Ajisai's body is shown with her hair already dyed orange, whereas the dyeing is Nagato's doing, once the body is in his hands. The point was corrected when she was reintroduced, more than two hundred episodes later, when the anime shows her alive with purple hair.

The End of the Second Animal Path

According to the anime, Ajisai's body is first used to hunt the jinchuriki of the Six-Tails (Rokubi): the Paths kill Tsurugi and the hunter-nin with him, then face Utakata, who has gone into Version 2. The Animal Path summons its chameleon there to pin down the jinchuriki; the summon is defeated, the Human Path is destroyed, and the Animal Path recovers that body before withdrawing. The Akatsuki then extracts the Six-Tails from the captured jinchuriki.

Then comes the invasion of Konoha. The Asura Path launches the Animal Path through the village's detection barrier, and she slips in alone so the barrier reports only one intruder; once inside, she summons Konan and the five other Paths on the spot, and they scatter at once. She is then among the Paths tasked with diversions, drawing the defenders' attention while the others search for Naruto.

Her destruction, though, belongs to manga canon. In chapter 432, Naruto launches a Rasenshuriken at the Six Paths: most of them escape, and the Human Path is destroyed. The Animal Path answers with fresh summons, which Gamabunta, Gamaken and Gamahiro eventually bring down, and Ajisai's body meets its end in Bunta's jaws, under a double senjutsu Rasengan. She is listed as definitively deceased.

Summary Table

FAQ

• Is Ajisai named in the manga?
  No. Her name was revealed only by the anime. On the page, she is never more than "the Animal Path": the body appears in chapter 407 and the corpse is delivered to Pain's tower in chapter 424, without a single character calling her by a name.
• Who killed Ajisai?
  Nothing says. It states only that she died in battle during her first S-rank mission, assigned to her despite her young age and one for which she was poorly prepared. Neither the opponent nor the place is given, and no fight is described. She does not die facing Team Guy: her encounter with Tenten ends in a truce, eight episodes before her promotion.
• Why does this Path speak with a woman's voice?
  Because the body is a woman's. In the anime, all of Nagato's Paths speak with Yahiko's voice, with the sole exception of the second Animal Path. It is a feature specific to the anime, one the manga could not convey. Shiho Hisajima voices the character in Japanese, Stephanie Sheh in English.
• What became of her squad?
  Suiren and Fuyo were promoted to chunin at the same time as she was, after the report sent to Konan, and the three were sent together on the S-rank mission. It is then unknown whether the squad is still active, and that it is likewise unknown whether the two kunoichi survived the fight that cost Ajisai her life.
• Was there another Animal Path before her?
  Yes, she is the second. The first body was that of a shinobi of the Fuma clan, skilled with giant shuriken, whom Jiraiya had fought on the eve of the Second Great Ninja War after the destruction of a peaceful village. That body is captured during the battle of Amegakure then sent to Konoha to be studied, which forces Nagato to replace it.
• What do the names of these Amegakure ninja mean?
  The translations are known. Ajisai (紫陽花) means hydrangea. Ryusui (流水), one of the two genin who deliver her body, means "running water" or "stream." Yudachi (夕立) refers to the late-day thunder shower of summer, and it is also the name of a Japanese destroyer. Her teammates stay in the same floral vein: Suiren, the water lily, and Fuyo, Hibiscus mutabilis.

In summary

Two stories for one body. The manga keeps only a corpse delivered to the tower's morgue in chapter 424, while the anime grants her a squad, sealing techniques marked "anime only," a promotion decided by Konan and the mission that kills her.