Anko Mitarashi : l'ancienne élève d'Orochimaru

Anko Mitarashi: Orochimaru's Former Student

4235 words | Reading time: 22 min

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Ten test subjects, a single survivor. Anko Mitarashi carries Orochimaru's Curse Mark in her flesh, left by the master who taught her his snake techniques before abandoning her. A special jonin of Konoha, she proctors the second stage of the Chunin Exams in the Forest of Death. A look back at her inherited snake style, at the Twin Snakes Mutual Death technique that failed against a clone of the Sannin, and at what the war changed for her.

The disowned student of Konoha's greatest traitor: branded in her own flesh, Anko Mitarashi turned her hatred of her former master into a driving force. A profile of a kunoichi with a snake style.

Contents

The Kunoichi With the Snake Style

Anko Mitarashi is a Konoha kunoichi ranked as a special jonin, not an ordinary jonin. The distinction has a precise meaning: where a jonin has a complete skill set, a special jonin excels in only one area, much like warrant officers in real-world armies; the book Naruto: One Decade, One Hundred Ninja takes Ibiki Morino and his knowledge of the human mind as an example. Her profile now lists her as an instructor at the Konoha Ninja Academy, under registration number 011226.

Her affiliation is not limited to the village: she is one of the recorded summoners of the Ryuchi Cave, the domain of snakes, and her arsenal rests on the reptilian summons she learned from Orochimaru. The rest of the portrait comes down to a few constant traits — casual, blunt, stubborn, unable to resist a dango. Sakura Haruno even describes her, in chapter 44 page 15, as very much like Naruto Uzumaki in many ways.

The manga and the anime do not draw her quite the same way, and the gap begins with her very introduction. In chapter 45, pages 3 and 4, she cuts Naruto's face with a kunai, then tastes his blood; the anime replaces the gesture with a simple wipe of the finger. Her hair itself differs: black with blue highlights in the manga as of chapter 604, it is purple on screen. These small discrepancies foreshadow far heavier ones in her biography.

Anko, in a beige coat and Konoha headband, bites into a skewer of rice dumplings, a cup in her other hand, in front of a chain-link fence
Anko and her dango: her name comes from the red bean paste she loves.

A Genin on Orochimaru's Team

The manga devotes few panels to her youth, but they are enough to set the frame. In chapter 122, page 16, Anko appears as a genin on a team led by Orochimaru himself. Her two teammates are never named: one will become the jonin in charge of the genin team that spies for the Sannin — Kabuto's team — and the other is a shinobi with long brown hair tied in a ponytail. She leaves the Ninja Academy at ten and makes chunin at twelve.

This team takes the same Chunin Exams as the one placed under the command of Minato Namikaze. In the second round, chapter 599, pages 2 to 4, shows her up against a trio made up of Hayate Gekko,Ibiki Morino and a genin named Tokara, recognizable by the large gourd strapped to his back. The detail is worth setting down: the proctor of the first stage whom she scolds years later in front of a room full of genin is an opponent from her childhood.

Studio Pierrot's model sheets add two concrete markers for this period: Anko stands 141 centimeters tall at the time of these Chunin Exams, then about 143 centimeters a year later. The manga says nothing else about these years, except that Orochimaru takes enough interest in her to make her his disciple. Everything we think we know about the break that follows comes from another source, and the anime alone bears responsibility for it.

Three young ninja in profile, pressed one behind the other and looking to the left; they all wear a blue forehead protector with a metal plate, the one in the middle round glasses and a dark top with a white collar, the one on the right spiky purple hair and mesh under a maroon strap; behind them, a green wall and the corner of a gilded frame.
Anko Mitarashi as a genin, on the right, with the two never-named teammates from Orochimaru's team: the one in the middle, with glasses, will become the jonin in charge of Kabuto's team.

Orochimaru's Former Student

What the manga establishes comes down to three facts. Anko was the student of Orochimaru, he took a marked interest in her and passed on several of his signature techniques, including the Striking Shadow Snakes. Then he subjected her, along with nine other subjects, to the application of his Curse Mark of Heaven: in chapter 50, page 15, she is the only one of the ten to have survived. The rest of the story — the rejection, the abandonment, the erased memory — is not in the pages of the manga.

