Chino: The Ketsuryugan and the Chinoike Clan

The Chinoike clan was banished from the Land of Lightning after the death of the daimyo, on a wholly fabricated accusation, then confined to a canyon of red water held to be uninhabitable. It survived there for decades before dying out in a single night. From that collapse remain two bearers of the Ketsuryugan, a father, a daughter, and a lie that keeps them apart.

A Dojutsu the Manga Never Drew

The Ketsuryugan (血龍眼, “Blood Dragon Eye”) does not appear in a single panel of the manga. It was born in a novel: Sasuke Shinden – Book of Sunrise (サスケ真伝 来光篇), written by Shin Towada and illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto, the third volume in the Naruto Shinden series published from September to November 2015. The book came out in Japan on November 4, 2015 and in English on March 7, 2017. Its bearer, Chino, is therefore a prose character before being an image.

The anime caught up with the novel a little over a year later. Naruto Shippuden devoted a five-episode arc to it, from 484 to 488, aired from December 1, 2016 to January 5, 2017 and grouped under the book's title. Chino makes her animated debut there in episode 484, voiced by Ai Kakuma in Japanese and Xanthe Huynh in English. The character also exists controller in hand: her video game debut is dated to Naruto Shippūden: Ultimate Ninja Blazing, one of the titles in the franchise's game catalog.

This editorial origin weighs on everything that follows. Sources classify the eye among the kekkei genkai and note that its power earned it comparisons to the Three Great Dojutsu; that comparison, however, circulates only in the novel, its anime adaptation, and the games. To place the blood eye among the other eye powers, the overview of the dojutsu covers the ground; this article sticks to the Chinoike file.

The Chinoike Clan, Banished From the Land of Lightning

The Chinoike clan (血之池一族, Chinoike Ichizoku) bears a name that literally means “blood lagoon.” It was active during the Warring States period and was then among the many mercenary ninja clans of the Land of Lightning. Its downfall came down to a marriage: a woman of the clan married the country's daimyo. The first wife grew jealous of it and, when the daimyo died shortly after the wedding, she accused the newcomer and her family of being responsible.

The lie took hold. Many believed it, and the entire clan was banished from the country. To carry out the sentence, they hired the Uchiha clan, who forced the Chinoike to settle in the Valley of Hell, in the Land of Hot Water. This blood debt explains the contempt Chino would display decades later: in her eyes, the Uchiha are the armed wing of a court slander.

The novel entrusts this account to an unexpected mouth. It is the Fourth Raikage who tells Sasuke the story, surprised that the last Uchiha does not know what Kumogakure has kept in memory. The anime moves the scene: it is the arms dealer En Oyashiro who, at the Coliseum, tells Sasuke that the red eyes come from the Chinoike clan, exiled from the Land of Lightning by the Uchiha themselves.

The Valley of Hell, an Exile Meant to Be Fatal

The Valley of Hell (地獄谷, Jigokudani) is a remote canyon in the Land of Hot Water. Scalding water comes out of the ground there and collects into pools; it is loaded with iron, which tints it red. The temperature of the water and the shape of the terrain sustain a thick, foul-smelling steam there. The place harbors no native animals and almost no vegetation: it was held to be uninhabitable, which made it a convenient land of exile.

A few months after the clan was moved, ninja from Yugakure came to check on them. They found the Chinoike drinking what looked like blood — in reality water reddened by the minerals in the ground. Rather than going to look more closely or offering help, the village declared the valley off-limits. Over the years, even its location was forgotten, and the Chinoike dropped out of history.

They were not dead, though. The clan survived on the canyon's meager resources and knew decades of peace, away from the wars of the ninja world. That seclusion came at a price: forced to live on top of one another for so long, the Chinoike saw their most minor disagreements degenerate into violence. The valley that had kept them alive became the setting for their disappearance.

The Night the Clan Died Out

In a single night, the clan wiped itself out. Only two Chinoike survived: En Oyashiro and his daughter Chino. The anime gives the breaking point — the question of whether the clan should go and demand vengeance from the Uchiha for the exile. The novel does not supply that detail and sticks to the long confinement and its outcome. Chino, very young at the time, would keep no memory of it: she would never be able to recall her parents' faces.

On the identity of the culprit, the two media do not tell the same story. The novel sticks to a mutual extermination: to Orochimaru, Oyashiro says he regrets the end of his people while judging it inevitable after so many years shut in together, and the account adds that his wife's death haunts him. The anime goes further and attributes the entire massacre to him, carried out alone; there he reveals that he acted to protect his daughter.

