Kaguya Ōtsutsuki

Princess is the matriarch of the Ōtsutsuki clan and mother of Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki and Hamura Ōtsutsuki, who had lived long before the founding of the hidden villages, during an era of endless wars between mankind. She consumed the fruit of the Shinju and became the first wielder of chakra, and part of the creation of the beast that would become known as the Ten-Tails.

Background
A millennium ago, Kaguya, longing for peace, believed that it was necessary for her to attain god-like powers in order to put an end to all of humanity's conflicts. For that reason, she defied the taboo of consuming the fruit of the Shinju. Using her new-found power, Kaguya single-handedly ended the wars, and for her deed, she was worshiped as the, and had settled down amongst humans, as she would eventually get pregnant and bear twin sons, Hagoromo and Hamura. As time passed, however, Kaguya began to lose trust in humanity as the power she now held ultimately corrupted her. This led her to madness as she created her ideal of peace by trapping her victims in the Infinite Tsukuyomi and converting them into White Zetsu, which changed her public image from that of a benevolent goddess into that of a. In a fit of envy that her own sons had inherited her chakra, Kaguya incarnated together with the Shinju to turn against them in the form of the monstrous Ten-Tails. Their intense battle ended with Hagoromo and Hamura separating and absorbing their mother's powerful chakra while sealing her body to form the core of a celestial body that would become known as the moon. Hamura later departed along with the rest of the Ōtsutsuki clan to the moon to guard his mother's remains, while Hagoromo stayed in order to spread chakra to humanity and teach them the concept of Ninshū.

However, just before her sons could completely seal her, Kaguya manifested her will into the form of an artificial being called Black Zetsu. With the agenda of reviving its creator or "mother", Black Zetsu manipulated the Sage's son, Indra Ōtsutsuki, and his descendants: the Uchiha clan, along with Asura Ōtsutsuki's descendants: the Senju clan, all in an attempt to get one of them to awaken the Rinnegan. Madara Uchiha would eventually succeed in doing so, and Black Zetsu began secretly manipulating world events to have Kaguya revived.

Personality
As noted by her son Hagoromo, Kaguya was once truly a good and caring person. However, after obtaining the ability to manipulate powerful chakra from the Shinju's fruit, Kaguya had grown despotic and developed both a god-complex and messiah-complex, believing that chakra rightfully belonged to her alone and that only she could protect and unite the world. Despite her initial desire for peace like her sons and grandsons, Kaguya caved into corruption from her power and lost faith in humanity's ability to do what is right, and opted to use her great and terrible power to submit everyone to her will. As Hagoromo noted, humanity around that time began to fear her as a demon. She uses the archaic pronoun when referring to herself — a sign of ancient nobility.

Kaguya also displays a degree of affection, as she appears to care very deeply about the world, viewing it as a nursery that she didn't want humanity damaging any further. Although she openly stated that she hated her own sons for their ability to wield chakra and created the Ten-Tails to get it back by force, she openly wept when looking at Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha, who reminded her of them.

While her belief that chakra should belong to her alone made her somewhat obsessive in retrieving it from everyone else, she is willing to listen to Black Zetsu's suggestion on killing Naruto to prevent him and Sasuke from sealing her away, though she expressed reluctance that she must destroy a large reservoir of chakra to preserve her freedom.

Despite her sombreness, Kaguya can nonetheless be stunned by unexpected events, as one of Naruto's perverted ninjutsu caught her off-guard, allowing him to land a hit on her.

Appearance
A woman in possession of very delicate facial features, Kaguya also had extremely long, sweeping white hair that touched the ground. Most noticeable were two brown horns which stuck out from her head — appendages inherited by both her sons. Kaguya possessed the Byakugan, and also had a third eye on the centre of her forehead that's eyelids parted vertically. Her eyebrows were cut very short — a symbol of nobility, and she wore a dark shade of lipstick on her lips and a dark shade of nail polish on her long fingernails. She wore the transitional high-collared hime-kimono which was adorned with intricate lines that are gold and purple and tomoe running down the centre and edges of the gown.

When her power goes out of control, Kaguya transforms into a conglomerate of the tailed beasts. Her original body turns into a gigantic rabbit creature with a humanoid upper body, jagged teeth and her signature Rinne Sharingan on its forehead. On its back is a great spherical mass of chakra with the heads of the nine tailed beasts emerging from it, along with chakra arms. When Kaguya has her powers stripped away, she briefly reverts to her Ten-Tailed form, with each tail ending with the head of one of the tailed beasts and the tenth ending with her rabbit head.

Abilities
Having consumed the fruit of the Shinju, Kaguya achieved such unrivalled power that she was able to pacify the war-torn world all by herself, leading the people to worship her in fear. Hagoromo, being a legendary figure himself, praised his mother's might as superior to all others, including his own.

