Le Mangekyô Sharingan : l'œil ultime des Uchiha

Mangekyo Sharingan: The Ultimate Eye of the Uchiha

4526 words | Reading time: 23 min

TechniqueMangekyoSharingan

The ultimate eye of the Uchiha is paid for in lost sight and grief. The Mangekyo Sharingan does not awaken from a strong emotion, but from a trauma that is truly lived through, the Curse of Hatred. Its kaleidoscope pattern is unique to each wielder, as are the techniques it unlocks. Using it gradually causes blindness, and only transplanting the eyes of a close relative grants the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan. Awakening, cost, EMS, individual powers: the complete file on the most tragic dojutsu.

An eye paid for with your sight and with someone you love. The Mangekyo Sharingan is the most formidable form of the dojutsu of the Uchiha — and one of the most tragic. Here is how it is born, what it costs, and what it offers.

Contents

An Evolution of the Sharingan

The Mangekyo Sharingan is not a separate dojutsu: it is an advanced form of the Sharingan, one that only a handful of Uchiha have ever activated. It is recognizable by its appearance, which changes the shape of the tomoe seal; the design differs for each wielder, but all of them evoke a pinwheel. On one point, more precision is needed than the formula usually passed around: the Mangekyo Sharingan does not merely preserve the Sharingan's generic abilities, it amplifies them (chapters 408, 480, and 579).

To these abilities are added techniques that the official SHINOBI ACADEMY video calls "unique dojutsu" (固有瞳術, Koyu Dojutsu), specific to each eye. They can differ from one eye to the other in the same wielder: Sasuke's left eye casts Amaterasu, while the right shapes its flames with Kagutsuchi — though the right eye has also proven able to cast it on its own. Two wielders can also have techniques of the same nature without handling them in the same way, Sasuke's control over Amaterasu being held to be superior to Itachi's.

Attribution follows the eye, not the person. Each technique is housed in a specific eyeball, and the one who created it loses the use of it if he no longer possesses that eye. A single eyeball can in fact house several: Itachi's right eye carries both Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi. This mechanic explains why an eye transplant also moves the repertoire of techniques along with it.

Close-up of an eye whose black iris bears a red six-pointed star pattern
The kaleidoscope pattern, different for each wielder, is the visible mark of the Mangekyo Sharingan.

"Kaleidoscope": The Name, the Databooks, and the True First Appearance

The dojutsu's Japanese name, 万華鏡写輪眼, translates literally as "kaleidoscope copy wheel eye": the kaleidoscope for the pattern, the copy wheel for the Sharingan it derives from. The official SHINOBI ACADEMY video gives it a second name, "legendary dojutsu" (伝説の瞳術, Densetsu no Dojutsu), literally "legendary pupil technique." It is the same source that provides the term unique dojutsu used for the techniques housed in each eye.

Two documentary references frame the technique, and they must not be confused. The third databook, pages 274-275, describes the Mangekyo Sharingan as the "heavenly eyes that see the truth of all creation without obstruction" (tenjo no kotowari o shoakuseshi hitomi). Another reference points to the To no Sho, page 278: this volume is the third of the series' supplementary guides, but the second of the four databooks, and it covers chapters 120 to 244.

In terms of publication, the Mangekyo Sharingan first appears in chapter 142 of the manga and in episode 82 of the anime, but its pattern is not actually shown until chapter 222, page 19: Itachi's, while Sasuke recalls the events leading to the fall of the clan, during his clash with Naruto at the Valley of the End. Hence a production anomaly in episode 84, where Itachi uses techniques exclusive to the Mangekyo Sharingan without the dojutsu being activated: Kishimoto had not yet revealed its appearance in the manga.

Illustrated book cover: two young boys standing side by side against a dark red background, one in an orange and blue jumpsuit with his arms crossed, the other in a blue high-collared top and white shorts, beneath large black ideograms and a title in big orange capital letters.
The To no Sho, second of the series' four databooks: it is to its page 278 that the reference devoted to the Mangekyo Sharingan points.

