Naruto Uzumaki's Jinchūriki Forms

Naruto Uzumaki is the jinchūriki of the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox. When Naruto taps into the Nine-Tails' chakra, it increases every physical aspect of his body. He is gifted with massive chakra and stamina, immense strength, increased speed, accelerated healing, and, at times, an almost impenetrable chakra shield. Naruto has unique access to the Nine-Tails' chakra, due to the seal that his father, Minato Namikaze, the Fourth Hokage, placed on him. Minato stated that he sealed the Nine-Tails within Naruto because he felt there would someday be a need for it.

Initial Jinchūriki Form
By simply tapping into the Nine-Tails' chakra, Naruto's body begins its initial transformation. The first signs to this are his eyes; his pupils become slitted, and his irises will change from blue to red. Following this, his nails and canine teeth grow longer and sharper and his blonde hair will seem to become longer and spikier, as it stands on end. Naruto's whisker marks will also widen and thicken, adding to his feral appearance, finally a cloak of pale red chakra covers him; unlike Naruto's other tailed form, this one looks more like an aura and is not a definable shape. While he can still stand on his own two feet, Naruto can move at greater speeds by maneuvering on all fours in a manner similar to the Four Legs Technique used by the Inuzuka clan. Depending on how much of the Nine-Tails' chakra is unleashed, the red chakra is capable of glowing around his body in an untamed way.

Naruto first reached this form when he thought his comrade Sasuke Uchiha was killed by Haku. This overwhelmed Naruto with rage and allowed the Nine-Tails' chakra to leak out of the seal. Even though this is the weakest state of his jinchūriki forms, it still increases Naruto's physical strength, to the point of being able to stop a massive snake going at incredible speeds, and healing rates well above most shinobi, even able to regenerate a lung pierced by a Chidori.

This form also increases his speed to such levels that nothing short of a fully matured Sharingan is able to track his movements. He can also use the chakra as a shockwave, sometimes merely using a roar or thrusting his fist out to send a rush of energy at his opponent. Until special training from Jiraiya, Naruto could only reach this state through sheer rage or if his life was in imminent danger. However, after having an inner talk with the Nine-Tails, Naruto is able to tap into its chakra at will, or by simply telling the Nine-Tails to give him some power.

One-Tailed Transformation
During Naruto's battle with Sasuke at the Valley of the End, the Nine-Tails granted Naruto more of its chakra that it leaked out of his body in a much denser state. All the physical traits of the initial jinchūriki form were present and slightly altered, including black rings around the more berserk-looking eyes, longer nails, and canine-like features. This form also came with an additional bonus: the red chakra became a complete shield around his body, in the shape of a fox, complete with long ears and a tail, known as the demon fox cloak.

When he is in this form, Naruto fights more like a beast; instead of using his fists, he uses his elongated, sharpened claws. Like with his initial jinchūriki form, while he can stand on his own two feet, Naruto can move at greater speeds on all fours. Naruto's most powerful weapon in this state is the chakra itself, and it appears to have a mind of its own; when a strike that was meant for Sasuke missed, the chakra itself stretched off of Naruto's arm and hit Sasuke before he could react. Since the chakra is sentient, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to predict, as Naruto was easily followed with the Sharingan, but the chakra was not.

The chakra can also stretch far from the body, as when Naruto was shown using his 'arms' to attack Sasuke from great distances. Naruto was also seen as being able to use the demon fox cloak's chakra tail like an extra limb, while hanging upside down. The chakra around his body grants him some measure of protection, enough that ordinary attacks like Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique will have no effect. The chakra can also act as a shell to help Naruto create a Rasengan without the help of his shadow clones, which was called the Demon Fox Rasengan. However, the demon fox cloak is not without its drawbacks; after Naruto uses his left arm for a number of attacks against Sasuke, it is left numb from overuse and the constant damage of the Nine-Tails' chakra on his body.

Two-Tailed Transformation
After catching the Akatsuki member Deidara, only to discover it was a Clay Clone, Naruto's frustration and anger at Gaara's death caused him to slip into his two-tailed transformation. His physical characteristics matched the first two forms, but his red eyes and canines grew larger, and his lips acquired a black outline, similar to a fox's. The chakra shield's only difference between the one-tailed and the two-tailed transformation was the extra chakra tail that formed.

While in this state, Naruto is still in control of his body, though to what extent is unknown. In the anime, he punched a tree, destroying it and a long line of trees behind it. He later attempted to attack Kakashi Hatake, who placed a seal, given to him by Jiraiya, upon his forehead, bringing him back to his normal self. The amount of chakra produced by the two-tailed transformation was so powerful that even Naruto's shadow clones doubled over in pain.

Three-Tailed Transformation
After Orochimaru revealed himself to Team Yamato, and baited Naruto with news of Sasuke, Naruto went on a rampage, first attacking Orochimaru and progressing from a one-tailed to a three-tailed transformation in doing so. The three-tailed form looks similar to the two-tailed form, but with the Nine-Tails' features becoming more pronounced. His eyes later glow red, similar to the four-tailed transformation, but can return to normal.

The amount of chakra produced from this form is devastating, such that the air around him begins to sting others. This is the strongest form Naruto can reach and control. With the standard chakra shield's protection and attack power, a simple roar has the power to create a powerful sphere of destruction, capable of destroying the Tenchi Bridge. In the second Shippūden movie, while fighting the Zero-Tailed Masked Leech, Naruto was able to use the chakra shield to mimic arms and wings for semi-flight.

