Gyûki, le Hachibi : le démon à huit queues

Gyuki, the Eight-Tails: The Eight-Tailed Ox in Naruto

4016 words | Reading time: 21 min

Tailed BeastGyukiKumogakure

Half bull, half octopus: the Eight-Tails (Hachibi) has no equivalent. Gyuki is a four-horned, eight-tentacled ushi-oni, and his host Killer Bee of Kumogakure is regarded as the first perfect jinchuriki in the series: between them, the understanding is total. This profile details his weapons, the Tailed Beast Bomb (Bijudama) born of black positive and white negative chakra, and the octopus ink, before coming back to the episode of the fake capture, the extraction and the survival.

An eight-tailed ox-octopus and the series’ first “perfect jinchuriki”: meet Gyuki and his host, the rapper Killer Bee. A profile of the eight-tailed demon.

Contents

An ushi-oni, half ox, half octopus

Gyuki, the Eight-Tails (Hachibi), is one of the nine tailed beasts. He is an ushi-oni, a folklore creature blending ox and octopus: a muscular four-horned bull’s torso whose eight “tails” are in fact eight octopus tentacles. These tentacles grow back if they are cut off — but his horns do not. The anatomy fills out: a hunched back like that of an American bison, spiny protrusions at the elbows, and hands fitted with opposable thumbs, like a human’s.

The name 牛鬼 literally means “ox ogre” and is only an alternative pronunciation of ushi-oni. In Japanese folklore, this massive and brutal yokai carries a horned bull’s head on the body of an octopus, a crab or a spider; one legend has it living off the coasts of Japan, where it preys on fishermen. His four long horns evoke those of a Jacob sheep, and his size is to match: he crushes whole forests and matches the Giant Squid.

This silhouette was not always his. In the days of Hagoromo Otsutsuki, Gyuki was smaller and his horns far shorter (chapter 572). On the profile side, the beast appears for the first time in chapter 413 of the manga and in episode 143 of Naruto Shippuden; the fourth databook, Jin no Sho, devotes pages 148 to 151 to him, where his species is given as ushi-oni and his unique trait as the production of ink.

A colossal creature with a muscular chest and a bull’s head, its mouth wide open, rises in the middle of eight enormous tentacles covered in suckers.
The chest comes from the ox, the eight appendages from the octopus: Gyuki brings together the two halves of the ushi-oni.

How Gyuki came to Kumogakure

Gyuki is born in the final days of Hagoromo Otsutsuki, who divides the Ten-Tails’ chakra into nine distinct bodies and gives a name to each one (chapters 467 and 572). The anime alone adds a step: before dying, the Sage sends Gyuki to live in a temple built to protect him, in a region of high mountains caught among the clouds, which will become part of the Land of Lightning (Shippuden episode 464). The manga tells nothing of the kind.

What follows comes not from the story but from the third databook, Sha no Sho, page 183: Hashirama Senju captures eight of the nine tailed beasts, then sells Gyuki and Matatabi to the Hidden Cloud Village at the Five Kage Summit, as a token of friendship and to ensure a balance of power among the young villages. The transaction is not dated: it sits at an unspecified time.

The age of this bond has left a material trace. In the cave carved out behind the Falls of Truth, where jinchuriki learn to master the power of their beast, a great wall bears murals depicting the Eight-Tails and the Two-Tails (Nibi) (chapters 495 and 496); one reads in them the measure of the time the two beasts have spent associated with the country. The temple that houses these paintings has two training chambers.

Interior of a vast stone building bathed in midnight blue: on the far wall, an immense painted mural unfurls long appendages covered in circular suckers that coil across the wall; in the foreground, a low wall carries a row of seated statues, and three stepped stone towers rise in front of the mural.
On the great wall of the temple carved out behind the Falls of Truth, the mural of the Eight-Tails tells how old the bond is between the beast and the Land of Lightning.

