Le Quatrième Raikage (A) : le Kage de Kumo

The Fourth Raikage (A): The Kage of Kumogakure

4373 words | Reading time: 22 min

CharacterKageKumogakure

No Kage runs faster than he does. Son of the Third Raikage, A leads Kumogakure with blasts of the Lightning Armor and rivals Minato for speed. This profile untangles his bond with Killer Bee, an adoptive big brother with no blood tie and no Tailed Beast, revisits the left arm lost to Sasuke's Amaterasu before the war, and his role as supreme commander of the Allied Shinobi Forces.

The fastest of all the Kage, lightning incarnate and Killer Bee's big brother: this is A, the Fourth Raikage of Kumogakure. A profile of the colossus of the Hidden Cloud.

Contents

The Leader of Kumogakure

A — whose name is the Japanese pronunciation of the letter A, like B, C, and F, other shinobi from the same village — is the Fourth Raikage, at the head of Kumogakure. Son of the Third Raikage, also named A, he was groomed to take the office (chapter 541, page 17). He first appears in chapter 416 of the manga, and in episode 152 of Naruto Shippuden.

The fourth databook devotes pages 202 and 203 to him: ninja registration number CL2211, born June 1 st , 47 years old in Part II, 198.2 cm and 101.1 kg, blood type A, Kage rank. He is credited there with three chakra natures: Lightning Release (Raiton), Earth Release (Doton), and Water Release (Suiton). During the conflict his role is doubled by that of supreme commander of the Allied Shinobi Forces.

The physical description comes down to a few traits: dark skin, a massive build, white hair combed back — blond in the anime —, a mustache and goatee, prominent cheekbones and hollow rings under the eyes, a deep crease across the forehead. He has pointed canines and an upper lip darker than the lower one, traits inherited from his father. He most often wears a white haori with nothing underneath, and sometimes the traditional Raikage hat.

In a room with a large gold panel engraved with an ideogram, a muscular dark-skinned man with spiky white hair and a white robe is crouched forward; two ninja stand behind him and a woman in a suit, a file under her arm, waits on the right.
A leads Kumogakure as a military chief, an office he holds from his father, the Third Raikage.

Killer Bee's Adoptive Brother

Kumogakure has long wanted its Raikage to have a fighting partner. Since A had no blood brother, selections were held among young children; after many attempts, only one managed to match his power and pull off the Double Lariat on a training dummy (chapter 541, pages 17 to 19) — the duo's entry specifies that he decapitated the dummy. That child was given the name "B," and A declared that from that day on they would be brothers.

The pair has a name, the A–B Combo (エービーコンビ, E Bi Konbi), and a reputation: "the strongest of tag teams" (Saikyo Taggu, chapter 542, page 10). Their Double Lariat is feared well beyond Kumogakure (chapter 542, page 7), and the two brothers perfected it to the point of performing it with A under his Lightning Armor and Killer Bee under his Tailed Beast cloak (chapter 473, pages 6-7). The Lariat is said to be a skill taught to every Raikage and to the ninja who earns the title of B.

The brotherhood has its comic side and its harsh side. The Iron Claw, listed on page 314 of the fourth databook, simply consists of crushing the target's face with one hand: A uses it to punish his younger brother every time his behavior exasperates him (chapter 467, page 19). And the duo is effectively dissolved when the Third Raikage dies, when A takes office and confines to the village the jinchuriki of Gyuki (chapter 543, page 13).

Two muscular men rush in on either side of a third and each swings an outstretched arm at him; the one on the right, dark-skinned with white hair, wears a white cape, the one on the left, overlaid in orange, has sword hilts on his back.
The Double Lariat only works if both strikes land at the same instant: it was by managing that B became A's brother.

Blue B, the Jinchuriki Cousin, and the Severed Horn

Blue B, A's cousin, was Killer Bee's predecessor as jinchuriki of the Eight-Tails (Hachibi). On a mission with the two brothers, he confides that neither he, nor his uncle, nor his father was ever able to subdue the beast, for reasons of incompatibility (chapter 542, pages 1 to 6). A describes him as a man of great talent, virtue, and lineage; Blue B answers that none of that counts, and that a jinchuriki needs something that gives him strength and fills the void hollowed out by the sealing (pages 4-5). A will do his best to apply that advice.

