Kazekage Rescue Mission
32 eps
32 canon 📷 32
Naruto returns to Konoha after two and a half years of training with Jiraiya, reuniting with Sakura, Konohamaru, and a village that has moved on while he was away. He learns that nearly everyone from his generation has been promoted, while Gaara has become Kazekage. Tsunade reunites Naruto and Sakura for their first assignment together, but first they have to prove how much they have grown.
Naruto and Sakura meet Kakashi for a second bell test, this time as far more capable ninja than the kids he trained years ago. While Jiraiya warns Kakashi that Akatsuki is hunting the tailed beasts, Sasori and Deidara approach the Hidden Sand with Gaara as their target. The Akatsuki sleeper agent Yura helps them slip past the village's defenses as Naruto and Sakura begin their rematch with Kakashi.
Naruto and Sakura show Kakashi exactly what their training accomplished, with Naruto using his shadow clones more intelligently and Sakura revealing the monstrous strength she learned from Tsunade. Kakashi realizes the tricks that worked on the old Team 7 will not be enough anymore. In the Hidden Sand, Deidara infiltrates from the air and is finally confronted by Gaara.
Gaara battles Deidara above the Hidden Sand while Naruto and Sakura struggle to land a clean hit on Kakashi during the bell test. Naruto finally attacks Kakashi's one real weakness by threatening to spoil the ending of his new Make-Out book, forcing Kakashi to cover his ears and close his eyes. Naruto and Sakura take the bells just as Gaara seals himself inside a sphere of sand to withstand Deidara's assault.
With the bell test over, Tsunade formally restores Naruto and Sakura to active duty under Kakashi. In the Hidden Sand, Gaara crushes one of Deidara's arms and continues fighting as Kazekage, determined to protect the village that once feared him. Deidara answers by preparing his massive C3 explosive and dropping it directly toward the village.
Gaara throws an enormous shield of sand over the Hidden Sand and absorbs Deidara's C3 blast before it can destroy the village. The effort leaves him exposed, and Deidara detonates clay hidden in Gaara's own sand armor, knocking him unconscious and carrying him away. Back in Konoha, Naruto shares ramen with Iruka and talks about his own determination to become Hokage, unaware that Gaara has just been taken.
Kankuro races after Deidara and Sasori as they escape with Gaara, pushing through traps that kill several of the Sand ninja following them. Baki sends an emergency message to Konoha while Naruto settles back into his apartment and Temari begins her return trip to the Sand. Kankuro finally catches the Akatsuki pair, and Sasori stays behind to face him alone.
Kankuro attacks Sasori with Crow, Black Ant, and Salamander, only to discover that Sasori originally built the very puppets he is using. Sasori dismantles them, poisons Kankuro, and leaves him dying in the desert while Deidara escapes with Gaara. Once the Hidden Leaf receives word of the abduction, Tsunade immediately sends Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi to rescue the Kazekage.
Team Kakashi meets Temari on the road and continues toward the Hidden Sand as Naruto explains why Gaara's capture hits him so hard. Both of them grew up as jinchuriki, feared and isolated because of the beasts sealed inside them, and Naruto refuses to let Gaara be abandoned. In the Sand, Kankuro's condition worsens as the medical team struggles to identify Sasori's poison and Baki turns to Chiyo and Ebizo for help.
Deidara and Sasori reach an Akatsuki hideout and join the other members through astral projections to begin extracting Shukaku from Gaara. The ritual will take three days, giving the rescue teams only a narrow window to reach him. Team Kakashi arrives in the Hidden Sand during a sandstorm, where Chiyo mistakes Kakashi for his father Sakumo and attacks him on sight, while Tsunade sends Team Guy as backup.
Sakura takes over Kankuro's treatment and proves how far she has come under Tsunade, drawing Sasori's poison from his body and beginning work on an antidote no one in the Sand could produce. Kakashi summons Pakkun to track a scrap from Sasori's clothing. Before Team Kakashi leaves, the badly weakened Kankuro asks Naruto to bring Gaara home.
Chiyo decides to leave retirement and accompany Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi after Sasori, while Pakkun leads them toward the Akatsuki hideout in the Land of Rivers. On the way, Chiyo explains the tailed beasts and the jinchuriki who carry them, giving Sakura a clearer picture of what Naruto and Gaara have lived with. Zetsu spots both Team Kakashi and the approaching Team Guy, prompting Akatsuki to send Itachi and Kisame to delay them.
Team Kakashi is intercepted by Itachi while Team Guy runs into Kisame, both enemies buying time for Akatsuki's extraction ritual. Kisame floods the battlefield and traps Lee, Neji, and Tenten in Water Prison clones, leaving Guy to face him alone. Against Itachi, Naruto is caught in a genjutsu without even meeting his eyes and begins wasting attacks on a swarm of false Itachis and crows.
Naruto realizes he has been trapped in Itachi's genjutsu and remembers Jiraiya's training on how to disrupt an illusion from within. At the same time, Guy struggles against Kisame and Samehada while his students remain trapped underwater. Naruto finally begins breaking the genjutsu, while Guy opens six of the Eight Gates and prepares his finishing attack.
Sakura and Chiyo help Naruto fully escape Itachi's genjutsu, and Kakashi turns the fight around by trapping their opponent long enough for Naruto to land his Giant Rasengan. Elsewhere, Guy unleashes Morning Peacock and defeats the man posing as Kisame. Both teams then discover that the enemies they killed were not Itachi and Kisame at all, but other shinobi transformed into perfect copies of them.
Chiyo identifies the false Itachi as Yura and explains the grim rule behind the tailed beasts: extracting one from its jinchuriki kills the host. Sakura immediately understands what that means for both Gaara and Naruto, while Naruto becomes even more desperate to reach Gaara in time. Back in the Hidden Sand, the council begins discussing what happens if Gaara never returns, enraging Kankuro as Team Kakashi pauses briefly before continuing the rescue.
As the rescue teams finish their brief rest, Chiyo remembers Sasori as a lonely child who built puppets of his dead parents just to feel their embrace again. Inside the Akatsuki hideout, the extraction of Shukaku finally ends and Gaara falls lifeless to the floor. Naruto, Kakashi, Chiyo, and Sakura reach the sealed cave moments too late.
Team Kakashi discovers that the Akatsuki hideout is protected by a Five-Seal Barrier, forcing Team Guy to split up and remove the four matching tags scattered around the area. Once all five seals are pulled at the same time, Sakura smashes open the stone blocking the entrance. Team Kakashi steps inside and finds Gaara's body lying between Deidara and Sasori.
Each member of Team Guy is locked in combat with a perfect mirror copy of themselves - same techniques, same strength, no fatigue. The only way out is to surpass who you were when you walked in.
Sakura and Chiyo face Sasori inside Hiruko, the heavily armored puppet he wears like a shell. Chiyo uses chakra threads to guide Sakura through a barrage of poisoned needles and attacks, counting on Sakura's strength to break through Hiruko's defenses. Sakura reaches him and destroys the puppet with a single crushing blow, forcing Sasori to reveal himself.
Sasori emerges from Hiruko looking exactly as Chiyo remembers him from more than twenty years earlier. While Naruto and Kakashi continue chasing Deidara, Sakura and Chiyo try to understand how Sasori has remained unchanged for so long. Sasori then unveils his next weapon: the missing Third Kazekage, turned into one of his human puppets.
Sasori attacks with the Third Kazekage puppet while Chiyo summons the Mother and Father puppets she originally made for him as a child. Sakura escapes a cloud of poison gas, and Chiyo's puppets clash with the Kazekage until Sasori reveals the puppet's most dangerous weapon. Using the Third Kazekage's magnetic power, he fills the cavern with Iron Sand.
Chiyo explains the Third Kazekage's Iron Sand as Sasori overwhelms the Mother and Father puppets and clogs their mechanisms. The fight brings back memories of Sasori losing his parents and creating puppet versions of them so he could still feel their embrace. With her own puppets disabled, Chiyo begins controlling Sakura directly, turning Sakura herself into the weapon against Sasori.
Sakura lets Chiyo guide her through Sasori's enormous Iron Sand attacks while relying on Tsunade's training to read the openings for herself. Sasori reshapes the Iron Sand into a field of poisoned spikes and appears to catch Sakura, but she has already taken an antidote and is waiting for him to close in. When the Third Kazekage puppet moves to finish her, Sakura destroys it with one punch.
Sakura reveals that she prepared three doses of antidote to Sasori's poison, but each one only protects her for three minutes. Sasori abandons the destroyed Third Kazekage and finally exposes the truth behind his unchanged appearance: he transformed his own body into a puppet, leaving only a living core. As Naruto and Kakashi continue pursuing Deidara outside, Sasori attacks Sakura and Chiyo with the weapons built into his artificial body.
Sakura smashes Sasori's puppet body apart, but his living core simply transfers into another shell. Chiyo answers his army of one hundred puppets with the legendary ten puppets of Chikamatsu, turning the cavern into an all-out puppet war. After Chiyo is poisoned and Sasori escapes an attempt to seal his core, he lunges for her, and Sakura takes the blade through her own body instead.
With Sakura badly wounded, Chiyo uses the last antidote on her and then brings the Mother and Father puppets together around Sasori, piercing his living core. Chiyo reveals that she possesses a forbidden technique capable of giving her own life to revive another person, using part of it to save Sakura. Before Sasori dies, he tells Sakura that one of his spies inside Orochimaru's organization will meet him at the Tenchi Bridge in ten days.
Team Guy remains trapped in evenly matched fights against their own copies until Lee realizes the weakness in the trap: the duplicates only match the strength they had when the seals were removed. By pushing themselves beyond that level, Guy, Neji, Lee, and Tenten finally defeat their doubles. Back at the cave, Sakura recovers while Chiyo refuses to return to the Sand, and Kakashi prepares to use his new Mangekyo Sharingan against Deidara.
Kakashi activates his Mangekyo Sharingan and uses Kamui to warp away Deidara's remaining arm, creating an opening for Naruto to knock Gaara's body free from the clay bird. Naruto carries Gaara to the ground and, seeing that he is dead, turns his grief directly on Deidara. Deidara substitutes an explosive clay clone and escapes Naruto's attack as the Nine-Tails' chakra begins to leak out.
Naruto's rage pushes him into a two-tailed state until Kakashi uses the seal Jiraiya gave him to suppress the Nine-Tails' chakra. Deidara tries to escape, only to be intercepted by Team Guy, and responds by swallowing clay and turning himself into a massive suicide bomb. Kakashi sends the explosion away with Kamui, and the group carries Gaara to an open field where Chiyo steps forward to help him.
Chiyo begins her life-giving technique on Gaara, but when her chakra starts to fail, Naruto supplies his own so she can finish it. She apologizes for the mistakes of her generation and entrusts the future to Naruto and the younger shinobi before giving her life to restore Gaara's. Gaara wakes surrounded by Sand ninja who came searching for him, and Naruto finally realizes that Chiyo traded her life for his.
Gaara returns to the Hidden Sand as its Kazekage, welcomed home by the village that once feared him. Naruto and Sakura pay their respects at Chiyo's grave before Team Kakashi departs, and Gaara uses his sand to lift Naruto's hand into a quiet farewell handshake. Elsewhere, Deidara is revealed to have survived, Tobi recovers Sasori's ring, and back in Konoha a new shinobi named Sai is selected to join Team Kakashi.
Tenchi Bridge Mission
21 eps
18 canon 3 mixed 📷 21
With Kakashi still recovering, Naruto and Sakura need replacements before they can follow Sasori's lead to the Tenchi Bridge. Naruto asks around for another teammate, but everyone he knows is already committed elsewhere. While Tsunade is pressured by the village elders to accept Danz?'s nominee, the mysterious Sai appears and provokes Naruto into a brief fight.
Naruto's first clash with Sai ends without a winner, but the stranger soon turns up again in Tsunade's office as the new member assigned to Team Kakashi. Because Kakashi is still hospitalized, the team also receives an ANBU captain using the name Yamato as its temporary leader. Naruto immediately recognizes Sai and makes it clear that replacing Sasuke is not going to make them friends.
Naruto confronts Sai after learning that his earlier attack was only a test of Naruto's strength, and Sakura has to stop the argument from turning into another fight. Tsunade privately warns Yamato that Sai was forced onto the team by Danz? and may have orders beyond the stated mission. With the new Team Kakashi assembled, Yamato takes responsibility for getting four people who barely trust one another to the Tenchi Bridge.
The new Team Kakashi heads out for the Tenchi Bridge, but Sai keeps needling Naruto about Sasuke and Naruto finally loses his temper. Yamato shuts the confrontation down with Wood Release and makes it clear that the mission comes before their personal grudges. Sai responds with the same empty smile he uses whenever he wants to hide what he is actually feeling.
During a stop on the way to the bridge, Sakura finds Sai painting and learns that he cannot give his work a title because nothing comes to mind when he looks at it. She later discovers his strange picture book, which shows two boys fighting their way inward from opposite covers but leaves the middle pages unfinished. As Yamato gathers information for the mission, the book becomes the first sign that there is more to Sai than his blank expression suggests.
Before risking the real meeting at the Tenchi Bridge, Yamato runs Team Kakashi through a full simulation of the contact with Sasori's spy. Naruto and Sakura try to treat it like a team exercise, but Sai abandons Naruto when doing so gives him a cleaner path to completing the mock mission. The exercise convinces Yamato that their lack of trust could ruin the real operation if they do not keep it under control.
Yamato disguises himself as Sasori and meets the Akatsuki spy at the Tenchi Bridge, discovering that the informant is Kabuto. Kabuto reveals that Orochimaru freed him from Sasori's control long ago and turns on the man he believes to be Sasori just as Orochimaru himself appears. Yamato's disguise is exposed, and Naruto, Sakura, and Sai rush onto the bridge to back him up.
Orochimaru deliberately taunts Naruto with Sasuke's name and the idea that Naruto may never be able to bring him back. Naruto's anger draws out the Nine-Tails' chakra until he reaches a three-tailed state and attacks Orochimaru with enough force to tear apart the bridge around them. Yamato, Sakura, and Sai are left separated from the fight as Naruto loses more and more control.
Sai slips away from Sakura and Yamato and crosses toward Orochimaru while Naruto's battle grows more violent. Orochimaru repeatedly sheds damaged bodies and continues provoking Naruto, who finally erupts into a four-tailed form so dense with chakra that his own body disappears beneath it. While Naruto becomes completely unreachable, Sai approaches Orochimaru to carry out the secret orders Danz? gave him.
Four-tailed Naruto and Orochimaru turn the area around the ruined bridge into a battlefield, with Naruto firing a massive chakra blast and Orochimaru repeatedly surviving injuries that should have ended the fight. Orochimaru answers with his giant snakes and the Kusanagi sword, but even he cannot put Naruto down. The struggle pushes Orochimaru's current body to its limit while Yamato races to stop Naruto before the transformation destroys him.
Sakura tries to reach Naruto through the four-tailed chakra cloak, but he no longer recognizes her and lashes out, badly injuring her arm. Yamato uses the First Hokage's power in his Wood Release to suppress the Nine-Tails and finally pull Naruto back to himself. At the same time, Sai reveals himself to Orochimaru as Danz?'s messenger, while Kabuto heals Sakura before leaving with Orochimaru.
The Sai that Orochimaru attacked turns out to have been an ink clone, allowing the real Sai to deliver Danz?'s message and leave with Orochimaru and Kabuto. Yamato secretly follows them with a Wood Clone while Sakura tends to the exhausted Naruto. Naruto wakes with no memory of becoming the Four-Tails, and Sakura hides the truth about how she received her injury.
Yamato explains that Danz? may be trying to make a deal with Orochimaru behind Tsunade's back, turning Sai's disappearance into a threat to the entire village. The team follows Yamato's tracking clone toward Orochimaru's hideout, only to find signs that their pursuit has already been noticed. After watching Sakura protect Naruto from the truth, Yamato privately tells Naruto that it was Naruto himself who injured her while under the Nine-Tails' influence.
Yamato tells Naruto that relying on the Nine-Tails is not what makes him strong and forces him to face what losing control did to Sakura. Naruto, Sakura, and Yamato study Sai's picture book and realize that it follows Sai and his older brother from opposite ends toward an unfinished meeting in the center. Yamato's tracking clone locates Orochimaru's hideout, where Sai is brought inside and comes face-to-face with Sasuke.
Yamato, Naruto, and Sakura infiltrate Orochimaru's enormous underground hideout and use the tracking seeds Yamato planted earlier to locate Sai. In his room, Sai secretly summons a Bingo Book containing marked targets while Kabuto realizes he left sensitive documents behind and turns back. Team Kakashi reaches Sai's room before Kabuto can recover everything and corners their missing teammate.
Team Kakashi restrains Sai and demands to know what Danz? really sent him to do. Sai talks about Root's training, which stripped away names and emotions, and about the brother whose death left the center of his picture book unfinished. Naruto refuses to accept Sai's claim that bonds only create pain and explains that his bond with Sasuke is exactly why he will keep risking everything to bring him home.
Kabuto attacks Team Kakashi and frees Sai, but Sai shocks everyone by turning on Kabuto instead of escaping with him. Naruto's determination to save Sasuke has stirred memories of Sai's own brother and made him reconsider what bonds mean. After Yamato captures Kabuto, the team splits into pairs and begins searching Orochimaru's hideout for Sasuke.
As the search continues, Sai finally remembers what he wanted to draw on the unfinished center pages of his picture book: himself and his brother together. He completes the image and gives Naruto and Sakura his first genuine smile. When Orochimaru interrupts the search and Sai goes ahead alone, Sakura and Yamato examine the belongings he left behind and discover that Sasuke is listed among Sai's assassination targets.
Yamato realizes that Sai's true Root mission was to kill Sasuke, but Sai has already reached Sasuke's room and tries to capture him alive instead. Sasuke breaks free of Sai's ink snakes and blows open a large section of the hideout, drawing Naruto, Sakura, and Yamato to the scene. Sai admits that he abandoned his assassination order because he now understands why Naruto refuses to give up on Sasuke.
Naruto finally stands face-to-face with Sasuke again, but Sasuke makes it clear that he has severed his old bonds and cares only about killing Itachi. His speed and Chidori techniques overwhelm Naruto, Sai, Sakura, and Yamato before they can properly react. When Naruto reaches for the Nine-Tails' power, Sasuke enters his inner world with the Sharingan, confronts the fox directly, and suppresses its chakra.
Yamato decides to stop holding back, but Sasuke prepares a jutsu powerful enough to end the confrontation before Orochimaru intervenes and tells him to spare Team Kakashi because they may still be useful against Akatsuki. Sasuke leaves with Orochimaru and Kabuto, forcing Naruto and Sakura to accept that they found him and still could not bring him home. Back in Konoha, Yamato reports what happened to Tsunade, while Sai chooses his new bond with Team Kakashi over the emotionless life Root taught him.
Twelve Guardian Ninja
18 eps
1 canon 3 mixed 14 filler 📷 18
Naruto is shaken by a nightmare of the Nine-Tails breaking loose and destroying a temple, but Kakashi gives him something else to focus on: a new training method that could make him stronger much faster. Sai tries to put his friendship books into practice while spending time with Naruto, Sakura, and Team 10, with predictably awkward results. Elsewhere, two grave robbers search an abandoned temple crypt, hinting that someone is targeting the dead.
Kakashi begins Naruto's new training by explaining chakra nature and shape transformation, then uses special paper to reveal that Naruto's natural affinity is Wind. Yamato joins them and demonstrates how combining elemental natures produces his Wood Release. Kakashi then reveals the real advantage of Naruto's shadow clones: every clone can train separately, and all of that experience returns to Naruto when they disappear.
Naruto struggles to cut a leaf with Wind chakra until he seeks advice from Asuma, another wind-style user. With Asuma's tip passed back through a shadow clone, Naruto finally slices the leaf in two and clears the first step of his training. The training is interrupted when Team Kakashi and Team 10 receive new missions, while a group of mysterious shinobi discusses changing the Land of Fire by destroying Konoha.
Team Kakashi is sent to investigate grave robberies near the Fire Temple, where four hidden tombs belonging to former elite guardians appear to be the real targets. When the team splits up, Naruto finds one tomb already emptied and gets into a fight with Sora, a hot-headed young monk who also uses Wind Release. The misunderstanding is broken up, and Naruto is disturbed to realize that the Fire Temple is the same place he saw in his nightmare.
At the Fire Temple, Chiriku explains that the stolen graves belong to former members of the Twelve Guardian Ninja, a group that once split over whether the Hokage should continue to hold military power. Naruto watches Sora being treated as an outsider by the other monks and recognizes the same loneliness he grew up with, softening the hostility between them. Sora admits that he wants strength to avenge his father, while the remaining hidden tombs are robbed.
Chiriku leads Team Kakashi and Sora after the stolen coffins, but the thieves lure them into a prepared trap and split the group apart. The attackers finally show themselves as F?ka, Fuen, and Fud? under the command of Furido, each taking on a separated Leaf shinobi. Naruto ends the episode trapped underground and face-to-face with F?ka.
