Yugito Nii: The Two-Tails Jinchuriki of Kumogakure

The keeper of the demon cat with blue flames: an elite kunoichi lost far too soon. Meet Yugito Nii, the host of the Two-Tails of Kumogakure.

The Kunoichi of Kumogakure

Yugito Nii (二位ユギト) is a kunoichi of Kumogakure ranked as a jonin, and the last host of the Two-Tails (Nibi), Matatabi. The manga brings her on stage in chapter 312; the anime shows her for the first time in episode 71 of Naruto Shippuden. The official entries give her age as twenty-nine in Part II and a single recorded chakra nature, Fire Release (Katon). No affiliation other than the Hidden Cloud Village is recognized for her, and those same entries list her as dead.

Her reputation rests on a mention in the series' second artbook: Killer Bee held her in high esteem even though she was younger than he was. The two hosts of Kumogakure are not to be confused for all that: she carries the Two-Tails, he the Eight-Tails (Hachibi). The village lost them both to the Akatsuki — her for good, him only in appearance, his capture having later been disproved.

Her appearance is described in detail: long, straight blond hair bound with tight bandages, dark eyes and lipstick. She wears a black and purple short-sleeved blouse and black pants, both marked with a cloud-like pattern, purple fingerless gloves and a chain of blue beads wrapped around her left hand. To these are added the standard Kumogakure forehead protector, sandals, a kunai holster strapped to her right thigh, bandages on her arms and legs and a red belt.

What the Databooks Say About Her

Two databooks document Yugito: the Sha no Sho, the third of the name, on page 127, and the Jin no Sho, the fourth, on page 133. They set her date of birth at July 24, her age at twenty-nine in Part II, her height at 170.2 cm and her weight at 50.8 kg. They also give her blood type, A, her ninja registration number, CL5322, her jonin rank and Fire Release, the only chakra nature attributed to her.

The count of her official missions appears there as well: 1,025 missions in total, broken down into 190 D-rank, 185 C-rank, 356 B-rank, 260 A-rank and 34 S-rank. The same entry notes her hobby, the shamisen, her favorite dishes, tekkadon and milk, and what she hates, namely anything spicy. Her recorded wish fits in a single line: to face her village's enemies. Her catchphrase, "Neko ni kyūshō ari" (猫に九生あり), means that cats have nine lives.

The moral profile comes from those same pages. Yugito gained confidence in herself through work, which makes her a brave, proud and shrewd kunoichi; she is also described as firm, determined and attentive toward her teammates and her peers, who admired her. None of this converts into a measure of power: a mission count tells you about a career, not about a combat level, and these pages belong to the profile sheet, not to a ranking.

Matatabi, the Cat of Blue Flames

Matatabi was sealed inside her at the age of two. The third databook spells out what followed: a training program described as detestable was imposed on her, at the end of which she could trigger her tailed beast transformation at will. It is a constraint, and not a gift, that is put forward. The process itself resembles Naruto's: she slowly covers herself in a dense, burning blue chakra that takes the shape of the Two-Tails until it reproduces it entirely — a two-tailed feline wrapped in cobalt-blue flames laced with black, with mismatched eyes.

The distinction is precise, and often lost: Yugito did not have complete control of the tailed beast, but she did have complete control of her transformation and of the amount of chakra she borrowed from it. The two things are distinct. Hidan himself, before the fight, remarks that she will be hard to beat as long as she has her beast's backing. After her reanimation, she will prove capable of a partial transformation, materializing only a single tail.

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Claws, Hairball and Fire: Her Arsenal

Her arsenal rests on a single elemental nature, Fire Release, and on her nails. The Claw Creation Technique, never named in the manga, appears in chapter 564 and episode 324: in a few moments it lengthens the nails of her hands and feet and hardens them, to the point where they cross a sword without breaking. Her taijutsu pattern is spelled out in black and white: strike first with clawed hands to force the opponent to block with both arms, then attack with the feet.

Two named techniques complete the picture. Hisō, the "Flying Claw" (chapter 565), consists of leaping onto an opponent in midair to deliver a crossed slash. Nezumi Kedama, the "Mouse Hairball" (chapter 565, episode 325), turns her spit into a burning hairball shaped like a mouse, which then splits into homing projectiles that explode on contact. One reads in it a nod to the fire rat, a yokai cited in particular in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.

In transformation, she has Byōen Hōka, the "Roaring Flame of the Fire Cat" (chapter 313, episode 72), a fireball that reduces a large building to rubble and melts concrete in a single shot, also called "Nibi: Flame of Purgatory." Added to these are Daibyō Sōgeki, a right paw strike, and Nekozume, the claw laceration of her Version 2. A point of method: neither the manga nor the anime names Byōen Hōka or Daibyō Sōgeki — nor Hisō; these three names come from a video game, Ultimate Ninja Storm 3. Nekozume, for its part, is referenced in the fourth databook, page 324.