The anime, for its part, tells episode 173. Anko refuses to keep following her master after receiving the mark; Orochimaru, who considers her too valuable as a research subject to kill, erases her memory. Found with amnesia in the Land of the Sea by the Konoha Anbu, she is brought back to the village in the hope that she will give up intelligence on the Sannin, but nothing can be recovered. Convinced she was abandoned for lacking the will needed to feed the mark, she is comforted by the Third Hokage.

The branding itself is presented as the turning point: the unreserved admiration she felt for her master turns into stubborn hatred, and the ordeal leaves her with nightmares about the mark's effects, from which she wakes drenched in sweat. From it she draws a duty, to put a stop to her former master's crimes herself. But the anime does not stop there: at the end of that same arc, Anko regains her memory and discovers that the abandonment never happened — she is the one who left.

Orochimaru, with long black hair, pallid skin and yellow eyes, stands in a light kimono; a teenage girl with spiky purple hair smiles beside him
The master and his student: Orochimaru taught her his techniques before treating her as a test subject.

What the Manga Establishes, What Only the Anime Tells

The manga foundation is thin and has to be treated as such: Orochimaru's student in chapter 122, holder of several of his techniques, branded with the Curse Mark of Heaven, sole survivor of the first ten subjects in chapter 50, page 15. Everything else — the teaching of immortality, passed on according to Shippuden episode 114; the refusal, the memory erasure and the discovery by the Anbu, episode 173; the poison immunity built with Orochimaru's help, Shippuden episode 261 — belongs to the anime alone.

The dividing line also runs through her stat profile. Her Fire Release (Katon) and Yin Release affinities are marked "anime only" there, as are Fire Release: Fire Dragon, the Snake Clone and the Sly Mind Affect Jutsu, that genjutsu which sends a target walking in circles while convinced of going straight ahead. Her weapons split the same way: the katar is listed as manga only, the senbon anime only. Common to both media are, notably, the Curse Mark of Heaven, the snake summons and the two Striking Shadow Snakes techniques.

One last case deserves to be set apart: the Twin Snakes Mutual Death technique, which the first databook classes as a technique of rank A, both ninjutsu and kinjutsu. The user forces the victim's hand to form the signs, and both die — Rin no Sho (Naruto databook), page 206, compares the outcome to a lovers' double suicide. Yet the technique has never been seen to succeed: Anko breaks it off on discovering that she is striking a shadow clone, so the exact way the death occurs remains undetermined.

Color illustration: a young woman with tousled purple hair, a beige jacket open over a mesh top and a dark skirt, kneeling with her teeth clenched at the center of a ring formed by two enormous spotted brown snakes whose wide-open pink mouths rear above her; a vertical black band bearing Japanese characters occupies the upper right corner.
Anko Mitarashi caught at the center of the Twin Snakes Mutual Death technique: the first databook classes this kinjutsu as rank A, but the technique has never been seen to succeed.

The Curse Mark

The Curse Mark of Heaven takes the form of three commas arranged in a mitsudomoe, a pattern close to that of the Sharingan. Orochimaru applies it by biting the recipient's neck, the mark appearing near the bite: for Anko as for Sasuke Uchiha, it sits on the left side of the back of the neck. The body accepts or rejects the mark while its bearer is unconscious, and it is Anko's survival, the first to come through the process, that sets the compatibility rate at one in ten.

Anko herself does not use it. For lack of the will to employ it, the mark recedes and goes dormant, even if it flares up in fits to push her toward it. Orochimaru reactivates it by force in the Forest of Death, before the Third Hokage seals it again. The mark will not disappear until chapter 593, page 9, used as a medium to give the Sannin back a body and a mind: it still held a part of his consciousness and his chakra.

