Kaguya Otsutsuki is one of the most powerful and mysterious characters in the Naruto franchise. She is the progenitor of chakra, the mother of Hagoromo and Hamura Otsutsuki, and the final antagonist of Naruto Shippuden. In this article, we will explore her origin, abilities, motives, and legacy in the anime series.
Contents
All about Kaguya Otsutsuki
[schemas]- Birthdate: August 15
- Sex: Female
- Species: Celestial Being
- Status: Incapacitated
- Kekkei Mōra: Byakugan/Rinne Sharingan
- Classification: Sensor Type
- Occupation: Princess/Head of the Ōtsutsuki Clan
- Affiliation: Land of Ancestors
- Partner: Isshiki Ōtsutsuki/Black Zetsu
- Clan: Otsutsuki Clan
Who is Kaguya Otsutsuki?
A millennium ago, Kaguya and Isshiki were both sent to cultivate a God Tree on the planet Earth and harvest its Chakra Fruit, with which she was to provide for the main family of her clan from another world.
According to Amado Sanzu, Kaguya was a low-ranking member of the clan chosen as a sacrifice to the Ten-Tails, which would nurture the development of the God Tree. Instead, Kaguya desired the chakra fruit herself; betraying Isshiki in the process and leaving him for dead.
In the anime, Kaguya was discovered by the people of the Land of Ancestors during an arrival to Earth, who brought her before their emperor Tenji.
Identifying herself as the God Tree’s guardian, Kaguya used her abilities to wipe Tenji’s memories of the encounter and subsequently settled among his people, becoming recognised as his concubine.
Living among humans, she slowly developed an attachment for the planet she meant to destroy. Growing closer with the emperor, she eventually fell pregnant.
When the Land of That began to threaten the Land of Ancestors over a border dispute, Tenji attempted to prevent the outbreak of war by declaring that anyone who attacked the larger nation’s representatives was to be executed, an order which she broke when she was threatened by them, resulting in her and her assistant Aino becoming hunted by their land to be executed.
Losing all faith in humanity but still longing for peace, Kaguya believed that it was necessary for her to attain god-like powers in order to put an end to all of humanity’s conflicts.
So, despite her clan waiting to harvest that world of its God Tree, she defied the taboo surrounding the fruit and ate it. In doing so, she awakened the Rinne Sharingan and became the sole person on the planet endowed with chakra.
Using her new-found power, Kaguya single-handedly ended the wars, and took control of the nations. For her deed of stopping the conflict, she received the blessing of the people and was worshipped as the Rabbit Goddess (卯の女神, Usagi no Megami).
After establishing peace and changing somehow, Kaguya used the Infinite Tsukuyomi on humans to transform them into an army of White Zetsu over the course of many years in fear of her clan returning to take her chakra away. In the anime, not wanting mankind to perish, she freed some victims of the genjutsu and erased their memories.
While giving birth to her twin sons Hagoromo and Hamura, she dispersed chakra to them, making the pair the first people born with chakra. Ruling by herself and often resorting to cruelty, her dōjutsu and jutsu were regarded with fear, awe and reverence by humans. At some indefinite point, the Rabbit Goddess had instead become known as a Demon (鬼, Oni).
Eventually, Kaguya found herself ruled by her own desire to possess all chakra, which eventually turned her against her sons. Having devised a plan to absorb their chakra, she integrated with the God Tree and became the Ten-Tails itself, followed by her challenging the twins to battle.
Assuming the Ten-Tails was an incarnation of the God Tree that attacked them to recover the chakra from its stolen fruit, Hagoromo and Hamura sealed the beast’s chakra within the former’s body while using its husk as the core of Six Paths – Chibaku Tensei, creating a celestial body that would become known as the Moon.
Hamura later took leadership of the Otsutsuki clan and departed to the moon to guard the beast’s remains, while Hagoromo remained on Earth in order to spread chakra to humanity and teach them the concept of ninshū.
However, just before her sons could completely seal her, Kaguya had manifested her will in the form of an artificial human called Black Zetsu.
With the agenda of reviving its “mother”, Black Zetsu manipulated Hagoromo’s eldest son, Indra, as well as his descendants within the Uchiha clan and his brother’s descendants within the Senju clan in an attempt to get one of them to awaken the Rinnegan and break the seal. Madara Uchiha would eventually succeed in obtaining the Rinnegan, and Black Zetsu began secretly manipulating world events to have Kaguya revived.
Kaguya Otsutsuki’s Appearance
Kaguya was a pale-skinned woman with soft facial features. She had extremely long, sweeping white hair (grey in the anime). Kaguya possessed white clear eyes and her eyebrows were cut very short and round – a symbol of nobility, and she wore a red shade of lipstick on her lips.
