The Legendary Sannin: Jiraiya, Tsunade, and Orochimaru

The three legendary ninja of Konoha, with radically opposed destinies: the herald, the healer, and the traitor. Here is the guide to the Legendary Sannin.

The Three Legendary Ninja

The Sannin — Jiraiya, Tsunade, and Orochimaru — are three exceptional shinobi of Konoha. They were trained together as young genin by Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Third Hokage. The team's first exercise, a bell test, goes badly for Jiraiya: he falls into every one of his master's traps and ends up tied to a post.

Hiruzen tells him to follow Orochimaru's example. Jiraiya retorts that his Transparent Escape Technique proves his skill, since it lets him spy on women at the baths without getting caught — Hiruzen offers to go and check with him. Tsunade mocks him, and he fires back about her flat chest: the discord is there from day one.

One signature unites them all the same: all three perform the Summoning Jutsu with their left hand. The team is disbanded once the three can stand on their own, but they will fight together during the Second Great Ninja War.

The Title Given by Hanzo

Their title does not come from Konoha but from an enemy: Hanzo the Salamander. During the Second Great Ninja War, in Amegakure, they were the only survivors of a clash with him — though it is worth spelling out what surviving means here: Hanzo slaughtered their entire squad and defeated them. A defeat, then, and not a feat that impressed him.

The title is a price, not a reward: he names them the Sannin of Konoha, leaving them to carry that name "in exchange for your spared lives." Most online summaries nevertheless treat it as a tribute.

What follows closes the loop: Hanzo will be killed much later by Pain, during the Amegakure civil war. On learning that the three founders of the Akatsuki were Jiraiya's students, he says that this compassionate organization was repaying the favor he had done himself by sparing the Sannin.

The Amegakure Orphans and the Toad's Prophecy

The real turning point comes right after the battle. On the way home, three orphans from Amegakure — Yahiko, Nagato and Konan — ask to be trained. Orochimaru suggests finishing them off out of mercy; Jiraiya, eaten up by his own part in the war, chooses to stay. He will stay three years, until the children beat one of his shadow clones, and along the way he discovers Nagato's Rinnegan.

He therefore trained Yahiko, Nagato, and Konan, and not Pain: Pain is Yahiko's body animated from a distance by Nagato, and Jiraiya will recognize his former student in the Deva Path.

The prophecy comes from the Great Toad Sage: Jiraiya will meet a student who will save or destroy the world depending on how he trains him. The order of his guesses is counterintuitive: he first suspects Minato, whose genin team he leads before meeting the orphans, then Nagato, and only understands as he dies that it is Naruto.

Toads, Slugs, and Snakes

Each signs an animal-themed summoning contract, instantly recognizable: Jiraiya the toads and Sage Mode, Tsunade the slugs and medical ninjutsu, Orochimaru the snakes. An echo of the folkloric toad, slug, and snake cycle: the Japanese sansukumi, ancestor of rock-paper-scissors, and not the Chinese novel Three Kingdoms it is sometimes wrongly traced to. The frog fears the snake, the snake fears the slug, the slug fears the frog — it is Tsunade who calls the team a three-way deadlock.

Behind the contracts, three places: Mount Myoboku, Ryuchi Cave, and Shikkotsu Forest, the only regions where senjutsu can be learned. The symmetry stops there. Jiraiya alone reaches Sage Mode, imperfectly. Orochimaru masters senjutsu at Ryuchi Cave, but his host body cannot withstand its Sage Mode — hence the Curse Marks, senjutsu chakra diverted. Nothing establishes that Tsunade ever practiced senjutsu.

🐸 A fan of the legendary ninja? Find them in our Naruto figures.

Tanzaku Gai, the Only Reunion of the Three

In the manga, the three Sannin meet again only once, at Tanzaku Gai. Orochimaru, his arms sealed, bargains their healing against the resurrection of Nawaki and Dan Kato. Tsunade drugs Jiraiya's sake to get him out of the way; Kabuto opens his veins and covers her in his blood, paralyzing her with her hemophobia.

She breaks her phobia by stepping in front of the Sword of Kusanagi to protect Naruto, strikes Orochimaru, activates Creation Rebirth — and only then does she accept the title of Fifth Hokage. The summons come only afterward: Gamabunta, Katsuyu, and Manda, the last of whom demands a hundred human sacrifices in compensation.