The separated battles continue as Yamato faces Fud?'s Earth Release and Sai tries to outmaneuver Fuen's traps. Sakura is attacked by a giant venomous spider before Sai reaches her, while Naruto discovers that F?ka can use several different elemental natures and has a dangerous interest in stealing his chakra. Elsewhere, Sora finally encounters Furido on his own.
Furido tries to win Sora over by presenting himself as someone who understands his anger toward Konoha, but Sora realizes he is one of the grave robbers and attacks him. Naruto continues fighting F?ka while Yamato, Sakura, and Sai struggle to reach him through Fud?'s traps. Sora comes to Naruto's aid, and the arrival of Chiriku and the Fire Temple monks forces Furido's group to retreat.
Back in Konoha, Tsunade explains how the Twelve Guardian Ninja split over a failed attempt to place all military authority under the Fire Daimyo. Sora temporarily joins Team Kakashi in Sai's place, but his temper immediately puts him at odds with Naruto and the others. Asuma tells Sora that his father Kazuma was one of the guardians who died in that conflict, while Furido's group attacks elsewhere in the Land of Fire.
Yamato asks Asuma to help Naruto and Sora with their Wind Release training, giving the two rivals a chance to work toward the same goal. Chiriku sends word that Sora is Kazuma's son and reveals that the boy once lost control of a terrifying chakra at the Fire Temple. After Asuma gives Sora a new set of chakra blades, Furido approaches him with the truth that Asuma was the one who killed Kazuma.
Sora overhears Danz? being questioned about the grave robberies and learns that some in Konoha see him as dangerous enough to kill. When Asuma admits that he killed Kazuma during the Twelve Guardian Ninja conflict, Sora lashes out and flees after Naruto protects him from the ANBU response. Furido then feeds Sora's resentment by claiming that the Land of Fire has two competing kings, the Daimyo and the Hokage, and Sora turns his anger toward Tsunade.
Naruto chases Sora through Konoha just as the village loses power and Furido's group begins its attack. Four enormous gates rise around the village and form a barrier, while corpses begin clawing out of the earth inside Konoha and the shinobi scramble to protect civilians. Asuma reaches Sora and forces him to confront the fact that Furido's plan will kill ordinary villagers along with the people Sora blames.
The invading corpses are revealed to be victims taken from villages Furido's group destroyed, while four stolen coffins open to reveal reanimated members of the Twelve Guardian Ninja. The revived guardians spread out to prepare Limelight, a devastating Lightning Release technique capable of destroying Konoha. Asuma stays behind to fight Kitane, while Naruto, Sakura, and Yamato are pulled into separate battles against Furido's allies.
Konoha's defenders fight on several fronts as Furido explains that the reanimated guardians only need to complete Limelight for the village to be wiped out. Sakura defeats Fuen and breaks the barrier around Konoha, while Yamato defeats Fud? and stops the army of reanimated corpses. Sora refuses to join Furido and is beaten for it, while Asuma remains trapped by Kitane and Naruto continues struggling against F?ka.
With the barrier and corpse army gone, the Leaf realizes they were only distractions meant to buy time for Limelight. Naruto figures out F?ka's trick and finally defeats her, while Asuma escapes Kitane's technique and stops the reanimated guardians before they can finish their attack. Furido abandons that plan and reveals his real weapon: Sora carries Nine-Tails chakra that was gathered after the fox's attack on Konoha, and Furido releases the seal holding it back.
Naruto and Asuma reach Sora as the leaked Nine-Tails chakra begins consuming him, and Asuma recognizes Furido as Kazuma, Sora's supposedly dead father. Kazuma admits that he sealed the leftover chakra into his own son so Sora could become a weapon against Konoha. Naruto reveals that he is the Nine-Tails' true jinch?riki and tries to reach Sora, but Sora loses control and grows from a one-tailed cloak into a three-tailed form.
Sora's Nine-Tails chakra overwhelms him, and even Naruto, Yamato, Lee, Kiba, and Ch?ji cannot hold him down as a fourth tail begins to form. The chakra inside Sora resonates with the real Nine-Tails inside Naruto, forcing Naruto toward his own transformation while Yamato is unable to suppress both of them at once. Naruto stops himself through sheer will and turns all of his attention back to saving Sora.
Naruto keeps getting back up no matter how many times Sora knocks him down, finally reaching his friend and helping him reject the Nine-Tails chakra instead of letting it define him. Asuma defeats Kazuma, and Sora expels the stolen chakra and returns to normal before eventually leaving Konoha to travel and find his own place in the world. As the village recovers, Asuma and Shikamaru return to their shogi board, and the story shifts back toward Akatsuki as two members close in on the Two-Tails jinch?riki.
Akatsuki Suppression Mission
17 eps
17 canon 📷 17
Asuma visits the Third Hokage's grave and reflects on the lesson about Konoha's "king" that he once failed to understand. Naruto returns to his Wind training while news reaches the Leaf that Akatsuki is moving again. In the Land of Lightning, Yugito Nii releases the Two-Tails against Hidan and Kakuzu, but Hidan defeats her and the pair head toward the Land of Fire.
Zetsu arrives to collect the defeated Yugito while Hidan and Kakuzu move into the Land of Fire and attack the Fire Temple. Chiriku fights back, but Hidan kills him and Kakuzu decides to cash in the enormous bounty on his body. Back in Konoha, Naruto begins the next stage of his training by trying to cut through a waterfall with Wind chakra, using hundreds of shadow clones to speed up the work.
Tsunade responds to the Akatsuki threat by forming twenty four-man squads to search the Land of Fire, sending Asuma out with Shikamaru, Izumo, and Kotetsu. Naruto keeps grinding away at the waterfall exercise while Sakura quietly looks at an old Team 7 photograph and worries about him. Late that night, Naruto finally cuts the waterfall and completes the second stage of his Wind training before collapsing from exhaustion.
Asuma's team reaches the devastated Fire Temple and learns that Hidan and Kakuzu took Chiriku's body, leading Shikamaru to realize they are probably headed for a bounty exchange. Naruto takes a break at Ichiraku, where Kakashi promises that the next stage of training will be something different. Kakashi then surprises Naruto by producing a Rasengan of his own and prepares to explain what Naruto must do next.
Kakashi explains that the Rasengan was never completed with an elemental nature, even by its creator, the Fourth Hokage, and believes Naruto may be able to succeed where others could not. Naruto begins trying to combine Wind Release with the Rasengan, but the strain nearly draws out the Nine-Tails before Yamato suppresses it. Meanwhile, Kakuzu collects Chiriku's bounty and Asuma's team closes in on the exchange point.
Asuma, Shikamaru, Izumo, and Kotetsu ambush Hidan outside the bounty station and quickly discover that ordinary killing blows do not work on him. Shikamaru supports Asuma with his shadow techniques while Izumo and Kotetsu keep Kakuzu occupied. Hidan manages to cut Asuma, drinks his blood, and steps into a ritual circle just as Asuma engulfs him in burning ash.
Asuma is burned by his own attack, revealing that Hidan's ritual links any injury Hidan suffers to the person whose blood he swallowed. Shikamaru studies the curse in the middle of the fight and realizes Hidan must remain inside the circle for it to work. He forces Hidan out with Shadow Possession, giving Asuma the opening to sever Hidan's head from his body.
Decapitation does not kill Hidan, and Kakuzu calmly stitches his partner's head back onto his body while holding off Izumo and Kotetsu with the black threads inside him. Once restored, Hidan slips back into his ritual circle before Asuma can stop him. He drives a spike through his own chest, inflicting the same wound on Asuma and leaving him mortally injured.
Ino, Choji, Aoba, and Raido arrive as reinforcements, but Hidan and Kakuzu are recalled before the fight can continue so Akatsuki can seal the Two-Tails. Ino tries to save Asuma and realizes his wounds are beyond treatment. Asuma gives Choji, Ino, and Shikamaru his final words, tells Shikamaru who Konoha's true "king" is, and dies after one last cigarette.
Naruto struggles to combine Wind chakra with the Rasengan until Kakashi's advice helps him realize he can use an additional shadow clone to divide the work. While Akatsuki begins extracting the Two-Tails, their leader lays out the organization's plan to use the tailed beasts and control war itself. News of Asuma's death reaches Konoha, and Shikamaru returns to report to Tsunade before taking responsibility for delivering Asuma's message to Kurenai.
Konoha gathers for Asuma's funeral, but Shikamaru stays away and finally breaks down at home during a game of shogi with his father. After working through his grief, he finishes a plan for killing Hidan and Kakuzu. Team 10 prepares to leave without authorization, but Kakashi steps in as their required fourth member and joins them on the revenge mission.
After the Two-Tails is fully extracted, Hidan and Kakuzu resume their hunt and walk straight into Shikamaru's prepared ambush. Shikamaru pins their shadows with Asuma's chakra blades and uses Shadow Possession to turn Hidan against Kakuzu. Kakuzu escapes the trap by secretly detaching his arm, and Choji drops in from above to continue the attack.
Choji's attack fails when Kakuzu hardens his body, but Kakashi catches him with a Lightning Blade directly through the chest. Kakuzu survives by releasing four masked creatures from his back, revealing that the heart Kakashi destroyed was only one of several inside him. The remaining masks unleash Fire, Wind, and Lightning attacks together, forcing Kakashi and Team 10 onto the defensive.
Kakuzu's masked creatures overwhelm the team until Shikamaru pieces together the truth: Kakuzu carries five hearts and must be killed once for each of them. Knowing Hidan and Kakuzu are far more dangerous together, Shikamaru uses Shadow Possession to drag Hidan into a forest prepared for their private fight. When the technique appears to wear off, Hidan cuts Shikamaru and begins another curse ritual with what he believes is Shikamaru's blood.
Hidan stabs himself through the chest expecting Shikamaru to die, only to destroy one of Kakuzu's hearts instead. Shikamaru reveals that Kakashi secretly collected Kakuzu's blood and that the entire ritual was part of his plan. Kakuzu absorbs one of his masks to replace the lost heart and corners Kakashi, Ino, and Choji, but Naruto, Yamato, Sakura, and Sai arrive in time to stop his finishing attack.
Shikamaru reveals that he deliberately lured Hidan onto Nara clan land, where a deep pit and a web of explosive tags are already waiting for him. Remembering Asuma's final lesson, Shikamaru blows Hidan apart and sends the immortal Akatsuki member into the grave he prepared. Back on the main battlefield, Naruto steps forward against Kakuzu and unveils the completed technique he has been training for: Wind Style: Rasenshuriken.
Naruto's first attempt to hit Kakuzu with the Rasenshuriken collapses before it connects, forcing him to try again while Kakuzu changes tactics to attack from a distance. Naruto uses shadow clones to make Kakuzu commit to the wrong target, then slips through the opening with the real attack. The Rasenshuriken lands and tears through Kakuzu's remaining replacement hearts, leaving him shattered on the battlefield but not yet dead.
Three-Tails' Appearance
24 eps
3 mixed 21 filler 📷 24
Kakashi finishes the battered Kakuzu with Lightning Blade, and Team 10 returns to Konoha with Asuma's revenge finally complete. At Asuma's grave, Shikamaru tells Kurenai that the "king" Asuma wanted protected is the next generation, including her unborn child. Tsunade's examination of Kakuzu shows that Naruto's Rasenshuriken destroys the target at a cellular level but also damages Naruto's own arm, so she forbids him from using it again while Orochimaru sends Kabuto to find a woman named Guren.
An ANBU operative dies after sending Konoha information about a possible Orochimaru hideout, and Kakashi is assigned to investigate with Shino, Kiba, and Hinata. Naruto is frustrated that the Rasenshuriken has been taken away from him, so Jiraiya offers to train him again and takes him to a hot spring village. Meanwhile, Kabuto gives Guren a new mission, and Sasuke briefly meets a sickly boy named Yukimaru.
Guren selects a small group of survivors from Orochimaru's experiments and leaves the hideout just before Kakashi's team discovers it. The remaining test subjects try to rebel against her, but she wipes them out with Crystal Style, leaving only a few followers behind. Naruto begins training with Jiraiya and the toads while Kakashi's group realizes they are dealing with an enemy whose jutsu can crystallize almost anything.
Kabuto brings Yukimaru to a lake and forces him through a painful experiment meant to draw out the creature hidden beneath the water. Orochimaru has Sasuke fight a thousand Sound ninja at once, and Sasuke defeats all of them without killing anyone because he is saving his hatred for Itachi. Naruto meets Yukimaru at the hot spring village while Guren is tempted with the possibility that Orochimaru may choose her, rather than Sasuke, as his next vessel.
Jiraiya continues teaching Naruto how to synchronize his chakra with a summoned partner, but Naruto would rather work with Gamakichi and Gamatatsu than Gamariki. A new lead on Akatsuki pulls Jiraiya away, leaving Naruto instructions to continue the training on his own. Back in Konoha, Shino begins breeding insects that survived Guren's Crystal Style while Kakashi's team keeps tracking her group.
Kabuto places Yukimaru in Guren's care and tells her that succeeding with the boy is her chance to prove herself to Orochimaru. When Yukimaru becomes sick during a storm, Guren reluctantly stays with him through the night and begins to soften toward the child. Yukimaru gives her a keepsake connected to his mother, and Guren answers by making him a crystal camellia that she promises will remain intact as long as she lives.
Guren rejoins her men and prepares to confront the Leaf team while Shino stays behind to breed insects resistant to her Crystal Style. Kakashi, Kiba, and Hinata move ahead and are drawn into battle with Guren's followers. Back in Konoha, Naruto finally gets Gamatatsu to use Water Style and convinces Tsunade to let him join the reinforcement team heading after Kakashi.
Kakashi, Kiba, and Hinata are separated by Guren's men, with Hinata badly injured by attacks hidden inside a smoke screen and Kakashi occupied by the powerful Gozu. Kiba returns in time to keep Hinata from being finished off, and Shino arrives with his newly resistant insects to force the attackers back. Naruto squeezes in one last round of collaboration training before Sakura drags him away to join the mission.
Tsunade confirms that the enemy is using the rare Crystal Style while Guren traps Kakashi's team inside a huge crystal labyrinth. Her crystal clones press the attack and Hinata is sealed inside a crystal prison after defeating one of them. Naruto's reinforcements reach the battlefield, and Naruto uses his new Wind Style collaboration with Gamatatsu to blast open the labyrinth and reach the trapped team.
With the crystal labyrinth broken, Team Kakashi helps recover Hinata and the Leaf shinobi pull back while Sakura treats her injuries. Kabuto leads Guren, Gozu, and Yukimaru to the lake, where he again forces Yukimaru to use his strange power. Guren raises crystal pillars around the water, and Yukimaru's chakra finally calls the Three-Tails up from the lake.
Yukimaru manages to hold the Three-Tails still long enough for Guren to try capturing it, but the beast breaks free and attacks everyone around the lake. Naruto, Gamakichi, and Gamatatsu arrive and discover Yukimaru working with Guren, while the other Leaf teams clash with her remaining followers. When Guren is put in danger, Yukimaru pushes himself past his limit to restrain the Three-Tails again and escape with her.
The Three-Tails covers the area in a mist that produces genjutsu, trapping Naruto in a vision of Sasuke and nearly making him attack Kiba with a Rasengan. Guren is caught in memories of her own past, and Yukimaru collapses with another fever after using too much power. Once Tsunade learns that the Three-Tails has appeared, she sends Shizune, Ino, Tenten, and Lee to help seal it before Orochimaru or Akatsuki can take it.
Naruto searches for Yukimaru and runs into Guren, leading to a short fight before Kakashi and Yamato pull him back. Kabuto makes it clear to Guren that Orochimaru only values Yukimaru as a tool for controlling the Three-Tails, forcing her to face how attached she has become to him. The Leaf reinforcements arrive with new orders: capture and seal the Three-Tails before anyone else can claim it.
Kakashi reorganizes the combined Leaf force into three groups for the Three-Tails operation. Shizune, Sakura, Ino, and Hinata form the sealing team; Kakashi, Naruto, Sai, and Shino handle direct combat; Yamato, Lee, Tenten, and Kiba guard the sealing group. Away from the Leaf camp, it is revealed that Rinji has been secretly reporting Guren's movements to Kabuto.
The Leaf teams move into position around the lake and begin preparing the Four-Corner Sealing Barrier while Kakashi's combat team intercepts Guren and Gozu. Naruto accuses Guren of using Yukimaru as a tool, while she insists she is the one giving the boy somewhere to belong. As the sealing ritual starts, battles break out around the perimeter to keep Orochimaru's forces away from the lake.
Shino's specially bred insects finally give the Leaf a way through Guren's Crystal Style, allowing the combat team to push her back. Gozu throws himself in front of Kakashi's attack and appears to die protecting her, while the guarding team stops Rinji's men from reaching the seal. Guren remembers that she was the one who killed Yukimaru's mother, and Kabuto uses that guilt to force her back into Orochimaru's plan.
Guren returns to the lake with Yukimaru and uses herself as a distraction while Rinji's group attacks the sealing team. The assault breaks the Four-Corner Sealing Barrier before Shizune's group can finish, and the Three-Tails begins rampaging across the lake. Orochimaru's real plan becomes clear: he built Yukimaru's attachment to Guren so the boy would willingly use far more of his power whenever her life was threatened.
Rinji stabs Guren to force a reaction from Yukimaru, and Yukimaru desperately tries to restrain the Three-Tails to save her. When his strength gives out, Guren shields him with Crystal Style and turns against the beast herself. Naruto joins her in the fight, but the Three-Tails overwhelms them both and swallows them while Kakashi's group gets Yukimaru away from Kabuto.
Inside the Three-Tails, Naruto helps the injured Guren instead of taking advantage of her weakness, and the two are forced to work together against smaller creatures living inside the beast. Their argument over Yukimaru reveals that both of them want to keep the boy from being used as a weapon, even if they still distrust each other. Outside, Sakura and Ino treat Yukimaru while Kabuto strengthens Rinji's remaining men with curse marks and sends them after him.
Naruto and Guren search for a way out of the Three-Tails while its mist traps them in illusions of Sasuke and Yukimaru's mother. Guren finally admits to Naruto that she killed Yukimaru's mother and fears what will happen when he learns the truth. At the lake, Yukimaru uses his mother's song and the crystal camellias as a guide, allowing Naruto and Guren to locate the surface and blast their way free.
The Leaf prepares another attempt to seal the Three-Tails, but Kabuto's curse-marked men attack with far greater power than before. Sai tries to move Yukimaru somewhere safe, only for Rinji to seize the boy and force more pills into him so his connection to the Three-Tails will activate again. Naruto and Guren recover just in time to see Yukimaru's power begin surging once more.
While Shizune's team continues the sealing attempt, Kakashi, Yamato, and Shino defeat the curse-marked attackers and move toward Yukimaru. Rinji tells Yukimaru outright that Guren killed his mother, but Yukimaru chooses to forgive her rather than lose the person who has become his new home. Naruto stops Rinji from attacking Guren, only for Rinji to reveal himself as Kabuto in disguise.
Kabuto reveals that the real Rinji is dead and uses his corpse as a weapon against Guren. Guren traps herself and Rinji inside a massive crystal and falls into the lake, convincing Yukimaru that she has died and sending the Three-Tails into another rage. Naruto drives the beast back with his collaboration jutsu and promises the grieving Yukimaru that they will return home together.
Yukimaru notices that Guren's crystal camellia is still intact and realizes she may be alive; beneath the lake, Gozu rescues Guren, and the three eventually leave together after Yukimaru loses his ability to control the Three-Tails. With her teams injured and Yukimaru no longer usable by Orochimaru, Tsunade calls the Leaf shinobi back and leaves ANBU to watch the lake. Deidara and Tobi then return, kill the guards, draw out the Three-Tails, and capture it for Akatsuki.
Itachi Pursuit Mission - Part 2
23 eps
21 canon 2 mixed 📷 23
With another tailed beast being sealed, Akatsuki learns that Sasuke has killed Orochimaru and is now hunting Itachi. In Konoha, Tsunade approves Naruto's plan to search for Itachi, and Kakashi combines Team Yamato with Kiba, Hinata, and Shino into an eight-man tracking squad. Sasuke and Hebi also begin moving, putting Konoha, Akatsuki, and Sasuke on the same hunt.
Kakashi divides the eight-man squad into smaller search teams while Kiba and the ninja hounds track Sasuke's scent across the region. Hebi splits up as well so each member can gather information about Itachi. Sasuke eventually encounters Deidara and Tobi, and Deidara decides that killing Itachi's younger brother is the perfect answer to his old hatred of the Sharingan.
Sasuke and Deidara begin their fight with both sides testing the other's range and weaknesses. Deidara escalates from basic clay explosives to his C2 dragon while Tobi plants mines around the battlefield, trying to box Sasuke into a killing zone. Sasuke keeps reading the attacks with his Sharingan and forces Deidara to fight far more carefully than he expected.
