Konoha first: the four teams, the village's adults, the Hokage, the Sannin, the great clans and their dead. Then the four other great nations, the villages outside the Kage Summit, the nine Tailed Beasts, the summons, the Akatsuki, and Boruto's generation facing the Otsutsuki.
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Three genin, one jonin, twenty years of story
Konoha assigns its young graduates to groups of three, placed under the supervision of a jonin. Team 7 brings together Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura under Kakashi Hatake. Its line-up shifts over the course of the story: when Sasuke defects, Sai replaces him, and Yamato temporarily takes Kakashi's place.
These six form the narrative backbone of the series: every major arc runs through at least one of them.
Byakugan, sense of smell, and insect colonies
Team 8 is the intelligence team. Under Kurenai Yuhi, it brings together three complementary means of detection: the Byakugan of the Hyuga, the sense of smell of the Inuzuka and their combat dogs, and the insect colonies of the Aburame. This is the team you send to find someone, not the one you send to break down a door.
This specialization in tracking is what gets the team sent out with Team Kakashi on the trail of Itachi and Sasuke.
Shadows, mind transfer, and body mass
Team 10 replays a formation generations old: the Ino-Shika-Cho trio, pairing a Yamanaka, a Nara, and an Akimichi, under the responsibility of Asuma Sarutobi. Their specialty is battlefield control: immobilize, probe, absorb, long enough for Shikamaru's strategy to close in.
Shikamaru, Ino, and Choji form the sixteenth generation of the Ino-Shika-Cho; the seventeenth will be their children's.
Relentless work against innate talent
Team Guy is a year ahead of Naruto's, and has a philosophy of its own: whatever you lack in talent, you make up in training. Might Guy inherited it from his own father and applies it to three genin: a boy with no ninjutsu, a Hyuga born on the wrong side of the clan, and a specialist in sealed weapons.
This is the counterpoint to the main story: here, no inherited power replaces the hours of training.
From the Ninja Academy to the Anbu, the village's framework
The Ninja Academy trains the village's children until they graduate as genin, and then the jonin take over. In between, Konoha maintains a whole supervisory structure: chunin teachers, tutors, examiners, assistants to the Hokage, but also clan heads, village advisors, and special units. These adults are rarely in the foreground, but their decisions weigh on an entire generation.
From the Ninja Academy instructor to the head of the Anbu, these are the adults who decide who learns what, and who goes where.
The seven Hokage in order, and the three Sannin
The title of Hokage, literally “fire shadow,” designates the leader of Konoha, traditionally the village's most powerful shinobi. Seven people have officially held it, and their faces are carved into the cliff. The Sannin, for their part, are the three students of the Third Hokage, named that way by Hanzo of Amegakure.
Understanding the succession of the Hokage means understanding Konoha's political history, and so a good half of the plot.
Heredity as the engine of power
Konoha was not born from a state but from an alliance of clans, and that origin stays visible everywhere in the village. Each family passes down its techniques, sometimes a kekkei genkai, that genetic ability impossible to copy. Here are the bloodlines that weigh most heavily on the story.
Konoha counts dozens of quiet families; the ones gathered here are the bloodlines that shaped the village, for better and for worse.
Figures who died before the first chapter
Part of the cast appears only through the memory of the living: parents, teammates, clan heads, all dead before the story opens. The manga brings them back through flashback, through testimony, or through the Edo Tensei, and most of them shed light on a wound still open in a leading character.
These departed figures are not scenery: before the first chapter, they set out what the next generation will have to repair.
The desert, the puppets, the alliance
Sunagakure occupies a desert and lives on little: the daimyo of the Land of Wind long trimmed the village's budget, which fed the Fourth Kazekage's resentment. The Sand makes up for it with technique and maintains an entire unit devoted to combat puppets. Its jinchuriki policy was brutal.
Few resources, sand and strings: Suna turned its constraints into a military doctrine, then turned an enemy into a lasting ally.
Seven blades, four Mizukage, one reputation
Kirigakure is the hidden village of the Land of Water, a string of islands drowned in mist. A thick fog surrounds it permanently and hides it from outsiders. It was long called the Village of the Bloody Mist: the Ninja Academy's final exam, in place before the Fourth Mizukage's reign, forced students to kill one another, and hereditary bloodlines were hunted down.
