Rasenshuriken: Naruto's Ultimate Jutsu

TechniqueNaruto UzumakiRasenshuriken

Minato dreamed it up; his son finished it. The Rasenshuriken is the completion of the Rasengan Minato left unfinished: an S-rank Wind Release ninjutsu, known in the French dub as Fûton - Orbe Shuriken. We look back at the clone training devised by Kakashi, with Yamato on hand to suppress the Nine-Tails' chakra, at those microscopic wind blades that cut down to the cellular level and that no medical ninjutsu can heal, then at the long-range throw unlocked in Sage Mode.

Naruto's ultimate jutsu, the one that completes his father's unfinished dream: this is the Rasenshuriken, a shuriken made of chakra that cuts down to the cellular level. Here is the breakdown.

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The completion of the Rasengan

The Rasenshuriken is not the completion of the Rasengan in general, but of one precise stage: the Wind Release Rasengan. Its invention comes just after the moment when Naruto grasps the principle of that elemental version. Minato Namikaze had designed the Rasengan intending to add his own chakra nature to it, a task he never managed to finish before his death — the manga states this in chapter 321, pages 9 and 10.

Naruto summed up the obstacle with an image: combining shape manipulation with Wind Release came down to "looking left and right at the same time," in chapter 329, pages 1 to 5. The finished form is recognizable by four large points arrayed around the core, hence its fuma shuriken silhouette; it comes with a shrill whistling sound, noted in chapter 339, page 11.

Its debut dates to chapter 339 of the manga and episode 87 of Shippuden; episode 88, which is named after the jutsu, covers chapters 339 to 342. The gap with the Wind Release Rasengan shows up even in the entries: the latter is listed as short range only, the Rasenshuriken as short, medium and long range. Yet the jutsu will not become a projectile until senjutsu, several dozen chapters later.

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The clone training

The training protocol comes down to three hands. Naruto supplies the chakra, a first shadow clone shapes the sphere, a second infuses it with the Wind Release nature: that is the solution laid out in chapter 330, page 4. One should see this reliance on the Shadow Clone Jutsu as the usual aid for the jutsu, and not as a permanent constraint: Naruto will eventually do without it.

The mentoring is split between two men. Kakashi designed the training method that exploits the Shadow Clone Jutsu, since a dispelled clone returns the experience it gained to the original; yet it is the advice of Asuma on sharpening wind chakra that unlocks the decisive phase. Yamato, for his part, is there for a specific reason: the repeated failures exasperate Naruto to the point that one of his clones starts drawing on the Nine-Tails' chakra, and it falls to the captain to cancel the transformation.

The number of hands then varies with the format. The Chodama Rasenshuriken calls for four instead of three, in chapter 634, pages 12 and 13. In Nine-Tails Chakra Mode, the chakra arms simply replace the clones, as in chapter 617, pages 11 and 12. And by the time of " The Last: Naruto the Movie”, Naruto forms the Rasenshuriken with no help at all and can guide it at a distance.

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Microscopic blades

The trigger follows two conditions: after a certain distance traveled, or on contact with a target it cannot cut through, the central core detonates and creates a wind vortex in the immediate area. That vortex contains countless microscopic wind blades, so many that even the Sharingan cannot count them all — the manga establishes this in chapter 341, page 18.

The damage mechanism is described on pages 9 to 15 of chapter 346. The blades pierce each cell and disconnect it from the chakra circulatory system, preventing it from supplying its physical energy to chakra production; the target loses the ability to create and mold chakra. Tsunade compares the effect to a poison and warns that, if the damage is extensive enough, the victim will never be able to use jutsu again, beyond the reach of medical ninjutsu.

💨 A fan of Naruto's jutsu? Find its world in our collection of Naruto weapons.

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An S-rank kinjutsu

The classification leaves no room for doubt: both databooks place the Rasenshuriken among the S-rank kinjutsu, both ninjutsu and forbidden jutsu — third databook, pages 298 and 299, fourth databook, pages 290 and 291. The label appears on the entry just like the range or the chakra nature, on the scale that runs from E to S.

Two original flaws weigh on the jutsu. The first has to do with stability: the orb dissipated sporadically once formed, which forced Naruto to deliver it in close combat to keep it going, exactly like an ordinary Rasengan — chapter 340, pages 5 to 7. The second carries heavier consequences: the jutsu also damages the cells of the arm holding it, less severely than the target's, but enough to matter (chapter 346, pages 9 to 12).

Tsunade draws a personal ban from it in chapter 346, page 11: Naruto must never use it again. The decision does not rest on a hunch. Kakuzu's body was brought back to Konoha to be autopsied, precisely in order to assess what the Rasenshuriken was capable of, and the examination confirmed damage at the cellular level. Episode 89 adds that Naruto carries the same lesions in his right arm, less severely, and that Tsunade then calls the jutsu a kinjutsu.

