Saiken, le Rokubi : le démon à six queues

Saiken, the Six-Tails: The Six-Tailed Slug in Naruto

3946 words | Reading time: 20 min

Tailed BeastKirigakureSaiken

Nothing monstrous about this tailed beast. Saiken, the Six-Tails (Rokubi), is a giant white slug with a bluish sheen, a slimy body and six tails, gentler than most of its kin. This profile details the corrosive alkali it spits from its mouth and its Tailed Beast Bomb (Bijudama), introduces its jinchuriki Utakata, the soap-bubble rogue ninja from Kirigakure, recalls that it was named by the Sage of the Six Paths, and revisits its capture by the Akatsuki.

A giant six-tailed slug, gentler than most of its kin: meet Saiken, the Six-Tails (Rokubi), and his jinchuriki Utakata. A profile of the six-tailed beast.

Contents

A giant slug

Saiken is the Six-Tails, the “Rokubi,” one of the nine tailed beasts born from the chakra of the Ten-Tails. It takes the form of a colossal bipedal slug, white with a faint bluish sheen, with stubby arms and feet, extended by six long tails. Two prominent eyestalks serve as its eyes, and its mouth is reduced to openings pierced in its face. Its entire body is covered in a thick, slimy substance.

This anatomy is in no way decorative. It is through its mouth that Saiken releases the corrosive gas from which it draws most of its reputation, and it is through its mouth as well that it expels the sticky substance it spreads over the ground to hinder its opponents. The eyestalks, for their part, remain the only landmark on an otherwise featureless face, where the mouth itself is nothing more than a series of openings.

The manga gives a point of scale in chapter 572. When the nine creatures are shown during the lifetime of the Sage of the Six Paths, Saiken is far smaller there than the beast seen during the Fourth Great Ninja War, yet it already towers well above the Sage himself. Its size therefore increased between Hagoromo's era and the Akatsuki's, without the story ever specifying by how much.

Five giant creatures lined up side by side on ochre ground, among them a white bipedal mass with a round, smooth body bearing several long tails, a shelled turtle and a blue feline covered in flames; a tiny human figure stands in front of them.
Among the tailed beasts, Saiken is recognizable by its silhouette of a white slug standing on two legs.

Saiken means “rhinoceros dog”

The Six-Tails' name is written 犀犬 and literally means “ rhinoceros dog .” The term is said to designate a species of Chinese yokai. Yet neither dog nor rhinoceros appears in the creature's look, which is that of a slug, and the word gives no hint of its corrosive powers. The discrepancy is not an isolated one: the bestiary of the nine beasts was not built on a single model.

Only four tailed beasts are modeled on popular yokai from Japanese folklore: Shukaku on the tanuki, Matatabi on the nekomata, Gyuki on the ushi-oni and Kurama on the kitsune. The other five — Isobu, Son Goku, Kokuo, Saiken and Chomei — are original creations by Masashi Kishimoto, who blends into them elements borrowed from several animal species. The Six-Tails belongs to this second group.

One last trait concerns the use of names. The tailed beasts almost never use them, neither for themselves nor among one another, and they refer to themselves by their number of tails. Son Goku is the exception from beginning to end, taking offense at the numbered nicknames, and Shukaku goes only by its name without minding being called the One-Tail (Ichibi). On the human side, the vocabulary is harsher: Jiraiya speaks of yoma, of “specters” (chapter 143, page 7), the Sho no Sho databook of bakemono, of “monsters” (page 5), and chapter 404 uses the phrase “chakra monsters” (page 14).

An artbook plate divided into nine colored panels; in each one a giant creature — a blue cat covered in flames, a red monkey, a sand-colored tanuki adorned with black markings, a turtle with a spiked shell, a white horse, a pale gleaming slug, an octopus with an ox's head, a beetle with green wings, an orange fox with long tails — rises behind a small human figure.
The nine tailed beasts and their hosts: only four are modeled on yokai from Japanese folklore, and Saiken — the pale slug — belongs to the five original creations by Masashi Kishimoto.

“Ore,” the Osaka accent and a high-pitched voice

Little of Saiken's character is shown, but two speech traits are documented. The slug refers to itself as “ore” (オレ), a boastful first-person pronoun, and speaks in a dialect said to originate in Osaka-ben, the speech of Osaka and the Kansai region. Beyond that, its temperament has been shown very little, and most of what is known about it comes from the anime rather than the manga chapters.

The anime gives it a high-pitched voice and a very energetic temperament. It also shows it as kinder and less self-serving than most of the other tailed beasts: when his jinchuriki asks it to lend him its power to save a young girl, Saiken complies, does exactly what is asked, then withdraws back into him without trying to seize control (episode 151). His host is, moreover, one of the few jinchuriki to maintain a peaceful relationship with his beast.