The fog has not moved; it is the Bloody Mist that Kiri is working to leave behind.
Brute force, Lightning Release, and two jinchuriki
Kumogakure stands on the rocky peaks of the Land of Lightning. Its doctrine: physical power and mastery of Lightning Release (Raiton). The village long failed to contain its Tailed Beasts, until Yugito Nii and Killer Bee, its two jinchuriki who managed to master theirs. Its relations with Konoha stayed bad for decades.
Held at arm's length by its neighbors, Kumogakure comes out of the Fourth Great Ninja War in the Allied Shinobi Forces' camp; Darui will take charge of it later.
Stone, dust, and old grudges
Iwagakure is built into the rock, in towers linked by walkways, in the middle of mountains that serve as its natural rampart. Its doctrine follows the terrain: Earth Release (Doton) dominates, in traps and crushing masses. Its wars against Konoha left stubborn grudges, and it is the only village with known users of Dust Release (Jinton).
From Onoki to Kurotsuchi, Iwa ended up trading decades of mistrust for a place in the alliance of the five villages.
Six villages, one neutral country, and their fighters
The five great nations concentrate most of the military power: their Kage sit at the Summit, and eight of the nine Tailed Beasts were entrusted to their villages. The smaller countries nonetheless maintain hidden villages of their own, with no voice at that Summit. Their territories serve as battlefields for the great powers.
These villages count for nothing at the Kage Summit, but it is on their land that other people's wars get settled.
From the one-tailed tanuki to the nine-tailed fox
Nine chakra creatures, from one to nine tails, each with a name, a character, and a power of its own. Sealed inside human hosts, the jinchuriki, they become the hidden villages' deterrent force, which for a long time sees nothing in them but monsters. None of them can die for good: destroyed, it eventually re-forms.
Freed at the end of the Fourth Great Ninja War, the Tailed Beasts stop being weapons; Kurama and Gyuki stay with Naruto and Killer Bee.
Toads, a slug, snakes, a monkey, and a dog
The kuchiyose no jutsu binds a shinobi to an animal species through a contract signed in blood. The creatures summoned are not tools: they speak, they negotiate, they sometimes refuse to obey, and they keep territory of their own, from Mount Myoboku for the toads to the Ryuchi Cave for the snakes.
The three Sannin summoned the toad, the slug, and the snake; Team 7 inherited that triangle, one animal each.
From the founders of Ame to the S-rank rogue ninja
The Akatsuki is the matrix of the antagonists in the second half of the story. Founded in Amegakure by three orphans who wanted peace, it becomes an organization of S-rank rogue ninja set loose hunting the Tailed Beasts. Black cloak with red clouds, slashed headband, kanji ring: its members work in pairs.
Art, faith, or money: several Akatsuki members push one fixed idea to the point of absurdity, and that is what makes them memorable.
Those who manipulate, those who come back, those who betray
Around the Akatsuki orbit figures who never wore the cloak. One founded Konoha before fighting it, another brought chakra to Earth, others serve a master, a village, or simple profit. What they have in common is forcing the story to admit that an enemy almost always has his reasons.
From the greedy magnate to the ancestral goddess, these adversaries have neither the same scale nor the same reasons, and they still fuel fan debate.
The children of Konoha and Suna in Boruto's time
A generation after the Fourth Great Ninja War, Konoha lives in peace and its children enter the Ninja Academy in their turn. Many carry the name of a well-known parent, a team, or a clan technique. Konohamaru supervises the new Team 7, and Sunagakure trains its own successors as well.
The next generation is in place, with its parents' techniques and threats of a new kind.
From Hagoromo to Kara, the celestial bloodline
Once the Fourth Great Ninja War is over, the threat changes scale. It comes from above: the Otsutsuki clan, of which Kaguya was only one link, sows God Trees from planet to planet to harvest their chakra and sets up human relays on Earth. The shinobi world's laboratories, for their part, are still producing monsters of their own.
This shift in scale explains why the sequel abandons the war between villages: the adversary is no longer a rival, it is a species.
Short answers to the questions that come up most often about the characters of Naruto.