Chakra and Physical Prowess
After eating the Shinju's fruit, Kaguya gained unparalleled reserves and strength in chakra, noted by both Naruto and Sasuke to be greater than Madara as the Ten-Tails jinchūriki. As the first person to ever wield chakra, she can also absorb any technique that she encounters. When making physical contact with an enemy, she is able to halt their movements while absorbing their chakra. Through her bond with the Shinju, she becomes stronger by gaining chakra from the tethered victims of the Infinite Tsukuyomi. While not her specialty, Kaguya has shown a degree of unarmed combat skills, being able to easily block several attacks from Naruto's omnidirectional shadow clone-assault. She can also move very fast, displayed when she suddenly appeared before Sakura Haruno in the blink of an eye, and later when she responded quickly to Sasuke's teleportation to evade his Chidori. Claiming to be immortal, she is also able to quickly regenerate any lost anatomy, including severed limbs.

Ninjutsu
In combat, Kaguya can make use of her extremely long hair as a makeshift weapon capturing and tossing foes around the battlefield or shooting it like senbon with enough ferocity to pierce even Sasuke's Susanoo. She is able to harden her hair to shield her from attacks. Much like the jinchūriki of the Ten-Tails, she displayed the ability to fly. Kaguya has also shown the ability to manipulate nature itself; she was seen manipulating lightning, causing a thunder storm. While in her dimensions, she has also shown the ability to meld with the world and control the substance within it, such as the ice and snow in her frozen mountainous dimension.

Will Materialisation
Kaguya is able to manifest her will, an ability that allows her to create life to serve on her behalf. Just prior to her sealing, Kaguya was able to create Black Zetsu, using the latter to revive her centuries afterward.

Nature Transformation
With her absolute mastery of chakra, Kaguya could utilise all five nature transformations along with Yin–Yang Release.

Byakugan
Kaguya wields the Byakugan in both eyes, granting her near 360° vision (with the presumed exception of a small blind spot at the upper thoracic vertebrae), x-ray vision and the ability to see the chakra pathway system amongst other abilities. While at first she sensed Naruto and Sasuke were Hagoromo and Hamura respectively, because of chakra accumulated in their palm but after using her Byakugan, she correctly identifies that they were reincarnation of Asura and Indra by looking at their chakra pathway systems. In conjunction with her hair, Kaguya is able to see the individuals' vital points, accurately piercing them in order to immobilise them completely.

Rinne Sharingan
Kaguya wields her Rinne Sharingan as a third eye on her forehead, which is red in colour and contains several concentric circles and nine tomoe. Her third eye also grants her the Sharingan's powers, such as seeing the flow of chakra, casting and easily recognising genjutsu, and the heightened powers of perception among the other abilities it held. Using its power, Kaguya could cast Infinite Tsukuyomi on select individuals.

With her third eye, Kaguya is also able to instantaneously teleport herself and others around her to a different dimension, while simultaneously erasing the presence of their chakra. Similarly, Kaguya is able to open and travel through rifts in space as a means of instantaneous travel.

God: Nativity of a World of Trees
Kaguya is able to manipulate the roots of the Shinju to encase those caught within her Infinite Tsukuyomi, converting most of the populous into White Zetsu. Kaguya can become stronger by rapidly absorbing the chakra of everyone connected to the Shinju.

Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack
Kaguya is able to materialise enormous chakra fists. With them, she can easily surpass the power of the chakra arms employed by a jinchūriki, and even destroy a Complete Body — Susanoo without much effort. Should the need arise, this technique can also be used defensively. Kaguya can also combine them with her Byakugan, greatly enhancing the strength and precision of this ability.

All-Killing Ash Bones
Kaguya has shown the ability to manipulate and by extension weaponise her own bone structure, similar in principles to the Shikotsumyaku, enabling her to have a vast array of battle options without any need to carry weapons on her body, such as launching her bones like projectiles. However, the deadliness is far superior in comparison, as her All-Killing Ash Bones is a technique that will cause the victims' body to corrode into a pile of ash on impalement.

Expansive Truth-Seeking Ball
Kaguya can absorb chakra from all the people connected to the Shinju, focus all of her accumulated chakra into an enormous Truth-Seeking Ball, which according to Black Zetsu, houses every nature transformation, with the power to reshape the world by obliterating it to nothing first, essentially being the start of a new dimension.

Tailed Beast Transformation
Along with the Shinju, Kaguya incarnated as the Ten-Tails to take her chakra back from her sons. This made the two believe the Ten-Tails was the Shinju's vengeance. While fighting Team 7, the tailed beasts' chakra in Naruto's Sage Art: Super Tailed Beast Rasenshuriken attack reacted to the chakra inside of Kaguya, resulting in her mutating into an unstable rabbit-like version of the Ten-Tails. Black Zetsu noted that the transformation was not humanoid and did not happen intentionally, implying that she's also able to transform into the Ten-Tails at will. However, she seemingly can't revert to her normal form by herself, seeing how she couldn't do so when she was sealed as the Ten-Tails inside a jinchūriki; she needed Black Zetsu's help to appear as her normal self.