This benevolence has a clear limit. The anime tells how Harusame, Utakata's master in Kirigakure — a shinobi renowned for his skill in fuinjutsu, presented as the one who had sealed the Six-Tails inside his student —, one day tries to extract it from him to spare him the condition of a living weapon. Since no known method allows a tailed beast to be removed without killing its host, Saiken takes control of Utakata's body and kills Harusame. The student, who keeps only fragmentary memories of the scene, will long believe his master a traitor, until the words of Tsurugi and Naruto bring him back to the truth.

A person in a light kimono, holding a long pipe, stands on a stone structure at dusk, wrapped in a translucent red aura that drips and extends into wide pointed appendages; a second figure with light hair can be made out behind them.
Episode 151: Saiken lends its chakra to Utakata to save a young girl, does exactly what is asked, then withdraws without trying to seize control.

Named by the Sage of the Six Paths

Saiken is born in the final days of the life of Hagoromo Otsutsuki, the Sage of the Six Paths. The Sage uses his Creation of All Things to divide the chakra of the Ten-Tails into nine distinct bodies and gives each one a name. Some time after their creation, he explains to the young beasts that a bond remains between them despite the separation, and foretells a day when they will be reunited — though not as they are — and when someone will rise to show them what true strength is (chapter 467, pages 15-16; chapter 572, pages 10-11).

The manga traces the impulse back to Asura, his youngest son, whose example inspires the Sage at the moment of dividing that chakra. The purpose of the operation is twofold: to prevent the resurrection of the Ten-Tails, but also to maintain balance and peace, as chapter 671, page 8 recalls. The tailed beasts are therefore not conceived as weapons, which is nevertheless what they will become in the hands of the hidden villages.

The anime adds a step the manga does not recount. Before his death, the Sage and his disciples build temples in nine regions of the world, one per tailed beast, where the beasts can live and be protected; Saiken is sent to a cavernous, damp region (episode 464 of Shippuden). The name it receives at its creation will not enter the story until centuries later, when the tailed beasts introduce themselves to Naruto.

An overhead view of nine creatures of different sizes and colors seated in a circle around a pattern carved into the ground, at the center of which stands a tiny human figure.
Hagoromo facing the nine beasts born from the Ten-Tails' chakra, to which he gives a name.

Sold to Kirigakure along with Isobu

During the First Ninja War, Hashirama Senju captures eight of the nine tailed beasts and distributes them among the young hidden villages. Saiken and Isobu leave together: the First Hokage sells them to the Hidden Mist village at the very first Kage summit, as a token of friendship and to balance the powers. The fact is recorded in the third databook, Sha no Sho, page 183. The Mist therefore leaves that summit with two of the nine tailed beasts.

Chapter 648 puts the scene into images. Kirigakure is represented there by Byakuren, the First Mizukage, accompanied by the man who will become the Third. The First Kazekage, Reto, refuses the beast he is offered on the grounds that Sunagakure already holds Shukaku, and demands instead a portion of the fertile lands of the Land of Fire and 30% of the price asked of the other nations. Most of those present are outraged and threaten Suna with war, before Hashirama calms the assembly by speaking of the future he hopes for the shinobi.

The transaction is nothing like an agreement between consenting parties. Chapter 648 specifies, on pages 10 to 12, that Hashirama obtained the tailed beasts by force and not by securing their cooperation. The sealing of Saiken into a human host, for its part, is not dated: it will not take place until decades later, in the body of a Mist ninja.

Utakata, the rogue ninja of the Hidden Mist

Saiken's last known host is Utakata, a rogue ninja from Kirigakure who leaves the village during the era of the Bloody Mist and then spends his life fending off the hunters sent after him. His trademark is a soap bubble ninjutsu, blown with a pipe, which the fourth databook notes, on page 37, he knew how to mix with Saiken's acid.

The control he exerts over his beast is intermediate. Utakata is not among the jinchuriki cited as fully mastering their tailed beast, but he reaches every level of Saiken's chakra, up to the Six-Tails' full form. He uses it decisively at least once: in the anime, he takes and absorbs the Fury kinjutsu without harm by transforming, even though he had promised himself never to resort to that power.

The anime also grants him a six-tailed Version 2 form, quickly reached but no longer truly under his control, in which his chakra cloak turns blue. It is in this form that his body oozes the Six-Tails' corrosive liquid, that he becomes malleable enough to wrap around his targets, and that he extends his tails to strike at a distance.

A young man with long black hair and a gray-blue kimono blows into a curved pipe and releases a string of iridescent bubbles in a dark forest.
Utakata fights with a pipe: his soap bubble ninjutsu is his signature.