His father is Minato Namikaze, the Fourth Hokage, nicknamed Konoha's Yellow Flash and a student of Jiraiya. His mother is Kushina Uzumaki, Kurama's jinchuriki before him. Both die on the night of the fox's attack, when Minato seals the Tailed Beast inside their newborn. Naruto carries his mother's name.
Team 7 brings together three genin — Naruto Uzumaki, Sasuke Uchiha, and Sakura Haruno — under the supervision of the jonin Kakashi Hatake. Its line-up changes afterward: after Sasuke's defection, Sai replaces him at Danzo's request, and Yamato leads the team while Kakashi is hospitalized. It is then called Team Kakashi, and then Team Yamato.
Seven people have held the title, in order: Hashirama Senju, Tobirama Senju, Hiruzen Sarutobi, Minato Namikaze, Tsunade, Kakashi Hatake, and Naruto Uzumaki. Danzo Shimura was named candidate for the post of Sixth by the daimyo of the Land of Fire, but died before being formally approved.
The Uchiha clan was preparing a coup against Konoha. A double agent in the village's service, Itachi was given a choice by Danzo: let the coup set off a civil war, or eliminate the clan with the possibility of sparing his brother. He chose Sasuke, then passed himself off as a selfish murderer.
The story does not provide a ranking. It establishes that Kaguya Otsutsuki, the first to wield chakra, is the manga's final adversary, and that it takes Naruto and Sasuke together, endowed with Hagoromo's power, to seal her. Their own duel at the Valley of the End ends in mutual exhaustion, each of them losing an arm there.
Naruto marries Hinata Hyuga; they have Boruto and Himawari. Sasuke marries Sakura Haruno; their daughter is Sarada. The manga's epilogue shows these families a generation later, with Naruto having become Seventh Hokage. The circumstances of Naruto and Hinata's marriage are developed in the film The Last: Naruto the Movie.
Obito Uchiha, teammate of Kakashi Hatake and Rin Nohara on Team Minato, left for dead during the Kannabi Bridge mission. Taken in by the real Madara, he then acts under the name Tobi while passing himself off as him. Kakashi recognizes him during the Fourth Great Ninja War.
The organization aims for ten members, one per ring, and works in pairs. At the start of Shippuden, nine are active: Pain, Konan, Itachi, Kisame, Sasori, Deidara, Hidan, Kakuzu, and Zetsu. Orochimaru defected taking his ring with him; Tobi only joins the group after Sasori's death, whose ring he recovers.
To gain the power he needed for his revenge against Itachi, whom he then believed to be driven by a simple desire for greatness. Orochimaru, who had branded him with the Curse Mark during the Chunin Exams, promised him training that Konoha would not give him. Naruto tries to stop him at the Valley of the End.
Pain, that is, Nagato acting through his six bodies, in Amegakure. Jiraiya was there investigating the Akatsuki's leader, his former student. Mortally wounded, he carves a coded message on a toad's back indicating that the real Pain was not among the six: Naruto will decipher it.
Jiraiya, Orochimaru, and Tsunade, the three students of Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Third Hokage. The title comes to them from Hanzo, leader of Amegakure, who spared them after facing them during the Second Great Ninja War. Each has a summoning contract of his or her own: the toads, the snakes, the slugs.
Nine, from one to nine tails. Hagoromo Otsutsuki, the Sage of the Six Paths, separates the Ten-Tails' chakra into nine entities at the end of his life and gives them names: Shukaku, Matatabi, Isobu, Son Goku, Kokuo, Saiken, Chomei, Gyuki, and Kurama. The villages then seal them inside human hosts, the jinchuriki.
Konoha is born from the alliance between the Senju and the Uchiha, the two dominant clans before the founding. The village is home to many others: Hyuga, Yamanaka, Nara, Akimichi, Aburame, Inuzuka, Sarutobi, Hatake, Shimura, Kurama. Several pass down a kekkei genkai or a hereditary technique, such as the Sharingan or the Byakugan.
Kaguya Otsutsuki. She consumes the fruit of the God Tree and becomes the first to wield chakra on Earth. Her sons Hagoromo and Hamura are the first humans born with chakra; Hagoromo, the Sage of the Six Paths, then passes its use on to humankind under the name ninshu.
At the Ninja Academy, Lee has no aptitude for ninjutsu or genjutsu, which earns him his classmates' mockery. He chooses to specialize in the one field left to him, taijutsu, under the guidance of Might Guy. He masters the Strong Fist (Goken) and the opening of the Eight Inner Gates.