Her Death Against the Akatsuki

Her first scene shows her running through sewers, pursued by two strangers. Reaching the point where all the tunnels meet, she stops and reveals to them that she led them there on purpose, then sets off explosive tags placed on the tunnels behind them: the exits are cut off. For this she is credited with a sound sense of strategy, since she has locked two members of the Akatsuki into a closed space, Hidan and Kakuzu, and herself along with them.

Once the organization has been identified, she swears not to let them leave: chapter 313, pages 4 and 5, gives her an oath sworn on her own name. She then transforms fully into the Two-Tails and the fight devastates the place. On its outcome, the versions differ by a hair: chapter 313, titled "A New Duo!!," shows Hidan and Kakuzu beating her together, then bickering over how long it took them. It is the Naruto Quiz Book, page 112, that credits the takedown to Hidan by name.

The anime carries the sequence to episode 72, which adapts chapters 312 to 314 and gives her this line: she explains to her pursuers that it is they, and not she, who are trapped. What follows is no longer hers: unconscious, she is carried off to one of the organization's hideouts, and the extraction of the tailed beast will finish what the fight began.

Three Days of Extraction and Kumogakure's Failed Rescue

It is Zetsu who comes to collect her, unconscious. Arriving after the fact, he chides the pair for their slowness — Hidan blames his partner, busy with his money dealings — then carries Yugito off to the organization's base, while the two men set out at once for the Land of Fire in search of another jinchuriki. Episode 73, which adapts chapters 314 and 318, puts the scene on screen. Yugito is still alive at that point.

The extraction runs through a fuinjutsu of S rank, the Genryū Kyūfūjin, or Nine Phantom Dragons Seal — the technique already used on Gaara as early as chapter 255. It takes three full days when the nine members of the Akatsuki are present, and longer if there are fewer of them. The anime makes use of that span: in episode 81, which adapts chapters 329 and 330, Hidan rages at having to stay still for three days, which the leader takes advantage of to lay out the organization's plan for him. Removing the tailed beast kills the host.

Kumogakure tried to save her. Teams were sent to search the Akatsuki hideouts, but there were too many places to inspect: they lost time and did not arrive before her death, as chapter 455, page 8, establishes. From those "mistakes" the village drew a direct lesson, that of knowing what not to do when Killer Bee was believed captured in turn. The two captures ultimately pushed the Fourth Raikage to convene the Kage Summit, an arc that covers chapters 454 to 483 and episodes 197 to 214.

One of Tobi's Six Paths

The setup is described precisely. Each reanimated jinchuriki receives a Rinnegan in the left eye and a Sharingan in the right eye, their tailed beast resealed inside them, and a chakra receiver driven into the body: a single black receiver, sunk into the left side of the chest and hidden, which migrates to the neck when the host shifts into tailed beast form. The effect is twofold: the Sharingan brings perception and anticipation, the Rinnegan a field of vision shared among the six bodies.

The fight takes up chapters 564 to 566 and episodes 324 and 325. Fu blinds both opponents with her scale powder; Yugito attacks head-on alongside Han and crosses swords with Killer Bee. Her first attack is parried: she then lengthens the nails of her feet to strike him, but he dodges, pointing out that his glasses were too dark for him to be blinded. The jinchuriki then materialize a first tail, and Yugito launches her hairball just after the attack of Roshi, which forces Naruto and Bee to break off.

A wound taken earlier closes instantly, but it had exposed the receiver driven into her chest long enough for Bee to spot it. Knocked out by the Demon's Eight Whirlpools, the attack that flattens the forest once Bee has transformed into the Eight-Tails, she is caught in the Octopus Hold, the fuinjutsu built on Bee's ink clones; she frees herself before the sealing is complete by shifting into Version 2 and slashes Naruto. After Son Goku is resealed, Tobi forces her into full transformation: Tailed Beast Bomb, direct assault, then a collision with the Six-Tails (Rokubi) that throws her back.

Reanimated During the War

Her death is not the end. Ahead of the Fourth Great Ninja War, Kabuto Yakushi brings her back from the dead to set her against the Allied Shinobi Forces, then deploys her alongside the other dead jinchuriki. It is only at the dawn of the second day of the war that the fate reserved for her comes to light: Tobi has made the reanimated jinchuriki his own Six Paths of Pain, a customized version of the setup Nagato had used before him.

The scene that sets her apart from the others is not a fight. As Naruto tries to tear the chakra receivers out of the opposing beasts, he enters the shared consciousness of the tailed beasts and meets the reanimated hosts there. Yugito tells him that Son Goku had announced this meeting, then introduces herself to him alongside Matatabi. He also comes across Fu, the other kunoichi jinchuriki killed by the Akatsuki.