Deidara unleashes C4 Karura, filling the area with microscopic bombs that enter the body and destroy it from within. Sasuke survives by using Lightning Release to neutralize the Earth-natured explosives and reveals that he has been analyzing Deidara's jutsu throughout the fight. Humiliated that another Uchiha can see through his art, Deidara throws away any remaining caution.
Deidara turns his own body into a final suicide bomb, creating an explosion large enough to erase everything around him. Sasuke survives by summoning Manda, controlling the snake with genjutsu, and using it as a shield before escaping through a summoning. Manda dies from the blast, while Hebi realizes Sasuke is still alive and the Leaf trackers lose the trail in the destruction.
Jiraiya returns to Konoha with intelligence that the Akatsuki leader is operating from the Hidden Rain and decides to infiltrate the village himself. Over drinks, Tsunade tries to talk him out of what both of them know is an extremely dangerous mission, and their conversation turns to Minato, Kushina, and Naruto. Jiraiya leaves Konoha alone while Tsunade watches him go, unable to shake the feeling that this farewell may be permanent.
The story looks back over Jiraiya's life, beginning with his days as Hiruzen's troublesome student alongside Tsunade and Orochimaru. His obsession with summoning jutsu accidentally brings him to Mount Myoboku, where the Great Toad Sage tells him that he will one day train a pupil capable of changing the world. Jiraiya begins wandering from country to country, searching for the child described in the prophecy while trying to understand what peace could actually mean.
During the war in the Hidden Rain, Jiraiya meets the orphaned Yahiko, Konan, and Nagato and chooses to stay behind to train them. After Nagato reveals the Rinnegan while protecting Yahiko, Jiraiya begins to wonder if he has found the child from the prophecy. Three years later the orphans are strong enough to survive on their own, and Jiraiya returns to Konoha believing their dream of changing the Rain may someday succeed.
Jiraiya slips into the Hidden Rain hidden inside a toad and quickly realizes that Pain's rain itself functions as a detection system. He captures two Rain ninja and interrogates them for information about the village's mysterious leader. What he learns is disturbing: Pain killed Hanzo, wiped out everyone connected to him, and now rules the Rain as a god.
Jiraiya continues investigating Pain and realizes that the man ruling the Hidden Rain may be connected to the children he once trained. Konan finds him first and attacks with paper jutsu, forcing Jiraiya to reveal himself. Pain then appears with the Rinnegan, and Jiraiya recognizes the eyes immediately as Nagato's.
Jiraiya battles Pain's Animal Path and its endless summons but cannot safely stop to gather the natural energy he needs. He summons Gamaken to hold the enemy off while he keeps his hands together and prepares Sage Mode. Fukasaku and Shima finally arrive on his shoulders, completing Jiraiya's imperfect transformation and giving him a real chance to fight back.
In Sage Mode, Jiraiya faces three Rinnegan users at once and discovers that their shared vision makes ordinary attacks almost impossible to land. Fukasaku and Shima trap the three bodies in a powerful sound genjutsu, allowing Jiraiya to kill them and briefly believe the fight is over. Pain answers by bringing out all six bodies, and Jiraiya loses an arm in the surprise attack.
Badly wounded, Jiraiya recognizes that he has seen the faces used by Pain before and finally understands the clue behind their identity. He forces himself back into the fight long enough to confirm it, then carves a coded message onto Fukasaku's back so the information can reach Konoha. Pain crushes Jiraiya's throat and sends him into the water, where Jiraiya dies believing Naruto will be the one to finish the story he could not.
After Jiraiya's death, Pain turns his attention toward capturing the Nine-Tails while Zetsu leaves to watch the Uchiha brothers. Sasuke meets an Itachi shadow clone and receives an invitation to settle their fight at the Uchiha hideout. Naruto's tracking squad tries to close in, but Tobi appears in their path and casually prevents them from reaching Sasuke.
Sasuke reaches the Uchiha hideout and finally confronts Itachi face-to-face. Their battle begins almost entirely inside genjutsu, with each brother repeatedly killing or deceiving the other while testing who can control the Sharingan more completely. Itachi eventually turns the conversation toward the Mangekyo Sharingan and the price Sasuke believes his brother paid for power.
Itachi tells Sasuke the history of Madara Uchiha, the Mangekyo Sharingan, and the blindness caused by overusing it. He claims that taking Sasuke's eyes will give him the Eternal Mangekyo and finally free him from that weakness. Sasuke refuses to become another sacrifice for his brother and pushes the fight out of illusion and into a direct clash.
Sasuke escapes Itachi's Tsukuyomi and forces the battle into ninjutsu, using fire and shuriken attacks to exhaust his brother's remaining strength. Itachi answers with Amaterasu, surrounding Sasuke with black flames that cannot be extinguished normally. Sasuke survives by shedding Orochimaru's substitute body and begins setting up the storm clouds needed for his own final technique.
Sasuke calls down Kirin and believes he has finally killed Itachi, only for Susanoo to shield his brother from the lightning. With Sasuke out of chakra, Orochimaru erupts from his body in his eight-headed serpent form, but Itachi seals him away with the Totsuka Blade. Itachi walks toward a terrified Sasuke, taps his forehead one last time, and collapses dead at his feet.
Tobi keeps Naruto, Kakashi, Yamato, and the rest of the search squad occupied even as they realize none of their attacks can touch him. Zetsu arrives and reports that Itachi is dead, prompting Tobi to abandon the fight and reach Sasuke first. By the time the Leaf team reaches the ruined hideout, Sasuke and Itachi's body are already gone.
Sasuke wakes in an Akatsuki hideout with Tobi watching him. When Tobi reveals his Sharingan, an Amaterasu trap Itachi planted inside Sasuke activates automatically and nearly kills him, convincing Tobi that Itachi was still protecting his brother after death. Tobi begins dismantling everything Sasuke thought he knew about the Uchiha massacre and tells him that Itachi's life was built around a secret.
Tobi tells Sasuke that the Uchiha clan had been preparing a coup against Konoha and that Itachi was ordered by village leaders to stop it before civil war erupted. According to Tobi, Itachi accepted the massacre, protected Konoha's reputation, and spared only Sasuke because he could not bring himself to kill his younger brother. The story destroys Sasuke's understanding of the man he spent his entire life hating.
Sasuke awakens the Mangekyo Sharingan and renames Hebi as Taka, declaring that their new goal is the destruction of Konoha. Tobi brings Taka into Akatsuki and assigns them the Eight-Tails, sending the group into the Land of Lightning in exchange for Akatsuki's help against the Leaf. They find Killer Bee at Unraikyo, where Suigetsu and Jugo quickly discover that their target is far stronger than they expected.
Sasuke takes over the fight against Killer Bee, but Bee's unpredictable seven-sword style cuts through his Sharingan defenses and leaves him badly wounded. Karin and Jugo repeatedly save Sasuke while Bee shows complete control over the Eight-Tails, even breaking out of Sasuke's genjutsu before transforming fully. Seeing his new teammates risk themselves for him reminds Sasuke of Team 7, and he unleashes Amaterasu to bring the Eight-Tails down.
Pain's Assault
24 eps
22 canon 2 filler 📷 24
Akatsuki finishes sealing the Six-Tails, leaving only the Eight- and Nine-Tails uncaptured. In Konoha, Fukasaku arrives with news of Jiraiya's death and delivers the coded message Jiraiya left behind. Naruto refuses to accept it at first, then leaves Tsunade's office devastated as the reality of losing his master finally hits him.
Naruto wanders Konoha grieving Jiraiya until Iruka finds him and reminds him that Jiraiya believed in the person Naruto would become. Shikamaru also pushes Naruto to think about the next generation instead of remaining trapped in loss. When Fukasaku offers to teach him Sage Jutsu at Mount Myoboku, Naruto decides that carrying Jiraiya's will forward is the only answer he can give.
Shikamaru and the cryptanalysis team struggle with Jiraiya's final code until Naruto realizes the numbers refer to pages in Jiraiya's books. The decoded message warns that 'the real one is not among them,' giving Konoha its first major clue about Pain. Naruto then leaves for Mount Myoboku with Fukasaku, while Konoha begins examining one of Pain's captured bodies for anything else Jiraiya discovered.
At Mount Myoboku, Fukasaku explains Sage Mode and the danger of taking in too much natural energy: Naruto could permanently turn into a toad. Naruto begins training by sitting completely still while Fukasaku knocks excess energy out of him with a staff whenever the transformation goes too far. Remembering Jiraiya's own imperfect Sage Mode, Naruto throws himself into mastering the same power without relying on shortcuts.
Naruto moves from the toad oil training to gathering natural energy on his own, balancing it with his physical and spiritual chakra until he can enter Sage Mode without changing into a toad. Fukasaku is stunned by how quickly he succeeds and believes Naruto may surpass Jiraiya. Naruto then starts adapting Sage Mode to combat, but learns that maintaining it while moving is the next problem he must solve.
Pain and Konan enter Konoha from several directions at once, using the Six Paths to interrogate shinobi and civilians for Naruto's location while summoning creatures across the village. Konoha immediately mobilizes, but the attackers' shared vision and strange abilities make them difficult to contain. Tsunade realizes Akatsuki has come specifically for Naruto and orders that he remain at Mount Myoboku while the village fights without him.
The Six Paths and Konan continue tearing through Konoha while defenders try to learn what each body can do. Tsunade pours Katsuyu throughout the village to heal the wounded and share information, refusing the elders' demand that Naruto be kept out of the fight forever. She sends word to Mount Myoboku about the attack because she believes Naruto has earned the right to defend his home.
Kakashi confronts the Deva Path and quickly discovers its ability to repel and attract anything around it. The Asura Path joins the fight, and Choza and Choji arrive with reinforcements, allowing Kakashi to build a plan around the brief interval between the Deva Path's techniques. The plan nearly succeeds, but the Asura Path shields the Deva Path from Choji's attack and Kakashi is left critically wounded.
Ibiki and the interrogation unit battle the Animal Path while Shizune's team studies the black receivers taken from Pain's body. They conclude that the Paths are corpses being controlled remotely through chakra signals rather than living ninja acting on their own. Kakashi, near death after protecting Choji from the Asura Path's missile, uses Kamui one last time so Choji can escape with the information he learned.
Konohamaru tries to help civilians escape the invasion and witnesses the Naraka Path killing a Leaf shinobi through the King of Hell. When Ebisu is captured and refuses to reveal Naruto's location, Konohamaru steps in rather than run away. Remembering Naruto's lessons, he surprises Pain with a shadow clone and lands a Rasengan of his own.
Pain gathers information from Shizune's mind and kills her, finally confirming that Naruto is at Mount Myoboku. The Deva Path rises above Konoha while the other Paths withdraw, then unleashes an enormous Shinra Tensei that flattens almost the entire village. Sakura survives inside Katsuyu's protection and cries out for Naruto, who is summoned back to the ruins with Fukasaku, Shima, and the giant toads.
Naruto arrives in Sage Mode to find Konoha destroyed and immediately takes command of the battle against Pain. He destroys the Asura Path with a single blow, then uses the giant toads and his new Frog Kata to counter Pain's summons and shared vision. Naruto kills the Human Path and prepares a Rasenshuriken as Tsunade, exhausted from protecting the village, is carried away.
Naruto's Rasenshuriken destroys the Animal Path, and he follows by defeating the Naraka Path before it can keep restoring the others. His Sage Mode then runs out, leaving him vulnerable to the remaining Paths. A shadow clone gathering natural energy at Mount Myoboku lets Naruto restore Sage Mode once, but Pain begins narrowing the fight down to the Deva Path.
Naruto tricks and destroys the Preta Path, but the Deva Path's full power returns and changes the fight immediately. Pain pins Naruto to the ground with black receivers and explains the cycle of hatred that shaped his idea of peace. Naruto cannot answer Pain's question about how he would end that cycle, and Pain declares the Nine-Tails captured.
Hinata steps onto the battlefield alone even though Naruto begs her to stay back, telling him that she loves him and has always followed his example. She attacks Pain to free Naruto but is overwhelmed and struck down in front of him. Believing Hinata has been killed, Naruto loses control and erupts into the Nine-Tails' chakra.
Naruto's transformation races from four tails to six as the Nine-Tails batters the Deva Path through the ruins of Konoha. Pain uses Chibaku Tensei to create a massive sphere of earth around Naruto, but the fox's power keeps breaking through until eight tails emerge. Inside the seal, Naruto is about to remove the final restriction and release the Nine-Tails completely when the Fourth Hokage appears and stops him.
Naruto finally learns that the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, is his father and unloads years of anger over being made the Nine-Tails' jinchuriki. Minato explains why he trusted Naruto with the fox's power and warns him that the masked man who attacked Konoha sixteen years earlier is the greater threat behind Akatsuki. He repairs Naruto's seal before disappearing, giving Naruto the strength to return to the fight in Sage Mode.
Naruto escapes Chibaku Tensei and confronts the Deva Path for the final time, using shadow clones and carefully timed attacks to get around Shinra Tensei's five-second interval. A Rasengan finally destroys the last Path of Pain. Instead of returning to the village, Naruto follows the chakra receiver to find Nagato himself, determined to hear the answer of the other student who inherited Jiraiya's teachings.
While Naruto is still away from Konoha, the story jumps back to a mission from his younger days involving a rumor that the Fourth Hokage left behind a hidden legacy. Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke become obsessed with finding it and race against other young Leaf ninja through a series of traps and clues. What begins as a treasure hunt quickly turns into a competition over who can reach the supposed inheritance first.
The hunt for the Fourth Hokage's legacy continues as Naruto's group pushes through the final traps and discovers that the entire challenge was designed to test cooperation rather than reward a single winner. The rival teams are forced to work together to make it through safely. In the end there is no legendary treasure waiting for Naruto, only another lesson about teamwork attached to the Fourth Hokage's name.
Naruto finds Nagato and Konan hidden outside Konoha and refuses to kill them immediately, even though Nagato murdered Jiraiya and destroyed the village. Nagato demands to know how Naruto can promise peace when hatred keeps producing revenge, and Naruto admits he still does not have an answer. Rather than attack, Naruto asks Nagato to tell him the full story of how Jiraiya's hopeful student became Pain.
Nagato tells Naruto about growing up in the Hidden Rain after Leaf shinobi accidentally killed his parents during the war. He describes meeting Yahiko and Konan, training under Jiraiya, and later building an organization meant to bring peace to the Rain. Hanzo and Danzo eventually trap the group and force Nagato into a choice that ends with Yahiko dying on Nagato's own kunai, pushing Nagato toward the path that created Pain.
Nagato finishes explaining how Yahiko's death destroyed his faith in Jiraiya's answer and convinced him that people only understand one another through shared pain. Naruto admits that part of him still wants revenge, but reads from Jiraiya's first novel and explains that the hero was named Naruto after Nagato inspired the character. He chooses to believe in Jiraiya's dream instead of killing Nagato, giving Nagato the answer he had abandoned.
Moved by Naruto's refusal to continue the cycle of revenge, Nagato uses the Rinne Rebirth technique to restore the people killed during his attack on Konoha, sacrificing his own life in the process. Konan leaves with Nagato and Yahiko's bodies after entrusting their hope to Naruto. Naruto returns to the ruined village exhausted and is met by the entire population, who finally welcome him not as the Nine-Tails' host but as the hero who saved Konoha.
Past Arc: The Locus of Konoha
21 eps
21 filler 📷 21
While Konoha rebuilds after Pain's attack, Iruka remembers his first days as an Academy instructor and the problem student everyone warned him about: Naruto. Other teachers tell Iruka that Naruto only acts out for attention and is best ignored, but Iruka can see that the boy is desperate for someone to acknowledge him. His own resentment over losing his parents to the Nine-Tails makes that connection much harder than he wants to admit.
Iruka continues struggling with how to handle Naruto, who keeps getting into trouble and pushing away anyone who tries to discipline him. Kakashi quietly questions whether Iruka really understands why he became a teacher, forcing him to look at his own grief instead of projecting it onto Naruto. Iruka begins to recognize that Naruto's pranks are less about causing trouble than making sure the village cannot pretend he does not exist.
Iruka finally decides that Naruto needs someone willing to see him as a child rather than only as the Nine-Tails' host. When Naruto puts himself in danger after being rejected and isolated again, Iruka goes after him and makes it clear that he will not abandon him. Back in the present, Iruka watches Konoha being rebuilt and realizes just how far the boy everyone once avoided has come.
As Konoha deals with Tsunade's coma, Kakashi looks back on being assigned to lead Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura for the first time. The Third Hokage chose him after other jonin had failed Team 7's three very different personalities, and Kakashi deliberately tested whether they could put teamwork ahead of themselves. His memory returns to the bell test and the moment the three finally understood why he cared more about comrades than rules.
Inari and Tazuna arrive in ruined Konoha to help with reconstruction, bringing back memories of Team 7's mission in the Land of Waves. The flashback follows Inari after Naruto's words begin breaking through the fear Gato created in his village. When Gato's men threaten the people around him, Inari finally chooses to stand up instead of hiding, proving that Naruto's stubborn courage had already started changing him before the bridge battle ended.
Team 7 stops in a town and meets Tsukado, a man determined to avenge a relative he believes was killed by Katazu. Naruto sympathizes with the need for revenge and even tries to help, but the story becomes far messier once they learn the death was not the simple murder Tsukado imagined. Watching revenge consume someone over a misunderstanding gives Naruto an uncomfortable glimpse of the road Sasuke has chosen.
Gaara hears about the destruction of Konoha and remembers an earlier joint mission between Sand and Leaf shinobi after the Konoha Crush. Still awkward around the people he once attacked, Gaara sees Naruto continue treating him as a person instead of a monster or weapon. The mission becomes another small step in Gaara learning how bonds work, and in the present he has no doubt that a village with Naruto in it will recover.
Sakura remembers an absurd incident from the period after the Konoha Crush when Naruto is suspected of carrying a rare virus that interferes with chakra control. Tsunade orders him captured before the illness can spread through a weakened village, turning half of Konoha into a pursuit squad while Naruto has no idea why everyone is chasing him. After he is finally dragged to the hospital, the doctors discover he was never infected in the first place.
Tenten looks back on a mission where she is put in charge of Naruto and Neji while retrieving new ninja tools from the craftsman Iou. She is excited to prove herself as captain but quickly finds that leading a team is harder than simply having the right weapon for every situation. When the mission turns dangerous, Tenten gets the chance to rely on her own judgment and arsenal instead of comparing herself to Neji and Lee.
During Konoha's reconstruction, the ostrich Condor tells younger ostriches about the day he became Naruto's ridiculous animal rival. In the flashback, Naruto, Lee, Shino, and Kotetsu are sent to capture the escaped bird, only to discover that Condor has learned enough ninja tricks to make the job humiliatingly difficult. What should have been a simple retrieval mission turns into an all-out battle against an ostrich that genuinely believes it can defeat shinobi.
Lee brings Sakura a special medicine Guy prepared for the still-comatose Tsunade, which reminds them of the period when Lee himself was hospitalized after the Chunin Exams. Naruto accidentally drinks the last dose and learns that one of its ingredients, the Jofuku Flower, is difficult to obtain. Determined to replace what he wasted and help Lee recover, Naruto turns a later mission into a search for the flower.
After the failed Sasuke retrieval mission, Jiraiya tells Naruto that they will soon leave Konoha for years of training and begins preparing him to deal with Sharingan genjutsu. Naruto struggles badly with breaking illusions, so Jiraiya takes him to the Genjutsu Tree Village for practical training. They discover that the village has been seized by Kandachi, a former subordinate of Hanzo, and Naruto disguises himself as a local boy to help Jiraiya get close to him.
Naruto and Jiraiya reveal their trick and confront Kandachi, who uses the Conch King and a powerful mist genjutsu to keep control of the village. A frightened boy named Tanishi finally follows Naruto's example and helps break the illusion, giving master and student their opening. Naruto defeats the Conch King with a Big Ball Rasengan, the villagers are freed, and Jiraiya cannot help noticing how much Naruto reminds him of Minato.
A visit to Nekobaa brings back the story of a bizarre old assignment Sasuke took very seriously. Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke are sent to collect the paw print of Nekomata, the giant boss of a ninja-cat stronghold, because Sasuke has been completing a paw-print book since childhood. The mission forces all three into cat disguises and becomes another reminder of how even Sasuke once had ordinary, ridiculous days with Team 7.
During Konoha's recovery after the Konoha Crush, Naruto is assigned to a border patrol with Kosuke Maruboshi, an elderly man who has remained a genin for more than fifty years. When Stone ninja attack, Kosuke reveals skills far beyond his rank and explains that he chose to remain a genin after losing comrades through his own ambition. Naruto refuses to leave him behind, reminding Kosuke of the same promise once made by Minato and proving that rank has little to do with what kind of shinobi someone is.
Kakashi spots a travelling musician named Hanare during Konoha's reconstruction and remembers when she was captured as a spy from the Hidden Lock Village. Inoichi discovers memories linking Hanare to Kakashi, so Kakashi is ordered to watch her while Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke become convinced something romantic is happening and secretly follow them. Hanare is genuinely gathering intelligence, but Kakashi ultimately lets her escape after the strange connection between them becomes clear.