Kaguya Ōtsutsuki Strikes
After the Infinite Tsukuyomi was cast by Madara Uchiha, he attempted to finally tie up loose ends by eliminating Naruto Uzumaki, Sasuke Uchiha, Kakashi Hatake, and Sakura Haruno. When he proclaimed himself as the Saviour of the World, Black Zetsu — who had been standing behind Madara prior — impaled the elder Uchiha in the chest with his hand. He revealed that his will was Kaguya's own, before taking over Madara's body with his own malleable mass. As Sasuke and Naruto attempted to intervene, they were captured by hair-like appendages while Madara's body continued to expand, growing off of enormous reserves of chakra from the victims of the Infinite Tsukuyomi. His body grows till Black Zetsu's mass completely engulfs him, thereby completing Kaguya's revival who now stands in Madara's place. She looked on at the surroundings, noticing Naruto and Sasuke and, more important, the marks on their hands before the hair-like appendages, now made up of her actual hair, threw them back to the ground. She activated her Byakugan, noticing that the two youths had similar chakra to her sons and Hagoromo's children, before coming to the conclusion that Hagoromo had bestowed the powers to them. Kakashi asked her about her motives, which led her to state that the world was her nursery and as such she wanted no more fighting to damage it any further. She then teleported Team 7 and Obito into an active volcano, telling them that she would have them disappear.

However, all five of them managed to avoid death. Seeing this Kaguya struck them once again with her hair, this time aiming with her Byakugan and firing needle-like strands at Sasuke, who was saved by Naruto whom had just discovered his ability to fly. Noticing this, and Naruto's power resembling that of her son, Kaguya grew enraged and clashed with Naruto while declaring all the chakra in the world should once again be hers. As she knocked Naruto back, Sasuke appeared above her and attempted to strike her with his Susanoo's sword.

The assault left Kaguya unscathed and she was able to rebuff Sasuke sending him reeling to where he almost fell into the lava, before teleporting behind Naruto and using one of his Truth-Seeking Balls as a platform for safety. Kaguya immediately entered a dimensional void and transported herself behind the duo, noticeably crying due to the resemblance they held to her own children, before forcing Black Zetsu over their bodies. Black Zetsu then began to tell the two youths the truth about past events, things that even Hagoromo was unaware of. He told them that Hagoromo and Hamura once sealed Kaguya using the same powers that Sasuke and Naruto inherited and that he had been manipulating the descendants of Indra and Asura for presumably all of time, attempting to get an Uchiha to awaken the Rinnegan and activate the Infinite Tsukuyomi so that the Ten-Tails — and subsequently, his mother, Kaguya — would be revived.

Kaguya, still crying, then stated she hated her two sons for what they did to her, causing Naruto to grow enraged, not understanding why Kaguya was so angry that her sons had gained powers like her own, before tearing the Black Zetsu off himself and Sasuke. To create an opening, Naruto convinced Sasuke to attack Kaguya with Amaterasu, which allowed him to get close to her and use his Sexy: Reverse Harem Technique. The technique was successful in distracting Kaguya long enough for Naruto to strike her, allowing Sasuke to teleport the two of them around her and begin the sealing. In that moment, Kaguya shifted them into a frozen kingdom, encasing herself and her foes in ice. Kaguya then created a portal to escape the ice, before Sasuke used his Blaze Release: Kagutsuchi to free himself and Naruto. At the behest of Black Zetsu, Kaguya created another portal to grab Sasuke, and then proceeded to teleport him to a desert landscape in order to eliminate them one at a time.

As Kaguya went to deal with Naruto, the crafty ninja began drawing aid from the tailed beasts within him, ploughing through Kaguya's defensive and quickly overwhelming her with a massive army of shadow clones, calling it his own "personal dimension". The princess quickly retreats through her portal, to which Naruto quickly follows through, as does Obito along with Sakura and Naruto-clone. While the shadow clone quickly disperses, Black Zetsu is shocked that Naruto could follow them to the base world of Kaguya's various dimensions. While Kaguya is determined to "reclaim" the massive chakra within Naruto, Black Zetsu points out that Naruto is too dangerous and should just take the easier route of killing him. Dismayed in agreeing, Kaguya then launched a jagged bone barrage on Naruto that impales him and starts to disintegrate. Kaguya then returned to the normal dimension, only to find that Naruto's shadow clone army didn't disperse. She comes to realise that the body she killed was a well-disguised clone, and then sees that only the true Naruto, among the clones, possesses the Truth-Seeking Balls on his back. Cutting through Naruto's clones trying to kill the real one, Kaguya was unaware of Obito and Sakura's rescue of Sasuke from her desert dimension. With Naruto and Sasuke reunited, Kaguya teleported them all to a dimension with heavy gravity in an effort to pin them down so she could kill them easily.

