Yoton: Lava Release in the Naruto Universe

A Kekkei Genkai That Changes Matter Depending on Its Wielder

Lava Release combines two chakra natures, Fire Release and Earth Release, and it is filed among the kekkei genkai of nature transformation. Its dating is twofold: the name is spoken as early as chapter 353 and episode 121 of Shippuden, while the element's page sets its manga debut at chapter 466. That episode 121 contains an anime-exclusive sequence in which Roshi, off screen, pits what looks like the Kakazan against a water technique from Kisame.

One thing almost no summary picks up: whereas most kekkei genkai are practically identical from one wielder to the next, Lava Release varies in form depending on who uses it. The table that follows lines up six of them. Molten rock, acid sludge, quicklime, vulcanized rubber, volcanic ash, melting flames: these materials have neither the same consistency, nor the same use, nor the same constraints.

Nine names share them out. Molten rock belongs to Son Goku and to his jinchuriki Roshi; acid sludge to Mei Terumi and to Boro; quicklime to several Iwagakure shinobi, and to Kyusuke in the anime; vulcanized rubber to Dodai and to Karyu; volcanic ash to Kurotsuchi; melting flames to Etoro Konjiki, in the novel Gaara Hiden: A Sandstorm Mirage. Kurotsuchi, filed under ash, also uses the quicklime form.

Molten Rock, the Form of the Four-Tails (Yonbi)

Molten rock, in solid as in liquid state, belongs to Son Goku and to his jinchuriki Roshi; the booklet Naruto: One Decade, One Hundred Ninja says it can melt anything, pages 171-172. The Yoton: Shakugaryugan no Jutsu (chapter 564, Jin no Sho page 327) gives the projected version: Roshi spits out a large amount of lava that immediately solidifies into blocks, fired in a volley and scattered over a wide arc, which makes them hard to dodge.

The Yoton Chakra Mode (chapter 565, same databook page) requires having first manifested one of Son Goku's tails. Roshi then wraps his body in a lava coating that adds weight to his physical attacks and deters anyone who would try to touch him. Above all, the heat burns without contact: he hits Naruto this way in Nine-Tails Chakra Mode without having touched him, in chapter 565 page 7. The lava-clad fist that follows from it is named nowhere in the manga.

The Kakazan, "Mountain of Flowers and Fruit" (chapter 566, Jin no Sho page 315), gives rise to a volcano that erupts and hurls molten rock in every direction, in a corolla. The fourth databook credits its use to Roshi as well as to Son Goku. The name refers to the peak where Sun Wukong is born in Journey to the West, located on a volcanic island; the four-tailed beast draws on the same character. Son Goku is also credited with the creation of volcanoes and with a green fire breath.

Mei Terumi's Acid Is Not Lava

The Yoton: Yokai no Jutsu (溶遁・溶怪の術, Jin no Sho page 302) does not project molten rock. Mei Terumi converts her chakra into a highly acidic fluid, formed inside her body, then spits it out, deciding its shape and its quantity herself. Spat at short range, the stream gains speed; spread over a wide surface, it becomes a wall of acid where everything that enters crumbles and loses its shape. The sludge corrodes even flesh.

If the first attack misses, the acid gives off a thick smoke that blocks the opponent's view and covers the next offensive. Prolonged exposure eats even into defenses made of chakra: in chapter 563 page 8, the rib cage of Madara's Susanoo partially melts. Chapter 466 page 6 establishes that Mei has two elemental kekkei genkai, this one and Boil Release (Futton). Its name plays on homophones: 溶怪 evokes both 妖怪, the specter, and 溶解, dissolution.

A generation later, Boro, an Inner of Kara, handles the same matter with the Yoton: Rakuseiha: acid spat out as a projectile (Boruto chapter 41, pages 14-15) or bursting from the ground in a wide explosion, able to melt shuriken (chapter 40, pages 10-12; chapter 42, page 13). There remains a divergence between media: the games, the movies, and the early anime episodes draw Mei's technique as lava, not as an acid sludge.

Quicklime and Ash: The Lava Release That Immobilizes

The Yoton: Sekkaigyo no Jutsu (chapter 514, Jin no Sho page 327) spews out a large amount of quicklime, able to injure and then to hinder: the residue behaves like a fast-setting cement. But the substance only hardens on contact with water. Kurotsuchi therefore triggers the reaction with a Water Release (Suiton), the Water Trumpet, which at the same time extends the surface covered (chapter 514, pages 8-9). The kanji 凝 in her technique's name is found again in 混凝土, the Japanese word for concrete, which also calls for water.

The technique did not remain a personal one: on pages 11-12 of chapter 612, several Iwagakure shinobi pour it together onto the Ten-Tails during the Fourth Great Ninja War, before water is mixed into it and members of the Sarutobi clan over-dry it. Kurotsuchi has a second form, the Yoton: Kaisekifu no Jutsu (Boruto chapter 7, page 29): a thick ash cloud, whose grip she maintains and strengthens with her chakra, and with which she immobilizes Kinshiki.

The anime gives the same quicklime to Kyusuke, a shinobi of Amegakure and a founding member of the Akatsuki, whom the manga leaves as an anonymous extra. Mortally wounded by his own blade, he holds Tobi in place so that Daibutsu can trap them both in water, then tries to petrify them together knowing that he will lose his life doing so. Tobi teleports away, and the sacrifice comes to nothing.