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Two attempts against Kakuzu, and a Sharingan left behind

The first attempt falls short. Naruto forms the Rasenshuriken, sends his clones to corner Kakuzu and slips in behind him, but the jutsu dissipates a few seconds before impact. The Akatsuki member takes advantage of it: his thick black threads bind Naruto to tear out his heart, and it takes Yamato's Wood Release (Mokuton) attack, then Kakashi's speed as he cuts the threads with the Chidori, to free him — episode 88 of Shippuden, chapters 339 to 342.

The scene amounts to a demonstration of the flaw described above. Choji, going by the name "shuriken," thought Naruto was going to throw it; Yamato sets him straight: at this stage, the jutsu requires a head-on attack. Naruto gets a second attempt on his own and changes his method. This time he hides among his clones; Kakuzu destroys the one he takes for the original, and the real Naruto strikes him for good, the anime showing him surge above him with two clones.

The heart count varies by medium. In the manga, Kakuzu sacrifices two of his hearts to raise his earth shield and finds himself unable to move, before Kakashi finishes him off by piercing the last one; the anime bursts all of his hearts at once and defers the execution to episode 89, with the Chidori. Episode 88 adds Kakashi's observation, unable to follow the orb's movement with his Sharingan.

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Thrown in Sage Mode

Sage Mode solves the problem through stability. By infusing the orb with senjutsu chakra, Naruto holds its shape after it is formed: the jutsu becomes a projectile, and the self-damage disappears along with the need for close combat. The chakra remains extremely dense nonetheless, to the point that Fukasaku is astonished to see Naruto throw such a mass, even in Sage Mode, in chapter 432, page 5.

The throw aimed at the Human Path of Pain disintegrates most of it, on pages 6 and 7 of chapter 432. Pages 4 to 6 of the same chapter show the other gain: Naruto can expand the orb at a distance to correct an imprecise aim or catch a dodging target. Its speed nevertheless makes that correction rarely necessary: in chapter 442, pages 5 to 8, it crosses the Chibaku Tensei crater in less than a second, and its points cut through the rock.

Senjutsu does not make the jutsu free, however. The ceiling is a fixed number: two Rasenshuriken per Sage Mode transformation, after which Naruto has to enter it again to produce more — chapter 433, pages 1 to 10. An improved Sage Mode lets him hold three at once in chapter 614, but the anime shows five; in Nine-Tails Chakra Mode, finally, the count becomes unlimited.

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From the Mini to the Chodama: four questions of size

The first family of derivatives only touches the format. The Mini-Rasenshuriken (chapter 545, episode 296) is born in Nine-Tails Chakra Mode: Naruto grows two small chakra arms on his index finger and shapes a miniature orb on them. Weaker than the original, it still cleanly severs the leg of a merged clone from the army of White Zetsu; its entry moreover credits it with the same short, medium and long ranges.

At the other end, the Wind Release Chodama Rasenshuriken (chapter 634, episode 305) uses those same chakra arms to expand the orb beyond the size of a summon like Gamakichi; forming it calls for four hands instead of three. The anime extends it in its own way: it is in episode 305 that it shatters a giant barrier, and the studio redraws the relationship between the core and the blades there, closer to a hugely enlarged Wind Release Rasengan than to the manga's model.

The Odama Rasenshuriken (chapter 655, episode 387) follows a different logic: a noticeably bigger core, a very bright glow in the dark once the orb is inflated to the extreme, a wind sphere visible for several kilometers on detonation. It neutralizes Madara , reanimated, long enough for him to be restrained, and destroys Hashirama's two wood dragons along the way. That leaves the fourth format, the one from chapter 696 and episode 477: the manga gives it no name at all, and the name Rikudo Chodama Rasenshuriken comes from the game Ultimate Ninja Storm 4.

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When the core changes nature

The other family of derivatives replaces the central Rasengan with something else, and they all appear during the Fourth Great Ninja War. The Senpo Yoton Rasenshuriken (chapter 673, episode 424) comes after Naruto has drawn on the power of Son Goku (Four-Tails): the core is loaded with lava, and its heat makes the blades give off steam. Its entry credits it with enough to destroy a target's legs and, once expanded, to cut in half the tree form of the Ten-Tails.

The Bijudama Rasenshuriken (chapter 676, episode 425) goes further still. With Kurama's help, Naruto converts a Truth-Seeking Ball into a Tailed Beast Bomb, then wraps it in wind blades before throwing it; the blast eclipses that of an ordinary Tailed Beast Bomb (Bijudama) and destroys several Chibaku Tensei planetoids in a single throw. The anime makes a slip here: episode 426 shows seven of them, whereas the manga leaves Naruto only six Truth-Seeking Balls.

Two variants remain on the margins. The Senpo Sumisan Rasenshuriken, an ink orb drawn from Gyuki's power, is named neither in the manga nor in the anime: the name comes from the game Naruto x Boruto: Ninja Voltage. The Wind Release Rasenrenshuriken (chapter 617, episode 364), for its part, holds two orbs at once, one of which serves as a close-combat weapon to sever the Ten-Tails' tails; the manga places it in Nine-Tails Chakra Mode, the anime in Sage Mode.

