#kinjutsu

The information presented in this post has been checked and revised. My aim is not to hate or to discredit any of the characters mentioned. Please read about me for further information.

This post will contain evidence in picture format directly from the manga Naruto (1999 - 2014) created by Masashi Kishimoto and published by Shueisha in 1999. I will also use information from the official databooks of Naruto.

In this informative post will explain all the jutsu that Sakura Haruno has used in canon, meaning this will only include techniques that the author of the manga and the novels, illustrated by Kishimoto, have given her.

I originally wrote this post for Sakura Week on Twitter.

Ino’s jutsu arsenal (with 14 techniques) Hinata’s jutsu arsenal (with 10 techniques)

Read here.

“You should really start running now...”

I didn’t want to upload this until much later but the urge was too strong. I really like drawing my girly when she’s about ready to eat a man’s heart. <3

There will definitely be a post dedicated to her abilities in the near future, but for now yes she too has the same kinjutsu as a certain Taki nin. 👀

Restrictions

Written for my @kakashibingo​ board - Forbidden Knowledge!

T; 1.6k Kakashi & Sakura, Kurenai

Kakashi's precious student wants to learn how to call down storms . . . and Kakashi will put any tools he can into her hands, to keep her safe and strong.

My board in progress beneath the cut:

or, yunyu strives mightily to make Kishimoto’s bad worldbuilding into something clever.

Ok, so, very very beginning of Naruto. Naruto gets tricked by his douche teacher Mizuki into stealing a scroll about a forbidden jutsu. A scroll that’s guarded by being in the Third Hokage’s house.

Naruto of course doesn’t manage to sneak in undetected, but Hiruzen, known pervert, faints when subjected to Naruto’s first original jutsu:

Which is #1 funny and #2 actually sets up a recurring pattern of how Naruto’s out of the box thinking gets him around stronger opponents, so I’m fine with that tbh.

So Naruto gets out of there with the scroll and opens it up, and reads the “first technique” in the scroll. (To be honest I would retcon this and say that the scroll only has one technique.) It’s the Shadow Clone Jutsu. Clones, we’re already told, are Naruto’s weakest technique. And yet...

Now, is part of this because of the haxx0r Nine Tails chakra? Yes. But even so: wow. Naruto was able to do it on the first try? So many? All perfect replicas? A slow learner like him, who has never gotten the kind of teaching attention he needed?

Moreover, Iruka calls it “completely forbidden”, but we know that it seems to be pretty well-known (and openly used) among high ranking Leaf ninja.

So my humble suggestion is: the Shadow Clone jutsu is forbidden because it’s way too easy to learn for how powerful it is.

The dumbest academy student can pick it up within minutes and become a small gang of soldiers. Not to mention its spying and other disposable soldier uses. And it requires only a single handsign to cast!

Moreover, in the manga, only Leaf ninja are shown knowing how to do this technique with one exception: Deidara, who is known to be obsessed with beating Itachi and must have been closely observing him to learn how to counteract the Sharingan (a feat that is a major plot hole/head scratcher in itself, but that’s for another post).

So my headcanon is this: the Shadow Clone jutsu was forbidden because it’s too good of a weapon to allow to be taught carelessly. Only the most loyal elite Konoha soldiers are permitted to know it. Otherwise it might be learned by enemy shinobi and used against Konoha.

(2/2) well either that or u gotta be able to have v good control over your chakra so there’s less wastage. oh and the technique is more “konoha’s forbidden technique” and less “the whole ninja world’s forbidden technique”. maybe because it’s tobirama’s jutsu thats why konoha restricts its use, but outsiders who know it probably teach it, w warnings of chakra exhaustion. so other hidden villages would have it in their syllabuses.

(follow up to the 2part kage bunshin thing i submitted cuz i had a realisation™) my logic meant that konoha lit put themselves at a disadvantage, esp in the chunnin exams omg. so maybe that theory doesnt hold too much water. still, that’s how i see it *shrugemoticon*

Your view seems to be more or less the official one promulgated by the databooks (and possibly the anime–my knowledge of the anime isn’t super great), but I don’t find it satisfying, which is why I came up with my headcanon instead.

Here’s what bothers me about the official explanation:

What separates a jutsu as a kinjutsu/forbidden technique versus just a high rank technique? Especially because in the databooks, multiple shadow clone jutsu is only an A rank technique, not the highest S rank. “It’s very dangerous” describes all the upper rank ninja techniques, surely? If ordinary ninja don’t have the chakra for the technique, describe the technique as requiring X amount of chakra and so on, but why make the technique forbidden, especially when the other notorious forbidden jutsu in Naruto involves turning a living person into a sacrifice to resurrect the dead and enslave them?

Moreover. This is the Naruto world. A world where they send genin, most of whom are still children, into a inherently dangerous forest where they are encouraged to murder each other. Where their deaths are embraced as a proxy for war.

Concern for genin’s well-being? In my Konoha? It’s less likely than you think.

Moreover, Kakashi “Chakra Exhaustion” Hatake is well-known to not have a great amount of chakra because of his eye, and yet at the end of the battle with Zabuza, he was still able to make lots of shadow clones. He noted that he gave each barely any chakra, but even so: they were impressive in appearance of number. If he could make that many at that point, it doesn’t make sense to me that an ordinary genin with full chakra, with careful instruction (ha!), couldn’t make a dozen or so.

To me, to make a jutsu forbidden, it should be for one of two reasons:

1. It’s too inherently evil even for shinobi. Edo Tensei would be this one. In a universe where Snakebert and Danzo got all their dirty deeds dragged into the light, they probably had a lot of these.

2. Being widely studied would be inherently bad for Konoha. This is the reason my headcanon relies on for why the shadow clone jutsu is so restricted–not despite the apparent ease of learning and using it, but because it’s easy to learn and use, and therefore would be the ninja world equivalent of disruptive technology that threatens to upend the established strategies of war and commerce.