Be careful, though: this does not make her the only one to bear a curse mark. Sasuke, Kimimaro and the Sound Four bear one too; she is simply the only survivor of that first batch of experimentation. The distinction matters: only Sasuke receives the same Curse Mark of Heaven, while Kimimaro bears the Curse Mark of Earth, its counterpart.

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Close-up of the back of a neck where three black commas arranged in a circle have just appeared, two trickles of blood running just below
The pattern of the Curse Mark of Heaven: three commas, identical to those etched into the back of Anko's neck.

The Proctor of the Forest of Death

During the Chunin Exams held in Konoha, Anko oversees the second stage. She bursts into the room of the first test, introduces herself with a bang, then, realizing she has come in too early, deflects attention by scolding Ibiki Morino for letting too many candidates through — the first stage, the written test, is indeed his. In the Forest of Death, she lays out the rules, warns of the dangers of the place and attacks Naruto with a kunai when he accuses her of exaggerating; it is a Kusagakure ninja named Shiore who hands the weapon back to her.

What follows shows an investigator rather than a presenter. Three Kusagakure ninja are found dead, killed some time before, Shiore among them and all stripped of their faces; Anko concludes from this that Orochimaru has infiltrated the exam. She sends word to the Third Hokage, orders two Anbu teams deployed, then enters the forest alone. She locates him shortly after nightfall and attempts the Twin Snakes Mutual Death technique on him, before discovering at the last moment that she is pinning only a shadow clone.

Orochimaru then reactivates her mark, pins her with pain and forbids her to cancel the exam. The Third treats her, sets aside her request to pull Sasuke from the stage and keeps to the planned schedule; she then stays at his side during the preliminaries, briefing him on the contestants. A month later, she apologizes for not having managed to kill her former master and laments the loss of the Fourth Hokage: he tells her to blame herself for nothing and not to dwell on the dead (chapter 94, pages 6 to 8).

Anko, standing in front of a huge banner covered in large kanji, one arm stretched out to the side and the other elbow bent, in an exam room strewn with papers and streaked with speed lines
Anko's entrance at the Chunin Exams: she takes charge of the second stage, not the written test.

Land of the Sea: The Arc Where She Regains Her Memory

Episodes 169 to 173 of the original series form a filler arc, with no equivalent in the manga. Konoha is hired there to escort a delivery ship and clear up a story about a sea monster in the Land of the Sea. The Hokage puts Anko in charge of the mission because that is where she received her mark, in the hope that she will regain her memory; she is joined by Naruto, Ino and Shino, the only ninja available.

Once there, the team runs into two faces from the Chunin Exams, Yoroi Akado and Misumi Tsurugi, then into Amachi, the Sannin's research accomplice who stayed on in the country and who is continuing, on a young girl named Isaribi, the fish-human hybrid program abandoned by Orochimaru. Anko reveals to her team that the Sannin made these islands a base and their inhabitants test subjects. She collapses in the middle of the mission, then, once recovered, guides the group to the laboratory thanks to what she knew of it back when she was his apprentice.

It is this laboratory that unlocks the memory: it comes back to her and she learns that Orochimaru did not abandon her, she is the one who left him. The geographical detail completes the picture — Jiro Island, one of the three surrounding the country's main island, is the place where she was abandoned and taken as a test subject for the Curse Mark of Heaven, before being found there by the Anbu. The arc thus closes off on its own the belief it had established.

A woman with spiky purple hair, a long beige coat and a backpack strap, raises her index finger in profile facing three young ninja also strapped into backpacks: a blond boy with a blue forehead protector and an orange jacket holding a folded green paper, a blonde girl with a long fringe and a purple top, a boy in small dark glasses in a light coat with a high collar; a light gray post, green foliage and blue sky around them.
Anko Mitarashi takes charge of the mission in the Land of the Sea with the only ninja available: Naruto Uzumaki, Ino Yamanaka and Shino Aburame.

The War: Captured by Kabuto

Before Pain's assault, Anko takes command of the Infiltration and Reconnaissance Squad, tasked with finding Kabuto. The unit first includes Yamato and Sai; an ink clone locates the target, but Yamato leaves the mission on sensing Naruto reach his six-tailed transformation, and Sai in turn returns to the village. Reassembled, the team resumes the hunt and comes across three Takigakure ninja killed by Kabuto, the backs of their necks marked with bites.