Shortly after, the valley was rediscovered by Hidan, still young, who described it strewn with freshly killed bodies. Yugakure sent someone to check, found no one alive, and officially declared the clan extinct. The parallel with the Uchiha clan massacre suggests itself, and Chino would draw it herself: she would call Sasuke a hypocrite for having wanted to destroy Konoha in his clan's name before forbidding her from doing the same.

En Oyashiro's Lie

Oyashiro took Chino out of the valley and made a point of not telling her that he was her father. He took advantage of her very young age to tell her exactly the opposite: he was the one, he claimed, who had her whole family killed, so that she would become the last holder of the Ketsuryugan and therefore a valuable commodity. The motive for the lie is nonetheless affection: he wants his daughter to be worth more than he is.

He then became an arms dealer and trained Chino for a double role: bodyguard, and instrument for settling “business disputes.” She kills against her will. He also enters her from time to time at the Coliseum, an underground arena set up on an island missing from every map, where the loser becomes the property of the winner's master. Fighters who carry a kekkei genkai are worth particularly high prices there.

It was there that Chino, in her first match, defeated with genjutsu Fushin, the still-undefeated reigning champion — the same man would later call himself Nowaki. Oyashiro collects children with bloodlines: Fushin joined his inner guard, until the day he fled with all the others, Chino included. At the end of the story, Oyashiro confides to Orochimaru his pride at what his daughter has become; the Sannin notes that he dotes on her, beneath his air of mistreating her.

What the Ketsuryugan Actually Does

When activated, the eye is recognizable by its bright red sclera, its dark red iris, and its white pupil shaped like a horizontal rectangle. It opens two registers. The first is genjutsu, triggered by skin contact or by meeting the target's gaze: hypnosis, reduction of the target to a will-less executor, induction of a dream state, and a defensive barrier against mind reading. The novel adds to it the searching of memories and the setting of mental guards. Its strength in illusion is given as comparable to that of the Sharingan.

The second register is iron. The eye manipulates any liquid with a high iron content, starting with the blood of a living being. One condition holds the whole power: one must first infuse it with one's own chakra, which Chino achieves by cutting Sasuke's wrist. The name of the associated genjutsu technique appears, moreover, neither in the novel nor in the anime, but in the game Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Online; it is attached to the Yin Release nature.

Two notes round out the entry. Written 血流, ketsuryu means “blood flow,” a homophone that doubles the “blood dragon” of the official name. A resemblance has also been noted with Ranmaru's kekkei genkai, seen in the filler arc of the Kurosuki family: the same red eyes, the same reputation in genjutsu. But nothing makes it possible to say whether it is the same dojutsu, and the anime gave the two a distinct design.

The Rest of Chino's Arsenal

Beyond her dojutsu, Chino is described as a very powerful kunoichi. She excels at Water Release (Suiton) — defensive walls of water, liquid masses hurled on the attack — and even blows soap bubbles, purely for the pleasure of the show. She is moreover a sensor type, able to perceive chakra at a distance through the ground; her abilities are compared to those of Karin. She can also produce shadow clones.

The Ketsuryugan then offers her two direct applications. The first expands a target's blood to give them an entirely different build: that is how Nowaki moves around in a silhouette taller and more massive than his own, until a cut to the wrist drains the excess and gives him back his appearance. The anime shows the maneuver in episode 486. The second, more brutal, turns a body into a bomb.

That leaves the Blood Dragon Ascension (血龍昇天). In it Chino shapes an eight-headed blood dragon, which sources liken to Yamata no Orochi, and whose maws spit steam after biting. Fed by the valley's iron-rich springs — in the novel, Chino opens her wrists to pour her blood into them — it hinders the movements of Sasuke's Susanoo and absorbs his lightning. A probable divergence separates the two versions: the heads grow back in the novel, whereas the anime does not seem to have left them that ability.

The Lightning Group and the Human Bombs

The Lightning Group (雷光団, Raiko-Dan) was founded by Fushin and Oyashiro's other former slaves. Its method: attack murderers and thieves, take everything from them, then redistribute the spoils to those left behind, with priority to the small villages neglected by their country. The reputation came, and with it the attention of Kirigakure, which hired them to deal with politicians embezzling the funds of the people they governed.