Before Killer Bee: uncontrollable hosts, a squad and a pot

For decades, Kumogakure seals Gyuki into a succession of hosts, none of whom manages to control him: Blue B, but also his uncle and his father before him. Blue B himself speaks of “incompatibility” (chapter 542). With each loss of control, the beast runs wild, destroys the village and kills many of its inhabitants — behavior that comes from his hatred of humans, who have oppressed and sealed him many times.

The Third Raikage nonetheless judges that a Gyuki jinchuriki remains a deterrent far too valuable to give up. He assembles a special squad tasked with binding the beast in chains — chains the anime says are invested with fuinjutsu — long enough for him to seal it in the Kohaku no Johei, the Amber Purifying Pot (chapter 494). During one of these rampages, the Third faces him one on one until both collapse from exhaustion.

This pot is no ordinary tool: it is one of the Treasured Tools of the Sage of Six Paths, and according to the Fourth Raikage the only one Kumogakure managed to wrest from the Gold and Silver Brothers (chapter 529). The human cost, for its part, can be counted: the last rampage kills eight ninja of the village, among them Furui, a member of the squad, impaled by a horn thirty years before the Fourth Great Ninja War. At an unspecified date, another Kumogakure ninja had died for eating a tentacle of chakra flesh, in imitation of the brothers, hoping to draw jinchuriki powers from it.

A colossal brownish-pink creature with a muscular chest and a horned bovine head, mouth wide open, surging out of a green sea, eight large appendages covered in suckers spread out behind it; long taut chains cross the image diagonally, held by six fighters in dark outfits with forehead protectors, posted on the cliffs and on the water.
The special squad put together by the Third Raikage binds Gyuki in chains, long enough to hold the beast before sealing it in the Kohaku no Johei, the Amber Purifying Pot.

Fukai or Blue B: the predecessor rewritten by the anime

Killer Bee’s predecessor first poses a naming problem. The anime christened him “Fukai” (フカイ) in episode 318 of Shippuden, because it put him on screen before the manga named him; the fourth databook then settled on “Blue B” as the official name. In passing, ブル, buru, is heard as “bull”, the animal — a notable coincidence for the host of an ushi-oni.

What the manga says about it fits in a few lines: Blue B loses control, the beast kills eight ninja of Kumogakure including Furui, Motoi’s father, and the Third seals Gyuki in the Amber Purifying Pot, which brings about the host’s death. The anime completely rewrites the episode: Orochimaru passes himself off as his doctor, gives him genjutsu pills to paralyze him, uses the Five Elements Unseal to extract the beast, then takes advantage of the chaos to collect fragments of the Eight-Tails’ severed horn, where traces of Blue B’s DNA also remained.

The consequence arrives thirty years later, still in the anime: Kabuto brings Blue B back with the Edo Tensei (Reanimation Jutsu), and the genetic material of Gyuki harvested from that horn gives him back most of his jinchuriki powers — he enters an eight-tailed Version 2 even though Gyuki is no longer inside him, as a pseudo-jinchuriki. The beast is the stunned character here: he is the one who demands to know how his former host still wields his power, and who learns that his own rampage, of which he has no memory, was a manipulation.

Bust portrait on a black background of a man with tan skin and mid-length two-tone hair, white on one side and dark green on the other, a wide blue-purple lightning-shaped mark covering one eye and one cheek; a collar of beige bandages, a blue-gray jacket, a gray sword handle with a red guard showing behind his shoulder.
Killer Bee’s predecessor as the anime shows him in episode 318 of Shippuden, the very episode that christened him “Fukai” before the fourth databook settled on “Blue B”.

Killer Bee, the “perfect jinchuriki”

After the last rampage, the village chooses a new host: Killer Bee, five years old, in whom Gyuki is sealed by means of the Iron Armor Seal (chapters 494 and 496). This Tekko Fuin takes the form of the kanji 鉄, “iron”, printed on the right shoulder of its bearer, and Bee himself judges it to be of lesser quality and weaker than the Four Symbols Seal, the one that confines the Nine-Tails inside Naruto.