Those marks tell Anko that he now commands Orochimaru's powers. The trail of corpses, which she judges too visible to be innocent, leads the unit to the Mountains' Graveyard. There Tokuma Hyuga spots Kabuto with the Byakugan in the company of Tobi, and the report leaves at once for Konoha. When the Fourth Great Ninja War breaks out and the White Zetsu Army starts moving, Anko orders her team to fall back to the Allied Shinobi Forces and sets out alone to face Kabuto. She is defeated in short order; Tobi demands her death, but Kabuto prefers to keep her comatose.

He siphons the chakra from her Curse Mark to strengthen his Edo Tensei (Reanimation Jutsu). What follows escapes her entirely: after Kabuto's defeat at the hands of Itachi and Sasuke, it is Jugo who finds her unconscious body, and Sasuke uses the mark as a medium to bring Orochimaru back, in chapter 593, page 9. Anko does not regain consciousness and they leave her where she lies.

Anko, arm outstretched, sends a spray of white snakes toward a hooded figure in a dark coat backing away, between the trunks of a forest
Sent on Kabuto's trail during the war, Anko is captured shortly after this clash.

A Teacher at the Ninja Academy in Boruto

During the invasion of Konoha, Anko had thrown herself into the fray to put a stop to her former master's misdeeds; she then devoted herself to training the next generation, sums up Naruto: One Decade, One Hundred Ninja, page 66. Ten years after the Fourth Great Ninja War, she is an instructor at the Ninja Academy, and the novel adapted from Boruto: Naruto the Movie presents her as a legendary kunoichi. She watches, appalled, the entrance ceremony where Boruto Uzumaki throws a train at the Hokage Rock.

The anime then gives her a school trip to Kirigakure, organized by the Seventh Hokage to improve relations between villages. Once there, the class is taken in hand by Kagura Karatachi, appointed as their guide, then introduced to Chojuro, the Sixth Mizukage. Anko and Shino finally speak with Mei Terumi: the Land of Water wants to extend its military power over the neighboring seas, and the Fifth Mizukage fears a return to war, while assuring them that Kirigakure firmly opposes it.

The Ninja Academy graduation exam, also unique to the anime, pits the whole class against Anko, Shino Aburame and Konohamaru for twenty-four hours, the real test being to steal the bell hanging at Kakashi's hip. Anko traps a good share of the students in a genjutsu right away, then, in episode 36 of Boruto, dominates the coordinated attack of the Ino-Shika-Cho trio, which includes Chocho Akimichi, before finishing the group off. She is only put out of action later that night, by Namida Suzumeno's scream.

In a grassy clearing lined with trees, a cluster of large scaly brown snakes, mouths wide open, bursts toward the left of the frame; on the right, a small figure with spiky purple hair, a salmon coat and mesh leggings stands at their base, one arm thrown forward; on the left, a teenage girl with long red hair and a white ribbon leaps backward, and at the bottom right a boy in a green jacket, black hair tied in a point, turns toward the attack.
An instructor at the Ninja Academy, Anko Mitarashi unleashes her snakes on her own students: here Chocho Akimichi, on the left, and Shikadai Nara, on the right.

Her Databook Profile

Only one databook gives her a rated profile: the first, Rin no Sho. It measures her on the three ninja arts and five other axes — Ninjutsu 3.5, Taijutsu 2.5, Genjutsu 4, Intelligence 2, Strength 3, Speed 3, Stamina 4, Hand Seals 3 —, for a total of 25. Genjutsu and stamina are her two best scores, intelligence her lowest. The same book also names her the most dangerous woman in Konohagakure. No later databook repeats the exercise for her.

The ninja registry details complete the portrait: born October 24, blood type A, 167 centimeters and 45.8 kilos in the first part of the story, where she is 24 — 28 in the second. The most telling figure remains her mission log: 647 official missions, including 72 of rank D, 86 of rank C, 398 of rank B, 89 of rank A and 2 of rank S. Class B alone accounts for more than half the total.