The end fits into a few panels. Matatabi is resealed into the Gedo Mazo, the statue that is to become the Ten-Tails again; the bodies of the reanimated jinchuriki are then gathered by Killer Bee and held in the tentacles of Gyuki. Then comes the release of the Edo Tensei: Yugito and the others are wrapped in a kind of light, their bodies begin to come apart and her soul departs for the afterlife.

Nii, "Second Place": What Her Name Hides

Her family name, Nii (二位), means "second place." She stands among the small number of Kumogakure characters whose name is neither the pronunciation of a letter — C, the sensor in the Raikage's service, is one example — nor a description of what they are: the link often drawn between "Nii" and the Two-Tails is not the one that is retained. Her date of birth, July 24, places her under Leo in the Western zodiac: a feline sign, and a fire sign.

Japanese folklore offers a second parallel, pointed out without being attributed to any intent on the author's part: the nekomusume (猫娘), a particular incarnation of the bakeneko that takes the appearance of a young girl. One editorial detail is worth noting in passing, because it throws readers off: her blond hair is sometimes colored in a tone closer to green, as on the color page of chapter 420.

She even has her own verse in a counting song. The "Bijū Kazoe Uta," the Tailed Beast Counting Song (尾獣数え唄), performed by Junko Takeuchi, serves as the omake ending for episodes 330, 333 and 337 of Shippuden: it devotes one stanza to the nine beasts, then a second to their nine hosts. Yugito's, "Futatsu, funyan to neko nade, Yugito," translates as "Two, gently petting a meowing cat".

Yugito Beyond the Manga: Anime, Film and Games

The anime gives her a scene the manga leaves out. In episode 189 of Shippuden, Yugito agrees to give Nekobaa Matatabi's paw print for the Paw Encyclopedia, that collection born from a game Itachi had invented to keep a young Sasuke busy while he bought weapons for the clan. The notebook holds only three known prints: Dread Lion's, Matatabi's and Nekomata's. One reads in it the measure of her control, since setting a tailed beast's paw on paper implies a transformation of great finesse.

Episodes 429 and 430, "Killer Bee Rappuden," aired on September 10 and 17, 2015, take place in the dream the Infinite Tsukuyomi imposes on Killer Bee. Yugito is alive in it: she teams up with him, Matatabi and Gyuki reduced to chibi versions, to infiltrate Sunagakure and free Gaara. While Bee opens the cell, she goes to retrieve the sand gourd; the two Kumogakure ninja then split up to look for the other hosts. She is seen again later with Han and Utakata. Episode 430 also credits her with a chakra flow applied to her claws, comparable to that of the ninneko.

That leaves film and video games. In Road to Ninja: Naruto the Movie, a Genjutsu World Yugito appears only in a cameo, defeated and left unconscious by Menma. Her profile in Naruto Mobile credits her with having learned to master her beast by working with Killer Bee, and with having drawn Hidan and Kakuzu away from the village to protect it: this is a reading specific to the game, absent from the manga. On the voice side, she is played by Mie Sonozaki in Japanese and Wendee Lee in English, with Laura Bailey taking over in Ultimate Ninja Storm 4; her first appearance in a game goes back to Ninja Destiny 3.

Summary Table

FAQ

• Which tailed beast does Yugito host?
  The Two-Tails (Nibi), the two-tailed demon, whose true name (revealed late) is Matatabi: a giant two-tailed cat wrapped in blue flames, inspired by the Japanese nekomata. Not to be confused with another tailed beast.
• How did Yugito die?
  Hunted by Hidan and Kakuzu of the Akatsuki, she lures them into sewers, seals the exits and transforms into the Two-Tails, but is defeated — it is Hidan who takes her down. Zetsu recovers her body; the tailed beast is then extracted into the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path, which kills her.
• Did Yugito master her tailed beast?
  For the transformation, yes: a host from the age of two, she could turn fully into Matatabi at will (blue flames, strength and fire breath). She does not, however, fully "tame" the beast the way Killer Bee does — she is not a "perfect" jinchuriki.
• Does Yugito reappear after her death?
  Yes: reanimated by Kabuto's Edo Tensei during the Fourth Great Ninja War. Turned by Tobi into one of his six controlled jinchuriki, she faces Naruto and Killer Bee, then vanishes when the Edo Tensei is released — her soul returning in peace.
• Which village does she come from, and who should she not be confused with?
  From Kumogakure, the Hidden Cloud Village, in the service of the Raikage. Not to be confused with Killer Bee, the other jinchuriki of Kumogakure (host of the Eight-Tails), nor with a ninja of Konoha.

In summary

Sacrificed far too soon, Yugito Nii embodies the fate of the jinchuriki hunted by the Akatsuki. But her cat of blue flames, Matatabi, still burns in the memory of the saga.