Konohamaru, Moegi, and Udon ask Neji for a story about Naruto and end up hearing about a mission during the chaos surrounding Orochimaru's attack on Konoha. Cloud ninja use the confusion to abduct Hinata, forcing Neji and the others to pursue them while the village is already stretched thin. Neji risks himself to bring Hinata home, showing how far he has moved from the resentment toward the Hyuga main family that once defined him.
Naruto removes a strange talisman from a rock and begins seeing Kisuke, a dead ANBU operative whose murder was never properly solved. Kisuke leads Naruto toward Sabiru, a Leaf official secretly selling information, and Naruto disguises himself as the dead man to force a confession. Kakashi arrives to make the arrest, but Kabuto reveals himself from hiding, exposing Orochimaru's connection to the espionage plot before the case is finally resolved.
On an old Team 7 mission to recover a stolen golden statue, Naruto and Sasuke rush ahead without Kakashi and Sakura and make the situation worse when Sakura is taken hostage. A strange chakra substance bonds Naruto and Sasuke's hands together, leaving the two rivals physically stuck to each other while they try to rescue her. They spend most of the mission fighting each other as much as the thieves, but eventually cooperate well enough to save Sakura and recover the statue.
While helping gather food during Konoha's reconstruction, Shikamaru remembers a past mission where Team 10 and Team 7 had to rescue a kidnapped girl from bandits. Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji initially struggle when their usual formation is disrupted, forcing them to trust one another instead of waiting for Asuma to solve every problem. Their coordinated Ino-Shika-Cho tactics finally turn the mission around and show why Asuma put so much faith in the three of them as a unit.
Sasuke remembers a mission from the period when his jealousy of Naruto's rapid growth was beginning to poison their relationship. Tsunade separates the two onto different assignments, but a noble girl named Naho insists that Sasuke be her guard, forcing Naruto to impersonate him while Sasuke handles another threat nearby. When Sasuke finally arrives and brutally beats the man behind the attack, Naruto and Sakura see how much darker and angrier he has become, pushing him another step toward leaving Konoha.
Five Kage Summit
18 eps
17 canon 1 mixed 📷 18
Team Samui arrives in the ruined Leaf with the Raikage's letter and learns that Danz? has been installed as Hokage while Tsunade remains unconscious. Naruto and Sakura are furious when they hear that Danz? has authorized Sasuke's elimination, but Kakashi stops them from confronting him directly. Karui and Omoi then corner Naruto and demand information about the man they believe abducted Killer Bee.
Naruto refuses to betray Sasuke even after Karui explains what losing Killer Bee has done to the Hidden Cloud, and he lets her beat him rather than give up information on his friend. Danz? prepares to leave for the Five Kage Summit and orders Naruto confined to Konoha, but Kakashi chooses to help Naruto anyway. At the same time, Zetsu tells Taka that Naruto defeated Pain, and Sasuke changes his target from Konoha to Danz? at the summit.
The Five Kage leave for the neutral Land of Iron with their bodyguards, while Danz? shows the Sharingan hidden under his bandages when assassins attack him on the road. Kakashi, Yamato, and Naruto follow Team Samui through the snow so Naruto can speak directly to the Raikage. They finally intercept the Cloud delegation, and Naruto asks for a chance to plead for Sasuke's life.
Naruto begs the Raikage to spare Sasuke, arguing that another revenge killing will only keep the cycle of hatred going. The Raikage refuses, telling Naruto that Sasuke chose his own path and that forgiveness cannot be demanded from the people he hurt. In the Land of Iron, the Five Kage Summit begins, and Mifune proposes a unified shinobi alliance with Danz? as its leader.
The summit erupts over Mifune's choice of Danz?, and Ao uses his Byakugan to realize that Danz? has been manipulating Mifune with Shisui Uchiha's eye. Back at the inn, Sai tells Sakura that Naruto loves her and has been carrying the pain of his promise to bring Sasuke home, while Shikamaru asks her to accept that the Konoha 11 may have to kill Sasuke themselves. White Zetsu then exposes Sasuke's presence at the summit, while Tobi appears in Naruto's room and says they need to talk.
Tobi tells Naruto, Kakashi, and Yamato the truth about Itachi and explains how Sasuke's hatred has been redirected toward Konoha. In the Land of Iron, Zetsu's warning puts the samurai on alert and Sasuke cuts through them while searching for Danz?. The Raikage finds him first and launches a furious attack, beginning the fight Sasuke came to the summit knowing he might have to survive.
Tobi continues tracing the old conflict between the Senju and Uchiha and argues that Naruto and Sasuke have inherited the same cycle. At the summit, the Raikage pushes through Amaterasu and Sasuke's Susanoo, willing to sacrifice his own body to kill him. Gaara intervenes before the Raikage can finish the attack and tries one last time to talk Sasuke away from the hatred consuming him.
Sasuke rejects Gaara and uses Susanoo to break through the summit hall in pursuit of Danz?, only to find that the Hokage candidate has already fled. Mei traps Sasuke and attacks with Lava and Boil Release, while ?noki follows with Dust Release and appears to erase him completely. Tobi arrives before the Kage can celebrate, revealing that Sasuke survived and forcing the summit to deal with Akatsuki's real leader.
Tobi sends Sasuke and Karin away and tells the remaining Kage about the Ten-Tails and his Eye of the Moon Plan. He demands that they hand over Naruto and Killer Bee so he can complete the beast and cast his genjutsu over the world. When every Kage refuses, Tobi declares the Fourth Great Ninja War and disappears, leaving the five nations no choice but to form an alliance.
The Kage agree to create the Allied Shinobi Forces and place the Raikage in command while they return home to prepare for war. Sakura reaches Naruto in the Land of Iron and tells him she loves him and no longer cares about Sasuke, hoping to free him from the promise he made years ago. Naruto immediately sees through the lie and refuses to stop chasing Sasuke for reasons that have nothing to do with that promise, while Kisame finally confronts Killer Bee.
Kisame battles Killer Bee and overwhelms him inside a huge moving dome of water, using Samehada to drain the Eight-Tails' chakra faster than Bee can fight back. Elsewhere, Sai tells Naruto that Sakura really intends to kill Sasuke herself, and Gaara asks Naruto what he plans to do as Sasuke's friend. Ao's pursuit of Danz? also turns into a trap when F? Yamanaka tries to steal his Byakugan.
Killer Bee is nearly defeated until Samehada turns on Kisame and gives Bee chakra instead, buying enough time for the Raikage to arrive and join his brother in a double lariat that appears to kill Kisame. Naruto absorbs Gaara's warning and Sakura's real intentions, realizing that everyone around him has reached a decision about Sasuke except him. Tobi catches Danz? on the road, defeats F? and Torune, and releases Sasuke and Karin to begin the confrontation Danz? has been trying to avoid.
Tobi places Sasuke in front of Danz? and lets him demand the truth about Itachi and the Uchiha massacre for himself. Danz? unwraps his right arm and reveals that it is covered in stolen Sharingan, with Hashirama's cells grafted into the limb to help control them. Sasuke responds with Susanoo and Amaterasu, but Danz? keeps surviving attacks that should have killed him.
Tobi identifies Danz?'s secret as Izanagi, a forbidden Uchiha technique that lets him turn his own injuries and deaths into illusion at the cost of closing a Sharingan each time. Sasuke and Karin begin counting the eyes on Danz?'s arm to work out how long the technique can last. As both men burn through their remaining power, Sasuke uses increasingly subtle genjutsu to create the opening he needs.
Sasuke tricks Danz? into believing one of his Sharingan is still open and lands the decisive Chidori when Izanagi has already expired. As Danz? loses, he remembers the mission where Tobirama chose Hiruzen as the Third Hokage and the fear that kept Danz? from volunteering first. He takes Karin hostage, but Sasuke stabs straight through her to reach him, and Danz? uses a final sealing technique in a failed attempt to take Sasuke and Tobi with him.
Sakura knocks out Kiba, Lee, and Sai so she can reach Sasuke alone and take responsibility for killing him herself. At the bridge she finds Karin wounded and Sasuke preparing to finish her, then claims she has abandoned Konoha and wants to join him. Sasuke tells Sakura to prove it by killing Karin, while he quietly prepares to kill Sakura the moment she turns her back.
Naruto wakes after collapsing in the snow and thinks back over everything that has happened between him and Sasuke, from the Valley of the End to the pain of losing Jiraiya. He finally understands why simply telling Sasuke to abandon revenge was never enough and decides he has to face him with a better understanding of that loss. Naruto leaves to find Sasuke just as Sakura's attempt to deceive him falls apart.
Kakashi arrives at the bridge in time to save Sakura from Sasuke and takes responsibility for fighting the student he once failed to stop. Sasuke's eyesight is deteriorating from Mangekyo overuse, but his hatred keeps driving him against Kakashi and a Susanoo arrow nearly forces Kakashi to use Kamui. Sakura tries once more to stab Sasuke from behind, freezes at the last instant, and is about to be killed when Naruto arrives.
Fourth Shinobi World War: Countdown - Part 1
8 eps
8 canon 📷 8
Naruto saves Sakura and confronts Sasuke directly, telling him that he has learned the truth about Itachi but still cannot accept Sasuke's plan to destroy Konoha. Kakashi tries to take the burden onto himself, but Naruto restrains him with a shadow clone and charges Sasuke with a Rasengan as Sasuke answers with Chidori. Their clash echoes the Valley of the End and opens the conversation Naruto has been trying to reach for years.
Naruto and Sasuke understand one another through their clash in the way Sasuke once said only high-level shinobi could. Naruto tells Sasuke that if they fight again at full strength, both of them will die, and he is willing to carry that fate rather than abandon him. Tobi and White Zetsu take Sasuke away, Naruto collapses from Sakura's poisoned kunai and is treated with the antidote, and Sasuke finally asks Tobi to transplant Itachi's eyes.
Naruto's group starts back toward Konoha, where Kiba, Lee, and Sai demand to know why Sasuke was allowed to escape and Naruto says he will deal with him when the time comes. In the Hidden Cloud, Killer Bee returns with Samehada and is welcomed home by Omoi and Karui. None of them realize that Kisame survived the earlier fight by hiding inside Samehada and has successfully infiltrated the village.
The feudal lords ratify the Allied Shinobi Forces, allowing all five great villages to begin preparing openly for war. The Kage return home to organize their forces, and Gaara briefs the Sand while news of Danz?'s death reaches the alliance. Naruto arrives back in Konoha and asks Shikamaru to gather their friends because he has made a decision about Sasuke that he wants to tell them himself.
Naruto tells the Konoha 11 that he intends to face Sasuke himself and refuses to explain away the bond that still connects them. With Danz? dead and Tsunade still unconscious, the village elders move to appoint Kakashi as the next Hokage, and even the monument carver begins preparing his face. Before the appointment can become permanent, Tsunade wakes from her coma and immediately resumes command.
At Mount Myoboku, Fukasaku, Gerotora, and the Great Toad Sage debate whether Naruto should receive the key to the seal Jiraiya left behind. The Great Toad Sage gives Naruto a new prophecy: he will meet an octopus and later confront a young man whose power lies in his eyes, which Naruto immediately connects to Sasuke. Naruto accepts the responsibility of carrying Gerotora and the key to his own seal, while Tsunade begins preparing Konoha for the coming war.
Naruto hesitates over taking Gerotora into his body because the key can loosen the seal on the Nine-Tails, but ultimately accepts the risk and completes Jiraiya's plan. Elsewhere, Anko's reconnaissance team tracks Akatsuki's movements while Kabuto approaches Tobi with a proposal for the war. Kabuto proves what he can offer by summoning the reanimated bodies of Itachi, Sasori, Deidara, Kakuzu, and Nagato, forcing Tobi to consider an alliance.
The Five Kage meet again and agree that Naruto and Killer Bee must be kept away from the battlefield so Akatsuki cannot capture the final two jinchuriki. Tsunade objects to simply hiding them but persuades the Raikage that Bee should help Naruto learn to control the Nine-Tails while they are isolated. Naruto is then given what he believes is an S-rank mission on a remote island, with Yamato assigned to escort him, setting up the journey away from Konoha.
Paradise Life on a Boat
20 eps
4 good filler 16 filler 📷 20
Naruto, Yamato, Aoba, and Guy begin the long sea voyage toward the Land of Lightning, with Naruto still believing he is on a secret mission rather than being hidden from Akatsuki. At a port they meet Yusuke, a fisherman whose father was killed years ago by a giant marlin that still terrorizes the harbor. Naruto helps him confront the fish, and Yusuke finally settles the grudge that has kept him tied to the sea.
Seasickness forces Naruto's group to stop on Nanakusa Island, where they unexpectedly find Sakura, Ino, and Choji gathering medicinal herbs for the coming war. Their mission is complicated by merchant ninja from Benisu who have already harvested nearly everything and intend to sell it for their own village. After Naruto saves the merchants when they get into trouble, the rival group repays the favor by sharing half of the herbs they collected.
A thick fog surrounds the ship, and Yamato passes the time by telling Naruto a story about a cursed vessel that appears at sea. Almost immediately, a derelict ship matching the tale drifts beside them, and Naruto finds a lone boy named Hishaku aboard it. The ship is attacked by the giant crab that killed Hishaku's crew, and after Naruto helps destroy it, Hishaku reveals that he and the ship were ghosts finally able to move on.
Naruto's ship is caught in rough currents and comes under cannon fire from pirates operating out of a heavily fortified island. Yamato turns part of the vessel into a makeshift submarine so the group can get close without being sunk, and Naruto discovers the pirates have been preying on ships and nearby settlements for years. Naruto, Guy, Aoba, and Yamato destroy the island's defenses and send the pirate fleet to the bottom.
A giant bird suddenly carries Guy away from the ship, leading Naruto, Yamato, and Aoba onto a volcanic island filled with oversized creatures bred as potential summons. Guy turns out to be alive and caring for the bird's chicks, while Aoba follows the image of a mysterious woman connected to the island's abandoned research. Their presence awakens the Ultimate Summoning Beast, a creature that consumed the other experiments, and the team destroys it before returning to sea.
Guy's seasickness reminds him of Rock Lee and the strange way his student fights when alcohol is involved. He tells Naruto about Lee accidentally drinking sake during his younger days and unleashing the unpredictable Drunken Fist style, turning an otherwise routine situation into chaos. The memory becomes another story about Lee finding a weapon in something that initially looked like a weakness.
Before entering the windless Sea Route of Silence, Naruto buys a mushroom from a merchant and unknowingly brings it aboard with the ship's provisions. The fungus multiplies through the hold, drains Yamato's chakra, and devours nearly every bit of food and water, leaving the crew starving enough that Naruto and Guy finally try eating the mushrooms themselves. When the merchant returns expecting to loot a dead ship, the recovered Leaf ninja expose the scam and send him fleeing.
After a storm, four of Naruto's shadow clones suddenly refuse to disappear, take the real Naruto hostage, and seize control of the ship while complaining about how he treats them. The mutiny spirals into a ridiculous fight as each clone seems to embody a different part of Naruto's personality. Naruto then wakes and realizes the entire rebellion was a memory passed back from a clone that sacrificed itself to save him, leaving him with a little more respect for the copies he normally treats as disposable.
Shikamaru is uneasy about being responsible for other shinobi in the coming war, so Shikaku sends him and Tenten on a supply mission that brings them to Naruto's ship. Soon after they depart, the vessel becomes trapped in a foggy route of reefs and whirlpools that seems to repeat no matter how many obstacles the group destroys. While Naruto, Guy, and Yamato burn through their chakra trying to force a path, Shikamaru recognizes the pattern and works out how to break the trap.
Hinata is shaken when Neji is chosen to command Hyuga forces in the coming war and begins questioning whether she is strong enough to protect anyone. Tenten gathers Sakura, Ino, and the other kunoichi for a night together, and the conversation drifts through old missions, the Chunin Exams, and Naruto. A drunk Tsunade eventually joins them, and Hinata comes away from the night more certain that protecting Naruto and her comrades matters more than comparing herself to Neji.
While crossing part of the route by land, Naruto's group runs into Banna, a large thief pretending to be Naruto Uzumaki, and an apparent ninja named Iggy who claims to have been pursuing him. The real Naruto easily exposes the fake, but later learns that Banna and Iggy are partners running a scam so Iggy can become famous as the man who defeated Naruto. When mercenary ninja capture Banna for the bounty on Naruto's name, Iggy risks himself to rescue his friend and Naruto's group steps in to save them both.
Konohamaru is furious that the older shinobi are preparing for war while he and his teammates are being left behind with ordinary village work. He boasts that he is Naruto's favorite pupil, challenges Temari, and even tries using new techniques to prove that he belongs on the battlefield. Tsunade refuses to send a child to war, while Shikamaru gives Konohamaru the same lesson Asuma once gave him about the identity of Konoha's true 'king.'
While the ship is stopped for supplies, Naruto meets Shizuka, a kunoichi from Nadeshiko Village whose tradition requires her to marry a man capable of defeating her in combat. Jiraiya once fought Shizuka's teacher to a draw and promised that their students would someday settle the match, making Naruto the unwilling heir to the agreement. Naruto fights Shizuka but refuses to treat marriage as a prize, and his feelings for Sakura help Shizuka reconsider the idea that losing someone means she has to shut herself off from love.
A ladybug landing on Naruto's ship reminds him of Shino, and the story shifts back to an early Team 8 mission. After Shino loses to a rogue jonin because of his weak close-range fighting, he becomes convinced that he is holding Kiba and Hinata back and considers leaving the team. Kiba and Hinata help him train instead, and when they later fall into the enemy's trap, Shino returns to save them and finally understands that being teammates means covering each other's weaknesses.
During training with Lee, Tenten remembers how badly she once wanted to become a legendary kunoichi like Tsunade. She tried medical ninjutsu and struggled with the fact that her talents did not match the hero she was copying, especially while watching Lee face the possibility that his own ninja career was over. Tenten eventually discovered that weapons and summoning were where she truly excelled, choosing to become great in her own way rather than imitate Tsunade.
Sai spends a rare day off wandering through Konoha, sketching and watching children whose friendship reminds him of Naruto and Sakura. Their interactions bring back memories of his first mission with Team Kakashi, his break from Root, and the way Naruto's refusal to abandon Sasuke slowly taught him what friendship meant. Sai eventually paints a mural of himself, Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke holding hands, quietly hoping that the broken Team 7 can someday be whole again.
As Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji think about the coming war, they run into Kosuke, who remembers both their early days and the legendary Ino-Shika-Cho formation used by their fathers. Hearing how Inoichi, Shikaku, and Choza once fought together leaves the younger trio wondering whether they can live up to that standard. Kosuke reminds them that their fathers did not become legends overnight, and Team 10 commits to perfecting its own version of the formation.
Kiba cannot stand that Naruto, once the dead last of their class, has become the hero of Konoha while he feels left behind. He asks Kakashi for special training, only to be handed over to Kakashi's ninken for a brutal tracking exercise with Akamaru. Discovering that Naruto once kept training until he broke Kiba's old childhood speed record reignites Kiba's competitive streak, and he pushes through the exercise instead of quitting.
Kakashi receives an emergency messenger tortoise carrying what appears to be an SOS from Guy and immediately heads out to find his old rival. On the ship, Guy remembers the ridiculous contests that built their rivalry, then hears about an enemy supposedly capable of copying a shinobi's appearance and chakra. When Kakashi arrives, Guy assumes he is the impostor and attacks him until a private memory proves his identity, and everyone discovers the SOS was sent by accident.
Naruto's group stops at an island where Hidden Stone and Hidden Mist representatives are trying to settle an old grievance before the war, only for Ganryu, the lone survivor of the Tragedy of Yosuga Pass, to attack the meeting. Kurotsuchi wants to kill him before he can strike again, but Naruto physically places himself between the two sides and refuses to let another cycle of revenge begin. When Chojuro reveals that the Tsuchikage sent a formal apology and a keepsake from Ganryu's fallen comrade, Ganryu surrenders and Naruto leaves believing the alliance might actually have a chance.
Fourth Shinobi World War: Countdown - Part 2
14 eps
14 canon 📷 14
Naruto, Yamato, Guy, and Aoba finally reach the giant turtle island where Naruto is supposed to remain hidden during the war. Naruto immediately recognizes Killer Bee as the octopus from the Great Toad Sage's prophecy and asks him for help controlling the Nine-Tails, but their first attempt to connect goes badly. Motoi takes Naruto to the Waterfall of Truth, where Naruto is confronted by a dark version of himself carrying all the anger he has tried to bury.
Naruto cannot defeat his dark self because it knows every move and every resentment he does, so he asks Motoi how Killer Bee learned to live with the Eight-Tails. Motoi tells him how Bee was hated after becoming a jinchuriki and admits that he once tried to kill Bee himself after losing his father to the Eight-Tails. When a giant squid attacks Motoi, Bee saves him without hesitation, and Naruto finally understands the kind of acceptance he needs before returning to the waterfall.