A useful clarification: this is the only scene in the manga where all three bosses are summoned together, and not the only moment in the series, since the anime shows another one during the Second Great Ninja War. These creatures remain summons bound by contract, and not tailed beasts.

The Hokage Seat, the Thread Running Through All Three Paths

The title of Hokage shapes all three destinies. Orochimaru puts himself forward for the position of Fourth when Hiruzen is thinking of stepping down, and he is passed over: his master judges that he has not understood what being a ninja of Konoha means. It is this rejection, then the appointment of Minato, that leave him no reason to stay. His defection comes after, not before.

Jiraiya, for his part, refuses. The position is offered to him three times: before Minato's appointment; after Minato's death, when Hiruzen wants him as Fifth but cannot manage to locate him; then after Hiruzen's death, when he declines and puts Tsunade forward. The daimyo would have wanted him as Sixth, but by then he was already dead.

The tally: one candidacy rejected, three refusals or missed chances, a single acceptance — Tsunade is the only one of the three to hold the office.

Diverging Paths

After the war, their paths diverge radically. Jiraiya becomes a wandering spymaster and Naruto's mentor, but also a novelist: from Nagato's words about ending the cycle of hatred he draws a book that does not sell, before making his fortune with Icha Icha. Minato, a reader of that first novel, names his son after its hero; Jiraiya tries to talk him out of it, because it would make him the child's godfather.

Tsunade, a healer who will become Fifth Hokage and train Sakura, founded a system: the official status of medical ninja and the four rules that govern it. A descendant of Hashirama Senju and Mito Uzumaki, she invented Creation Rebirth, which shortens her life with every use.

Orochimaru deserts the village for his forbidden experiments and will mark Sasuke with his curse mark. He will join the Akatsuki with Sasori, leave it after failing to steal Itachi's body, then found Otogakure. The trio plays out again in the new Team 7, which the manga calls another three-way deadlock, without ever speaking of new Sannin.

The Price Paid, and Jiraiya's Final Riddle

Each one paid in his or her own body. Hiruzen seals the part of Orochimaru's soul contained in his arms: he survives, but loses ninjutsu and has to change hosts. Itachi will not kill him either: he seals what is left of him with the Sword of Totsuka. Tsunade, for her part, pays in hemophobia and in years of life burned away by Creation Rebirth.

Jiraiya dies in Amegakure, his left arm torn off and his throat crushed — not to be confused with the left hand Itachi severs from Orochimaru. He forces his heart to start again in order to carve a coded message into Fukasaku's back. Konoha's codebreakers fail; only Naruto finds the key, the page numbers of Icha Icha Tactics, whose first word makes up the warning that will make victory possible: the real one is not among them.

His body sinks to the bottom of the sea, and that is precisely why Kabuto will never manage to bring him back with Edo Tensei. During the Fourth Great Ninja War, Orochimaru will save Tsunade after Madara cuts her in two; she tells him that such a change, had it come earlier, could have saved Jiraiya.

📜 The three Sannin on your wall: discover our Naruto posters.

Summary Table

FAQ

• Who are the Legendary Sannin?
  Three exceptional ninja from Konoha — Jiraiya, Tsunade, and Orochimaru — former students of the Third Hokage Hiruzen, famed for their animal-themed summons.
• Who gave them this title?
  Their enemy Hanzo the Salamander. The only Konoha ninja to survive a clash with him during the Second Great Ninja War, they were named by him "the Legendary Sannin."
• Which Sannin summons which animal?
  Jiraiya the toads (and Sage Mode), Tsunade the slugs (with medical ninjutsu), Orochimaru the snakes. A nod to the "three-way deadlock" of Japanese folklore.
• Can they all use Sage Mode?
  No. Only Jiraiya masters a form of it, an imperfect one. Orochimaru studied it without succeeding, and Tsunade never learned senjutsu. It is their students (Naruto, Kabuto) who reach the perfect form.
• What became of each of the Sannin?
  Jiraiya, spymaster and Naruto's mentor; Tsunade, Fifth Hokage and Sakura's teacher; Orochimaru, a deserter turned criminal, tied to Sasuke.

In summary

One master, three students, three destinies: the Sannin are the mirror of Team 7 — proof that the same starting point can lead to the hero, the healer, or the monster.