Kaguya Otsutsuki: The Rabbit Goddess of Naruto

The source of all the chakra in the ninja world, she is the ultimate antagonist of the series: Kaguya Otsutsuki, the “Rabbit Goddess,” is a near-divine being whose shadow hangs over all of Naruto. A profile of the mother of all powers.

The progenitor of chakra

Kaguya is the first person to possess chakra on Earth: she acquires it by eating the fruit of the God Tree, breaking the taboo that surrounded it and betraying at the same time her own clan. The fruit awakens her Rinne Sharingan and gives her enough power to end the wars single-handedly (chapter 670, page 12), then to take control of the nations (Jin no Sho, page 67). The peoples then bless her and worship her as the “Rabbit Goddess” (卯の女神), a title that the fourth databook, page 216, and chapter 670 tie to that feat alone.

With peace established, she casts the Infinite Tsukuyomi on humanity and converts them into White Zetsu over many years — the detail comes from the novel Sasuke Shinden: Book of Sunrise, chapter one. The worship turns: at a date that is never pinned down, the Rabbit Goddess has become a “Demon” (鬼) to her subjects, a solitary and often cruel reign having replaced gratitude with fear (Jin no Sho page 216; chapter 671, pages 8-9).

Her lineage is broader than the usual summary suggests: besides the Hyuga, the Uchiha, the Senju, and the Uzumaki, the fourth databook connects to her, on page 275, the Kaguya clan, the one Kimimaro would be the last member of. Mother or grandmother of each of their ancestors, she is also the source of their distinctive abilities. Her fall, though, was anything but swift: at the peak of their powers, Hagoromo and Hamura took several months to defeat her.

Tenji, Aino, the Land of Ancestors: the past only the anime gives her

None of what follows exists in the manga. In May 2016, Naruto Shippuden devoted three episodes to a past written for her and narrated by Black Zetsu: “Kaguya Otsutsuki” (460, aired May 12), “Hagoromo and Hamura” (461, May 19), and “The Falsified Past” (462, May 26). Episode 460 opens on a meteorite: the God Tree grows at its point of impact. Years later, a light falls from the sky, and Emperor Tenji’s soldiers bring back an unknown woman who puts to sleep those sent to imprison her and introduces herself as the guardian of the tree.

Kaguya becomes Tenji’s concubine and is given a young woman, Aino, as her attendant, whose life is set a full millennium before the main story. The Land of That (彼の国) then lays claim to a lake in the Land of Ancestors on the strength of an old document Tenji knows to be forged; to avoid war, he decrees the execution of anyone who attacks their representatives. Kaguya slaughters the men sent to capture her, minister Suzaku produces a witness from the Land of Ancestors at the negotiations, and Tenji — who loves peace more than he loves her — gives the order to kill her, without knowing she is pregnant.

Fleeing toward the God Tree, slowed by her pregnancy, she is saved by Aino, who is killed protecting her; it is under a hail of arrows that she eats the fruit. Episode 461 adds the ritual of the tree, which villagers attend and never return from, and her answer to her sons: it will go on until “the others” arrive. In episode 462, she turns Hamura into a puppet thrown against Hagoromo; controlled by her, he comes to understand her fears and will go on to watch over her from the Moon. That same episode shows the twins sealing Kaguya herself, where chapter 681 and the databook have them seal the Ten-Tails.

The White Zetsu army: a defense against her own clan

The White Zetsu are not an army of conquest raised out of nothing: they are the victims of the Infinite Tsukuyomi, converted over many years, and the motive is explicit — fear of reprisals from her clan, come to harvest the fruit. Kaguya had been sent to Earth to supply chakra to the main Otsutsuki family. The anime adds the rest: the attachment she develops for the planet, the human whose children she carries, and the idea that without her clan she could have ruled without cruelty.

There remains the initial act, the one that opened everything: she leaves for dead Isshiki, sent to Earth with the same mission as her. Amado, for his part, does not settle the question and puts forward two competing hypotheses, personal enmity or the will to keep the fruit for herself alone. The same Amado points out that she was only a low-ranking member of the clan, chosen as a sacrifice for the Ten-Tails, which was meant to feed the growth of the God Tree (Boruto, chapter 51).

The family’s verdict would come much later: Momoshiki condemns her as a disgrace and a traitor, says he intended to punish her himself and that her defeat spared him the trouble (Boruto, episode 55). Despite that power, she left behind a scroll setting out the true nature of her coming to Earth. Sasuke finds it, encrypted, in a castle in her ice dimension, and its decryption in Konoha yields decisive information against his enemies (Boruto: Naruto the Movie).

From the Goddess to the Ten-Tails

To reclaim the chakra inherited by her sons, Kaguya merges with the God Tree and becomes the Ten-Tails herself, then challenges the twins to battle: the fourth databook, page 217, presents the move as a deliberate plan of absorption. Yet that chakra she had passed on to them herself: by giving birth to Hagoromo and Hamura, she dispersed it to them, which makes the two brothers the first humans born with chakra.

