Sasuke Retsuden: Redaku Prison and the Inmate Jiji

A novel published in 2019 sends Sasuke Uchiha to have himself locked up under prisoner number 487 in a mountain prison more than two weeks away from the Land of Fire, to look there for the cure to Naruto's illness. Sakura, for her part, goes undercover as a medical ninja in the infirmary, and the guard patrolling the Institute is a resurrected dinosaur.

The Land of Redaku and its institute turned prison

The Land of Redaku is a small mountain country set in a valley that its founders deliberately isolated: they believed that having neighbors leads sooner or later to war. It therefore shares a border with no one, and it takes more than two weeks to reach it from the Land of Fire. The country has no standing army and most of its inhabitants have never known the slightest physical confrontation: there, jutsu are taken for impossible magic and shinobi stories for folktales.

The Astronomical Research Institute stands high in the mountains, just beyond the country's northern border. It was founded by Janmaru-Tataru, a contemporary of the Sage of the Six Paths, as a refuge for research; centuries later, it serves as a prison for Redaku's criminals. The cells there are bare, the clothing gives no protection from the cold, the food has little nutritional value, and every inmate works the quarry whatever their age or state of health.

Sasuke Uchiha did not end up there by accident: he had himself locked up under prisoner number 487. Naruto Uzumaki suffers from an illness that Hagoromo, the Sage of the Six Paths , is said to have had before him and from which he is said to have recovered at the Institute, thanks to the "polar particles" drawn from a meteorite. Sakura, for her part, goes undercover as the infirmary's new doctor, after finding that her messenger hawks never reached their destination.

Inmate No. 544 and his cover story

Jiji is introduced to the other prisoners as inmate No. 544, sentenced for stealing food. That version is false. He was originally a Sunagakure ninja: a few years before the events of Sasuke Retsuden, the Prime Minister of Redaku, touring the region, hired him to come and train a ninja army in a historically peaceful country with no experience of combat. Jiji then moved into a room in the royal palace, in the capital.

A palace maid, Margo, was put in charge of looking after him. The two fell in love and Jiji decided to give up the ninja life to stay with her. The Prime Minister eventually discovered their affair: rather than punish her, he offered to let it last on one condition, that Jiji spend a year in the service of the researcher Zansuru. Jiji accepted and promised Margo he would come back at the end of that year, without telling her what he was going to do there.

In the cell, he plays the talkative, friendly inmate. He welcomes Sasuke, introduces him to Penjira and Ganno, warns him about the severity of the rules and fakes injuries to escape the quarry. None of this is spontaneous: that sociability was a front meant to spy on the other prisoners on Zansuru's behalf. At the same time, Jiji was quietly searching for the polar particles, never managing to draw from the Institute's documents the place where they were hidden.

The fake death certificate

At the end of the year, Meno remained the only resurrected creature and Jiji was getting ready to leave. Just before his departure, he was told that Margo had died, carried off by an epidemic in the capital; the Prime Minister even sent him a copy of the death certificate. All of it is false, and the lie comes from the director himself: it was Zansuru who asked the Prime Minister to fabricate the document to back up his version.

Jiji lost all will to live: he held Margo's death to be his fault, convinced that nothing would have happened if he had stayed with her. Zansuru then offered him a deal: the technique that brought Meno back can also bring Margo back. If Jiji stays until the dragon army is complete, Zansuru will take care of finding the body. It is at that moment that Jiji discovers the army project, and he declares that it makes no difference to him.

Margo, for her part, was perfectly fine. The Prime Minister had assigned her to Prince Nanara, sent to the village of Nagare, where she did the cooking and the cleaning and recruited the tutors that the boy's pranks kept driving away. She knew nothing of the lies fed to Jiji. That departure suited the Prime Minister: it was he and his allies who had convinced Queen Manari to send her brother away from the palace, arguing that he was too young to grow up there. Nanara could see that his sister was being manipulated by her advisers.

Zansuru, a director with no ninja chakra

Zansuru ran the Institute. An archaeologist by training, he had spent years there studying the dinosaur fossils that are routinely dug up in the surrounding area, and it was by going through the archives of the place that he learned how to bring back the dead. His plan: to build from those fossils an immortal army in the service of the Prime Minister. One obstacle remained, and a considerable one, because resurrection requires an amount of chakra that only a shinobi possesses.