The contract was a trap. When the group confronted the politicians, Kirigakure came to their defense: the hiring had served only to manufacture a pretext for intervention. Most of the members died, the survivors sought refuge in the villages they had helped and were turned away everywhere, for fear of reprisals. Fushin, dying, found Chino again in the Valley of Hell; it would take him a year to recover. The novel specifies that she had never joined the group; the anime makes her part of it.

The desire for revenge was born of this betrayal; what Chino found next was the method, and she owed it to a geological accident. During the Fourth Great Ninja War, part of the army of White Zetsu passed beneath the valley and left in the ground fragments of its composition and its thoughts, which Chino studied. From it she drew a technique: the chakra she infuses becomes toxic, and the slightest wound turns the victim into a living explosive. Konoha, Kumogakure, and Kirigakure received their own ninja turned into bombs, those of Kumogakure having been picked off where they were waiting for a ship.

The Duel in the Valley of Hell, and After

It is in the valley that Sasuke Uchiha found her. Chino tells him her story and points to the only difference she sees between them: he has people who love him and give him a reason to keep going, she has no one. She does not expect to win. Against an opponent who has the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan, the Rinnegan, and half of Hagoromo's chakra, she nonetheless holds out for a while thanks to the iron-rich water.

The resolution does not come from a jutsu. With her defeat already settled, Nowaki — still wounded from his own fight — steps in to protect her. Sasuke points out the obvious: she is not as alone as she believes. Chino, who had understood it before he did, surrenders, saying she wants to live long enough to see the world Sasuke wants to build. In the novel, she then leads Sasuke to the pool where ninja are submerged and withdraws her chakra from it.

The epilogue diverges one last time. In the novel, it is the Sixth Hokage who comes to the prison to bring the offer, on behalf of the Mizukage: freedom in exchange for a commitment to hunt down the injustices they were victims of. In the anime, it is the Fifth Mizukage in person. The novel makes the assault on the Coliseum their first mission, a Kirigakure raid led by Chino; the anime credits Sasuke and Kumogakure with it. Chino ends up attached to Kirigakure.

Summary Table

FAQ

• Does the Ketsuryugan appear in the Naruto manga?
  No. Only three media carry it: the novel, the anime, and the video game. It first appeared in Sasuke Shinden – Book of Sunrise, published in Japan in November 2015, then on screen in Naruto Shippuden starting with episode 484. Not one panel by Masashi Kishimoto shows it.
• Is Chino really the last bearer of the Ketsuryugan?
  That is what she believes, because her father made her believe it. En Oyashiro is also a Chinoike and has the same eye, but he hid his parentage from his daughter. He also escapes arrest during the raid on the Coliseum, which leaves two living bearers at the end of the story.
• Is the Ketsuryugan as strong as the Sharingan?
  Its genjutsu are described as comparable in strength to those of the Sharingan, and its power earned it a comparison with the Three Great Dojutsu. That comparison, however, holds only for the novel, its anime adaptation, and the games. In practice, Chino loses her duel against a Sasuke equipped with the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan and the Rinnegan.
• In which episodes can you see Chino?
  The Sasuke Shinden – Book of Sunrise arc covers episodes 484 to 488 of Naruto Shippuden, aired between December 1, 2016 and January 5, 2017. Chino appears from 484 on. Nowaki's blood transformation is shown in episode 486, and the Blood Dragon Ascension in episode 488.
• What changes between the novel and the anime?
  At least four points. In the anime, Oyashiro kills his clan alone, whereas the novel describes a mutual extermination; Chino joins the Lightning Group there, which she does not do in the novel; the blood dragon's heads grow back in the novel, which the anime does not seem to carry over; and the final raid on the Coliseum is a Kirigakure operation led by Chino in the book, a Kumogakure operation led by Sasuke on screen.
• Why does the Valley of Hell have red water?
  The iron contained in the hot water that gushes from this canyon in the Land of Hot Water is enough to color it. The Yugakure ninja who came to inspect the clan took these pools for blood and preferred to declare the place off-limits. That same iron-rich water then serves as ammunition for Chino's Ketsuryugan.

In summary

The medium dictates the version. Novel and anime agree neither on the author of the Chinoike massacre, nor on Chino's membership in the Lightning Group, nor on the final raid on the Coliseum; they do converge, however, on the destination, since Chino surrenders and then enters Kirigakure's service in both accounts.