The corrosive alkali

The Six-Tails emits corrosive substances capable of disintegrating a target on contact, and the fourth databook catalogs two of them, separately. The first is a gas, the Chirokyu (知狼朽, “Decay of the Wisdom Wolf”), page 322: Saiken opens its mouth and releases a dense gas that covers a wide area in a short time and instantly disintegrates a good-sized tree (chapter 568, page 3). The anime colors it pink when Saiken uses it, white when its host does; the video games render it white.

The second is liquid: the Hiruma (蛭間, “Leech Interval”), page 325, which appeared one chapter earlier, in 566. The word “acid,” convenient as it is, is an approximation: the entry describes an extremely alkaline liquid that burns on contact. In Version 2 form, Utakata oozes it from his whole body; Killer Bee, having shifted into the Eight-Tails' full form, finds that the substance goes through his skin, and Utakata uses it to break free from the grip of Gyuki.

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A white tentacled creature spews from its maw a wide pinkish jet that falls back in thick clouds over a plain; two tiny figures flee in the foreground.
The substance projected by Saiken covers the ground over hundreds of meters.

Mizuame Nabara, taking a hit from Kurama, reborn younger

Corrosives aside, Saiken's arsenal rests on its affinity for Water Release (Suiton). The sticky, adhesive substance it expels from its mouth has a name, Water Release: Mizuame Nabara (水遁・水飴拿原, “Starch Syrup Capture Field”), a C-rank technique cataloged in the third databook, page 273, and performed with the hand signs of Ram then Tiger. It covers the ground with a highly viscous water that hampers movement; its ordinary range does not exceed a few meters, but it can go as far as turning an entire pond into syrup (chapter 658, page 7).

The technique is not reserved for tailed beasts either: Saiken shares it with an unexpected user, the Konoha ninja Izumo Kamizuki. The rest of its arsenal is that of any tailed beast: a colossal chakra reserve it freely transfers to whomever it wishes, and the Tailed Beast Bomb (Bijudama). To this are added considerable endurance — it withstands being hurled far away by Kurama — and powerful healing abilities, able to close wounds in a few seconds, in itself as in others.

Saiken is, finally, immortal in practice: when it dies, its chakra eventually reforms and it returns, in a younger appearance. Two additions specific to the other media round out the picture: the anime grants it the soap bubble ninjutsu, the very one its host practices, and the video games have it produce those bubbles through its mouth. There it is playable as Utakata's awakening in Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution and Ultimate Ninja Storm 4.

Close-up on the pale gray snout of a creature with thin drooping antennae and small light-colored teeth: a thick, gleaming mass, pale green and streaked, pours from its maw and covers dark rocks.
Water Release: Mizuame Nabara — Saiken expels from its maw a highly viscous water that covers the ground and hampers movement.

Captured by the Akatsuki

The manga does not show Utakata's capture. It places it within a range: either before Gaara's abduction by Deidara (chapter 256, page 15), or between that abduction and that of Yugito Nii by Kakuzu and Hidan — for once Yugito is sealed, Pain notes that there are only three tailed beasts left to capture (chapter 332, page 5). Utakata dies at twenty-six, killed by the extraction of the Six-Tails.

The anime, for its part, puts the scene into images and makes it the conclusion of the “Rokubi Hatsudo” arc. Having gone looking for the Kiri Anbu, Utakata comes across a bloodied mask and then finds himself facing Pain's six bodies, sent by Nagato to capture the Six-Tails; he puts two of them out of action before being overwhelmed. The detail of the forced shift into Version 2 during that clash comes from a much later episode, 324. Saiken is then extracted from his body and sealed inside the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path (Gedo Mazo).

Saiken's story does not end with that sealing. Kabuto Yakushi recovers Utakata's DNA and brings him back with the Edo Tensei (Reanimation Jutsu) (chapter 515, page 16). Tobi then turns the reanimated jinchuriki into his own Six Paths of Pain, with a Rinnegan in the left eye and a Sharingan in the right eye (chapter 544, page 15). The tailed beasts are resealed inside their former hosts (chapter 565, page 1), then a chakra receiver is implanted in each body (chapter 565, page 11).

Close-up on the face of a man with long black hair, gray skin run through with cracks and the visible eye a pale mauve ringed with black.
The extraction kills Utakata; he reappears only reanimated, his skin cracked.

The corrosive gas unleashed on Kakashi and Might Guy

It is during the Fourth Great Ninja War that the manga shows Saiken in combat. Tobi forces the reanimated Utakata into the Six-Tails' full form, and the beast attacks Kakashi Hatake and Might Guy by expelling a corrosive compound from its maw. Kakashi forbids Guy to touch it; the assault forces the two men back for a moment, until Guy disperses the cloud with his Morning Peacock. The Six-Tails immediately prepares to attack again.