Naruto returns to the Waterfall of Truth and stops fighting his dark self, accepting that the bitterness is part of him instead of something he can simply beat into submission. Killer Bee then leads him into the chamber where a jinchuriki can confront a tailed beast directly and explains that Naruto must take the Nine-Tails' chakra for himself. Naruto opens the seal and begins the battle, using Sage Mode and shadow clones while Bee helps keep the fox from overwhelming him.
Naruto begins pulling chakra away from the Nine-Tails, but the fox's hatred seeps into him and starts turning the fight against him. Kushina Uzumaki suddenly appears inside his mind and restrains the Nine-Tails with her chakra chains, giving Naruto the chance to recover. After realizing he is finally meeting his mother, Naruto hears how Kushina came to Konoha, how she met Minato, and how the boy who once teased her red hair became the person who saved her.
With Kushina holding the Nine-Tails down, Naruto overwhelms the fox and successfully takes control of a portion of its chakra, unlocking his new chakra cloak. Kushina then tells Naruto that she was the Nine-Tails' previous jinchuriki and explains the Uzumaki clan's connection to powerful sealing techniques. Before her remaining chakra disappears, she begins telling Naruto the truth about the night he was born and how the masked man attacked when her seal was at its weakest.
Kushina's story reaches Naruto's birth, when the masked man kills the guards, takes the newborn Naruto hostage, and tears the Nine-Tails out of Kushina. Minato saves Naruto and Kushina before racing back to defend Konoha from the unleashed fox. He confronts the masked attacker directly, sees through Kamui, and lands a Rasengan before marking him with the Flying Raijin and breaking his control over the Nine-Tails.
After driving the masked man away, Minato transports the Nine-Tails away from the village while the dying Kushina uses her chains to restrain it. Kushina wants to take the fox with her in death, but Minato chooses to seal half of its chakra into himself and the other half into Naruto, trusting their son to face the future threat. Minato and Kushina shield Naruto from the Nine-Tails' claw, give their newborn son their final words, and in the present Naruto gets the chance to thank his mother before her chakra fades.
Naruto's new ability to sense negative emotions exposes Kisame hiding inside Samehada, and Kisame immediately flees with the intelligence he gathered on the Allied Shinobi Forces. Naruto nearly catches him with his new speed but has not mastered the power well enough to continue the chase. Guy intercepts Kisame outside, opens the Seventh Gate, and defeats his massive shark attack with Daytime Tiger.
Aoba tries to read the captured Kisame's mind, revealing memories of the Bloody Mist, his betrayal of Fuguki, and the day the masked man recruited him into Akatsuki. Kisame breaks free before the interrogation can expose Akatsuki's secrets and chooses death over capture, summoning sharks to devour him inside a Water Prison. Even after dying, he completes his mission by sending the stolen intelligence away inside a scroll, earning Guy's respect as a shinobi who never betrayed his cause.
Tobi travels to the Hidden Rain to claim Nagato's Rinnegan, but Konan refuses to surrender the body of the friend she and Yahiko fought beside. She declares that Naruto now carries their hope and attacks Tobi with a carefully prepared strategy built around the limits of his space-time jutsu. Konan turns the lake itself into a vast trap of explosive paper tags, forcing Tobi into the one battle he did not expect her to be prepared to win.
Konan's enormous paper-bomb trap appears to kill Tobi, but he survives by sacrificing a Sharingan to Izanagi. He explains the technique, defeats Konan, and uses genjutsu to force the location of Nagato's body from her before she dies remembering Yahiko, Nagato, and Jiraiya. Tobi takes Nagato's Rinnegan and returns to Akatsuki with a new mask, while the paper flower Konan once placed on their old hideout marks the end of the three Rain orphans' story.
To keep Naruto from realizing a war is beginning around him, Aoba invents a ridiculous S-rank mission that has Naruto cataloguing the giant animals living on the turtle island. Away from Naruto, the alliance learns that Akatsuki knows the island's location, and Onoki heads out with Kurotsuchi and Akatsuchi to defend it. Kabuto approaches on a reanimated Deidara's clay bird, and the episode ends with Deidara detonating a clay clone against Onoki.
Onoki survives Deidara's explosion and continues battling the reanimated bomber while Kabuto sends Manda II beneath the turtle island and flips the enormous creature over. Kurotsuchi traps Kabuto, bringing Yamato, Aoba, and Motoi close enough to confront him, but Kabuto sheds his skin and snatches Yamato before they can stop him. Kabuto retreats with his captive and recalls Deidara, revealing that Yamato and his Hashirama cells were the real prize of the attack.
Onoki gets the giant turtle safely back to the Hidden Cloud while Killer Bee resumes Naruto's training. Tokuma discovers the enormous White Zetsu army beneath the Akatsuki hideout, and the Allied Shinobi Forces organize into five battle divisions with Gaara commanding the main force. Kabuto answers by summoning his reanimated army, and both sides finally begin moving toward the Fourth Great Ninja War.
Fourth Shinobi World War: Confrontation Arc - Part 1
29 eps
19 canon 10 filler 📷 29
Kabuto captures Anko after she sends her team away with intelligence on Akatsuki's forces. At the Allied Shinobi Forces camp, old rivalries between villages begin flaring until Gaara speaks about the hatred he once carried and the friend who changed him. His promise to protect Naruto unites the army, and the five nations march together toward the battlefield.
Kankuro leads the Allied surprise attack unit into enemy territory with Sai, Omoi, Ittan, and Taji, hoping to locate Kabuto and stop the Reanimation Jutsu. Deidara and Sasori ambush them using captured shinobi as weapons, including a suicide attack that forces Ittan to drop the team's position underground. The battle becomes personal when Sai recognizes his reanimated brother Shin among Kabuto's fighters.
Sasori turns Shin into a regenerating human bomb, enraging Sai when Deidara treats his brother as nothing more than ammunition. Sai knocks Deidara and Sasori into Kankuro's trap while Omoi neutralizes Deidara's clay with Lightning Release. Shin breaks free of the Reanimation Jutsu after seeing Sai's completed picture of them together, and Sasori follows after entrusting his puppet legacy to Kankuro.
Killer Bee starts teaching Naruto how a Tailed Beast Bomb works, and Naruto realizes the Rasengan itself was modeled after the same principle. At Akatsuki's hideout, Tobi forces Kabuto to explain the Reanimation Jutsu, so Kabuto demonstrates it by sacrificing F? to revive Torune and explains both the technique's strengths and its weaknesses. On the battlefield, the alliance flushes a massive wave of White Zetsu out from underground.
Kakashi's division reaches Sai and Omoi just as Kabuto sends Zabuza, Haku, Pakura, and Gari against them. Kakashi and Sakura recognize Zabuza and Haku, and the two reanimated shinobi learn that Naruto carried their story with him after the Land of Waves. Kabuto then strips away their personalities and adds the reanimated Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist to the battlefield.
The Seven Ninja Swordsmen attack under Zabuza's Hidden Mist Jutsu while Suigetsu tells Jugo about the legendary group and his brother Mangetsu. History repeats itself when Haku throws himself in front of Kakashi's attack meant for Zabuza. Kakashi defeats and seals both of his first major enemies, takes up the Executioner's Blade, and prepares his division to stop holding back.
Gaara's division discovers that Kabuto has reanimated former Kage, including Gaara's father Rasa and the Second Tsuchikage Mu. At headquarters, Shikaku reorganizes the alliance after learning Darui's division is facing White Zetsu, Kakuzu, Dan, Hizashi, and the Gold and Silver Brothers. Onoki decides he cannot leave Mu to the younger generation and heads to Gaara's battlefield himself.
The war spreads across several fronts as Black Zetsu attempts to locate the feudal lords and Hizashi is forced into battle against his brother Hiashi. Shikamaru's unit is redirected toward Darui's coastal battlefield while Gaara and Onoki prepare for the reanimated Kage in the desert. Darui comes face-to-face with the notorious Gold and Silver Brothers, Kinkaku and Ginkaku.
The Raikage explains how Kinkaku and Ginkaku survived inside the Nine-Tails and gained some of its chakra, along with weapons once used by the Sage of Six Paths. Samui and Atsui are caught by the brothers' bizarre sealing tools, which punish anyone who speaks their most-used word. Darui turns the rules against them, seals Ginkaku, and drives Kinkaku into a furious pseudo-jinchuriki transformation.
Kinkaku's Nine-Tails chakra overwhelms Darui's division until Mabui sends the Kohaku no Johei to the battlefield and Shikamaru arrives with reinforcements. The alliance finally traps and seals Kinkaku by using his own response to Ginkaku's voice against him. Their victory is short-lived when Kakuzu arrives with Dan and a reanimated Asuma, forcing Team 10 to face their dead teacher.
Ino finds Sakura falling from the sky outside Konoha and discovers that she has lost her memory. As they walk through the village, Sakura recognizes people without remembering them correctly and becomes increasingly confused by the life around her. Her parents return a cherry-blossom necklace that restores part of her memory, and Sakura realizes she came from another version of the world before vanishing as mysteriously as she arrived.
Hanzo corners the retreating surprise attack unit with Ibuse's poisonous mist until Mifune and the samurai arrive to challenge him. Their duel forces Hanzo to remember the conviction he once respected in Mifune and how completely he abandoned his own ideals. Rather than remain Kabuto's puppet, Hanzo cuts open his own poison sac and resists the Reanimation Jutsu long enough to be sealed.
Izumo and Kotetsu help seal Kakuzu while Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji confront the reanimated Asuma. Memories of their old training return as Asuma begs his former students to stop him, but Choji cannot bring himself to strike the teacher who always understood him. Shikamaru and Ino try to push Choji past his hesitation before Asuma's forced attacks kill someone.
Choji finally accepts that protecting his comrades now means fighting the teacher who once protected him. He releases his butterfly wings without using the usual pills, while Ino and Shikamaru coordinate their techniques around him. The completed Ino-Shika-Cho formation defeats Asuma, who proudly tells his students they have surpassed the lesson he tried to leave them before he is sealed.
Naruto realizes the island guards are lying to him and uses Sage Mode to sense that a war is raging outside. Iruka tries to keep him inside by appealing to the danger of Akatsuki capturing him, but Naruto refuses to hide while his friends fight for him. Iruka slips a letter into Naruto's headband asking him to come home alive, and Killer Bee follows Naruto as the two jinchuriki break through the barrier and head for the battlefield.
Black Zetsu attacks the feudal lords' refuge but is stopped by Mei and her guards. On the coast, Tobi summons the Gedo Statue and tears through the Allied division long enough to steal the sealing tools containing Kinkaku and Ginkaku, giving him access to their Nine-Tails chakra. As night falls, Kabuto recalls the reanimated shinobi and both armies regroup after the first day of war.
On the way to the battlefield, Naruto is pulled into his inner world where the Nine-Tails mocks his belief that he can overcome all the hatred waiting for him. The fox points to Sasuke as proof that some hatred cannot simply be talked away. Naruto refuses to accept that answer and promises that he will deal with the war, Sasuke, and even the Nine-Tails' own hatred someday.
A string of murders spreads through the Allied medical camp, and the attacker appears to be Neji. Sakura notices one tiny mistake when the impostor talks about Tonton's 'hands,' exposing him as a White Zetsu that copied Neji's appearance and chakra. The discovery reveals that Zetsu can perfectly impersonate people he has touched, forcing headquarters to rethink security across the entire alliance.
Kiba, Shino, and Hinata become trapped in a cave with White Zetsu while a sealing team tries to close the entrance. After an explosion kills the reinforcements, the three begin suspecting that one of them has been replaced. Shino turns their rock-paper-scissors test into a trap of his own and exposes the fake Hinata, allowing Team 8 to defeat the infiltrator and find the real Hinata alive.
A White Zetsu infiltrates the samurai guarding Deidara and creates an opening for the reanimated bomber to escape captivity. Deidara flees through the Fifth Division while obsessing over finding a chance to unleash his ultimate art again. Kurotsuchi tricks him with a fake Sasuke, lures him into a prepared trap, and has him captured before he can blow himself up.
Back in Konoha, Ebisu gathers the civilians left behind and tries to organize them in case the nearly empty village is attacked. Konohamaru initially dismisses reports of suspicious strangers after one warning turns out to be a traveling circus. When real attackers appear, the village mothers prove they have no intention of waiting helplessly for the shinobi to return, and Konohamaru finishes the fight with a Rasengan.
Tsunade and the Raikage block Naruto and Killer Bee from entering the war, with Ay insisting that protecting the final two jinchuriki matters more than their wishes. Bee challenges his brother's reasoning by remembering how the two became partners and how their Double Lariat earned them a bond stronger than blood. The memory reaches their old encounter with Minato, whose speed pushed both young Cloud ninja to their limits.
Bee proves to the Raikage that he is no longer the younger brother who needs to be protected from every danger. Tsunade sides with Naruto, and Ay gives Naruto one final test by attacking at full speed. Naruto dodges the strike just as Minato once did, convincing the Raikage to let both jinchuriki join the war, while Tobi prepares his own Six Paths using the reanimated former jinchuriki.
Kakashi's division receives a sealing tool for Sai as the battle against the Seven Ninja Swordsmen continues. Sai worries that the technique depends on emotional control, something Root spent years teaching him to suppress. With Lee protecting him and Kakashi holding off Jinin Akebino, Sai steadies himself and seals the Helmet Splitter inside his scroll.
Maki confronts her former teacher Pakura, who died believing the Sand betrayed her during a supposed peace mission with the Mist. Pakura reveals that the story told in the Sand was a lie and that she was sacrificed for political convenience. Maki pleads with her to believe the current alliance can create something better, and Pakura briefly protects her student before Kabuto erases her personality again.
While escorting Naruto and Bee, Tsunade remembers meeting the Raikage years earlier when he desperately needed her medical skill to save a wounded subordinate. Still traumatized by losing Dan and Nawaki, Tsunade initially refuses until Ay beats her in an arm-wrestling wager. The emergency forces her back toward medicine, but the sight of blood exposes how deeply her old losses still control her.
The flashback continues as Tsunade diagnoses an explosive insect hidden inside the Raikage's wounded subordinate. Her fear of blood prevents her from performing the operation herself, so Shizune takes the lead while Ay openly questions trusting lives to a medic who cannot stand the sight of blood. Shizune succeeds, and the memory helps explain why Tsunade later chose to gamble on Naruto despite every reason to be afraid of losing someone again.
Kakashi and Guy encounter reanimated swordsmen Jinpachi Munashi and Kushimaru Kuriarare, whose explosive blade and needle sword turn the battlefield into a killing ground. Kakashi is briefly blinded by Jinpachi's blasts, but he and Guy keep fighting together while remembering one of their old missions with Rin. They hold the pair off until the sealing team arrives and removes both swordsmen from the war.
Ameyuri Ringo devastates a Cloud unit with the lightning blades Kiba, leaving Omoi furious when the survivors choose retreat over a hopeless fight. Omoi turns back to challenge her, and Nurui and Kayui eventually return to help him lure Ameyuri toward a patch of quicksand. The trap catches her long enough for reinforcements to save Omoi, and the amused swordswoman leaves him one of her blades as a final gift before being sealed.
Fourth Shinobi World War: Climax - Part 2
28 eps
9 canon 1 mixed 1 good filler 17 filler 📷 28
Naruto and Killer Bee finally enter the war, and Naruto's new Nine-Tails Chakra Mode immediately changes the battlefield because he can sense the malice hidden inside transformed White Zetsu. He sends shadow clones toward multiple fronts while he and Bee rescue Allied shinobi from the reanimated Toroi. On Gaara's battlefield, the former Kage arrive, and the Fourth Kazekage is stunned to find his son standing before him without Shukaku.
Gaara fights his reanimated father, who cannot understand how the child he once treated as a weapon became Kazekage and earned the trust of a village. When Gaara's sand protects him in the shape of his mother, Rasa finally admits that Karura always loved and protected their son and that Yashamaru's cruel story was a lie told on his orders. Gaara forgives him, and Rasa allows himself to be sealed after seeing that his son has become everything he failed to recognize.
Naruto and Killer Bee run into the reanimated Itachi and Nagato, who are forced by Kabuto to attack despite being fully aware of what they are doing. Naruto tells Itachi that Sasuke learned the truth about the Uchiha massacre and has turned his hatred toward Konoha. When Itachi activates his Mangekyo Sharingan, the crow he planted inside Naruto emerges and uses Shisui's Kotoamatsukami, freeing Itachi from Kabuto's control before Nagato is restored to his younger strength and grabs Naruto.
Itachi saves Naruto and Bee from Nagato, then works out how to destroy the core of Chibaku Tensei by having all three attack it at once. He seals Nagato with the Totsuka Blade, giving Nagato a final moment to tell Naruto to become the successful ending to the story Jiraiya began. Naruto wants to rush off and handle everything himself, but Itachi reminds him that becoming Hokage means trusting the people who acknowledge him, then leaves to stop the Reanimation Jutsu at its source.
The Second Mizukage and Third Raikage escape Gaara's sealing attempt and, despite actively explaining their own weaknesses, prove extremely difficult for the Allied forces to defeat. Naruto's clone joins Gaara and Onoki against Mu, helping land a Planetary Rasengan so the Second Tsuchikage can be sealed. Gaara then locates the giant clam creating the Mizukage's mirage, but destroying the illusion only reveals that the real Mizukage still has another dangerous technique waiting.
Naruto's clone reaches the division fighting the Third Raikage and finds that neither Wind Release nor ordinary attacks can break through his legendary defense. After learning that the Raikage's only scar came from his own battle with the Eight-Tails, Naruto realizes the answer is hidden in the contradiction between the man's ultimate spear and ultimate shield. Switching to Sage Mode, Naruto redirects the Raikage's own One-Finger Hell Stab into his chest, finally allowing the division to seal him.
The Second Mizukage unleashes Steaming Danger Tyranny, creating a fast-moving clone that repeatedly heats up, explodes, and reforms as hail cools it down. Gaara searches for the weakened real Mizukage while protecting his division from the blasts, then mixes his sand with his father's Gold Dust to weigh down and cool the clone before it can explode again. Impressed that Gaara solved the technique, the Mizukage accepts defeat and is sealed, while Mu secretly survives by splitting his body in two.
Kiba, Neji, Shikamaru, and Choji come face-to-face with the reanimated Sound Four, enemies they defeated during the Sasuke Retrieval Mission years earlier. The Leaf shinobi overwhelm them much faster this time, showing how far they have grown, but the victory is exactly what the Sound Four wanted. A barrier activates around the four Leaf ninja and pulls their souls into another battlefield, leaving their bodies unconscious while Naruto senses that something is wrong.
Neji, Shikamaru, Choji, and Kiba discover that the Sound Four used the Underworld Transfer Jutsu to trap their souls inside a sealed space. Outside, Ino and Shino keep their friends' bodies alive while headquarters admits it cannot locate or retrieve the missing souls. Inside the barrier the old fights begin again, and the Sound Four reveal the trap's real cruelty: even if they are defeated, the Leaf ninja will remain imprisoned until their bodies die.
The trapped Leaf shinobi continue battling the Sound Four while Ino and Shino desperately keep their bodies alive in the real world. Shikamaru deliberately provokes their enemies, realizing that the reincarnated Sound Four are being strengthened by the hatred and resentment they carried into death. That malice eventually leaks through the barrier strongly enough for Naruto to sense it, giving him the location he needs to break their friends free.
Naruto destroys the Sound Four's barrier from outside and returns Neji, Kiba, Choji, and Shikamaru's souls to their bodies. As the battlefield settles, Hinata remembers a childhood incident when Neji went searching for a rare medicinal plant after her eyes were damaged during training. Naruto and Sakura accompanied him through the dangerous Valley of Judgement, and in the present Hinata finally thanks Neji for how much he cared even when their family relationship was still strained.
Kabuto reanimates Hayate Gekko and sends him with other dead shinobi to infiltrate the Allied medical camp and steal a list identifying valuable corpses and bloodline users. Sakura helps organize the pursuit, but Yugao freezes when she learns that the man leading the enemy team is the lover she lost years ago. Hayate escapes with the information, forcing Yugao to decide whether she can raise her sword against him.
Yugao remembers training and falling in love with Hayate as the Allied pursuit team catches up to the reanimated shinobi. The other attackers are defeated, but Yugao cannot bring herself to fight Hayate until Sakura reminds her that Kabuto's technique is exploiting the dead and everything they cared about. Hayate briefly resists Kabuto's control at the decisive moment, allowing Yugao to strike him down and the sealing team to finally put him to rest.
Naruto recognizes a reanimated samurai named Tatewaki on the battlefield and remembers an old mission involving Team 10 and a young noble named Shu. Shikamaru's plan required Choji to enter an eating contest while Ino used Mind Transfer on Shu and Naruto transformed into him, letting the real boy escape without immediately alerting the castle. The ridiculous food contest is really cover for a carefully timed kidnapping mission, and the episode ends with Team Asuma successfully getting Shu away.