Awakening Through Trauma

The fourth databook, page 248, sets the criterion: the Mangekyo Sharingan awakens under the shock of the trauma caused by the fear or the grief of losing a loved one, most often tied to that person's death. Only a handful of Uchiha have managed it, at the cost of a sufficiently traumatic experience (chapter 224, pages 7-8). The mechanism extends that of the ordinary Sharingan, which an intense emotion of any kind is enough to trigger; the Mangekyo Sharingan, for its part, demands the loss.

The clan long misunderstood this criterion. Convinced that one had to be responsible for the death in question, its members developed the practice of killing the person dearest to them (chapter 386, page 13). Itachi's case contradicts it: he awakened his Mangekyo Sharingan after witnessing the suicide of Shisui, his best friend, shortly before the fall of the clan (chapter 550).

Tobirama Senju ties this mechanism to the Curse of Hatred, an ideal shared by the members of the Uchiha Clan: among them, lost affection instantly turns into hatred, and the despair of these experiences gives rise in the brain to a particular chakra that acts on the optic nerves. The advanced form of the Sharingan, he specifies, requires experiences that are extremely painful, which plunge the one who undergoes them into a darkness where he burns himself out (chapter 619, pages 13-17).

Close-up of a tearful face against an orange background, both eyes bearing a dark star-shaped pattern
The awakening is paid for with a grief truly lived through: the pattern appears in the shock of the loss.

The Naka Shrine Stone Tablet, Where the Clan Learned the Mangekyo Sharingan

The Uchiha's knowledge of the Mangekyo Sharingan had a material source: a stone tablet (石碑, sekihi) engraved by Hagoromo Otsutsuki to dissuade the descendants of his son Indra from recreating the Rinnegan (chapter 671, page 7). It passed to the clan, which handed it down secretly from generation to generation, then it was kept for decades in the underground bunker of the Naka Shrine, before being moved into a forest (Boruto, chapter 2, page 22).

It is not read the same way depending on the eye. The Rinnegan alone deciphers it entirely; the Sharingan and the Mangekyo Sharingan read only a part of it, the latter going further than the former. Fugaku explains it to Itachi: the shrine's tablet holds the secrets of a better world, but it takes an evolved Sharingan to read it, even a little (chapter 224, pages 2-8). The clan's knowledge therefore passed through a text that almost none of its members could decipher.

Its contents are detailed: they include the secrets of the Mangekyo Sharingan, the instructions for obtaining it and its power of control over the Tailed Beasts, but also the secrets of the Uchiha Clan and the history of the Sage of the Six Paths, of Kaguya and of the God Tree. Added to these are lines that are not in Hagoromo's hand: Black Zetsu had falsified certain details of it to prepare Kaguya's return, and he could read and rewrite the tablet without possessing either a Sharingan or a Rinnegan (chapter 681, pages 10-11).

Underground room lit by two tripod braziers, greenish walls decorated with round red and white fans; seen from behind, a child with spiky black hair stands before a large stone block covered with columns of engraved characters.
Sasuke before the stone tablet kept in the underground bunker of the Naka Shrine: the Sharingan reads only a part of it, the Mangekyo Sharingan a little more, and the Rinnegan alone deciphers it entirely.

Indra, Fugaku, Hagoromo: Three Awakenings Only the Anime Tells

Indra Otsutsuki is the first user of the Mangekyo Sharingan. The manga limits itself to establishing that he could use the Susanoo (chapter 670, page 18) and gives him a spiral pattern; it is the anime that tells the awakening, in episode 468. Having understood that his eyes grew stronger from his personal losses, Indra secretly killed his two closest followers, who were also his best friends, so that he could challenge his father and his brother. Still in the anime, his left eye uses Hinokagutsuchi.

Fugaku Uchiha awakens his own during the Third Great Ninja War, when a dear friend sacrifices himself to save him: episode 455 is the only source for this scene, as it is for the fear that makes him keep his Mangekyo Sharingan quiet before the clan, the fear of driving his own people to seek that power by immoral means. The manga does say one thing about it: in chapter 224, Fugaku confides to Itachi that he has spoken of it to no one, for fear of being asked to use it to take control of the Nine-Tails (Kyubi), something he believed himself capable of.