The training goes through the Falls of Truth, on Turtle Island, and unfolds in two distinct stages. Seated on the platform at the foot of the waterfall, the one concerned is carried into his own mind, where the water becomes a mirror that shows him his true face: only the first stage. It is behind the falls, in the hidden temple, that the jinchuriki confronts his beast. Bee learns control there in a remarkably short time, beats Gyuki in single combat, then makes a friend of him (chapter 492).

The phrase “perfect jinchuriki” (完璧な人柱力) is not for all that a status established by the series: it is an assessment made by Kisame in chapter 472, page 7. What can be said, more cautiously, is that Bee is the first host to succeed in cooperating with Gyuki. The bond has more to do with a consented partnership than with domination: the beast disrupts his bearer’s chakra to dispel a genjutsu, or lends him more of his own, and he is often the one who plays the responsible one.

A dark-skinned man with white hair and round sunglasses, wearing the Kumogakure forehead protector and a white scarf, writes in a small notebook; several sword handles show behind his back.
Killer Bee, ninja of Kumogakure and host of Gyuki, the first jinchuriki to get along with his demon.

Ink and the Tailed Beast Bomb

True to his theme, Gyuki sprays octopus ink to blind the opponent or to form clones. Like every tailed beast, he masters the Tailed Beast Bomb, made of positive (black) and negative (white) chakra in an 8:2 ratio (chapter 519); he is the one who compares the operation to vomiting. Unlike most of his brothers, he can overcharge it until it is several times bigger than he is (chapter 609), and he can fire it sometimes normally, sometimes in bursts, sometimes as a wave (chapter 414).

One of his own passed through nine barriers without exploding (chapter 536), and he is tough enough to take his own (chapter 611). The ink, for its part, is not a mere ornament: it is the unique trait of Gyuki, of which he is the sole holder and which he passes on to his host. On these ink clones rests the Fuinjutsu: Octopus Hold, a technique of Killer Bee’s own, which the fourth databook credits with sealing up to 1,000 enemies, the target’s body being entirely dyed in three seconds.

That leaves the reputation. He was said to be the second most powerful tailed beast, behind Kurama: the ranking is Kisame’s in chapter 471, page 11, then the fox’s own in chapter 567, which places him second according to the number of tails. These are two character assessments, not a databook figure — and Gyuki openly rejects the criterion they rest on, which earns the siblings a full-blown quarrel.

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Crouched at the water’s edge, a tentacled creature shoots a dazzling yellow beam from its mouth that sweeps the horizon and tears debris from the landscape.
The Tailed Beast Bomb concentrates the tailed beast’s chakra into a single shot, able to flatten the scenery.

“Don’t rank us by the number of our tails”

This criterion is precisely what Gyuki holds against the Nine-Tails. He explains that he and his brothers do not like the fox, for his arrogance and for his way of measuring their strength by the number of their tails (chapter 567, page 10). He addresses this line to him: “Don’t decide who is strong or weak by the number of our tails!” A character’s line, then, and not a thesis put forward by the story.

The grievance is collective: Shukaku, the One-Tail (Ichibi), held a grudge against the fox for this same ranking. Gyuki does not stop at this enmity, however — he is the one who insists that Bee train Naruto, on the grounds that both are jinchuriki (chapter 493). Seeing the manipulated Five-Tails (Gobi) lament, he declares that the tailed beasts have their own emotions and that seeing one of their own treated that way makes them angry.

The fox retorts that shinobi have always treated them like pets, Gyuki and Bee being the only exception. One classification detail nevertheless lends weight to the Eight-Tails’ objection: along with Chomei, the Seven-Tails (Nanabi), he is one of only two tailed beasts with no known elemental affinity, and one of only two whose tails differ from those of the siblings — his are tentacles, and six of Chomei’s are insect wings.