Before moving everyone again to her main dimension, Kaguya managed to kill Obito with her All-Killing Ash Bones, letting himself be impaled while he saved Kakashi and Naruto. Kaguya remained silent as Black Zetsu taunted Naruto about the Uchiha's death, and was shocked when Naruto retaliated by severing her arm carrying Black Zetsu and pinning it to the ground. After getting hit by Naruto's tailed beast powered Rasenshuriken, the Ten-Tails' chakra within her reacted violently to the chakra of the other tailed beasts, transforming her into a rabbit-like chakra monster, which according to Black Zetsu was a form she couldn't control. Despite Black Zetsu's fears, Kaguya ultimately regained control and formed the tailed beast-mass into a giant Truth-Seeking Ball.

As Team 7 prepared for quite possibly their final mission, they launched a group attack that with well-coordinated efforts from their respective abilities landed a decisive group blow on the princess. Once Naruto and Sasuke made physical contact with her, they activated the Six Paths — Chibaku Tensei. Under the effects of the fūinjutsu, Kaguya's body transformed into the Ten-Tails and then into the Demonic Statue before being engulfed in the sphere. As the sphere closed up, Naruto sent Black Zetsu, who was hiding in Kaguya's severed arm sleeve, into the new moon, preventing it from reviving Kaguya ever again, thus resulting in both being permanently eliminated as threats to the shinobi world.

Legacy
Despite Kaguya's meaningful attempts to bring forth peace, her methods only brought it about temporarily. It also inspired the people of Hagoromo's era to weaponise chakra for wars instead of using it for peace, which would include the tailed beasts being seen as nothing more than masses of powerful chakra to exploit and control and the hosts to be seen as such. Before she was sealed away, she created Black Zetsu as a tool to facilitate her revival. Black Zetsu's actions throughout the history of the shinobi world included influencing the Uchiha and Senju clan for hundreds of years, and tampering with the Naka Shrine stone monument.

Kaguya is the progenitor of the Hyūga, Kaguya, Senju, Uzumaki, and Uchiha clans, as she is the mother or grandmother of each clans' ancestor and originator of their unique abilities. Eventually, Black Zetsu's efforts directly led Madara Uchiha to create and carry out the Eye of the Moon Plan, and creating Akatsuki as a project to prepare the Infinite Tsukuyomi, which led to the Fourth Shinobi World War. Madara would later succeed in casting the Infinite Tsukuyomi upon the entire world thinking he had accomplished his goal, but he had also unknowingly facilitated the revival of Kaguya. This came about when Black Zetsu manifested his will into Madara, using him as a vessel to revive Kaguya into the Mortal World, essentially bringing her back to life once more.

Trivia

 * Her name and title are references to Princess Kaguya, the main character from, which is said to be one of the oldest Japanese legends in written record. According to the legend, Princess Kaguya wears a when she returns home to her kingdom. The name  roughly means "big bamboo tree" and is derived from an obscure passage in the second volume of the Kojiki about the genealogies of Emperor Suinin, eleventh emperor of Japan, which states that he had a consort named , the daughter of a king named ; tradition holds that these individuals served as the basis for Princess Kaguya and the old bamboo cutter in the aforementioned tale.
 * Her horn-like appendages symbolise rabbit ears, representing her connection to the moon by evoking the moon rabbit; pop culture depictions of Princess Kaguya and the moon-folk often incorporate features like rabbit ears for this reason. This also fits with her being known as the . This is even more cemented, with her taking a rabbit like form after being hit by Naruto's Sage Art: Super Tailed Beast Rasenshuriken.
 * Aspects of Kaguya also bear resemblance to Izanami-no-Mikoto, the Shintō goddess of the dead. How Kaguya desires peace with taking over humankind and suspending them into bliss is similar to the concept of death leading into the afterlife, while her White Zetsu Army are reminiscent of the Yomotsu-shikome, Izanami's minions of Yomi.

Quotes

 * (To Kakashi when asked about her objective) "This place… this earth is my precious nursery. I cannot allow you to damage it any more… Let us end this battle. […] Here… I shall erase you all from existence right now."
 * (To Naruto) "All chakra… belongs to me. Once again, all chakra shall become one!!!"
 * (To Naruto and Sasuke while reminiscing about her sons) "I hate you… Hagoromo… Hamura… You both belong to me."
 * (Last words before her resealing) "Again… I, the ancestor of all chakra… am defeated by these scattered chakras… Why!!??"

References and Notes


Kaguya Ōtsutsuki Кагуя Ооцуцуки