The flashback continues with Naruto impersonating Shu inside the castle while the real boy gets a rare chance to enjoy ordinary life with Team 10. Naruto's disguise is exposed just as Sasori and Deidara attack the country, turning the mission into a fight for survival. Tatewaki dies protecting the people he served, but in the present Naruto tells his reanimated opponent that Shu and Chiyo survived, allowing Tatewaki to let go and return to the afterlife.
Tobi watches Naruto from afar while testing a limited version of the Infinite Tsukuyomi and trying to understand what Naruto wants most. Lee gathers Naruto and their friends for a trip to the public baths, which becomes a complete disaster after Lee falls into the women's changing area and Naruto is mistaken for stealing underwear. Later that night the others unexpectedly visit Naruto for cards, and after they leave Naruto quietly wishes they had stayed for dinner, giving Tobi the emotional opening he was looking for.
Guy's division encounters Master Chen, a legendary Leaf taijutsu user brought back by the Reanimation Jutsu. Rock Lee recognizes the man from his childhood, when Chen once dismissed him for trying to become a ninja without ninjutsu or genjutsu. Lee challenges him again and finally counters Chen's Leaf Dragon God with a technique developed through years of training, proving that the hopeless student Chen once met became exactly the kind of shinobi he said could not exist.
Different Allied units encounter the same impossible enemy: Yota, a strange child Naruto and the others knew when they were young, appearing on several battlefields at once and controlling rain, snow, and lightning with his emotions. Ino, Shikamaru, Choji, Sakura, Kiba, and Naruto each remember fragments of their time with him while trying to understand why he has returned as an enemy. The conflicting memories only make the mystery stranger as each group faces its own version of Yota.
The Leaf shinobi continue fighting the different Yotas while remembering the lonely child who wandered into Konoha years ago and became their secret friend. Their memories eventually reach the day ANBU discovered him and took him away for questioning, leaving Naruto and the others convinced that their friendship helped cause his death. In the present, Naruto encounters another Yota and realizes the story they remember still does not fully explain what is happening.
Naruto realizes the Yotas appearing across the battlefield are White Zetsu disguises and helps the others defeat them, but the real memories of Yota finally return. As children, Naruto and his friends tried to rescue him from ANBU custody, only for Yota to sacrifice himself while saving Naruto from a river and erase their memories of him. The reanimated Yota reveals that he had already died before they ever met and had been one of Orochimaru's earliest Reanimation Jutsu experiments, then chooses to return to the afterlife rather than fight his friends again.
Kabuto uses Torune to summon a collection of weak reanimated shinobi as a diversion meant to free stronger sealed fighters from the Allied forces. Some of the resurrected ninja are old friends or relatives of the people now fighting them, making even these disposable pawns difficult to face. Temari's unit stops the group before they can release the Third Raikage, but Torune slips away to prepare a much more dangerous technique of his own.
Shino tracks down the reanimated Torune before he can complete a forbidden jutsu that would spread his poisonous insects across the battlefield. Their fight brings back Shino's childhood, when Torune lived with the Aburame family and volunteered to join Root so Shino would not be taken instead. Naruto's clone helps, but Shino ultimately wins by using insects he bred to resist Torune's venom, allowing him to paralyze and seal the man who once protected him like an older brother.
Killer Bee and Motoi encounter Fukai, the former Eight-Tails jinchuriki, reanimated by Kabuto to stop them from reaching the battlefield. Their fight reveals that Orochimaru secretly drugged Fukai years earlier and extracted Gyuki, causing the rampage that eventually led to Fukai's death. Bee shows Fukai that he filled the loneliness of being a jinchuriki through the people around him, and Fukai finds peace before his reanimated body disappears.
Kankuro joins Mifune's division against the reanimated Chiyo and Kimimaro, bringing Chiyo face-to-face with the puppets and memories she left behind. She remembers Sasori's childhood and the death of his friend Komushi, another moment when her attempt to use puppetry to answer grief only created more pain. Kankuro tells her that Sasori entrusted his Mother and Father puppets to the next generation, convincing Chiyo that some part of her grandson did survive through the art he passed on.
Omoi abandons his assigned battlefield when he learns that a supply unit made up largely of children never reached its destination. The Raikage gives him one hour to rescue them, and Naruto sends a shadow clone to help against the White Zetsu forces blocking the route, but the clone disappears before the job is finished. Omoi pushes on alone, reaches the trapped Thundercloud Unit, and helps the children fight their way out even though he misses the Raikage's deadline.
Naruto's shadow clones spread across the battlefield and use his ability to sense hatred to expose White Zetsu impostors hiding among the Allied Forces. The alliance begins regaining the advantage just as Tobi moves with the reanimated jinchuriki. On Gaara's battlefield, Mu summons Kabuto's trump card, and the shinobi are stunned when the real Madara Uchiha steps out of the coffin.
Madara learns that Kabuto brought him back with the Reanimation Jutsu rather than the resurrection he expected, then immediately shows why his name terrified the shinobi world. He tears through the Fourth Division with taijutsu, fire, Susanoo, and the Rinnegan before dropping two enormous meteors onto the battlefield. When survivors still remain, Madara reveals Hashirama's cells and engulfs the area with Deep Forest Emergence.
Onoki keeps fighting Madara while Tsunade and the Raikage risk Mabui's Heavenly Transfer Technique to reach the battlefield, and Mei is transported there by the Hokage Guard Platoon. With Gaara already present, all five Kage finally stand together against Madara. Tsunade orders Naruto's clone to leave the real Madara to them and focus on the masked man, just as Naruto and Killer Bee encounter Tobi and his reanimated jinchuriki.
The Great Ninja War: Grand Battlefront (Part 1)
38 eps
16 canon 7 mixed 13 good filler 2 filler 📷 38
Naruto and Killer Bee face Tobi's reanimated jinchuriki, and Naruto recognizes Utakata among them. A brief connection with Utakata reveals that Pain captured him after the events with Hotaru, confirming what became of the Six-Tails' host. Naruto rejects Tobi's claim that a jinchuriki's life can only be misery and vows to tear off his mask, while the six reanimated hosts begin drawing on their tailed beasts.
Killer Bee and Naruto discover that Tobi's jinchuriki share both the Rinnegan's linked vision and the Sharingan's reaction speed, making them extremely difficult to attack directly. Bee transforms into the Eight-Tails and tries to overwhelm the battlefield, but the other hosts begin transforming as well. Tobi nearly captures Naruto with Kamui before Kakashi and Guy arrive to join the fight.
Sasuke leaves his hideout after destroying White Zetsu with his Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan, while Naruto's battle with the jinchuriki continues. Roshi fully transforms and swallows Naruto, bringing him face-to-face with the Four-Tails inside its mind. The beast introduces himself as Son Goku, tells Naruto that the Nine-Tails is named Kurama, and challenges Naruto to prove that his promise to free the tailed beasts is genuine.
Naruto continues speaking with Son Goku while Kurama listens from inside his own cage, remembering the many humans who treated him as a weapon and the years he spent trying to break Naruto's seal. Those memories carry through Naruto's worst moments and the gradual change in their relationship. Watching Naruto overcome his own hatred forces Kurama to reconsider the boy he has spent years refusing to trust.
Naruto escapes Son Goku's body and learns that Tobi's control comes through a chakra receiver embedded in the Four-Tails. He leaves a Sage Mode clone inside Son to locate the rod precisely, then uses Frog Kata from outside to knock it free despite Tobi's resistance. Kurama watches Naruto risk himself to keep a promise to another tailed beast and finally begins accepting that Naruto's actions match his words.
Tobi reseals Son Goku and forces the other jinchuriki into full tailed-beast transformations, leaving Naruto, Bee, Kakashi, and Guy badly outmatched. Kurama finally offers Naruto his full cooperation, and Naruto removes the seal that kept them apart so their chakra can truly merge. In Tailed Beast Mode, Naruto matches the combined beasts' attack, removes their receivers, and meets the jinchuriki and tailed beasts in a shared inner world where they entrust him with their names and chakra.
After Naruto frees the tailed beasts from Tobi's direct control, the Allied headquarters feels the surge of Kurama's chakra and realizes Naruto has reached a new level. Shikaku decides to spread Naruto's success across the battlefield to raise morale, and Naruto's friends begin moving toward him. Elsewhere, Sasuke also heads toward the war as a storm gathers overhead.
Karin pretends to be unstable while quietly planning an escape from Leaf custody, and Suigetsu and Jugo search Orochimaru's hideout for Sasuke. Jugo's rampage exposes a hidden room containing an important scroll. Sasuke, meanwhile, interrogates White Zetsu about the war, destroys the remaining clones, and unexpectedly crosses paths with the reanimated Itachi.
Madara uses Deep Forest Bloom against the Five Kage, filling the battlefield with poisonous pollen and pushing them close to defeat. Onoki remembers the lesson behind the Stone's will, rallies himself, and destroys the forest with Particle Style, allowing the others to recover. Madara then reveals Hashirama's face growing from his chest and singles out Tsunade as the Senju heir he intends to break, while Sasuke continues pursuing Itachi.
Tsunade releases the Strength of a Hundred Seal and joins the other Kage in forcing Madara to take their attacks seriously. Madara answers by using a wood clone and then creates twenty-five more, each capable of using Susanoo against the five Kage. Elsewhere, Itachi reaches Kabuto's cave and Sasuke follows him inside, where the brothers agree they must keep Kabuto alive long enough to make him release the Reanimation Jutsu.
Kabuto blocks his own sight to protect himself from Sharingan genjutsu and reveals how completely he has rebuilt his body with abilities taken from Suigetsu, Karin, Jugo, and Orochimaru's research. He unveils Sage Mode and uses the cave itself as a weapon against Itachi and Sasuke. The brothers begin fighting together again, even recreating an old teamwork maneuver to cut off one of Kabuto's horns.
Kabuto tries to convince Sasuke that they are alike because both were used and betrayed by Konoha, but Sasuke rejects the comparison and Itachi admits he still considers himself a shinobi of the Leaf despite its crimes. Itachi tells Sasuke he plans to use Izanami, a forbidden Uchiha technique, to stop Kabuto without killing him. As Kabuto attacks with Sage Art: Inorganic Reanimation, memories of his childhood at the Leaf orphanage begin revealing how he became obsessed with creating an identity for himself.
Kabuto remembers being taken in by Nono at the Leaf orphanage and later being forced into Root's intelligence network alongside her. Years of missions erase any stable sense of who he is, ending when Root manipulates Kabuto and Nono into attacking each other and she dies without recognizing him. Orochimaru reveals the deception and offers Kabuto a new place at his side, beginning the path that eventually leads Kabuto to rebuild himself from pieces of other people.
Kabuto uses abilities copied from the Sound Five and Orochimaru to overwhelm the Uchiha brothers, even cutting Itachi apart before his reanimated body reforms. The same exchange then seems to happen again, and Kabuto slowly realizes that events are repeating despite his supposed immunity to visual genjutsu. Itachi reveals that Izanami has already trapped Kabuto inside an endless loop.
With Kabuto trapped, Itachi explains that Izanami was created to stop Uchiha who abused Izanagi to rewrite reality whenever they disliked an outcome. The loop can only be escaped by accepting the truth of who one is instead of endlessly trying to change fate, which is why Itachi deliberately leaves Kabuto a way out. Sasuke struggles with that mercy and with Itachi's insistence that he was never the flawless older brother Sasuke imagined.
While the Five Kage continue fighting Madara, Itachi places Kabuto under genjutsu and forces him to perform the hand signs that release the Reanimation Jutsu. Souls begin leaving their reanimated bodies across the battlefields. Before disappearing himself, Itachi shows Sasuke the truth of the Uchiha massacre through his memories and tells his brother that no matter what Sasuke chooses next, he will always love him.
The reanimated shinobi begin returning to the afterlife, and Dan uses the final moments of his Ghost Transformation to reach Tsunade, speak with her, and restore some of her chakra. Madara refuses to disappear, revealing that he knows how to cancel his own Reanimation contract and has freed himself from Kabuto's control. On Naruto's battlefield, Tobi feeds the Gold and Silver Brothers' sealing tools into the Gedo Statue, beginning the Ten-Tails' resurrection.
Suigetsu and Jugo find Sasuke and give him the scroll they discovered in Orochimaru's hideout. Wanting answers before deciding what he will do next, Sasuke uses Kabuto's flesh and Anko's Curse Mark to restore Orochimaru, who agrees to take him to the people he wants to question. At the battlefield, Naruto learns that Tobi can revive the Ten-Tails without fully capturing the Eight- and Nine-Tails because he already possesses fragments of their chakra.
Naruto, Bee, Kakashi, and Guy attack Tobi while the Gedo Statue transforms, and Kakashi notices that his Kamui seems to interact strangely with Tobi's intangibility. By coordinating their attacks, they confirm that Tobi's phasing and Kakashi's Kamui send objects into the same dimension. A crack appears in Tobi's mask, and his claim that he obtained the eye during the Kannabi Bridge battle leaves Kakashi visibly shaken.
Kakashi uses Kamui to send one of Naruto's shadow clones into the other dimension while the real Naruto forces Tobi to phase through an attack. The hidden clone lands a Rasengan from inside Kamui's space and shatters Tobi's mask, revealing Obito Uchiha alive beneath it. Kakashi is devastated by the identity of his former teammate and Obito's accusation about Rin, but Naruto pulls him back into the fight just before Madara arrives beside Obito.
Madara joins Obito on the battlefield and casually tells Naruto that the Five Kage have already been defeated. As the fight resumes, Obito remembers waking beneath the battlefield years earlier after being crushed at Kannabi Bridge, his ruined body patched together with material from the Demonic Statue. The elderly Madara tells him that the world is built on suffering and begins explaining the dream world he intends to create, but Obito still wants only to recover and return to Kakashi and Rin.
Obito rehabilitates inside Madara's hideout with help from the strange White Zetsu beings, slowly learning to use the artificial half of his body. When Zetsu reports that Kakashi and Rin are surrounded by Hidden Mist ninja, Obito finally breaks out and races to them. He arrives in time to see Kakashi's Chidori pierce Rin's chest, awakens the Mangekyo Sharingan, and massacres the Mist shinobi before cradling Rin's body and deciding that the world around him is hell.
After Rin's death, Obito returns to Madara and accepts the idea of replacing reality with a world where loss and suffering no longer exist. Madara explains the Eye of the Moon Plan, the Ten-Tails, and how the Rinnegan he left with Nagato will eventually be needed to revive him, then creates Black Zetsu as an extension of his will before dying. Obito takes Madara's name and approaches Nagato, while Yahiko's growing peace movement begins taking shape as the original Akatsuki.
Years earlier, Yahiko, Nagato, and Konan build Akatsuki into a growing movement that tries to change the Hidden Rain through negotiation instead of conquest. Jiraiya is pleased to hear that his former students are still pursuing peace, but their success attracts the attention of both Hanzo and Danz?. Danz? stages an attack using Leaf ninja disguised as Stone shinobi, then convinces Hanzo that Akatsuki is becoming a threat to his rule.
Yahiko agrees to what he believes is a peace meeting with Hanzo, only to find Konan held hostage and Nagato ordered to kill his friend. Yahiko throws himself onto Nagato's kunai rather than let Konan die, and Nagato answers by summoning the Demonic Statue and destroying most of Hanzo's forces. Obito later steps in as Nagato abandons Yahiko's original path, and the peaceful Akatsuki is transformed into the organization that will eventually hunt the tailed beasts.
Kakashi remains haunted by Rin's death as the Third Shinobi World War ends and Konoha prepares for a new era. Hiruzen rejects Danz?'s preferred successor, Orochimaru, and names Minato the Fourth Hokage, while Minato sees how badly Kakashi is unraveling after everything he has lost. After a mission exposes Kakashi's inability to focus past his trauma, Minato brings him into the ANBU as his personal operative, and Kakashi puts on the mask that will define the next part of his life.
Kakashi serves under Minato and is assigned to help guard Kushina during the period around Naruto's birth, when the Nine-Tails' seal will be weakest. He visits Rin's grave and talks about the mission, unaware that Obito is listening and now knows exactly when Kushina will be vulnerable. The Nine-Tails attack follows, Minato and Kushina die sealing the fox inside Naruto, and afterward Danz? quietly recruits the grieving Kakashi into Root, where he meets the Wood Style user known as Kinoe.
Kakashi investigates Kinoe's Wood Style and learns from Hiruzen that he is the surviving child of experiments that implanted Hashirama's cells into test subjects. Danz? then sends Kinoe and other Root operatives to assassinate Hiruzen while the Third Hokage travels to have his return to office formally recognized. The target turns out to be Kakashi in disguise, buying time for Hiruzen to confront Danz? directly and making Kakashi's divided loyalties impossible to ignore.
Hiruzen and the ANBU raid one of Orochimaru's laboratories after his forbidden experiments are exposed, but Orochimaru escapes Konoha and becomes a rogue ninja. Kakashi intercepts him near the border and is badly outmatched, while a hidden explosive attack forces Orochimaru toward another refuge. Danz? sends Kinoe to help Orochimaru escape, but Kinoe instead encounters the Iburi clan and a girl named Yukimi who mistakes him for the boy Orochimaru once took away from them.
Kakashi finds the Iburi clan's hideout and clashes with them until Kinoe intervenes and claims that he is also pursuing Orochimaru. Yukimi leads Kakashi and Kinoe through a secret route outside, then slips away with Kinoe because she desperately wants to see the world beyond the clan's shelter. When an Iburi named Gotta dies after his unstable smoke body is scattered by the wind, Kakashi realizes Yukimi is in danger and goes after them while Orochimaru reaches the hideout.
Kakashi catches up with Kinoe and Yukimi, but Yukimi chooses to return to her clan rather than let the two ANBU keep fighting over her. She arrives to find Orochimaru killing the Iburi and is captured herself, forcing Kakashi and Kinoe to work together to drive him away. When Yukimi's body begins breaking apart into smoke, Kinoe uses Wood Style to save her, and Kakashi later reports that they never found Orochimaru or the Iburi clan, allowing Kinoe and Yukimi to choose their own paths.
Danz? orders Kinoe to take Kakashi's Sharingan because Danz?'s own eye is beginning to fail. Kakashi is sent to investigate another abandoned Orochimaru hideout, where Kinoe joins him before revealing the assassination order and attacking. Kakashi refuses to kill a comrade even after gaining the upper hand, and his words reach Kinoe just as one of Orochimaru's surviving experiments begins stirring inside the laboratory.
Kakashi and Kinoe are attacked by a giant white snake inside Orochimaru's hideout, and Kakashi saves Kinoe before being poisoned by the creature. Kinoe repays him with an antidote and abandons Danz?'s order to steal the Sharingan. After Kakashi reports the plot to Hiruzen, Danz? tries to have Kinoe disposed of, but Kakashi helps free him and Hiruzen removes him from Root, assigning him to the ANBU under Kakashi and giving him the name Tenzo.
Kakashi's ANBU unit receives a new prodigy in Itachi Uchiha, whose calm efficiency immediately unsettles the older members. Guy asks Hiruzen to let him join ANBU so he can keep Kakashi from sinking further into darkness, but the request is refused. During a mission against the Hannya Black Ops, Guy witnesses Kakashi and Itachi carrying out a brutal hidden assignment, while Itachi returns home to a clan already expecting him to serve as their eyes inside Konoha.
Danz? persuades the village leadership to place the Uchiha under constant surveillance after the Nine-Tails attack, deepening the resentment already building inside the clan. Shisui tells Itachi that the Uchiha are planning a coup and intends to stop it by using Kotoamatsukami on Fugaku. Danz? steals one of Shisui's eyes, and Shisui gives the other to Itachi before taking his own life, leaving Itachi trapped between his clan and the village.
Itachi is promoted within ANBU while Kakashi investigates evidence that someone has been entering Konoha without triggering the village barrier. Danz? gives Itachi the order to eliminate the Uchiha clan before their coup can begin, and Itachi makes a deal with the masked Obito to help him carry it out while sparing Sasuke. After the massacre, Itachi warns Danz? never to touch his brother, secretly promises Hiruzen that he will continue protecting Konoha from outside, and leaves the village branded a criminal.
Hiruzen removes Kakashi from ANBU and makes him a jonin instructor, hoping that teaching younger shinobi will pull him away from the darkness that has followed him since the war. Kakashi develops his own version of Minato's bell test and repeatedly fails teams that follow orders but refuse to put their comrades first. After Guy, Asuma, and Kurenai question his methods, Kakashi sees that even the students he failed understood the lesson, and Hiruzen prepares one more team for him to test.
Hiruzen assigns Kakashi to Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura and explains why those three were deliberately placed together, including Naruto's connection to Minato. Kakashi quietly observes each of them before their first meeting and visits the Memorial Stone, where Tenzo notices how much his former captain has changed. Kakashi finally meets the three genin, presents himself as an unreliable slacker, and begins the bell test that will turn them into Team 7.