The pace changes after the resealing of Son Goku into the Demonic Statue: Tobi, determined to hold nothing back, forces the remaining jinchuriki to transform completely. In the melee, Saiken immobilizes the Nine-Tails' right arm by swallowing it whole, before being torn from its grip and hurled against Matatabi, the two beasts flying off into the distance together.

The sequence marks the first appearance of the Chirokyu, in chapter 567 on the manga side and episode 324 on the anime side. The opposing tailed beasts then regroup and prepare a collective Tailed Beast Bomb, launched at Naruto and deflected by the one he fires with Kurama. The anime adds a scene absent from the manga: still aware of his actions, Utakata communicates mentally with Naruto and confides his regrets to him before his consciousness fades.

On a dusty battlefield, a shinobi with spiky white hair and a cloth mask, seen from behind on the right, and a man with black bowl-cut hair surrounded by a green halo, on the left, frame a large red chakra form whose pointed appendages radiate above an elongated head with a white eye.
Fourth Great Ninja War: Kakashi Hatake and Might Guy face the reanimated Utakata, wrapped in the Six-Tails' chakra tails.

After Utakata: Madara, Kaguya, Sasuke's prison

In the shared consciousness of the tailed beasts, which Naruto enters at the heart of the explosion, Saiken introduces itself to the young ninja. Freed afterward from its chakra receiver, it confirms Kurama's conviction: this boy really is the one the Sage of the Six Paths spoke of. It is immediately resealed inside the Demonic Statue. The Allied Shinobi Forces eventually extract the tailed beasts from Obito's body; Saiken strikes Madara along with the eight others, which opens for Gaara and Shukaku the window they need for their Imperial Funeral Desert Seal, from which the Uchiha escapes in his Susanoo.

Naruto, in Tailed Beast Mode, pins Madara to the ground with a blow of his tail; Saiken and the others follow suit to compound the damage, without finishing him off. The Uchiha then receives his right Rinnegan from a clone of White Zetsu, summons the Demonic Statue from Obito's body, drives the tailed beasts back by means of Limbo, then chains and reseals them. When Kaguya Otsutsuki is brought back to life, Saiken takes part in the combined power the nine lend Naruto to overwhelm her.

Kaguya is sealed by the Six Paths: Chibaku Tensei of Naruto and Sasuke, which ejects the tailed beasts from her body in the process. Sasuke immediately subdues them with a genjutsu and confines them in his own Chibaku Tensei, before releasing them once he is defeated and brought back to his senses (chapter 699). Years later, when Urashiki Otsutsuki goes after Shukaku, Saiken accepts the telepathic meeting arranged by Naruto — Matatabi, Kokuo and Chomei refuse it, fearing they will be taken back by humans. The anime finally shows it sensing Kurama's chakra fade away after the Baryon Mode.

Against a yellow-green background, several giant creatures, entirely white and outlined with a single stroke, are piled together — a feline head with fangs, a horned monkey, long tails, a muzzle striped with black, a horse's head — while blocks of bright pink rock fly around them.
The Six Paths: Chibaku Tensei seals Kaguya Otsutsuki and, in the process, ejects the nine tailed beasts from her body, Saiken among them.

Summary Table

Aspect Details
Name / rank Saiken, the Six-Tails (Rokubi), the six-tailed beast
Form Giant white slug with a bluish sheen, slimy body, six tails
Jinchuriki Utakata, rogue ninja from Kirigakure (soap bubbles)
Power Corrosive alkali spat from the mouth; Tailed Beast Bomb (Bijudama)
Fate Captured by the Akatsuki, killed by the extraction; Utakata reanimated with the Edo Tensei

FAQ

  • What form does Saiken, the Six-Tails (Rokubi), take?
    A gigantic bipedal slug with six tails, white with a faint bluish sheen, its body covered in mucus, with tentacles in place of eyes.
  • Who is the jinchuriki of the six-tailed beast?
    Utakata, a rogue ninja from Kirigakure, the Hidden Mist Village. He fights with soap bubbles blown through a pipe.
  • What are Saiken's powers?
    It spits a corrosive alkali (often called “acid”) and can, like any tailed beast, fire a Tailed Beast Bomb (Bijudama). Utakata mixes this alkali into his bubbles.
  • How does Utakata die?
    Hunted down and captured by the Akatsuki, he dies when Saiken is extracted from him, the beast being sealed inside the Demonic Statue.
  • Who named Saiken?
    Hagoromo, the Sage of the Six Paths, when he divided the Ten-Tails' chakra. The name is not revealed to Naruto until the Fourth Great Ninja War.

In summary

A peaceful creature with a corrosive power, Saiken forms with the melancholy Utakata one of the most endearing — and most tragic — duos in the gallery of tailed beasts.

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