Some time later, Blue B loses control and the beast kills eight ninja from Kumogakure, among them Furui, Motoi's father. A is part of the Eight-Tails Subduing Team, a unit set up by the Third Raikage to bind the beast with chains — charged with fuinjutsu in the anime — long enough for the Raikage to prepare the Kohaku no Johei. During the binding, the Eight-Tails impales Furui on its horn; A cuts off the horn (chapter 494, page 2), which stuns the beast long enough to seal it. Blue B dies of it.

The manga stops there. The anime, for its part, adds a cause: Orochimaru poses as Blue B's doctor, gives him genjutsu pills to paralyze him, then uses the Gogyo Kaiin, the Five Elements Unseal, to break the Iron Armor Seal and extract the beast. He then recovers fragments of the severed horn, carrying Blue B's DNA (Shippuden, episode 318). None of these elements appears in the manga.

In the brown light of a memory, a young man with long white and black locks, a dark jacket and a scarf, stands facing forward, tiny before the giant muzzle of a creature whose mouth is open on clenched teeth, its big rounded appendages filling the entire background.
Blue B, A's cousin, before the Eight-Tails, whose jinchuriki he was before Killer Bee: neither he, nor his uncle, nor his father was ever able to subdue the beast.

Minato, the Rival of the Third Great Ninja War

It is during the Third Great Ninja War that A faces for the first time Minato Namikaze (chapters 542-543). Before withdrawing, Minato identifies Killer Bee as the jinchuriki of the Eight-Tails, tells A that next time the title of Kage will be at stake, and slips him a piece of advice: let his brother know who he is before he is neither quite human nor quite jinchuriki (chapter 542, page 17). They will clash many times. Jiraiya will one day tell A that he takes Minato for the Child of the Prophecy.

The balance of power comes down to one blow. His fastest punch, thrown under the Lightning Armor, has been dodged only twice: by Minato thanks to the Flying Thunder God (Hiraishin) (chapter 542, page 14), then by Naruto in Nine-Tails Chakra Mode (chapter 544, pages 11 to 13). The manga gives it no name — A speaks only of his "fastest punch" —, and it is the game Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 that christens it "Lightning Straight." After Minato's death, and until Naruto surpasses him, A proclaims himself the fastest ninja in the world.

The consequence lies elsewhere. When his father dies during that same war, A inherits the title of Raikage (chapter 543, page 13). Out of fear of losing his brother in turn, he forbids him to continue his Lariat training, sends him to complete his mastery of the Tailed Beast Bomb at the Valley of Clouds and Lightning, then confines him to the village (page 14). He will later forbid him any full transformation into a Tailed Beast, judged too powerful.

"Kikanbo": The Character of a Raikage

The manga nicknames him "A the Unruly" (きかん坊のエー, Kikanbo no E, chapter 542, page 12), and the fourth databook also records "Boss" (Jin no Sho, page 142). The portrait comes down to three words: stern, blunt, cutting — to the point that it becomes remarkable for anyone to make him change his mind. A detail of language, invisible in translation, tells the rest: once he becomes Raikage, he stops referring to himself as "ore," a mark of pride, and switches to "washi," the humble term of an older man.

His credo he addresses to Naruto: shinobi must not bow their heads, only action and power command respect, the history of men is a history of war, and the weak will be crushed (chapter 457, page 14). By the same logic, he takes jinchuriki for tools of their village, not for individuals with a say in the matter (chapter 541, page 13). His hypocrisy is plain: he blames the great nations for letting their best people slip away while denying what Kumogakure itself has done — kidnappings, thefts of secrets, broken promises.

His temper does the rest. He leaves his office by going through the window to get to the Five Kage Summit, smashes the table there and points out that Kumogakure has never had a representative in the Akatsuki; three passages of the manga report the exasperation he provokes, and the judgment that it does his office a disservice (chapters 456, 459, and 460).