The Great Ninja War: Grand Battlefront (Part 2)
52 eps
27 canon 2 good filler 23 filler 📷 52
Madara uses the Wood Dragon to restrain Kurama and Gyuki while Kakashi, exhausted from repeated Kamui use, keeps trying to reach the friend Obito used to be. Naruto refuses to let Obito's contempt break Kakashi and shares Kurama's chakra with his teacher, restoring enough strength for one more plan. Naruto and Bee fire Tailed Beast Bombs at the Gedo Statue, but the Ten-Tails emerges from the smoke before they can stop its revival.
Obito and Madara take control of the newly revived Ten-Tails and overwhelm Naruto, Bee, Kakashi, and Guy with its power. Just as the Ten-Tails prepares to wipe them out, the Allied Shinobi Forces arrive and combine their techniques to divert the attack. Shikaku coordinates the entire army in a massive joint assault that traps the Ten-Tails long enough for the alliance to charge Obito and Madara together.
The Ten-Tails transforms again, breaks free, and launches Tailed Beast Bombs across the battlefield, including one that destroys Allied headquarters and kills Shikaku and Inoichi. Its next barrage of wooden spears kills Neji when he shields Naruto and Hinata, leaving Naruto stunned by another loss. Hinata snaps him out of it, and Naruto spreads Kurama's chakra across the alliance so they can keep fighting together.
Empowered by Naruto's chakra, the Allied Shinobi Forces drive back the Ten-Tails and sever Obito and Madara's control over it. Away from the battlefield, Sasuke, Orochimaru, Jugo, and Suigetsu enter the Uzumaki Mask Storage Temple and recover the mask needed to undo the Reaper Death Seal. Orochimaru releases the souls trapped inside and uses Reanimation Jutsu to bring the first four Hokage back.
Sasuke questions the reanimated Hokage about Itachi, the Uchiha clan, and what it means to protect a village. Hiruzen confirms the truth about Itachi's mission, while Tobirama explains how powerful emotion and loss shaped the Uchiha and their Sharingan. When Sasuke asks Hashirama what a village and shinobi truly are, the First Hokage decides the answer begins with his own history with Madara.
Hashirama begins his story with the day he met Madara as a child beside a river during the Warring States era. The two bond over brothers lost to endless clan warfare and share the same dream of building a place where children will no longer have to die in battle. Their friendship becomes dangerous when both families discover they have been secretly meeting an enemy from the opposing clan.
Hashirama and Madara try to warn one another before their fathers and brothers confront them at the river, forcing the boys back into the Senju-Uchiha conflict. Years later they become clan leaders, and Tobirama mortally wounds Izuna, leaving Madara with his brother's eyes and an even deeper hatred of the Senju. Hashirama defeats Madara but is willing to kill himself rather than continue the feud, convincing Madara to finally accept peace.
The Senju and Uchiha build the Hidden Leaf together, fulfilling the dream Hashirama and Madara imagined as children. Political reality quickly divides them when Hashirama is chosen as Hokage and Tobirama's distrust convinces Madara that the Uchiha will eventually be pushed aside. Madara leaves Konoha, abandoning the village he helped create and eventually returning as its enemy.
Hashirama finishes his account with the Valley of the End, where he chooses the village over Madara and strikes down his former friend. Back in the present, Sasuke decides that he will not let Itachi's sacrifice and the village he protected be wasted, choosing to enter the war rather than destroy Konoha. Karin rejoins the group, and Orochimaru leads Sasuke and the four Hokage toward the battlefield.
Naruto's constant distribution of Kurama's chakra begins wearing him down while the Ten-Tails prepares another devastating transformation. Obito pulls Kakashi into the Kamui dimension, where their argument over Rin becomes a direct confrontation about the emptiness Obito believes the world created inside him. On the battlefield, the alliance faces another enormous Tailed Beast Bomb with Naruto's chakra cloak fading around them.
Shikamaru coordinates a desperate defense against the Ten-Tails' Tailed Beast Bomb, but the barriers cannot stop it until Minato suddenly appears and teleports the attack away. The other three Hokage arrive and trap the Ten-Tails inside a powerful barrier, followed by Sasuke declaring that he intends to protect Konoha and become Hokage. Team 7 stands together again for the first time in years while Kakashi tells Obito that comrades are what fill the hole left by loss.
With Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura reunited, the Ten-Tails creates an army of smaller monsters to keep the alliance away from its main body. Sakura releases the Strength of a Hundred Seal and shows how far Tsunade's training has taken her, fighting alongside Naruto and Sasuke instead of behind them. Team 7 then summons Gamakichi, Aoda, and Katsuyu and prepares a coordinated attack on the Ten-Tails.
Naruto and Sasuke combine Wind and Flame techniques against the Ten-Tails while Sakura uses Katsuyu to spread healing across the Allied Forces, recreating the old three-way deadlock in a new generation. Elsewhere, Orochimaru, Suigetsu, and Karin reach the defeated Five Kage and help Tsunade keep them alive. Once Tsunade stabilizes the others, Orochimaru's group heads toward the main battlefield.
Kakashi and Obito finish their battle inside the Kamui dimension with a brutal exchange that leaves both of them pierced through the chest. Obito returns to the battlefield, where Madara tries to force him to perform Rinne Rebirth and restore Madara to life. Obito resists Madara's control at the last moment and instead absorbs the Ten-Tails, becoming its jinchuriki.
Months before Sasuke defeats Orochimaru, one of Orochimaru's experiments produces a mechanical Naruto that later falls into Akatsuki's hands. Pain sends Mecha-Naruto to Konoha to capture Naruto and extract the Nine-Tails, and the robot quickly defeats several Leaf shinobi while absorbing Naruto's chakra. Tsunade orders Naruto taken away from the village as bait, beginning a running battle to keep the machine from reaching him.
Mecha-Naruto tears through the shinobi escorting Naruto until Orochimaru reveals himself as its original creator and takes control of the machine. A hidden program Itachi placed inside Mecha-Naruto makes it turn against Orochimaru after Naruto refuses to give up on saving Sasuke. When Orochimaru unleashes a giant Mecha Nine-Tails against Konoha, Mecha-Naruto sacrifices itself to destroy the larger machine and save the village.
Obito absorbs the Ten-Tails and becomes its jinchuriki, gaining power that immediately overwhelms the reanimated Hokage. His mind nearly breaks apart under the Ten-Tails' influence, but memories of Rin and Team Minato allow him to pull himself back together and seize control. Once stabilized, Obito assumes a form resembling the Sage of Six Paths and tears off Minato's arm before preparing another attack.
Tobirama saves Minato from the Truth-Seeking Ball attached to his severed arm, while Naruto and Sasuke try combining their attacks against Obito. Their ninjutsu fails because Obito's new power cancels ordinary techniques and even interferes with the Hokage's reanimated bodies. Naruto notices that Gamakichi's natural-energy attack affected Obito and uses Sage Mode to land a Rasengan, revealing that senjutsu can hurt him.
Obito begins the final phase of the Eye of the Moon Plan by trapping the alliance inside a barrier and preparing four Tailed Beast Bombs. Naruto refuses to let Obito turn the anniversary of Minato and Kushina's deaths into a day of despair, reminding Minato that it is also Naruto's birthday. Naruto and Minato link their halves of Kurama, restore the alliance's chakra cloaks, and teleport everyone outside the barrier before the bombs explode.
Obito releases the Ten-Tails into its true tree form, and the Divine Tree's roots begin draining chakra and killing shinobi across the battlefield. Madara explains to Hashirama that the tree was once the source of all chakra and tells the story of Kaguya eating its fruit and the Sage of Six Paths being born. The tree begins moving toward the moment when its flower will bloom and the Infinite Tsukuyomi can finally be cast.
The Divine Tree's attack leaves the alliance devastated, and Obito offers everyone a final chance to stop resisting and enter his dream world. Naruto answers by entering Sage Tailed Beast Mode, while Sasuke has Jugo add natural energy to Susanoo so they can continue fighting Obito together. Hashirama shares his memory of the first Five Kage Summit with the entire army, reminding them that a united shinobi world was once only a dream and restoring their resolve.
The Five Kage arrive at the battlefield while Sakura struggles to keep Shikamaru alive after the Divine Tree drained his chakra. Naruto unconsciously shares enough chakra to help him survive until Tsunade arrives and finishes the healing. Naruto and Sasuke combine their powers again against Obito, forming a Susanoo-armored Kurama as the alliance rallies for one more attack.
Naruto and Sasuke's combined Kurama and Susanoo form clashes with Obito's Sword of Nunoboko while Naruto draws his friends directly into the attack. The Konoha shinobi strike with Rasengan formed through Kurama's tails, creating the opening needed to begin pulling the tailed beasts out of Obito. The entire Allied Shinobi Forces joins the tug-of-war, and Naruto's connection with Obito lets him see the lonely path that brought his enemy here.
Inside their shared consciousness, Naruto refuses to accept Obito's claim that his old identity no longer matters. He tells Obito that the two of them are similar, but that becoming Hokage means walking ahead of everyone rather than escaping into a shortcut that steals their freedom. Obito begins wavering as Naruto forces him to confront the difference between the shinobi he wanted to become and the man he chose to be.
Obito remembers Rin, Team Minato, and the life he abandoned, while Naruto points out that those bonds still exist inside him despite everything he has done. Naruto tells him that he can stop running and return to being Obito Uchiha, even if doing so means facing the consequences of his crimes. Obito hesitates as Naruto reaches out a hand and asks him to choose the path he once believed in.
Obito tries one last time to reject Naruto's offer, but the alliance succeeds in pulling the tailed beasts from his body and strips away the Ten-Tails' power. Kakashi returns from the Kamui dimension ready to kill his former friend, only for Minato to stop him after recognizing Obito's change of heart. Naruto leaves Obito in Kakashi's hands and turns toward Madara, preparing a massive Rasenshuriken as the war shifts to its next threat.
Gaara asks Shukaku to help seal Madara, forcing the former jinchuriki and tailed beast to face the long history between them. Shukaku initially refuses, but Gaara's memories of growing up alone and eventually finding his first real friend in Naruto change the tone of the conversation. The tailed beasts agree to fight together against Madara, while Gaara and Shukaku finally stand on the same side.
Hanabi remembers growing up idolizing Hinata, even as the Hyuga clan increasingly judged her older sister as too gentle to become its heir. She watches Hinata struggle through punishing training with Hiashi and begins to understand the pressure placed on her. After Hanabi defeats Hinata in a formal spar, the clan starts looking to the younger sister as its future instead.
Hanabi continues watching Hinata after the clan chooses her as the stronger successor and sees her sister refuse to give up despite repeated setbacks. Hinata's fight with Neji in the Chunin Exams and later determination against Pain show Hanabi that strength is not only about winning clan matches. By the present, Hanabi has come to respect the sister she once thought she had surpassed and commits herself to becoming stronger in her own way.
Black Zetsu takes control of Obito and forces him to perform Rinne Rebirth, restoring Madara to a living body instead of his reanimated one. Madara loses the artificial eyes he carried through the Reanimation Jutsu, but immediately absorbs Hashirama's senjutsu and overwhelms Sasuke even while blind. His next goal is clear: recover his Rinnegan and reclaim the tailed beasts.
The nine tailed beasts attack the fully revived Madara together, briefly battering him with a coordinated assault. A White Zetsu brings Madara his original right Rinnegan, and with the eye restored he summons the Gedo Statue from Obito's body. Madara uses the statue's chains to seize the tailed beasts one after another and begins dragging them toward imprisonment.
Madara finishes pulling the tailed beasts into the Gedo Statue, including Kurama, whose extraction leaves Naruto dying almost immediately. Kurama gives Gaara instructions before being taken, and Gaara carries Naruto away in a desperate attempt to save him. Sasuke tries to attack Madara while he is occupied, but Madara freezes him in place and drives Sasuke's own sword through his chest.
While Sakura struggles to save Naruto during the war, Tsunade remembers the Chunin Exams held after Naruto left Konoha to train with Jiraiya. She and the newly appointed Kazekage Gaara agree to stage a new joint exam between the Leaf and Sand, partly to draw out anyone plotting against Gaara or taking advantage of Akatsuki's growing threat. Invitations go out to the other villages, and the next generation begins preparing for another chance at promotion.
The Hidden Rain, Waterfall, Grass, and other smaller villages send teams to the new exams while the major villages largely refuse to participate. Konan sends Ajisai's team from the Rain, and Shibuki orders Fu to hide the fact that she carries the Seven-Tails. The visiting genin gather in Konoha and the first stage of the new Chunin Exams finally begins.
Shikamaru and Temari run a written test that separates teammates into different rooms and gives them three questions under a strange scoring rule. Sakura, Neji, and the other candidates slowly realize that the real challenge is coordinating their answers without being able to speak directly to their teammates. The teams that understand the test's hidden teamwork requirement move on while the rest eliminate themselves.
Neji uses the Byakugan and subtle vibrations to coordinate Team Guy's answers and help them clear the first exam. The surviving teams are then told that the second stage will be held in the Hidden Sand, forcing everyone into a race across countries rather than giving them time to rest. Back in the Sand, Gaara's enemies quietly begin moving against him while the exams provide perfect cover.
An assassin attacks Kankuro before the second exam, confirming that the political threat around Gaara is real, but Temari stops the attacker. Fu keeps trying to make friends with other competitors despite orders to hide her identity, while Sakura, Ino, and Choji are saved from a giant scorpion by the unusually cheerful Waterfall ninja. The next morning Temari explains the Heaven-and-Earth scroll rules and sends the teams into the Demon Desert.
The second exam begins across the Demon Desert, where Team Guy runs into a genjutsu and then clashes with a Sand team led by Shira. Lee quickly becomes interested in Shira after learning that he also built his entire fighting style around taijutsu. When another team attacks and traps Shira's group in quicksand, Lee, Neji, and Tenten turn back to help them rather than simply steal their scroll.
Lee learns that Shira was once barred from the Sand Academy because he lacked talent for ninjutsu and genjutsu, making his struggle almost identical to Lee's own. After the two teams cooperate against another group, Shira trades scrolls rather than continue a pointless fight. Lee then challenges Shira directly, eager to test himself against another shinobi who built everything around taijutsu.
Lee and Shira push their taijutsu duel far beyond a friendly spar, with Shira using pressure points to block Lee from opening the Inner Gates. Lee forces his way through the restriction and opens the Fifth Gate, while Shira answers with the Seven Heavenly Breaths. Lee finally wins, and both fighters leave the match with genuine respect for the other.
Team 8 is ambushed by Hidden Grass ninja who steal their Earth Scroll after Burami's smell-based jutsu leaves Kiba, Hinata, and Shino unable to fight properly. The thieves escape on a giant mole and use the desert itself to cover their tracks. Shino secretly marks the mole with one of his insects, giving Team 8 a way to pursue even after their normal tracking methods fail.
Team 8 catches up with the Hidden Grass team but is repeatedly thrown off by scent-erasing tricks and quicksand traps. Kiba refuses to give up even after the thieves appear to have escaped for good, and Akamaru provides the ridiculous but effective answer to one of their traps. Hinata, Shino, and Kiba eventually defeat the Grass genin and recover the scroll they lost.
Tenten begins doubting what she contributes to Team Guy while remembering how much she once wanted to become a legendary kunoichi like Tsunade. During a clash with Ajisai's Hidden Rain team at an old ruin, an explosion drops Tenten and Ajisai into an underground chamber together. With both teams temporarily separated, the two kunoichi are forced to cooperate to survive instead of continuing the exam fight.
Tenten and Ajisai make their way through the underground ruins while their teammates search from above. A nest of giant ants blocks the escape route, and Ajisai's summon cannot break through the wall trapping them inside. Tenten uses a massive water summon to flood the chamber and clear the insects, allowing both teams to escape and part ways without continuing their fight.
Sakura, Ino, and Choji continue through the desert while Sakura and Ino reflect on how their rivalry changed after the original Chunin Exams. Ino remembers asking Tsunade to teach her medical ninjutsu after seeing Sakura's progress and struggling to prove that she could contribute in more than one way. Back in the present, Team Ameno senses Team 10 approaching and prepares to challenge them for their scrolls.
Team Ameno attacks Sakura, Ino, and Choji using coordinated techniques that hide the attackers and make direct counterattacks difficult. Ino turns the fight by using the Yamanaka clan's sensory and mind techniques to guide Sakura and Choji through the confusion. After both teams push themselves to exhaustion, Ameno heals the Leaf trio and the two groups separate on friendly terms with the scrolls they need.
Sakura, Ino, and Choji encounter Saya's team, whose puppet techniques are designed to control opponents rather than simply attack them. Saya possesses Choji through a cursed puppet and forces him to turn on his teammates, but Ino enters the mental battle and drives her out. The clash leaves Sakura temporarily drained while Saya's team prepares another attempt to take their scrolls.
Choji fights through Saya's control while Sakura and Ino recover, and Team Saya traps the Leaf ninja inside a violent sandstorm for another attack. Sakura rebuilds enough chakra to end the fight with a single overwhelming punch and then treats the poison affecting her teammates. Elsewhere, the story briefly shows Jiraiya training Naruto and struggling to control the Nine-Tails chakra during their journey.
Gaara secretly watches the exam while Fu crosses paths with Matsuri's team and once again tries to turn competitors into friends instead of enemies. Fugi and Hoichi finally put their assassination plan into motion, creating a huge sandstorm so they can isolate Gaara and extract Shukaku. Fu saves Matsuri, Yukata, and Mikoshi from quicksand, and Gaara tells her about another jinchuriki named Naruto before Hoichi attacks.
Hoichi traps Gaara with a sealing technique meant to rip Shukaku from him and then catches Fu as well, trying to extract Chomei at the same time. The sandstorm keeps most of the exam officials from understanding what is happening, while Matsuri races to find help. Team Guy learns that both jinchuriki are being drained and heads toward the fight before the extraction can kill them.
Team Guy and Matsuri's group reach Gaara and Fu, but Hoichi's barrier prevents ordinary attacks from breaking the sealing chains. Fu uses her own chakra to slow the extraction while Neji studies the technique with the Byakugan. Using Tenten's chakra blade and a precise Gentle Fist strike, Neji reverses the flow of the seal and frees both jinchuriki before also saving Hoichi from being killed by his own jutsu.
Gaara cancels the final stage of the Chunin Exams after the assassination attempt and confronts Fugi, who takes his own life after his plan fails. The surviving candidates return home, and Tsunade later promotes most of the Leaf genin to chunin while Neji becomes a jonin. The episode closes on the futures waiting for the visiting shinobi: Ajisai eventually becomes one of Pain's bodies, while Fu is later hunted down by Hidan and Kakuzu.
The Infinite Tsukuyomi: Dream Worlds
18 eps
6 canon 3 mixed 9 filler 📷 18
Naruto is dying after Madara extracts Kurama, and Sakura resorts to opening his chest and manually pumping his heart while Gaara races them toward Minato. At the same time, Karin, Suigetsu, Jugo, and Orochimaru reach the dying Sasuke, only to find an unknown figure already beside him. Madara becomes the Ten-Tails' jinchuriki and moves toward Obito just as Minato prepares to transfer his half of Kurama into Naruto, but Black Zetsu intercepts the chakra.
Obito resists Black Zetsu and Madara long enough to turn against the man who manipulated him, stealing portions of Shukaku and Gyuki's chakra for Naruto. Kakashi uses Kamui to send Naruto and Sakura into the other dimension with Obito so the transfer can be completed safely. Outside, Guy arrives to protect Kakashi and prepares to fight Madara himself.
Obito remembers the earliest days of Team Minato, when he was still trying to understand the distant, rule-bound Kakashi. Minato gives Kakashi, Obito, and Rin a bell test and then leads them through their first missions together, where Obito's instinct to help others keeps clashing with Kakashi's obsession with completing the objective. Their first serious escort mission ends with Kakashi separating from the team to pursue the mission alone.
The Team Minato flashback continues as Obito refuses to let Kakashi face danger alone and Minato arrives in time to save them both. The team completes the escort mission and returns home, with Obito still determined to become someone Kakashi can rely on. Back in the present, Obito and Kakashi escape Madara through Kamui while Obito begins transferring the tailed-beast chakra into Naruto.
Kabuto reaches Sasuke and reveals that Izanami forced him to confront who he really was, leading him to save the Uchiha instead of serving Orochimaru's old ambitions. On the battlefield, Guy realizes the Seventh Gate is not enough to hurt Six Paths Madara and prepares to open the Eighth Gate even though it will kill him. As he makes that decision, memories of his childhood with his father Might Duy explain where his impossible determination came from.
Guy remembers growing up with a father the village mocked as the 'Eternal Genin,' even as Duy taught him that real strength means protecting something precious. Duy secretly mastered the Eight Gates and eventually sacrificed himself against the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist so Guy and his teammates could escape. In the present, Guy follows his father's example and opens the Eighth Gate, surrounding himself with the red vapor of death.