In the anime, after consuming the forbidden fruit, her hair grew even longer, dragging across the ground and her fingernails grew long and dark.
Most noticeable, she grew two brown horns that stuck out from her head and a third eye formed in the centre of her forehead. She wore a high-collared hime-kimono which has tomoe running down the centre and edges of the gown and in the anime, adorned with intricate gold and purple lines.
When her power went out of control, Kaguya transformed into a conglomerate of the tailed beasts. Her original body turned into a gigantic rabbit creature with a humanoid upper body, jagged teeth and her signature Rinne Sharingan on its forehead.
On its back was a great spherical mass of chakra with the heads of the nine tailed beasts emerging from it, along with chakra arms. When Kaguya had her powers stripped away, she briefly reverted to her Ten-Tailed form, with each tail ending with the head of one of the tailed beasts and the tenth ending with her rabbit head.
Kaguya Otsutsuki’s Abilities
In the anime, Kaguya showed otherworldly powers long before she consumed the fruit of the God Tree. She could perform interstellar travel, subdue people into sleep, hypnotise them, erase their memories, or even unleash a powerful shockwave from her eyes capable of blowing away or maiming people.
Even before eating the fruit, she was able to leave fellow clansman Isshiki near death, albeit in a surprise attack. After eating the chakra fruit, Kaguya achieved such unrivalled power, she was able to pacify the war-torn world all by herself, leading the people to worship her in fear.
Hagoromo, being a legendary figure himself, praised his mother’s might as superior to all others, including his own combined with his brother’s.
Even at the height of their powers, it took several months for Hagoromo and Hamura to defeat her. Kaguya has demonstrated unique abilities, such as merging with nature to give her control of the environments of her dimensions, such as ice and snow, flight, and in the anime the ability to read a person’s thoughts and feelings.
Chakra and Physical Prowess
After eating the God Tree’s fruit, Kaguya gained unparalleled chakra reserves and strength, noted by both Naruto and Sasuke to surpass Madara’s as the Ten-Tails’ jinchūriki.
In the anime, just a simple release of her chakra could create massive shockwaves capable of subduing Hamura. As the first person to ever wield chakra on Earth, Kaguya can absorb any jutsu she encounters.
When making physical contact with an enemy, Kaguya is able to halt their movements while absorbing their chakra. Through her bond with the God Tree, she becomes stronger by gaining chakra from the tethered victims of the Infinite Tsukuyomi.
Kaguya has shown a degree of unarmed combat skills, as seen from her being able to easily block several attacks from Naruto’s omnidirectional shadow clone assault.
She can also move very fast, shown when she suddenly appeared before Sakura Haruno in the blink of an eye, and later when she reacted quickly to evade Sasuke’s teleportation-initiated Chidori, even though she first had to switch dimensions.
Said to be immortal, Kaguya can quickly regenerate any lost anatomy such as severed limbs with Hagoromo lending Naruto and Sasuke the only means of defeating her, the Six Paths – Chibaku Tensei through the Yin and Yang Seals. She also retained the ability to mould chakra even though she was hit with nine different variations of the Rasenshuriken, escaping with merely superficial damage.
Jutsu
Though she was active well before the dawn of shinobi and thus ninjutsu, Kaguya, as an Ōtsutsuki, is capable of casting various jutsu for which she needs not weave signs.
With her absolute mastery of chakra, she can utilise all five nature transformations along with Yin–Yang Release. She can make use of her extremely long hair as a makeshift weapon for capturing and tossing foes around the battlefield. Kaguya can also create life to serve on her behalf as her will. She can also use the Summoning Technique.
Kekkei Mora
Kaguya possesses a number of unique abilities, some of which predate those shown in the series and are far deadlier in comparison. The Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack allows Kaguya to materialise enormous chakra fists to attack the target, which are powerful enough to overcome a jinchūriki’s chakra arms and destroy a Complete Body – Susanoo with ease.
This technique can also be used defensively. She can also harden her long hair to fire countless needles with enough ferocity to pierce Susanoo, an “absolute defence”.
With the All-Killing Ash Bones, Kaguya can harden her bones to launch as weaponised projectiles from her back or hands. When hitting living targets, these bones will cause the victim’s body to disintegrate into piles of ash, killing them.
Kaguya’s strongest ability is the Expansive Truth-Seeking Ball, formed by the accumulated chakra drawn from all the people connected to the God Tree.