The anime adds a whole scene. A demands from Tsunade an operation for one of his men, meets a refusal in the name of the Hyuga Affair, challenges her to arm wrestling and wins on speed. She ends up accepting, but hands the procedure to Shizune and leaves the room after being splattered with blood: A sees a weakness in that and refuses to entrust her with the lives of his men (episodes 286-287).

The Lightning Armor

The technique is properly called the Lightning Release Chakra Mode (雷遁チャクラモード, Raiton Chakura Modo): "Raiton no Yoroi," the Lightning Armor, is only another name for it, and the editions still diverge — "Lightning Style Armour" on English-language television, "Cloak of Lightning" at Viz. B-rank, chakra flow ninjutsu of Lightning Release chakra, entry on page 305 of the Jin no Sho, introduced in chapter 460 of the manga and in episode 202 of Shippuden. The more chakra A builds up, the more his hair stands on end (chapter 463, page 8).

The shroud stimulates his nervous system, increases his speed and his reaction time to the point of making his raw speed and his reflexes comparable to those of the Yellow Flash (chapter 462, page 3). It deflects most blows, and A is impressed that the Chidori manages to pierce it, even barely (chapter 463, pages 2-3). The Raiton no Shunshin lets him dodge as fast as Amaterasu (pages 13 to 15), and even the Sharingan struggles to follow his movements; only Minato's Hiraishin and the Nine-Tails Chakra Mode have been shown to be faster.

On the power side, Karin compares his chakra to that of a Tailed Beast (chapter 463, page 9), and under the armor his strength sits just below Tsunade's (chapter 577, page 3). That is how he shatters the Susanoo, presented though it is as an absolute defense (chapter 463, pages 16-17). A publishing footnote: on the cover of volume 59, the mode is colored yellow.

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A muscular dark-skinned man in a white tank top and forehead protector charges fist raised at a blond ninja in a green vest; his body is haloed in a bluish glow and speed trails.
The speed the Lightning Armor grants is put on the same level as that of Minato, the Yellow Flash of Konoha — here the target.

A Pro Wrestler Drawn by Kishimoto

Masashi Kishimoto explains that he drew him massively muscled to convey his power, and, having conceived him above all as a user of taijutsu, gave him wrestling holds and a championship belt. The visual detail follows: black Fuma shuriken tattoos on both shoulders, large gold bands on the wrists — abandoned after the Five Kage Summit, he will put one back on only briefly at the start of the war —, a gold belt with a boar's head, black pants with torn legs, Kumogakure shin guards. The whole thing gives him the look of a professional wrestler.

Three holds carry a scene. The Liger Bomb (databook page 303), a nintaijutsu of B rank: A lifts his opponent and drives him head first into the ground, a powerbomb borrowed from the wrestler Jushin "Thunder" Liger; Darui claims that no one has ever survived it, and the impact shatters the ribs of Sasuke's Susanoo (chapter 463, pages 6-7). The Raiton: Lariat, A-rank (page 308), is a charge launched at close to the speed of light, capable of taking off the entire torso. The Iron Claw (page 314), for its part, is only a hold on the face.

There remains a play on writing peculiar to Kumogakure's techniques: they are given an English name transcribed with kanji chosen for their sound rather than for their meaning. 雷犂熱刀 thus reads "rariatto" where the characters would normally be pronounced rairi netto, and 雷我爆弾 reads "raiga bomu" instead of raiga bakudan. The Lariat is, moreover, a hold feared in puroresu, and Killer Bee shouts "Wheee!" as he throws it, a nod to the wrestler Stan Hansen who popularized it in Japan.

A very muscular man with short white hair, mouth open in a shout, holds both arms above his head to support a body in dark clothes horizontally; both are caught in a web of very bright blue electric arcs against a night background.
The Liger Bomb: A lifts Sasuke above his head before driving him head first into the ground, a powerbomb borrowed from the wrestler Jushin "Thunder" Liger.

The Arm Lost Against Sasuke

At the Five Kage Summit, A outpaces Sasuke Uchiha while the latter is still adjusting to his Mangekyo Sharingan. The Chidori inflicts only a light wound on him, and the Liger Bomb is not enough to hurt Sasuke, protected by his Susanoo; Sasuke tries Amaterasu, too slow for him, then covers the colossus in black flames to deter close combat. A charges through the fire anyway, breaks the defense and lands a hit on Sasuke — his arm bursts into flames.