Guy attacks Madara with the Evening Elephant while Minato, Kakashi, Lee, and Gaara work together to clear Madara's Truth-Seeking Balls out of his path. The Eight Gates tear Guy's body apart, but he keeps pushing Madara harder than anyone has since Hashirama. Elsewhere, Naruto awakens in a strange inner realm and meets Hagoromo Otsutsuki, the Sage of Six Paths, who tells him about Indra, Ashura, and the cycle of reincarnation.
Hagoromo reveals that Naruto is Ashura's reincarnation and Sasuke is Indra's, just as Hashirama and Madara were before them. He gives both young shinobi his power and asks them to stop Madara from repeating Kaguya's path. On the battlefield, Guy unleashes Night Guy and nearly destroys Madara, but Naruto returns with Six Paths power in time to save Guy from dying.
While the war pauses around Naruto's recovery, the story looks back on Konohamaru learning the Rasengan from Naruto. Naruto walks him through the same brutal training Jiraiya once gave him, starting with rotation and then power, while Konohamaru struggles to reproduce the technique. The younger ninja refuses to quit, determined to inherit Naruto's way of pushing past every failure.
Konohamaru continues Rasengan training while Naruto works on adding Wind Release to his own technique. Their rivalry becomes a contest over who can finish first, and Konohamaru eventually masters both shadow clones and the Rasengan in his own awkward way. The flashback carries forward to the Pain attack, where Konohamaru finally uses the technique Naruto taught him in a real fight.
Naruto returns to the battlefield with Six Paths Sage power, saves Guy, and cuts through Madara's defenses with a Lava Style Rasenshuriken. Sasuke also awakens with a Rinnegan, and the two reunite against Madara with abilities that can finally perceive and counter his Limbo shadows. Pressured from both sides, Madara steals Kakashi's Sharingan and escapes into the Kamui dimension to reclaim his second Rinnegan from Obito.
Obito sends Sakura back before Madara can kill her and admits that he deliberately had Kakashi destroy the seal Madara placed on his heart. Madara reveals that he engineered Rin's death to break Obito, then recovers his Rinnegan and returns to the battlefield with Black Zetsu controlling Obito's body. Naruto restores Kakashi's original eye, Team 7 briefly stands together again, and Madara opens the Rinne Sharingan on his forehead as the moon turns red.
Madara reflects his Rinne Sharingan off the moon and casts the Infinite Tsukuyomi across the entire world. Nearly everyone is trapped instantly, with the Divine Tree wrapping victims in roots while Sasuke's Susanoo shields Team 7 from the light. Yamato is caught as well and dreams of finally belonging as the leader of Team 7, while the reanimated Hokage are left outside the genjutsu.
Tenten wakes inside her Infinite Tsukuyomi dream and realizes she is living in the strange alternate Konoha she once encountered, where everyone's personalities are reversed and Sakura's father is Hokage. She refuses to accept the world as real and searches for a way to break the genjutsu. A mysterious merchant gives her a map connected to the Hidden Rain, but her attempts to leave the village get her arrested.
Still trapped in the alternate dream, Tenten tries to convince Kurenai and her friends that their world is false but only pushes them farther away. When Hidden Rain attackers invade the village, Menma frees Tenten so she can help defend everyone. Tenten uses the Treasured Tools to stop Hanzo and, surrounded by friends who accept her, briefly decides that maybe this dream world is where she belongs.
Killer Bee's Infinite Tsukuyomi dream turns the jinchuriki into a ridiculous hero team trying to rescue one another across the great villages. Bee, Yugito, Gaara, Naruto, and their tailed beasts break prisoners out of Sand and Leaf while dodging traps and ANBU. The dream eventually brings the jinchuriki together against Akatsuki, with Bee imagining a world where none of them have to face their burdens alone.
Bee's dream expands into an all-jinchuriki adventure as Fu, Utakata, Roshi, Han, and Yagura join the team against Akatsuki and Orochimaru. The nine hosts finally stand together with their tailed beasts and combine their power against the Gedo Statue. Bee celebrates the impossible victory, unaware that the entire adventure exists only inside the Infinite Tsukuyomi.
Karin's Infinite Tsukuyomi dream becomes a painful replay of her childhood in the Hidden Grass, where her mother dies after being used repeatedly for her healing ability. Karin is forced into the same role, covered in bite marks as her village treats her like a medical tool rather than a person. Her memories carry through Orochimaru's hideouts and finally back to Sasuke, the one person whose smile she desperately wants to see again.
The Jiraiya Shinobi Handbook: Tales of Naruto the Hero
19 eps
19 filler 📷 19
Inside Tsunade's Infinite Tsukuyomi, she begins reading Jiraiya's fictional story about a world where Minato and Kushina survived the Nine-Tails attack. Naruto grows up openly known as the Fourth Hokage's son, while the Uchiha clan remains intact and Sasuke stays in Konoha with Itachi and his parents. Team 7 still forms, but Naruto and Sasuke's rivalry immediately begins straining the supposedly happier world.
In Jiraiya's alternate story, several experienced Leaf shinobi disappear during missions connected to mysterious Ageha butterflies. Minato sends Teams Kakashi, Guy, Asuma, and Kurenai to investigate but orders the genin to report back rather than attempt rescues on their own. The team leaders are abducted anyway, and Team 7 is intercepted by Hidan while Team Asuma encounters Yahiko, Nagato, and Konan.
Naruto reveals that Hidan cursed only a shadow clone and counterattacks, while Team Asuma clashes with Yahiko, Nagato, and Konan, who introduce themselves as Team Jiraiya. The battles pull the Leaf teams toward an abandoned village where two children are trapped underground. Despite being enemies, Team Jiraiya abandons the fight to save them, forcing the Leaf genin to question what side everyone is really on.
Shikamaru insists that the Leaf genin should prioritize regrouping and reporting instead of blindly chasing the kidnapped jonin, even as the trapped children remain in danger. Team Jiraiya pushes deeper underground to rescue them, while Kakashi and Guy's students discover their teachers imprisoned inside mysterious spheres. Naruto and Neji jump after the captives and wake in front of a masked man with a Byakugan.
Team Asuma helps Team Jiraiya rescue the trapped children, convincing Shikamaru that Yahiko's group is following orders rather than trying to kill them. The masked man shows Naruto and Neji images of the Hyuga Affair and argues that Konoha's rules sacrifice people to protect the system. He asks Neji to join him in changing the village, while Jiraiya separately discovers one of Orochimaru's hidden facilities.
Neji agrees to hear the masked man out while Naruto is left behind unable to access the Nine-Tails' chakra. Sasuke and Sakura are attacked by Sasori, and Sasuke is poisoned as the other Leaf teams race toward them. Jiraiya suddenly reaches Naruto, clears his blocked chakra points, and offers to loosen the Eight Trigrams Seal enough for Naruto to draw on Kurama's power.
Sakura treats Sasuke while Sasori returns with his puppet army and the other genin gather to protect them. Neji watches from beside the masked man, who wants to prove that Leaf shinobi will choose rules over comrades when the pressure becomes real. Jiraiya loosens Naruto's seal, but the power surges out of control and Naruto transforms into a four-tailed state.
Jiraiya fights the four-tailed Naruto and eventually restrains him, remembering the prophecy that shaped his faith in the boy. Naruto regains control, rejoins the others, and helps drive back Sasori's puppets with the Rasengan. As the genin prepare to continue searching for their kidnapped teachers, Neji confronts the masked man and reveals that he has recognized him as his father, Hizashi.
Inside Jiraiya's alternate story, Naruto and the others finally confront the masked Byakugan user and Neji recognizes him as his father, Hizashi. Neji rejects Hizashi's attempt to use the Hyuga clan's cruelty as proof that the village can never change, and Naruto's friends arrive to help defeat the remaining puppets. Hizashi disappears after hearing how much Neji has changed, but the victory is immediately undercut when the village Yahiko was protecting is destroyed.
Naruto returns to Konoha from training with Jiraiya and is welcomed as a much stronger shinobi, but Sasuke reacts badly to how quickly his old rival has advanced. Naruto begins learning to control Kurama's chakra while Sasuke trains his Chidori and grows increasingly frustrated with Fugaku constantly comparing him to Itachi. The gap between Naruto and Sasuke becomes the new pressure point in Jiraiya's imagined version of Team 7.
Naruto and Sasuke finally clash over the resentment that has been building between them, forcing Minato to stop the fight before it goes too far. Naruto leaves again to train with Jiraiya while Sasuke spends years training under Shisui, and Sakura begins studying under Tsunade so she will not be left behind. When Sasuke returns, his need to surpass Naruto and Itachi is stronger than ever, just as Danz? begins steering him toward Orochimaru.
Sasuke serves with the Leaf Military Police but grows harsher as his frustration over Naruto's progress and Fugaku's expectations consumes him. After his unit brutally handles a group of thieves, Fugaku removes Sasuke from the police force and makes his disappointment clear. Danz? exploits the humiliation by suggesting Orochimaru can give Sasuke the power he wants, pushing Sasuke toward leaving Konoha.
Sasuke knocks out Izumo and Kotetsu and leaves Konoha to seek power from Orochimaru, briefly stopping to thank Kakashi before trapping him in genjutsu. Naruto and their friends learn what happened and immediately organize a pursuit, while Minato places the village on alert. Danz? sends Root operatives to make sure no one prevents Sasuke from reaching Orochimaru.
Naruto, Shikamaru, Neji, Lee, and Tenten chase Sasuke while Root shinobi repeatedly block their route. Lee opens the Fifth Gate to hold off the attackers, allowing the others to keep moving, and the pursuit splits into separate fights. Meanwhile Sasuke continues toward Orochimaru, unaware that Akatsuki's own movements are beginning to intersect with the crisis.
Naruto and Shikamaru reach the tower where Sasuke has gone to meet Orochimaru while Neji stays behind to stop the last Root pursuers. Naruto is briefly captured by Yamato and loses control of the Nine-Tails before forcing himself back, then reaches Sasuke after Orochimaru has branded him with the Curse Mark. Naruto and Sasuke collide with Rasenshuriken and Kirin, but Itachi suddenly throws himself into Sasuke's attack and dies protecting his brother.
Naruto wakes to find Sasuke gone, but the crisis immediately shifts when Pain infiltrates Konoha and traps the entire village inside a massive Chibaku Tensei. Naruto returns with Sage Mode and fights the Six Paths while Minato, Hiruzen, Tsunade, Kushina, Shikaku, and Inoichi struggle to keep the compressed village from being crushed. Hinata is struck down trying to save Naruto, pushing him into a six-tailed transformation before Pain seals him inside another Chibaku Tensei.
Kushina reaches Naruto through the Nine-Tails and shares enough chakra to help him break out of Pain's Chibaku Tensei without completely losing himself. Naruto defeats Pain and convinces Nagato to release Konoha after reminding him of Yahiko and Jiraiya's ideals. Elsewhere Sasuke attacks Orochimaru but collapses from poison, then wakes to Sasori offering Akatsuki's help in destroying the village.
Tsunade tells the Konoha 11 that Sasuke has killed Orochimaru and may have joined Akatsuki, sending Naruto and his friends out to find him. Sasori unleashes an army of puppets while Sasuke begins questioning the path he chose, and Itachi unexpectedly appears alive to challenge his brother's hatred. Shinobi from multiple villages join the battle, and Naruto and Sasuke ultimately combine their strength to destroy Sasori before Sasuke agrees to return to Konoha.
Sasuke returns with Naruto but insists that coming home does not mean accepting the old village system or pretending nothing happened between them. The two settle their resentment in one more fight at Orochimaru's former hideout, finally acknowledging each other instead of endlessly measuring who was left behind. Tsunade reaches the end of Jiraiya's novel and wakes from the dream inside her dream, while in reality she remains trapped by the Infinite Tsukuyomi.
Itachi Shinden Book: Light and Darkness
8 eps
8 mixed 📷 8
Inside Sasuke's Susanoo, Team 7 waits for the Infinite Tsukuyomi's light to fade while Sasuke reflects on the memories Itachi shared with him before disappearing. The story turns to Itachi as a small child witnessing the carnage of the Third Shinobi World War, an experience that makes him obsessed with understanding why people kill one another. He questions Fugaku about war, meets Orochimaru while thinking about life and death, and later welcomes the birth of his little brother Sasuke.
Itachi protects Sasuke during the Nine-Tails attack and sees how the disaster deepens the village's suspicion of the Uchiha, who are relocated to the edge of Konoha during reconstruction. He enters the Academy with Izumi and immediately outpaces the curriculum, drawing admiration, jealousy, and attention from his teachers. Itachi begins training with Shisui, uses shadow clones to attend class, and graduates early so he can become an active shinobi.
Itachi settles into life as a genin while trying to understand friendship, family, and the growing resentment inside the Uchiha clan. A lighthearted mission to catch a ninja cat gives him a rare chance to bond with his teammates, especially Tenma, whose sick father gives the job personal importance. That memory turns painful when Itachi recalls a later mission where the masked Obito kills Tenma, and the shock awakens Itachi's Sharingan.
Shisui takes Itachi on a training exercise that becomes a real battle when they find Root operatives hunting a Leaf ANBU for sensitive information. The two Uchiha work together to drive the attackers away, and Shisui helps Itachi adjust to the Sharingan he awakened after Tenma's death. Years later, Itachi enters the ANBU and begins watching the village from the shadows as the divide between Konoha and the Uchiha continues to widen.
Itachi's position between clan and village becomes unbearable as Shisui loses one eye to Danz?, entrusts the other to Itachi, and kills himself. Shisui's death awakens Itachi's Mangekyo Sharingan, while accusations from other Uchiha push Itachi into openly turning against the clan's narrow thinking. Fugaku later reveals his own Mangekyo and the clan's coup plan, leaving Itachi caught between his father's hope for a bloodless uprising and Danz?'s demand that the Uchiha be eliminated.
After the Uchiha massacre, Itachi joins Akatsuki and is partnered with Juzo Biwa. Their missions eventually take them into the Hidden Mist, where Yagura and Mist ANBU corner them and force Juzo into a fatal battle against the Three-Tails' jinchuriki. Itachi survives by awakening Amaterasu, Juzo dies from his wounds, and after Orochimaru fails to steal Itachi's body, Pain assigns Kisame as Itachi's new partner.
Itachi and Kisame join Sasori in recruiting Deidara, who is defeated by Itachi's Sharingan and reluctantly enters Akatsuki. Sasori and Deidara then pursue Orochimaru, whose Reanimation Jutsu produces a strange clash between Sasori's Third Kazekage puppet and the Kazekage's reanimated body. Akatsuki later recruits the immortal Hidan after he survives a fight with Kakuzu, pairing the two together while Itachi volunteers to investigate Konoha after hearing of the Third Hokage's death.
Itachi returns near Konoha and quietly checks on Sasuke's growth, learning that his brother awakened the Sharingan and learned Chidori under Kakashi. He also takes the measure of Naruto, asking how the boy would choose between Sasuke and the safety of the Land of Fire. Back in the present, Sasuke finishes reliving Itachi's memories, the Infinite Tsukuyomi's light finally fades, and Sasuke lowers Susanoo just as Black Zetsu turns on Madara.
Kaguya Otsutsuki Strikes
16 eps
5 canon 5 mixed 1 good filler 5 filler 📷 16
Black Zetsu reveals that Madara was never the true endpoint of his plan and uses his body to resurrect Kaguya Otsutsuki. Kaguya immediately overwhelms Team 7 with chakra on a completely different scale and shifts Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Kakashi, and Obito into a volcanic dimension surrounded by lava. Hagoromo warns the trapped Kage that Naruto and Sasuke are the only people capable of sealing his mother again.
Black Zetsu begins explaining Kaguya's ancient past, when she descended into a world of constant war and became the companion of the ruler Tenji. Hoping to end the violence, Kaguya eventually eats the Divine Tree's chakra fruit and uses overwhelming power to impose peace. Her methods turn her into a feared ruler, and the story moves toward the birth of Hagoromo and Hamura and the origins of the chakra that will shape the shinobi world.
Hagoromo and Hamura grow up under Kaguya's rule while people continue disappearing in rituals connected to the Divine Tree. Guided by Gamamaru, Hagoromo investigates the forbidden Peak of Demise and discovers what his mother has been doing to humanity. The brothers begin learning senjutsu and prepare to confront Kaguya, even though doing so means turning against the mother who gave them life.
Hagoromo and Hamura confront Kaguya after discovering the truth behind the Divine Tree and the people sacrificed to it. Their battle lasts for months before they finally seal their mother and the Ten-Tails, beginning the chain of events that leads to Hagoromo spreading chakra through Ninshu. Black Zetsu then reveals that he survived as Kaguya's will and spent generations altering history, including the Uchiha stone tablet, to engineer her eventual resurrection.
Back in the present, Naruto rejects Black Zetsu's claim that the entire history of shinobi existed only to revive Kaguya and attacks with the one strategy she never expects: the Reverse Harem Jutsu. The ridiculous distraction actually lands a hit and gives Naruto and Sasuke an opening to try the Six Paths seal. Kaguya escapes by shifting dimensions again and separates Sasuke from the others, forcing Team 7 to find a way to reunite before they can seal her.
Hagoromo tells the four Hokage how he began travelling after Kaguya was sealed, using chakra to connect with people instead of turning it into a weapon. He helps rebuild a broken bridge and gains his first follower, Futami, then continues gathering disciples as Ninshu spreads from village to village. Hagoromo eventually entrusts the tailed beasts to places where they can live freely and settles down long enough to raise his two sons, Indra and Ashura.
Indra and Ashura grow up together under Hagoromo, but their talents could not be more different. Indra is a natural prodigy who quickly masters Ninshu and begins developing techniques of his own, while Ashura struggles and depends on friends to accomplish what his brother can do alone. As Indra becomes convinced that order requires strength, Hagoromo begins worrying about what that belief will do to the bond between his sons.
Hagoromo sends Indra and Ashura to separate villages with the same task: solve a serious local problem and return when they believe they have succeeded. Indra quickly forces a solution through his own power, while Ashura reaches a village whose water source has dried up and realizes there is no simple answer. Instead of imposing one, Ashura stays with the villagers and works beside them to find a new source of water.
Ashura refuses to abandon the struggling village even after the search for water turns into a long, exhausting ordeal. His willingness to share the burden inspires the villagers to work together, and their combined effort finally brings water back to the settlement. Ashura returns much later than Indra, but he comes home surrounded by people whose trust he earned rather than people he simply commanded.
Hagoromo names Ashura as the successor to Ninshu because he believes cooperation and love are more important than natural talent or overwhelming power. Indra sees the decision as proof that his father has rejected everything he achieved and turns against both Hagoromo and Ashura. Hagoromo shares his power with Ashura so he can resist his brother, beginning the conflict between their descendants that will continue through the Senju, Uchiha, Naruto, and Sasuke.
Team 7 finishes a mission early and Naruto revives the old obsession with seeing Kakashi's face, dragging Sasuke and Sakura into one more ridiculous attempt to unmask their teacher. They recruit a photographer named Sukea and spend the day following Kakashi through increasingly elaborate traps, only for every plan to fail. After the team gives up, Sukea removes his disguise in private and reveals that Kakashi spent the entire mission helping them investigate himself.
Kaguya separates Sasuke into another dimension before Naruto and Sasuke can seal her, leaving Naruto to keep her occupied while Obito and Sakura search through Kamui portals for his teammate. Sakura pours nearly all of her remaining chakra into Obito as they scan one hostile dimension after another. They finally find Sasuke in a desert world, and Sakura gives Obito the last burst of chakra he needs to pull Sasuke back.
With Sasuke reunited with Team 7, Kaguya shifts everyone into a dimension with crushing gravity and fires bone projectiles that will kill anyone they touch. Kakashi and Obito both move to protect Naruto and Sasuke, but Obito uses Kamui to save Kakashi and takes the fatal hit himself. As he dies, Obito remembers Rin and entrusts the future to Naruto and Kakashi instead of the dream world he once tried to create.
Naruto desperately tries to save Obito, but the All-Killing Ash Bones continue destroying his body and Black Zetsu mocks him for dying with nothing to show for his life. Obito rejects that judgment and tells Naruto that he has to become Hokage before finally joining Rin in the afterlife. His chakra then reaches Kakashi one last time, temporarily giving his old teammate both Mangekyo Sharingan and the power to use a complete Susanoo.
Kakashi enters the fight with Obito's dual Mangekyo Sharingan and uses a Kamui-enhanced Susanoo to protect Naruto and Sasuke from Kaguya's attacks. Team 7 corners Kaguya as Naruto tears Black Zetsu away from her and Sakura drops from above to prevent one last escape. Naruto and Sasuke touch Kaguya at the same time and activate the Six Paths seal, trapping her and the Ten-Tails inside a new moon.
Hagoromo and the spirits of the former Kage summon Team 7 and the tailed beasts back from Kaguya's dimension after the sealing succeeds. Kakashi loses the Sharingan as Obito's chakra finally fades, and Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, and Kakashi are congratulated for ending the threat. Hagoromo releases the reanimated Hokage from the world, giving Naruto a final moment with Minato on his birthday before his father returns to the afterlife.