According to Black Zetsu, it houses every chakra nature, with the power to reshape the world by reducing it to nothing first, essentially serving as the start of a new dimension.
Byakugan
Kaguya wields the Byakugan in both eyes,[Notes 1] granting her a near 360° field of x-ray vision (with the presumed exception of a small blind spot at the upper thoracic vertebrae) and the ability to see the chakra pathway system.
She notes that her Byakugan is especially powerful, far more so than her younger son Hamura’s. Using her Byakugan, she identified that Naruto and Sasuke had similar chakra to her sons and Hagoromo’s children after seeing the chakra accumulated in their palms and pathway systems. In conjunction with her hair, Kaguya is able to see her opponent’s vital points, accurately piercing them in order to immobilise them completely.
Rinne Sharingan
Kaguya wields her Rinne Sharingan as a third eye on her forehead, which is red in colour and contains several concentric circles and nine tomoe.
Her third eye also grants her the Sharingan’s powers, such as seeing the flow of chakra, casting and easily recognising genjutsu, heightened powers of perception, among the other abilities it held. Using the Rinne Sharingan’s power, Kaguya could cast Infinite Tsukuyomi on select individuals.
With her third eye, Kaguya is also able to instantaneously teleport herself and others around her to a different dimension, while simultaneously erasing the presence of their chakra. Similarly, Kaguya is able to open and travel through rifts in space as a means of instantaneous travel.
Kaguya is able to manipulate the roots of the God Tree to encase those caught within her Infinite Tsukuyomi, converting most of the populace into White Zetsu by slowly draining them of their individuality, personalities and defining features. Kaguya can become stronger by rapidly absorbing the chakra of everyone connected to the God Tree.
Tailed Beast Transformation
Combined with the God Tree, Kaguya became the Ten-Tails to take back the chakra inherited by her sons. While fighting Team 7, the tailed beasts’ chakra in Naruto’s Sage Art: Super Tailed Beast Rasenshuriken reacted to the chakra inside of Kaguya, resulting in her mutating into an unstable, rabbit-esque version of the Ten-Tails.
Black Zetsu noted that the transformation was not humanoid and did not happen intentionally, implying that she’s also able to transform into the Ten-Tails at will.
When she became an unstable Ten-Tails from Naruto’s attack, she needed to absorb chakra from victims trapped within the Infinite Tsukuyomi to return to normal.
What are Kaguya Otsutsuki’s motives?
Kaguya Otsutsuki’s motives are not entirely clear, but it seems that she has a twisted sense of love and attachment for humanity. She initially wanted to bring peace and harmony to the world by ending the wars and uniting everyone under her rule.
However, she also feared that her sons would inherit her power and rebel against her, so she decided to reclaim all the chakra that she had given to them by casting the Infinite Tsukuyomi, a genjutsu that traps everyone in a dream world.
She also planned to use the White Zetsu Army, which are mutated humans created from the God Tree’s victims, to defend herself from any threats.
What is Kaguya Otsutsuki’s legacy?
Kaguya Otsutsuki’s legacy is both positive and negative. On one hand, she is responsible for creating chakra and giving birth to Hagoromo and Hamura, who are the ancestors of most shinobi clans and the founders of ninshu, the precursor of ninjutsu.
She also inspired many legends and myths in different cultures, such as the Rabbit Goddess and the Demon. On the other hand, she is also responsible for causing many conflicts and tragedies in history, such as the Curse of Hatred and the cycle of reincarnation between Indra and Asura, who are Hagoromo’s sons and Naruto and Sasuke’s predecessors. She also influenced many villains such as Madara Uchiha, Obito Uchiha, and Zetsu, who sought to revive her or continue her plan.
How was Kaguya Otsutsuki defeated?
Kaguya Otsutsuki was defeated twice in history. The first time was by her sons Hagoromo and Hamura, who used their Six Paths Chibaku Tensei technique to seal her inside a massive celestial body that became known as the moon.
They also extracted the Ten-Tails from her body and divided it into nine tailed beasts. The second time was by Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha, who inherited Hagoromo’s power and used the same technique to seal her again. They also freed the people from the Infinite Tsukuyomi and restored the balance of chakra in the world.
Kaguya Otsutsuki is a fascinating and complex character that has a significant impact on the Naruto universe. She is the origin of chakra, the mother of ninshu, and the final enemy of Naruto Shippuden.
She is also a tragic figure that lost her way and became corrupted by her own power. She represents the ultimate challenge for Naruto and Sasuke, who have to overcome their differences and work together to stop her. She is also a reminder of the importance of peace, harmony, and free will, which are the values that Naruto strives to protect.
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