Yes. Sarada was born in one of Orochimaru's hideouts, where Karin assisted with the delivery, hence the absence of any file at Konoha's hospital. The DNA test linking her to Karin was in fact run on an umbilical cord that Karin had kept, the one belonging to Sakura and Sarada. Her parents are Sakura Haruno and Sasuke Uchiha.
189 blog articles to dig deeper into the subject.
Akatsuchi
Amado
Amegakure
Ameyuri Ringo
Anko Mitarashi
Ao
Asuma Sarutobi
Baki
Boro
Boruto Uzumaki
C
Chiyo
Chocho Akimichi
Choji Akimichi
Chojuro
Chomei
Choza Akimichi
The Kurama Clan
The Sarutobi Clan
The Shimura Clan
Code
Daemon
Might Duy
Dan Kato
Danzo Shimura
Darui
Deepa
Deidara
Delta
Dosu, Zaku, and Kin
Ebisu
Ebizo
Eida
Enma
Fugaku Uchiha
Fukasaku
Fu
Gaara
Might Guy
Gamakichi
Gato
Gengetsu Hozuki
Genma Shiranui
Gyuki
Hagoromo
Haku
Hamura Otsutsuki
Han
Hanzo the Salamander
Hashirama Senju
Hayate Gekko
Hiashi Hyuga
Hidan
Himawari Uzumaki
Hinata Hyuga
Hiruzen Sarutobi
Hizashi Hyuga
Homura Mitokado
Ibiki Morino
Indra and Asura
Ino Yamanaka
Inoichi Yamanaka
Inojin Yamanaka
The Sannin's Summons
Iruka Umino
Isobu
Isshiki Otsutsuki
Izumo and Kotetsu
Jiraiya
Jura
Jugo
Kabuto Yakushi
Kagami Uchiha
Kaguya Otsutsuki
Kakashi Hatake
Kakuzu
Kankuro
Kara
Karin Uzumaki
Karui
Karura
Kawaki
Kiba Inuzuka and Akamaru
Killer Bee
Kimimaro
Kinkaku and Ginkaku
Kisame Hoshigaki
Kitsuchi
Koharu Utatane
Kashin Koji
Kokuo
Konan
Konohamaru
Kurama
Kurenai Yuhi
Kurotsuchi
Kusagakure
Kushina Uzumaki
The Anbu and the Root
Team Taka
Sakura Haruno
Rock Lee
The Aburame Clan
The Akimichi Clan
The Hyuga Clan
The Inuzuka Clan
The Nara Clan
The Otsutsuki Clan
The Senju Clan
The Uchiha Clan
The Uzumaki Clan
The Yamanaka Clan
The Explosion Corps
The Ten-Tails
The Land of Iron
The Fourth Raikage
The Sound Four
The Third Raikage
The 9 Tailed Beasts
The Summons
The Legendary Sannin
Madara Uchiha
Mangetsu Hozuki
Suna's Puppets
Matatabi
Mei Terumi
Metal Lee
Mikoto Uchiha
Minato Namikaze
Mirai Sarutobi
Mito Uzumaki
Mitsuki
Mizuki
Momoshiki and Kinshiki
Mu
Nagato
Nawaki
Neji Hyuga
Nono Yakushi
Obito Uchiha
Omoi
Orochimaru
Otogakure
Onoki
Pakura
Rasa
Rin Nohara
Roshi
Sai
Saiken
Sakumo Hatake
Samui
Sarada Uchiha
Sasori
Sasuke Uchiha
Seven Swordsmen
Shibai Otsutsuki
Shikadai Nara
Shikaku Nara
Shikamaru Nara
Shin Uchiha
Shinki
Shino Aburame
Shisui Uchiha
Shizune
Shukaku
Son Goku
Suigetsu Hozuki
Sumire Kakei
Takigakure
Temari
Tenten
Tobirama Senju
Toneri Otsutsuki
Third Kazekage
Tsunade
Itachi Uchiha
Urashiki Otsutsuki
Utakata
Uzushiogakure
Victor
Yagura
Yahiko
Yamato
Yashamaru
Yugakure
Yugito Nii
Zabuza Momochi
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