That leaves the profile lines the databooks grant every ninja. Anko gives the tea ceremony as her hobby, sweet bean soup and dango as her favorite foods, spicy food as her dislike, and "Sanjo" as her catchphrase; her stated wish is simple, to face Orochimaru. The manga finally credits her with an aim so sure that she forms the symbol of Konoha with her dango skewers without even looking, in chapter 49, page 3.

Kishimoto's Favorite Female Character

Her full name is a dessert. "Anko" refers to the sweet red bean paste of Japanese confectionery, the one that fills dango in particular; "Mitarashi" comes from the syrup traditionally poured over those same dango. Her given name and family name together make up her favorite dessert — to the point that she nearly kills Naruto with her skewers, in the anime, after he swipes one right from under her nose.

The attachment is not the character's alone. In an interview published with Naruto Anime Profiles, Vol. 1, Masashi Kishimoto states that Anko is his favorite female character, and gives the reason: her relationship with Orochimaru. That authorial favor never converted into readers' favor, and the magazine's popularity polls measure it bluntly.

The first of them, whose results appear with chapter 60, ranks her eleventh with 332 votes, ahead of Neji Hyuga, Kurenai Yuhi, Might Guy, Orochimaru and Ibiki Morino: that is her best placing. She then falls to twenty-fifth with 108 votes in the second poll, to thirtieth with 120 votes in the fourth, then to sixty-seventh place with 8 votes in the seventh and last, published with chapter 531.

Color magazine double page: about a dozen young fighters drawn as a group and framed from a slightly low angle, each accompanied by a black bubble giving a rank and a number of votes in Japanese; along the left edge, a printed list of some twenty numbered lines, each followed by a name and a figure.
Results of the first popularity poll, published with chapter 60: the list along the left edge puts Anko Mitarashi eleventh with 332 votes, her best placing.

Summary Table

Aspect Details
Rank & role Special jonin of Konoha; proctor of the 2nd stage of the Chunin Exams (Forest of Death)
Connection to Orochimaru Former disciple; he taught her his snake techniques, branded her, then abandoned her. No family ties
Curse Mark Sole survivor of the first 10 test subjects (hence the ~1/10 rate); mark gone after the war
Techniques Snake style inherited from Orochimaru (including the Twin Snakes Mutual Death technique, failed against a clone of the Sannin)
Boruto Teacher at the Konoha Ninja Academy; no longer bears the Curse Mark

FAQ

  • Does Anko oversee the first stage of the Chunin Exams?
    No. Anko is the proctor of the second stage, the survival test in the Forest of Death. The first stage, the written test, is overseen by Ibiki Morino. Anko does, however, make a theatrical entrance by interrupting the very end of Ibiki's stage.
  • Why is Anko called "the only survivor" of the Curse Mark?
    According to the databooks, Orochimaru branded ten first test subjects and Anko was the only one to survive, which established the survival rate of about 1 in 10. Be careful: this does not make her the only one to bear a curse mark — Sasuke or Kimimaro bear one too.
  • What is the connection between Anko and Orochimaru?
    Anko is a former disciple of Orochimaru. He taught her his snake techniques, then used her as a test subject for his Curse Mark, before abandoning her and tampering with her memory. Her admiration turned into hatred; no family tie exists between them.
  • Which techniques does Anko use?
    Snake techniques inherited from Orochimaru rather than invented by her: the Striking Shadow Snakes, its tenfold version, and the forbidden murder-suicide technique "Twin Snakes Mutual Death," which she attempts in vain on Orochimaru in the Forest of Death.
  • What becomes of Anko in Boruto?
    She is a teacher at the Konoha Ninja Academy. She no longer bears the Curse Mark: it vanished from her body after the Fourth Great Ninja War, when Sasuke used it to revive Orochimaru.

In summary

Betrayed by her master but never broken, Anko Mitarashi turned Orochimaru's poison back on him: a survivor with a strong character, who has finally become a teacher to a new generation.

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