Zansuru was not a ninja. He sometimes claimed to be, but his reserves were those of an ordinary man, which Sasuke eventually confirmed with the Sharingan before deducing that someone else was animating the creatures. His left eye was a glass prosthesis — a technological device in the anime — convincing enough that almost no one ever noticed it. It made him immune to eye-based genjutsu and causes the only genjutsu Sasuke tries on him to fail. The novel does credit him with a brief use of Wind Release, to keep a flying dinosaur in the air.

His way of governing came down to spectacle: he was satisfied with the public executions carried out by Meno, knowing that they discouraged escapes. He stored the fossils in a secret room accessible only from his own office, where he also raised the chickens intended for the sacrifices. He dies by his own order: perched on a flying dinosaur, he gives it a new one, which mechanically cancels the previous one — to carry him — and sends him plunging to the ground. In the novel he orders it to clear the Titan stuck in the mud, in the anime to flee Sasuke.

Meno, the Institute's resurrected guard

Meno was a dinosaur that lived in Redaku millions of years ago and that died while still a juvenile. The country's marshes preserved his remains, which became fossils, before the land rose into a mountain range whose peaks yield those bones today. Zansuru and Jiji resurrected him first, as a test, and gave him this name, written 瑪瑙 and meaning "agate".

The novel describes him as a large bipedal lizard with thick skin covered in horns, conical fangs and sharp claws: eighty centimeters tall, more than two meters from snout to tail tip. Zansuru identifies him as a "Tirano"; the manga and the anime draw him more like a velociraptor, with a blue stripe along his flanks. His legs, compared to springs, let him cover dozens of meters in a single stride.

His claws carry a poison that cuts off the chakra circulatory system until his victim is completely, though temporarily, immobilized; he deliberately pulls back after clawing, to let the substance take effect. Immortal, he needs neither food nor sleep and patrols without interruption. The guards had ended up no longer locking the cells, and the messenger hawks no longer got through without the red authorization cloth. Sasuke first takes him for a summon.

Redaku's reincarnation ninjutsu

The technique has no official name: it is only classified among the reincarnation ninjutsu, under the label of Redaku's reincarnation ninjutsu. It is one of the many subjects recorded at the Institute, an archive of knowledge several centuries old for the country. Zansuru deciphered enough of it to learn it, but, not being a ninja, he recruited Jiji to perform it in his place.

The mechanism is described precisely. The user summons a dinosaur's soul from its fossilized remains and places it in the body of a living sacrifice: a chicken, one of the closest living relatives of dinosaurs. Dust and ashes then envelop the animal and give it back the size and appearance it had in life. The reincarnated body keeps all its former physical abilities. Six hand signs start it: Rat, Ox, Monkey, Tiger, Boar, Dragon — the same ones that, performed again, release the souls.

Control obeys rules that the story exploits to the very end. The information gathered by a creature travels back instantly to whoever is directing it, and that person can send it chakra to strengthen it. This control can be handed to someone who is not the user, as Jiji does for Zansuru, but that third party cannot give complex orders and each new order cancels the previous one, with no regard for the consequences. On his death, the last orders of the original user take effect again.

What sets it apart from the Edo Tensei

Sasuke first believes he is dealing with the Edo Tensei (Reanimation Jutsu). Zansuru, for his part, maintains that the Impure World Reincarnation is only a regional variant of Redaku's technique. The link between the two does exist: a few decades earlier, Orochimaru had come to study this research at the Institute, had stolen some of its most valuable documents there, and used what he had learned to perfect Tobirama Senju's technique.

The differences are documented. No talisman is placed in the skulls, unlike what the Impure World Reincarnation does, and the means by which the user keeps hold of his creatures is never explained. Above all, where the humans resurrected by the Edo Tensei do not seem affected by their wounds, Redaku's creatures feel pain: unable to die, they are the ones who endure normally fatal wounds until they have fully healed.

This point also separates the media. In the novel, the reincarnated body is immortal and repairs itself indefinitely, with burns simply taking longer than the rest to disappear. The anime removes most of that advantage: there the creatures bleed and can be killed if the damage is serious enough. The anime also shifts the director's line, since Zansuru there does not know what the Impure World Reincarnation is when Sasuke mentions it to him.

How Sasuke takes Meno from Jiji

The first two encounters go badly. The Sharingan's genjutsu has no effect: Meno staggers for a moment, then lunges. Sasuke drives him back, shapes an ice dagger, cuts off some of his claws and runs him through the chest — then finds him intact the next morning. On the second attempt, he even tries the Rinnegan, with no more result; a mere scratch is enough to poison him, and it is Sakura who pulls him out of it.