Four-Tailed Transformation
When Orochimaru further taunted Naruto about Sasuke, Naruto, in a fit of fury and anger, grew the fourth chakra tail, but in doing so, he had slipped into the Nine-Tails' grasp. The Nine-Tails' chakra began to burn its way through Naruto's entire body, completely destroying his skin while rapidly healing it at the same time. Naruto's body was eventually covered in a mix between the Nine-Tails' chakra and his own blood. Everything from his face to his chakra tails became completely solid and his eyes lose its characteristics and become empty glowing circles, surrounded by a black mask of chakra.

In this form, the Nine-Tails has complete control over Naruto's body, making him a mere endoskeleton for the Nine-Tails' chakra. The chakra's internal support becomes Naruto's physical mass, with every living thing in its way a target. The four-tailed transformation has all the benefits of the other tails, with upgrades. With a simple wave of his hand, it can create a shockwave of destruction. The chakra shield, while being solid, is so hot that it can burn the skin on contact and its defensive power is so great that not even Orochimaru's legendary Kusanagi could pierce it, only bending it slightly. If Naruto is hit, the chakra itself can form another body and strike back almost instantly. Finally, Naruto has the ability to charge a concentrated ball of chakra, consume it, and fire it in the form of a massive blast of chakra with such force that it could destroy three Rashomon gates.

In the end, the four-tailed transformation is Naruto's greatest downfall. Because the Nine-Tails' chakra is constantly destroying and creating new cells, it shortens Naruto's life, similar to Tsunade's Creation Rebirth. When the four-tailed transformation was finally repressed, Naruto needed immediate healing, as the top layer of his skin was completely burned away. Naruto first slipped into this form when he was training with Jiraiya, who had used the toad key to "twist" the Nine-Tails' seal. This weakened the seal, and allowed enough of the Nine-Tails' chakra to leak out of the seal and produce the form, in turn almost killing Jiraiya.

Six-Tailed Transformation
During Pain's invasion of Konohagakure, and after Naruto's failed attempt to defeat the Deva Path, Naruto was left pinned to the ground when Hinata Hyūga challenged Pain in a desperate attempt to protect Naruto. Outmatched, Hinata was quickly dispatched, stabbed, and severely wounded by Pain's Chakra Disruption Blades. Infuriated, and believing Hinata to be dead, Naruto lost control of himself, and exploded into his four-tailed transformation, which quickly slipped into a six-tailed transformation, skipping the fifth tail altogether.

In this form, the Nine-Tails' bones begins to form out of the intense chakra around his body, attached to the body with several thick chakra ligaments. The raw potency of its chakra is so great that it completely rejects the First Hokage's Necklace's effects to repress it. The Nine-Tails then removed the crystal and crushed it. With its raw power, the Nine-Tails was able to withstand Pain's Shinra Tensei, and then reflect the attack back upon Pain himself. Unlike the four-tailed form, the six-tailed form is able to unleash a concentrated ball of chakra without first ingesting it. Without even being fully charged, the attack had enough energy to create an enormous crater next to an already destroyed Konoha.

Eight-Tailed Transformation
As the Nine-Tails fought Pain through the six-tailed transformation, Naruto, within his consciousness, thought of Pain's plans for peace, and pleaded for someone to help him with a response. Through his suffering, the Nine-Tails tempted him to destroy everything in the world that hurt him and to remove the seal by saying that, if Naruto gave his heart to it, then it would stop his pain. Its influence had caused the seal to "distort" and allowed the seventh and eighth tails to grow.

The eight-tailed transformation, like the previous forms, brings Naruto's body closer to that of the Nine-Tails. This form is his largest so far, being about the same size as the Nine-Tails, with muscle tissue beginning to grow on the bones from the six-tailed transformation. The only things missing in the eight-tailed transformation from the Nine-Tails are the ninth tail, skin, and fur. The eight-tailed transformation is so powerful, that it was capable of breaking through Pain's Chibaku Tensei with brute force.

Jinchūriki Chakra Control
In the event of the Nine-Tails manifesting, Jiraiya gave Kakashi a special seal tag, that is to be placed on Naruto's body. This seal suppresses the Nine-Tails' chakra, and restores Naruto to his normal self. In addition, Yamato has demonstrated the use of a technique that reverses Naruto's tailed transformations, enhanced greatly by the First Hokage's necklace that Naruto wears. Sasuke has also demonstrated the ability to forcefully suppress the Nine-Tails' chakra with the help of his Sharingan.

In the anime, Naruto has shown that, with enough will power, he is able to suppress the Nine-Tails' chakra from taking over, if he acts early enough. However, the important factor to this is that the Nine-Tails' chakra was responding to the vessel of its residual chakra.

The seal, which keeps the Nine-Tails within Naruto, was designed with a fail-safe attached to it. Minato made it so that, if Naruto ever transforms into his eight-tailed form, the imprint of Minato will appear in his subconscious, in order to prevent the seal from being broken. Furthermore, Minato can restore the seal to its normal state, but he stated that he could only do it once.

When Naruto encountered Nagato face to face, he was shown to be able to simultaneously fuse his initial jinchūriki and Sage Mode forms together. His eyes take on the appearance of a mixture of them both. He was able to resist being taken over by Nagato's rod when it impaled him.