Two giant creatures on a rocky plain under a dark gray sky: on the left, a muscular pinkish-red mass with a horned bovine head, teeth clenched and fists closed, extended by long appendages covered in suckers; on the right, a white four-legged beast with hooves, a horn on its muzzle and long pale tails, thrown backward through the air.
Gyuki (left) overpowers Kokuo, the Five-Tails, by sheer brute strength; and at the same time you see what sets him apart from the siblings: his own tails are tentacles.

The only tailed beast whose body is permanently damaged

One fact no other member of the siblings shares: Gyuki is the only tailed beast whose body has apparently been shown permanently damaged. Two mutilations, two dated causes. The first occurs during one of his rampages: the lower left part of his horns is cut off by A, the Fourth Raikage — and the horn lost this way was the one that had killed Furui.

The second comes during the Fourth Great Ninja War: the right horns are destroyed by his own Tailed Beast Bomb, fired at point-blank range against the Ten-Tails, an explosion that also tears out one of his teeth. He survives it — he takes his own Tailed Beast Bomb (chapter 611), including the combined detonation of his own and that of the Ten-Tails inside the latter’s mouth. Toughness does not prevent the mark.

The asymmetry is what makes these wounds permanent: tentacles grow back when they are cut off, horns do not. Killer Bee can regenerate the former, never the latter. After the war, the beast did get a tooth back, and his horns grew again without becoming complete once more (Boruto: Naruto the Movie). What these horns are worth, the manga showed in chapter 494: they are sharp enough to impale a man.

In a greenish night sky scattered with stars and dark clouds, a muscular gray creature with a horned head, arms spread and large appendages covered in suckers opened out like a corolla, forms a blue-black sphere ringed with red and blue filaments in front of its mouth; at the bottom right appears a colossal beige head bearing an immense red eye with concentric circles and black comma marks.
Gyuki concentrates a Tailed Beast Bomb facing the Ten-Tails: it is one of these spheres, fired at point-blank range, that will destroy his right horns and tear out one of his teeth.

The fake capture

Facing Team Taka (Hawk), Bee transforms into the Eight-Tails and terrorizes his attackers, until Sasuke hits him with Amaterasu. A tentacle is then about to come down on Karin: Sasuke cuts it with a Chidori Sharp Spear, and Bee seizes the chance to swap himself for the severed piece and leave a decoy behind. Taka delivers this fake Bee to Akatsuki, while the real one, once the team has left, comes out of the lake and goes off “on vacation”, far from his role as guardian — until Kisame finds him again by tracking his chakra with Samehada.

This decoy is described precisely. The Octopus Leg Clone, a technique of Killer Bee’s, consumes a small share of Gyuki’s chakra and sacrifices one of his tentacles to produce a double of Bee that neither the Sharingan nor Akatsuki were able to tell apart from the original. It lasts a long time, takes considerable damage, and turns back into a tentacle only once it is entirely drained of its chakra; the fourth databook devotes page 322 to it.

On a beach, Gyuki raises his tentacles behind an immense mass of white water bristling with spikes; three silhouettes in dark coats with red patterns stand in the foreground.
The clash against Team Taka, at the end of which it is a decoy that will leave in their place.

The extraction and the survival

Toward the end of the war, Madara, brought back to life by the Rinne Tensei, manages to tear Gyuki away. The detail runs as follows: after receiving his right Rinnegan from a White Zetsu clone, the Uchiha summons the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path (Gedo Mazo), pushes the tailed beasts back with Limbo, then chains them up before removing Gyuki and the Yang half of the Nine-Tails from their hosts. Bound, the beast apologizes to Bee at the moment of being torn away and sealed inside the statue.

Bee’s survival is not an emotional exception but a mechanism: Gyuki severs one of his tentacles before being carried off, and the chakra contained in that piece keeps his host alive. The process generalizes — a severed tentacle serves as a medium for the beast’s chakra, both to make a clone and to sustain a jinchuriki after the extraction (chapter 677).