The twins, for their part, fight without knowing who they are facing: they believe they are facing an incarnation of the God Tree come to take back the fruit stolen from it, and it is under that reading that they seal the beast. It is that same Ten-Tails that the Sage of the Six Paths would later split into nine Tailed Beasts. Hagoromo, a legend himself, judged his mother’s power superior to all others, including his own and his brother’s combined (chapter 670).

The Rinne Sharingan and its powers

The fruit makes a third eye appear on her forehead, the Rinne Sharingan: red, formed of several concentric circles and nine tomoe (chapter 678, page 11), and given as the predecessor of the Rinnegan and the Sharingan. It does more than decorate: it also grants her the latter’s abilities (chapter 671), that is, reading the flow of chakra, casting and recognizing with ease genjutsu, and having heightened powers of perception.

It is through this eye that she casts the Infinite Tsukuyomi on chosen targets (chapter 671, page 8), then manipulates the roots of the God Tree to trap the captives and slowly drain them of their individuality, their character, and their features (chapter 671, page 11). Linked to the tree, she grows stronger by absorbing the chakra of everyone connected to it. That same eye finally governs her movements from one dimension to another.

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The kekkei mora, the category of powers reserved for her bloodline

The kekkei mora (血継網羅), which can be rendered as “all-encompassing bloodline,” is a branch of jutsu reserved for Kaguya and her direct descendants. The Naruto Quiz Book, pages 185-186, defines it as mastery of the five elemental natures, plus the power that unites those five natures with Yin Release and Yang Release. The category does not follow the rules of kekkei genkai: only the Byakugan of Kaguya and the Rinnegan of Hagoromo are placed in it. A note in the fourth databook, which classifies her only as a kekkei mora user, even suggests that her Byakugan was not a kekkei genkai.

The Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack (page 301) gathers chakra in her palms and materializes it as a volley of airborne fists; it destroys a Susanoo Complete Body fed on Six Paths chakra (chapter 680 page 15, chapter 688 page 7), and its name may refer to the tale of the Hare of Inaba, in which eighty gods court Princess Yagami. The Ash Bones (page 275) are of another order: whatever they pierce decomposes at the molecular level down to a pile of ash — the databook derives from this, on page 25, the Shikotsumyaku (Dead Bone Pulse) of the Kaguya clan.

The Expansive Truth-Seeking Ball (page 293) closes the list: formed from the chakra drawn from every being connected to the God Tree, it grows until it rewrites the dimension it is launched into, to the point that a synchronized space-time ninjutsu can no longer return to it (chapter 689, pages 7-8). It also carries an editorial slip: in serialization, Black Zetsu counts Wood Release (Mokuton) among her natures; Kishimoto acknowledged the mistake in issue 41 of Weekly Shonen Jump and announced its correction for the collected volume, the nature in question being Water Release (Suiton).

Her six dimensions, one by one

The count is set out in chapter 684, pages 12-13: six dimensions linked to one another. An expanse of lava, with a large volcano and a castle-shaped structure. A realm of ice, made of frozen canyons and mountains, where Kaguya’s castle stands atop a sheer cliff. A desert of dunes, scorching. A sea of acid that eats away at all matter, organic or not. A dimension of pyramid-shaped terrain crushed by gravity so heavy that one can barely move. And the core dimension, mountainous, which links the others and where she recovers quickly, absorbing at will the chakra of the victims of the Infinite Tsukuyomi.

Two separate techniques give access to them. Amenominaka (fourth databook, page 230) replaces the world around her with one of her dimensions: she does not move to the destination, she moves the destination to her, and everyone around her shifts with her without leaving the slightest trace of chakra (chapter 680, pages 1-4 and 10). Hence two limits: she cannot use it to flee an attacker, nor to take only a single target with her. For that, she turns to Yomotsu Hirasaka, which opens rifts in space and which the databook gives, on page 302, as the ancestor of all space-time ninjutsu.

Kakashi at first believes it is a genjutsu, and only changes his mind on judging the setting too vast and too detailed for an illusion. Black Zetsu, for his part, notes that repeated use of Amenominaka drains Kaguya’s reserves (chapter 684, page 13). The counter would come from Obito: by synchronizing his Kamui with Kaguya’s rifts, he links the dimensions to one another (chapter 685, pages 3-8); Sakura lends him her chakra, and his eyes bleed all the same.

How Team 7 brings down a goddess

Kaguya opens the fight by sending Team 7 and Obito over a sea of lava, then chains together changes of setting to split them up. The first opening is absurd and yet decisive: Sasuke covers her in Amaterasu, which she absorbs effortlessly, and Naruto immediately transforms into a group of naked men — the Reverse Harem Jutsu. The surprise freezes her long enough for him to land a hit (chapter 682, pages 6-8). Sasuke follows up with an Amenotejikara to begin the sealing; she shifts everyone into her ice dimension, before isolating Sasuke in the desert.