Stopped by the Fifth Kazekage, who asks to speak to Sasuke, he uses the pause to amputate his own left forearm and keep Amaterasu from spreading to the rest of his body (chapter 464, page 6), then has the bleeding stopped by C. Now A was left-handed (chapter 473, page 8): in that same chapter he tells Killer Bee that he does not need his good hand, his weak hand being enough to beat anyone. To Darui, who blames himself, he will later answer that he has no regret for that left arm, since he still has his two right arms — this one, and him (chapter 528, pages 3-4).

Two traps await the reader. The loss takes place before the Fourth Great Ninja War and against Sasuke, not against Madara; and on the last page of chapter 562, A is drawn with his left hand, an error corrected in the tankobon edition. The anime's thirteenth opening goes further by giving him an artificial arm of Lightning Release chakra to strike Madara's Susanoo with both hands: the manga never shows anything of the sort.

Run through with arcs of blue lightning, a muscular white-haired man brings his outstretched arm down on a young man with spiky black hair; his forearm, wrapped in a beige cuff, is entirely engulfed by black flames, against a purple aura
The arm that strikes Sasuke is engulfed by the black flames of Amaterasu: A amputates it himself to keep them from spreading to the rest of his body.

The Day Killer Bee Put Him Down

The starting point is a conviction: A takes jinchuriki for tools of the village, and states that he had resolved to kill his own brother if the situation demanded it (chapter 541, page 15). When B and Naruto escape from Turtle Island, he and Tsunade set out to intercept them in person. Naruto tries to flee in the Chakra Mode of the Nine-Tails; A manages to keep up with him and cuts off his route. Judging that he will not convince him, he decides to kill him rather than let him be captured.

B parries the blow and warns his brother that he will then have to kill them both; A answers that this poses no problem for him. B holds out his fist to remind him of everything they have been through, then, for lack of words, attacks him and beats him with the Lariat — the flaw is named along the way: through sheer overprotection, A refuses to acknowledge his younger brother's own strength. Defeated, he nonetheless refuses the pleas of B and Tsunade.

B tries one last time: Tailed Beasts alone do not make a jinchuriki's power, those who care about him count for something too — he calls them "suns" —, and Naruto has two. Naruto then tells him about his parents, who died shortly after his birth and yet made him strong. A charges his armor to the maximum and throws his fastest blow: Naruto dodges it completely. One has surpassed him in strength, the other in speed; from then on A judges them indispensable to ending the war, lets them through and lets slip that the savior may still be alive through him (chapter 544, page 14).

On bluish rocky ground, a muscular brown-skinned man in a white high-collared vest, with weapon hilts and ropes on his back, follows through with one arm; on the left, a figure in a long white coat and torn dark pants is flung backward through the air, head down, wrapped in a blue electric glow.
Killer Bee gets the better of his brother: the Raikage is swept away by the blow of the younger brother he spent his time overprotecting.

Supreme Commander of the Allied Shinobi Forces

At Mifune's suggestion, A is named supreme commander (大権, Taiken) of the Allied Shinobi Forces, with Gaara as regimental commander and Tsunade as staff officer. He stays at headquarters while the armies move out, and takes badly to not being at the front. When his father is reanimated, he wants to go and face him, then finally sends Onoki, Mu also being among those brought back. Same reflex for the Gold and Silver Brothers: he lays out who they are dealing with, has Mabui bring the Kohaku no Johei to Darui, calls in reinforcements, and the two brothers are sealed.

When Tsunade decides to have herself teleported to the battlefield, A asks Mabui to prepare her Tenso no Jutsu for two, despite her protest: the technique can tear a living being apart. Both make it through — Tsunade slightly injured, A without a scratch (chapter 562, page 14) —, and he opens by sending Mu into the rocks. Facing Madara, he has Onoki lighten him then weigh him down to pierce the Susanoo, and charges with lightning the Water Dragon of Mei Terumi to numb the opponent (chapter 588, pages 14-15).