A second transfer, less well known, explains an oddity in the profile. Obito, having come back to himself, steals a share of Gyuki’s chakra and a share of Shukaku’s, then seals them into a dying Naruto at the same time as the Yin half of the Nine-Tails. It is for this reason that one counts Obito and Naruto among Gyuki’s jinchuriki, alongside Blue B and Killer Bee.

At night on rocky ground, a large translucent blue humanoid silhouette faces a creature with a horned bull’s head surrounded by long tentacles, which brandishes a glowing orange appendage.
The resurrected Madara comes for Gyuki: the extraction will take place, but the tailed beast will leave a tentacle inside his host’s body.

After the war: Momoshiki, a few red pills and the return to Bee

Freed from Kaguya Otsutsuki and brought back into the real world, Gyuki surprises the fox, who asks him what he will do with his freedom: he wants to go back to Bee, having grown used to his dreadful rapping and finding it strange not to hear it anymore. He is indeed resealed into his host at some point after the war. Fifteen years later, he is the one who talks Bee out of going to see Naruto, on the grounds that the Hokage, unlike Bee, has hardly any free time.

What follows belongs to the Boruto movie and to its Versus Momoshiki arc. Gyuki and Bee are captured by Momoshiki and Kinshiki Otsutsuki; Bee fires a Tailed Beast Bomb, which Momoshiki absorbs and sends back with his Rinnegan, which knocks him out of his Tailed Beast Mode. The extraction done, Momoshiki throws an unconscious Bee into a river to drown him and says he is hardly impressed: all he drew from the beast is a few small red pills. Both survive and recover completely.

The Boruto era finally adds one ability to the file: Gyuki has powerful healing abilities, able to repair in a few seconds his own wounds as well as those of others (Boruto: Two Blue Vortex, chapter 11). The anime alone also shows a telepathic meeting called by Naruto when Urashiki Otsutsuki targets the tailed beasts’ chakra: Matatabi, Kokuo and Chomei stay away, refusing all human help for fear of being taken again; Gyuki, for his part, answers the call.

In a cave bathed in dark red light, a creature with a horned bovine head, arms spread and teeth clenched, is pinned to the ground; its eight long appendages covered in suckers spread out on either side, nailed down by a dozen bright pink glowing bars.
Gyuki bound and pinned to the ground in the Boruto movie, after his capture with Bee by Momoshiki and Kinshiki Otsutsuki — an extraction from which Momoshiki will draw only “a few small red pills”.

Summary Table

Aspect Details
Name / rank Gyuki, the Eight-Tails (eight-tailed demon)
Form Ushi-oni (ox-octopus): four-horned bull, eight tentacles
Jinchuriki Killer Bee of Kumogakure, the first “perfect jinchuriki”
Powers Tailed Beast Bomb (black positive + white negative), octopus ink
Survival Madara tears Gyuki away, but the demon leaves a tentacle that saves Bee

FAQ

  • What is the form of Gyuki, the Eight-Tails?
    An ushi-oni, a creature blending ox and octopus: a four-horned bull’s torso whose eight “tails” are in fact octopus tentacles (which grow back, unlike the horns).
  • Why is the bond between Killer Bee and Gyuki so special?
    Bee is the first host to have befriended his tailed beast and to control it completely — the first “perfect jinchuriki”, even before Naruto.
  • How does Killer Bee first escape Akatsuki?
    He leaves a decoy — a clone made from a single tentacle, undetectable to the Sharingan — which Taka delivers to Akatsuki, while the real Bee slips away “on vacation”.
  • Is Gyuki the most powerful tailed beast?
    No: he is reputed to be the second most powerful, especially in chakra volume, behind Kurama, the nine-tailed demon.
  • What is the Tailed Beast Bomb made of?
    Of a mixture of positive (black) and negative (white) chakra, in an 8:2 ratio, condensed and then fired from the mouth. All the tailed beasts can use it.

In summary

Powerful, playful and loyal, Gyuki proves that a tailed demon can become an ally — the very model of the harmony Naruto will in turn seek with Kurama.

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