The user's control resists ordinary genjutsu. Sasuke then considers Amaterasu, whose inextinguishable flames would immobilize the creatures, then gives up on it: unable to die, they would suffer for as long as the fire took to destroy them. He does, however, remember Itachi , who, brought back by the Impure World Reincarnation, had crushed his summoner's control with a genjutsu powerful enough. The principle, if not the tool, strikes him as transferable.

What works comes down to a few gestures. Sasuke changes the tone of his voice, treats the burns Meno brought back from an overturned lantern — water, then wind to set it into soothing ice — and does not flee when the creature finally bites his arm. He finally offers to send it back to the peaceful afterlife it was pulled from. The genjutsu then takes hold, and Sasuke injects his chakra into it to supplant Jiji's control for good.

The ending and where the three versions stand

On the night of the attack, Jiji stabs Sakura in the back with a poisoned kunai, takes from her the container of polar particles she has just located and leaves her under a collapsing building. He does not know that she placed a seal on his wrist from his very first visit to the infirmary: she had immediately judged that he had too much chakra for an ordinary inmate. The buried trap she links to that seal pins his feet to the ground.

Sasuke arrives with Meno and shows him the letter from Kakashi Hatake: the Prime Minister has been overthrown by Prince Nanara, helped by a maid named Margo. Jiji understands that he has been manipulated, performs the signs again and releases all the souls. The one that was about to swoop down on Sakura lingers: in the novel it turns on Jiji and slits his throat, in the anime he steps in to protect Sakura and is bitten. She treats him despite his asking to be left to die.

Three versions coexist. The novel by Jun Esaka, illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto, was published on August 2, 2019; the manga adaptation, ten chapters illustrated by Shingo Kimura, began on October 23, 2022 in Shonen Jump+; the anime drew from it the twenty-fifth arc of Boruto, from episodes 282 to 286. The endings diverge: the novel closes on Shikamaru announcing that Naruto may lose the use of chakra for good, while the anime shows him recovered in Konoha.

Summary Table

FAQ

• Is Redaku's reincarnation ninjutsu the Edo Tensei?
  No, even though Sasuke gets it wrong at first. The two look alike enough for the Institute's director to reverse the hierarchy and make Tobirama's technique the local version of his own. Four markers separate them: no talisman slipped into the skulls, a living sacrifice that is a chicken, creatures that suffer from their wounds, and a mode of control that is never explained. The historical bridge between the two is called Orochimaru.
• Does Jiji die at the end of Sasuke Retsuden?
  No. He is seriously wounded at the moment he releases the souls and asks Sakura to let him die; she refuses and treats him. A year later, he serves as an aide to King Nanara alongside Margo and guides him around the site of the Institute, where the novel has flowers laid before a monument to the sixty-two inmates killed.
• Why does Sasuke let himself be locked up in this prison?
  Because Naruto has an illness that is damaging his chakra circulatory system. The anime sums up the starting point as early as episode 282: Kurama revealed to Naruto that the Sage of the Six Paths had suffered from the same ailment, the archives showed that he had recovered by staying at the Astronomical Research Institute, and Kakashi was sent there. Since the Institute also serves as a prison, Sasuke has himself locked up under prisoner number 487.
• Is Meno a dragon or a dinosaur?
  A dinosaur. In Redaku, "dragon" is simply the everyday word for the fossils dug up at the tops of the mountains, and the usage carried over into the dialogue. Meno died as a juvenile, hence his small size next to the other creatures: Zansuru believes this handicap decisive when he faces an adult of his species, before Sasuke's chakra tips the balance.
• Are the resurrected creatures really immortal?
  It depends on the medium. The novel grants them limitless regeneration, however serious the blow, with burns lingering longer than the other wounds. The anime cuts that benefit back sharply, since the creatures there bleed and succumb to sufficient damage. In both cases they feel pain, which pushes Sasuke to avoid wounding them.
• What becomes of Zansuru?
  He dies in flight, through his own recklessness. Not being the original summoner, he can give his mount only one order at a time, and the new one drives out the old — including the order to carry him. The novel has him order it to clear the Titan stuck in the mud, the anime to flee Sasuke; in both cases the dinosaur obeys and Zansuru dies on impact. The creatures then revert to Jiji's last orders.

In summary

One technique, three versions and a control that changes hands. Zansuru holds Jiji with a fake death certificate, Jiji holds dozens of creatures that feel pain, and Sasuke takes Meno back by treating him before laying his genjutsu on him.