What follows is a collective failure: a wood clone traps him in a genjutsu from which the Tsuchikage pulls him out, and the five Kage end up defeated and gravely wounded, until Karin heals Tsunade, who then gets the others back on their feet. The war does change him on one precise point, though: at first wary of the other villages for their ties to the Akatsuki, he ends up recognizing them as comrades, worrying when they overexert themselves or save his skin (chapter 588, pages 7 to 10). The handover of the title, for its part, will not take place during the conflict.

In a landscape drowned in dust, a huge translucent blue humanoid figure fills the whole frame; at the bottom right, a white-haired man in a white robe rushes toward it, tiny beside it.
Supreme commander of the Allied Shinobi Forces, A charges the reanimated Madara himself.

After the War: The Cannon, the Forgiveness, the Retirement

The novel Kakashi Hiden shows the Kage inspecting the Blood Prison to assess its new warden, Kahyo: to prove herself, she freezes his beard, and the humiliation is enough for the other Kage to confirm her in her post. Two years after the war, in the film The Last: Naruto the Movie, the moon begins to fall toward the Earth by the will of Toneri Otsutsuki: A then brings back out a chakra cannon he had had hidden after the conflict and destroys the meteorites with B's help.

The machine has three muzzles. The two at the bottom fire, at full charge, a blue beam that spreads into a multitude of rays to bring down the meteorites; the one at the top, more powerful, would send its target into another dimension. A wants to use it on the moon itself, but the other Kage refuse as long as Naruto and his team are there. He grants them one hour, prepares to fire when it runs out — and it is B who refuses to kill Naruto, before the news of the mission's success arrives. The transfer cannon will never fire.

The novel Sasuke Shinden: Book of Sunrise wraps up another matter. After the disappearance of more than a hundred shinobi from Konoha, Kumogakure, and Kirigakure, A accepts a joint investigation and consents to Sasuke leading it; when Kumogakure's missing are brought back to him, he thinks back to Naruto begging him to spare him, then forgives the man who cost him an arm. The anime substitutes for it a raid on the Colosseum, where A, C, and Darui arrest the spectators for illegal gambling. At a date nothing specifies, he hands the title over to Darui: chapter 700, page 13, shows him balding, wrinkled, in a black kimono belted with a white sash.

High-angle view of a heavy metal artillery piece with three tubes — one wide and open above, two closed by a cross-shaped grille below — mounted on a riveted platform from which thick cables run, with two round lamps lit and, in the distance, a long line of uniformed figures.
The chakra cannon A had had hidden after the war, brought back out in The Last: Naruto the Movie — the two bottom muzzles to bring down the meteorites, the top one meant to send its target into another dimension.

Summary Table

Aspect Details
Identity A (E), Fourth Raikage of Kumogakure, son of the Third Raikage
Key relationship Killer Bee's adoptive older brother (no blood tie, no Tailed Beast)
Power Lightning Armor (Raiton no Yoroi); speed rivaling Minato's
Injury Loses his left arm to Sasuke's Amaterasu, before the war
War Supreme commander of the Allied Shinobi Forces; Gaara commands the field forces

FAQ

  • Are the Fourth and the Third Raikage the same person?
    No. Both are called "A," but the Fourth is the son of the Third, from whom he inherited the title — hence the frequent confusion.
  • How did A lose his arm?
    At the Five Kage Summit, while attacking Sasuke: his left arm was caught in the black flames of Amaterasu and he amputated it himself. It was before the Fourth Great Ninja War, not against Madara.
  • Is Killer Bee really A's brother?
    His adoptive brother, not his blood brother: as a child, B was the only one to pull off the Double Lariat in sync with A. B carries the Eight-Tails; A has no Tailed Beast.
  • What role does A play in the Fourth Great Ninja War?
    He is the supreme commander (Sotaisho) of the Allied Shinobi Forces. Note: it is Gaara who commands the field forces — the two roles are often confused.
  • Is A faster than Minato?
    His speed rivals Minato's, but Minato kept the edge thanks to his teleportation (Hiraishin): the debate remains open.

In summary

Brutal, loyal, and lightning fast, the Fourth Raikage embodies all of Kumogakure's warrior pride — a leader who commands the entire Allied Shinobi Forces, even with one arm gone.

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