Hagoromo Otsutsuki, finally, awakens the Mangekyo Sharingan after temporarily killing his brother Hamura to tear him away from the control of their mother Kaguya (episode 462). The design of his eyes remains unknown: they evolved into the Rinnegan in the same movement, and this simultaneous evolution is said to have given him the stability that ordinarily only an Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan provides. The anime also contradicts itself on Indra: after giving him the manga's spiral pattern, it later gives him Sasuke's.

Extreme close-up of a red eye in warm ocher light: around a black pupil, a dark ring from which three curved arcs extend, each ending in a black dot; spiky strands of black hair cross the frame.
Fugaku Uchiha's Mangekyo Sharingan as shown in episode 455 of the anime, the only source for his awakening: the manga does not tell this scene.

What the Jinraiden Novel and Boruto Change About the Awakening Criterion

The novel Naruto Jinraiden: The Day the Wolf Howled, written by Akira Higashiyama and illustrated by Kishimoto, is set shortly after Sasuke's fight against Itachi, but before the awakening of his Mangekyo Sharingan. In it, Sasuke is seized by an intense eye pain that he takes for the symptom of an awakening in progress; Itachi died twenty-two days earlier. The dojutsu finally activates only in the middle of the fight against Roen, as Sasuke accepts his grief, and he then uses it to alter the memory of Jiryu Sendo.

The novel incidentally sets out a rule it alone provides: someone who hesitates to let himself be saddened by a death feels an eye irritation, which fades with time or leads to the Mangekyo Sharingan if the grief becomes sincere. It thereby introduces a delayed awakening of several weeks, where an Uchiha ordinarily obtains his Mangekyo Sharingan immediately after the trauma.

Sarada Uchiha reopens the criterion from the other end, in the Boruto manga: she awakens her Mangekyo Sharingan while Boruto is accused of having killed the Seventh Hokage, weeping out of fear for him, not from having lost him (chapter 80). The consequence follows: it is a sufficient emotional trauma, and not the actual loss of a loved one, that triggers the evolution. She will go three years without consciously accessing it, until the fight against Ryu where Yodo, mortally wounded, urges her to use it; both of her eyes carry Ohirume.

Novel cover: against a background of blue and white clouds, an ink-drawn face with spiky black hair and long strands, one red eye marked with a circular black pattern, beside large silver ideograms in a column and two red flame-shaped labels.
The novel Naruto Jinraiden: The Day the Wolf Howled, illustrated by Kishimoto, introduces a delayed awakening — Sasuke obtains his Mangekyo Sharingan only in the middle of the fight against Roen, weeks after Itachi's death.

The Price: Blindness

The cost is not limited to sight. Simply activating the dojutsu, and holding it, already consumes a considerable amount of chakra, and each technique used demands more. Using it also inflicts bodily damage and excruciating pain, and gradually degrades vision until overuse leaves the wielder blind (chapter 385, page 15). This regime is that of all wielders, including Uchiha by birth.

The case of Itachi gives the concrete measure of it. With Tsukuyomi and Amaterasu both mobilizing enormous amounts of chakra, and his illness being terminal, repeated use of the Mangekyo Sharingan over a short period was particularly debilitating for him: after three uses in the same day, he had to deactivate even his ordinary Sharingan to save his energy (chapter 148, page 7).

Using the dojutsu is not discreet either: it comes with a sensation that sensors perceive, without that sensation telling them which technique is being prepared (chapter 550). As for lost sight, only one remedy is known, the transplant of the eyes of a closely blood-related Uchiha, ideally a brother or a sister (chapter 386, pages 7-9).

The Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan

The Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan is therefore obtained through this transplant, with both parties having to be Uchiha. The SHINOBI ACADEMY video immediately attaches a reservation to the rule: awakenings are so rare that these conditions remain open to being disproved. The fused eyes combine the designs and the abilities of the two Mangekyo Sharingan, and according to Madara, the eternal eye is proof that an Uchiha has kept moving forward despite great losses (chapter 662, page 16).

The fusion follows a precise logic. The wielder keeps the techniques of his original eyes and apparently loses those of the transplanted eyes; the eyeballs nonetheless remain those of their initial owner, and therefore react to techniques directed against that owner's Mangekyo Sharingan. In exchange, the side effects disappear: bodily damage and chakra drain fall to an imperceptible level, and sight is no longer affected.