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The nine Rasenshuriken thrown at Kaguya

The Senpo Cho Biju Rasenshuriken (chapter 688, episode 473) draws its scale from the power that the Sage of the Six Paths gave Naruto. He and eight of his shadow clones each form a Rasenshuriken charged with the chakra of a tailed beast of its own. The Jin no Sho (Naruto databook) gives the reason for this spread, page 291: Naruto does not know which type of chakra Kaguya Otsutsuki would be vulnerable to, and so covers the whole spectrum available to him.

The exact makeup of the nine orbs is never spelled out; they are identified by analogy, for want of anything better. Shukaku's evokes the Senpo Jiton Rasengan and its magnetized sand, Matatabi's the blue fire its body is made of, Isobu's water, Son Goku's the lava Rasenshuriken, Kokuo's a boiling vapor. That leaves Saiken, likened to a corrosive gas in the manga and to Utakata's soap bubbles in the anime, Chomei, with no clear source outside Ultimate Ninja Storm 4, which sees scale powder in it, Gyuki ink, and Kurama an orb indistinguishable from an ordinary Rasenshuriken.

The result is subtler than destruction. The nine thrown orbs set off several large explosions, but Kaguya is not visibly wounded by them: the beasts' chakra held in the orbs resonates with the chakra she has absorbed and prevents her from keeping her humanoid form, in chapter 688. The Jin no Sho goes further and describes the attack as "the most marvelous ninjutsu of all time" — a databook judgment, not to be confused with the narrative.

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The movie where an enemy tries to copy it

The jutsu also has a career outside the manga: its entry gives the same title for its debut in a novel and in film, "Naruto Shippuden the Movie: The Will of Fire". The antagonist Hiruko fails there precisely where Naruto succeeded. A former comrade of the Sannin born without any particular talent, he developed the Chimera Technique, a kinjutsu that grafts onto him the kekkei genkai of others by fusing their bodies with his own.

His stolen arsenal counts four elemental kekkei genkai, including Dark Release (Meiton), which opens in his palm a zone able to absorb the jutsu sent at him. He thus takes Kakashi's Raikiri, which he converts into a medium-range weapon, and one of Naruto's Odama Rasengan — bigger than normal because he absorbs it while a great many clones were producing it.

The Rasenshuriken, though, is the jutsu he cannot reproduce. The sphere starts to form in his hand, turns unstable, scatters and blows up on him: he does not know how to combine the extreme levels of shape manipulation and chakra nature, just as Naruto himself did not know how at the start. It is this failure that defeats him; he dies after a final exchange with Kakashi about solitary perfection and the bonds between comrades.

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A color never settled and an off-panel debut

Some points come neither from the manga nor from the anime, but from the paratexts. The second artbook states on page 15 that Masashi Kishimoto never settled on a color for the Rasenshuriken, any more than for the Rasengan, and the shade is therefore depicted inconsistently across the series. The jutsu is most often a bluish white, but various promotional and supplementary materials show it red or orange, with no apparent logic.

Its official debut is also out of step. The jutsu is unveiled in chapter 339, while Naruto uses it off-panel six chapters earlier: in chapter 333, "Compatibility...!!", in volume 37, he is seen nearing completion of his new jutsu while Yamato explains elemental affinities to him. The full name is written 風遁・螺旋手裏剣 and reads Fūton: Rasenshuriken, literally "Wind: spiraling shuriken"; the English dub says "Wind Style: Rasen Shuriken".

The games finally add a variant: under the name 真・風遁・螺旋手裏剣, Shin Fūton: Rasenshuriken, the thrown senjutsu version carries its target into the air before exploding. The entry also lists its first appearances outside the manga and outside the TV series, Ninja Destiny 3 on the video game side and the OVA Naruto x UT on the animation side. One production detail to finish: on the Studio Pierrot page devoted to episode 305, the word "Fūton" disappears from the name of the Chodama Rasenshuriken.

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Summary Table

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FAQ

• Who invented the Rasenshuriken?
  Naruto Uzumaki, during his Shippuden training with Kakashi and Yamato. He thus completes the Rasengan that Minato had left unfinished, by adding his Wind Release nature to it.
• Why was Minato's Rasengan "unfinished"?
  Minato wanted to add an elemental nature to it, but he died before he could. Naruto, whose affinity is Wind Release, applies that nature to the Rasengan and creates the Rasenshuriken.
• Why did the jutsu injure Naruto as well?
  Unstable, the orb had to be delivered in close combat. And since it attacks cells, it also damaged Naruto's arm. Tsunade forbade him to use it, fearing he might no longer be able to use chakra.
• How was Naruto able to throw it at range?
  Thanks to Sage Mode: senjutsu chakra stabilizes the orb's shape, which makes it possible to throw it like a shuriken with no self-damage.
• Who was it first used against?
  Against Kakuzu of the Akatsuki. The Rasenshuriken destroys two of his hearts and immobilizes him, but it is Kakashi who finishes him off with the Raikiri.

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In summary

A father's legacy and the fruit of relentless work, the Rasenshuriken sums up everything Naruto stands for: turning an unfinished dream into a legendary weapon.

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