Dodai's Vulcanized Rubber, a Defense That Absorbs

Dodai, a Kumogakure jonin and steward to at least two Raikage according to the fourth databook, converts his lava into a vulcanized rubbery matter. The Yoton: Gomuheki (chapter 554, pages 11-12; Jin no Sho page 327) raises a wall that deforms under impact, absorbs and dissipates the force instead of simply stopping it, and can reinforce a barrier already put up — Dodai thus doubles up an earth wall to take the Hell Stab of the reanimated Third Raikage .

The Yoton: Gomudama (chapter 555, pages 5-6) produces a hollow ball. The interest lies less in the protection than in the trick: Dodai makes it look as if he is sealing Naruto's clone inside when he has pulled it out while the sphere was forming, and the Third chases an empty shell. In chapter 561, a rubber tube absorbs the fall of the meteors hurled by Madara and saves that same clone, chosen over flesh-and-blood shinobi, he would explain, because it was indispensable to the battle.

One peculiarity sets him apart from every other known wielder: he does not only emit the matter from his mouth, he makes it appear around him and out of his body (chapter 554 page 11; chapter 555 page 6). The anime adds, in episode 486 of Shippuden, that this rubber resists Lightning Release (Raiton). Finally, the novel Sasuke Shinden: Book of Sunrise notes that this form is common among the village's leaders.

Karyu: What Lava Release Costs Those Who Carry It

The novel Sasuke Shinden: Book of Sunrise gives Lava Release what the manga never gives it: a social status. Karyu is born into a whole clan of lava users, but his village is small and, unlike Kumogakure , where such wielders are well regarded, it uses them only as disposable weapons of war — his relatives die young. Karyu flees to escape that fate; his village hunts him down and would have killed him if Fushin had not found him first.

Fushin enlists him in the Lightning Group, a band of kekkei genkai wielders who strip criminals of their goods to redistribute the loot to small communities such as the Bamboo Village, where they are held to be heroes. A maneuver by Kirigakure decimates the group; the hamlets they had helped then refuse them shelter for fear of reprisals, and one of Karyu's comrades dies of his wounds.

It is on learning of the attack by Sasuke Uchiha on the Five Kage Summit that he convinces himself a kekkei genkai wielder can defy the villages openly, and founds the Dark Thunder Group. His name, written 加硫, means "vulcanization." His Yoton: Gomumari are darker and far denser than Dodai's balls: from the size of a hand to that of a house, remotely controlled, they gain momentum with every bounce and strike in proportion to the chakra invested.

溶遁 or 熔遁: Two Kanji for a Single Element

Japanese sources write Yoton two different ways, which looks like a clue rather than a typo. Both kanji mean "to melt," but 熔, built on the fire radical, is obsolete and means "to melt by fire," while 溶, built on the water radical, is the spelling used today. Now 溶 appears in only two techniques, Mei's Yokai no Jutsu and Boro's Rakuseiha — precisely the two that handle a highly acidic fluid.

The Jin no Sho adds, on page 302, that Mei's Lava Release can be used only by her. Putting the two facts together suggests that 溶遁 and 熔遁 do not refer to quite the same thing. The databooks are themselves inconsistent about it: in the Sha no Sho, Roshi's entry carries the water radical while the glossary carries the fire radical, and the Jin no Sho uses, for him, only the fire radical.

A game, Naruto: Shinobi Collection Shippu Ranbu, goes as far as listing the two versions separately in the description of the Sage Art Ultimate Tailed Beast Rasenshuriken and its variants. On the English side, Viz first names the element "Corrosion Style" at its first mention, then switches to "Lava Style" for every later appearance, with some games continuing to use both translations interchangeably.

Manga, Anime, Novels: Which Source Attests What

The manga carries most of the wielders — Mei Terumi, Roshi, Son Goku, Dodai, Kurotsuchi, and the shinobi of Iwagakure —, and the Boruto manga adds Boro to them as well as the Kaisekifu no Jutsu. The databooks supply the page references: the Jin no Sho documents Mei's acid on page 302, the Kakazan on page 315, five other techniques on page 327. The booklet Naruto: One Decade, One Hundred Ninja is, for its part, the only source for the statement about molten rock.

The anime alone carries Kyusuke and establishes the rubber's resistance to lightning (episode 486 of Naruto: Shippuden); it is not, however, alone in giving Mei's acid the look of lava — the games and the movies give it that look too, the anime only in its early days. The novels bring two full wielders: Karyu, and Etoro Konjiki of Ishigakure, who seals a ring of melting flames inside a projectile in order to deform it, melt it, and make it explode into a firestorm, in the novel where he faces Gaara.

The games, finally, add names that the manga does not give: Roshi's lava-clad fist is called Shakugaikoken only in Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, Mei's Yokai Bakusan exists only on console, and Storm Connections renames the stream variant of the Rakuseiha 溶遁・濁流波, "muddy stream wave," while the manga and the anime give the same name to both variants. The movies count too: in The Last: Naruto the Movie, Mei destroys meteors with water and lava.

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