Two cases are documented, and the first is commonly told wrong. Blinded by the overuse of his Mangekyo Sharingan at the end of the Warring States period, Madara received the eyes of his brother Izuna, who bequeathed them to him on his deathbed to save the clan from extinction (chapter 624, page 13); it is the rumor of a theft that has prevailed (chapter 386, page 6). Sasuke first refused the transplant, his views differing from Itachi's, before accepting it: he describes the result as his brother's ocular power become his own, and increased (chapter 488, page 17).

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Two young men with long black hair side by side in close-up, each bearing a Mangekyo Sharingan pattern in the visible eye
Madara and Izuna: it is by receiving his brother's eyes that Madara obtains the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan.

Powers Unique to Each Wielder

The design differs for each wielder, and the repertoire of techniques with it, without being exclusive for all that. Itachi has Tsukuyomi,Amaterasu and the Susanoo; Sasuke also casts Amaterasu and shapes its flames; Obito and Kakashi both have Kamui; Shisui has Kotoamatsukami. A case apart, Kakashi has only a single Mangekyo Sharingan, in the left eye that Obito bequeathed to him and that Rin transplanted into him — until the day when Obito, dead, briefly returns to inhabit him and makes him manifest two of them.

The Susanoo is an exception to this dispersal: it is accessible to any wielder who has awakened the dojutsu in both of his eyes (chapter 464, page 16), even though Shin Uchiha and his clones, though endowed with several Mangekyo Sharingan, have never shown one. For others, nothing is known: the abilities specific to each of Madara's and Izuna's eyes are not known, and all that is known of the former is that he could use the Susanoo. Nothing indicates what triggered their awakening either.

A huge orange fireball devoured on its right by a mass of black flames, a small figure on the ground below
The black flames of Amaterasu: each wielder of the Mangekyo Sharingan has techniques that belong to him alone.

The Choku Tomoe, the Straight Tomoe of Madara and Sasuke

The fourth databook, page 49, names a rare configuration: the choku tomoe (直巴), the "straight tomoe," noted in two wielders, Madara and Sasuke. No additional technique is attributed to it. What it brings fits in one line, and nothing more is said about it: a superior fluidity of movement in combat (chapter 657, page 8).

Its interest is narrative. Madara perceives this form in Sasuke and deduces that a bond going beyond blood unites them, without managing to name its nature. One reads in it the sign of their shared status as reincarnations of Indra: Madara's speculation turns out to be accurate, but remains incomplete. Two wielders, a trait inherited from a shared ancestor, no technique to show for it — the information is genealogical before it is martial.

A nuance attaches to it, and it changes the scope of the trait: the trait is not a property of the Mangekyo Sharingan. Madara's original Mangekyo Sharingan did not carry it, Izuna's did, and Madara states that only he and Sasuke have awakened a "straight-tomoe Sharingan", not a "straight-tomoe Mangekyo Sharingan" (chapter 674, page 7). The trait therefore already exists at the Sharingan stage and does not correlate with the design of the Mangekyo Sharingan. Another design particularity, specific to the manga: Sasuke's is the only one with an inverted color scheme, a red pattern on black irises.

Extreme close-up of an open eye with a red iris bearing a broad black pattern: a thick ring broken in three places, each break occupied by a small red disc outlined in black, around a small black pupil.
Madara Uchiha's Mangekyo Sharingan, one of the two wielders of the choku tomoe along with Sasuke: this straight tomoe is a trait of the Sharingan, one that the design of the Mangekyo Sharingan does not carry.

Transplanted Outside the Clan: What a Non-Uchiha Gains and What He Pays

Like any dojutsu, the Mangekyo Sharingan can be transplanted into a wielder outside the clan: it then grants him all of its abilities, but with heavier chakra demands. The contrast with the ordinary Sharingan is sharp, and counterintuitive: a non-Uchiha carrying a simple Sharingan cannot deactivate it and must cover it to save his chakra (chapter 459, page 15), whereas a transplanted Mangekyo Sharingan activates and shuts off freely.