Then comes the decoy trick. Naruto overwhelms her with an army of clones; she pierces one with the Ash Bones believing she is killing the original, and only realizes her mistake on seeing the surviving clones — only the real Naruto carries the Truth-Seeking Balls (Gudodama) on his back. The clue remains misleading: his clones produce none, but he can transfer control of them to his clones (chapter 686, pages 10-11). The price is heavy: Obito dies impaled by those same bones while shielding Kakashi and Naruto, and Naruto severs the arm that carried Black Zetsu before pinning it to the ground.

Struck by the Rasenshuriken charged with the chakra of the nine Tailed Beasts, she mutates into a rabbit creature that Black Zetsu calls neither intended nor controlled (chapter 688), which suggests that she could take the form of the Ten-Tails at will; she regains control and compacts the mass into a giant Truth-Seeking Ball. One more opponent has to be added: Black Zetsu, hidden in the sleeve of the severed arm, uses the Ash Bones and Yomotsu Hirasaka himself (chapter 689, page 11).

The final antagonist

Centuries after her sealing, it is Black Zetsu who brings her back, at the expense of Madara: he pierces the Uchiha, covers him with his own mass, and the body swells with the chakra of the victims of the Infinite Tsukuyomi until Kaguya stands in his place. She becomes the final opponent of the Fourth Great Ninja War, not through a plan she carried out, but because the will she left behind patiently prepared that return.

The resolution comes down to a window of a few seconds. Kakashi pierces her with his Kamui Raikiri, then erases with Kamui the counters that Naruto’s clones have not exhausted, while Sasuke moves in to place the seal. She tries to flee, and it is Sakura’s blow, landed at the last second, that catches her off guard and breaks off one of her horns (chapter 689, page 15). Naruto and Sasuke then place their hands on her and unleash the Six Paths Chibaku Tensei: her body reverts to the Ten-Tails, then the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path (Gedo Mazo), before being swallowed up in the sphere.

One last act makes the victory final: Naruto sends Black Zetsu, lurking in the sleeve of the severed arm, into the moon that has just formed, which rules out any future resurrection. She is sealed, not killed, and her final words (chapter 690, pages 2-3) express her incomprehension: the ancestor of all chakra defeated, a second time, by scattered chakra.

Where her name, her horns, and her kimono come from

Her name and her title refer to Princess Kaguya of the Taketori Monogatari (竹取物語), “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter,” held to be one of the oldest Japanese narratives set down in writing: in the legend, the princess puts on a hagoromo (羽衣), “feather robe”, to return home — hence the name of her eldest son. Otsutsuki (大筒木) means roughly “great bamboo tree” and comes from an obscure passage in the second volume of the Kojiki, devoted to the genealogy of Emperor Suinin: the eleventh emperor of Japan, he has as his wife Kaguyahime no Mikoto, daughter of a king named Otsutsukitarine no Miko.

The horns, for their part, represent rabbit ears and tie her to the Moon through the motif of the moon rabbit, which her title of Rabbit Goddess corroborates — and which the rabbit form she takes under Naruto’s Rasenshuriken confirms one last time. Her outfit is that of a noblewoman of the Heian period: junihitoe, the twelve-layer kimono, extremely long hair, and hikimayu, those short round eyebrows that signaled rank. Even her language is archaic, since she refers to herself with the pronoun warawa (ワラワ).

Two parallels are finally noted, with nothing attributing them to any stated intention on the part of the author: Izanami, the Shinto goddess of the dead, whose Yomotsu-shikome recall the White Zetsu army, and the woman eating the forbidden fruit in Genesis. Her techniques draw on the same well: Amenominaka comes from Amenominakanushi, one of the five Kotoamatsukami, and Yomotsu Hirasaka is the name of the slope that leads to Yomi, the underworld of Japanese mythology.

Summary Table

FAQ

• Who is Kaguya Otsutsuki?
  The progenitor of chakra in the ninja world and the final antagonist in Naruto, nicknamed the “Rabbit Goddess.”
• How did Kaguya obtain her powers?
  By eating the forbidden fruit of the God Tree, which made her the first holder of chakra and gave her the Rinne Sharingan.
• Is Kaguya the Ten-Tails?
  She merged with the God Tree to become the Ten-Tails (Jubi); it is that Ten-Tails that her son, the Sage of the Six Paths, would later split into nine Tailed Beasts.
• Who are Kaguya’s sons?
  The twins Hagoromo (the Sage of the Six Paths) and Hamura, the first humans born with chakra.
• How is Kaguya defeated?
  Naruto and Sasuke, granted the powers of the Sage of the Six Paths, reseal her inside a new moon: she is sealed, not killed.

In summary

Source of all chakra and ultimate threat, Kaguya closes the loop in Naruto: the power that founded the ninja world is also the one that nearly destroyed it.