A second property, more singular: a Mangekyo Sharingan ability can be programmed to trigger in defined circumstances, either in the wielder's eyes or in a target he has chosen, and this programming survives his death. Itachi had thus set Shisui's left eye, implanted in a crow, to cast Kotoamatsukami on whoever possessed his own eyes and force him to protect Konoha (chapter 403, pages 2-8; chapter 590).

There finally remains an anomaly with no explanation: Obito used his Mangekyo Sharingan intensively for more than a decade without ever showing the slightest sign of fatigue or visual deterioration. Another departure from the common regime, exercising the power does not always require the organ: Madara was able to deploy a Susanoo without possessing a single eye (chapter 658, page 10).

Close-up of the head of a black crow with a long beak, its pale red eye bearing a black three-bladed curved pinwheel pattern, in front of the face of a character haloed by a bright yellow aura edged with orange flames, under a cloudy blue sky.
Itachi's crow carries Shisui's Mangekyo Sharingan in its eye: transplanted outside the clan, and even outside a human body, the dojutsu keeps its abilities.

Summary Table

Aspect Details
Nature Evolved and superior form of the Sharingan (the dojutsu of the Uchiha); keeps the base abilities and adds overwhelmingly powerful eye techniques.
Awakening Intense trauma = the truly lived loss of a loved one (Curse of Hatred). Never a positive emotion. Mistaken belief of the clan: you had to have caused the death yourself.
Pattern & techniques Kaleidoscope pattern UNIQUE to each wielder; DIFFERENT techniques depending on the individual; the Susanoo is the most widely shared (once both eyes are awakened).
Cost & EMS Use causes progressive blindness; the EMS = transplant of the eyes of a close wielder (Madara/Izuna, Sasuke/Itachi) → sight restored + increased power.
Key wielders Itachi (Tsukuyomi/Amaterasu/Susanoo), Sasuke (Amaterasu + Blaze Release/Kagutsuchi + Susanoo), Madara (EMS/full Susanoo), Obito and Kakashi (Kamui), Shisui (Kotoamatsukami).

FAQ

  • How does the Mangekyo Sharingan awaken?
    Through an intense psychological trauma, typically the loss or the death of a loved one — a mechanic tied to the Uchiha's Curse of Hatred. Where the base Sharingan asks only for a strong emotion, the Mangekyo Sharingan demands the genuinely felt shock of that loss. The clan long believed, wrongly, that you had to have caused your loved one's death yourself; in reality only the lived emotion of the loss counts, whether you are responsible for it or not.
  • What is the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan (EMS) and how do you obtain it?
    It is a superior version obtained by transplanting the eyes of another Mangekyo Sharingan wielder close in blood (the two known cases are brothers). It restores sight, removes the progressive blindness and increases power. Madara took Izuna's eyes; Sasuke took Itachi's. They are the only two known wielders of the EMS.
  • Why does the Mangekyo Sharingan cause blindness?
    Using it gradually erodes the wielder's sight until blindness sets in: that is the price of its power. Only the EMS, obtained by transplanting the eyes of a close wielder, lifts this weakness and restores vision.
  • Is Kakashi a true Mangekyo Sharingan wielder? What is his technique?
    He possesses only a single Mangekyo Sharingan, in the eye that Obito transplanted into him; his technique is Kamui, in its long-range variant. His Mangekyo Sharingan awakened at the same time as Obito's at Rin's death. At the end of the Fourth Great Ninja War, Obito temporarily lent him a double Mangekyo Sharingan and his chakra, hence a short-lived full Susanoo; Kakashi then lost all Sharingan.
  • Do all wielders have the same powers?
    No: the pattern is unique and the techniques differ depending on the individual. Itachi has Tsukuyomi, Amaterasu and the Susanoo; Sasuke casts Amaterasu and shapes the flames through Blaze Release (Enton); Obito and Kakashi have Kamui; Shisui has Kotoamatsukami; Madara has the full Susanoo. Only the Susanoo is shared by most of them, once both eyes are awakened.

In summary

The Mangekyo Sharingan is the perfect embodiment of the Uchiha tragedy: a power you gain only by losing, and keep only by stealing the eyes of a loved one. Behind every kaleidoscope hides a grief — and that is what makes this eye as fascinating as it is cursed.

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