Deidara

was a member of Akatsuki and was partnered with Tobi, Sasori before that.

Background
Deidara was once a ninja in Iwagakure, although one day left the village for the hope of using his "art" more frequently. Deidara became a terrorist bomber for hire, seeing it as an opportunity to use his "art" on a regular basis. Sometime after Orochimaru left the organization Akatsuki, Deidara was visited by members Itachi Uchiha, Kisame Hoshigaki, and Sasori, who were under the orders of the leader Pein to recruit Deidara into the organization. Although at first Deidara refused, he quickly got into a small confrontation with Itachi, where Itachi forced Deidara to join by almost fooling Deidara into exploding himself with a clay centipede via genjutsu. Deidara quickly realized he had no chance of wining and recognized the Sharingan as "art". Deidara, having been forced into Akatsuki and taking a huge loss to his ego, carried a loathing for Itachi thoughout all of his time in Akatsuki, though still recognized Itachi and a more powerful opponent.

Personality
Deidara is a very hot-headed person, and is quite a quick person to annoy, especially for Tobi. Relishing battles and fighting is also not uncommon for Deidara either. Deidara's most distinctive trait, however, is his love of art, and will respect any form of art, even if it disagrees with his own. Deidara also has a habit of ending his sentences with a mumble/grunt, usually transcribed as un or mmm, in the same way Naruto ends most of his sentences with -ttebayo.

Deidara refers to his ninjutsu as art, believing each bomb he makes to be such works. He refers to style as superflat (the word itself used to refer to certain types of manga), and claims pop (which is also the name of a manga style) is dead. One of Deidara's catchphrases, "Art is a bang" (or variations therein), was originally coined by famous Japanese abstract artist Tarō Okamoto. Deidara is very proud of his art, to the point that he is simply unwilling to accept that anything could defeat it, leading to frequent overconfidence in battle

Deidara refers to Sasori as. This is probably because Deidara greatly respects him as a fellow artist. He also admits that Sasori was a lot stronger. Despite that, Deidara still argued with Sasori about what art is and directly disobeyed his command in spite of a threat to be killed. Deidara held that art is transient, departing quickly. Sasori believed that fine art is something wonderful that's left long into the future. This reflects their individual natures (Deidara makes clay sculptures that explode, Sasori makes long-lasting puppets out of humans). Deidara outwardly seems to respect Sasori's beliefs, but couldn't resist getting a final jab in after Sasori's death: "Like anything that is left for the future as a thing of eternal beauty... He got killed straight off!"

Deidara's partnership with Tobi, however, is largely different. Tobi refers to Deidara as "Deidara-senpai". Tobi's carefree and goofy personality does not please Deidara, who believes that all Akatsuki members should be serious and calm. Tobi unintentionally irritates Deidara frequently, which usually results in Deidara attacking Tobi in a comedic fashion, such as strangling Tobi with his feet when his arms had been severed. In battle, however, the two easily set aside their differences for the most part, and the two work well together. Deidara also seems to have a minor respect for Tobi, apologizing to his partner in his thoughts before he initiated his Self-Destruction.

Gender Issue
Deidara's gender is sometimes confused due to the Japanese language's sparse use of third person pronouns, which forces translators to use their own ideas of Deidara's gender to make sentences flow smoothly. This caused a lot of confusion, since both "he" and "she" were used to refer to Deidara in early English fan translations. However, Deidara speaks of himself using male pronouns and was initially given a very deep, male voice in the anime. His current anime voice is significantly lighter, but still clearly masculine.

Abilities
Deidara wears a scope on his left eye for long-range observation, and he has trained the eye itself to genjutsu, which he did in response to Itachi's powerful genjutsu skills.

A fancy and skillful fighter, Deidara uses special mouths in the palm of each hand and one giant mouth on his chest, which is always kept sewn shut, to create. As the name suggests, Deidara can make the clay explode using the command. By infusing the clay with chakra and molding it into various forms, Deidara can create living explosives to sneak up on opponents. Deidara can even create clones from the clay, named, that can be a deadly surprise for opponents. Deidara's clay creations can range from microscopic to gigantic in size, allowing him to adapt to any situation. Deidara can also use the clay for other purposes, as he is frequently seen creating birds to be used for transportation.

Deidara also has a "final attack" of sorts called, with which he eats a large ball of clay with the mouth on his chest. Large cracks quickly spread across Deidara, and the mouth grows a large black sphere around it complete with two pupil-less eyes. Deidara's cracks then open up and he falls apart into pieces, freeing the sphere to fly up into the air. The sphere then opens up and detonates itself, destroying everything within a ten kilometer radius. It is unknown as of yet if using Self-Destruction will kill the user or not, but given as how Deidara said death will transform him into the ultimate art right before using Self-Destruction, it is likely.

Clay Ranking
Deidara ranks his clay by number in a fashion similar to the C-4 explosive, the weakest being C1 and the most powerful being C4. The other clay ranks are much more dangerous than C1, and any foe that sees Deidara use any rank higher than C-1 is usually one Deidara sees as a strong fighter.


 * C-1: Deidara's most commonly used form of clay, and is used to make small clay animal figures. The explosion power of C1 is equal to that of a hand grenade, although combined with the clay's ability to move on its own makes it an effective weapon. Deidara also uses C1 clay to create large birds he uses for long-distance transportation.


 * C-2: C-2 summons a large clay dragon whose main use is to spit out several smaller explosives made from the clay of its tail out of its mouth.


 * C-3: A large immobile clay statue that drops on top of targets from above, is capable of destroying entire cities with destructive power equalling that of nuclear weapon.


 * C-4: The most powerful of Deidara's ranked clays. It is used after Deidara eats clay with his own mouth followed by spitting the clay out making his "C4 Garuda", a giant clay clone of himself. The clone quickly explodes itself after it is created, spreading microscopic explosives throughout the surrounding area that destroy anything that breathes them in from the inside out.

Rescue Gaara arc
Deidara, when partnered with Sasori, travelled to Sunagakure to capture Gaara and extract the Shukaku within him. When they got inside the village, Deidara was greeted by the Fifth Kazekage himself, and the two began to fight. Deidara's left arm was destroyed during the fight. Despite the fact that he had lost one arm, Deidara still managed to defeat the Kazekage by using the safety of Gaara's village as a distraction. Deidara then took the unconcious Gaara out of the village where his partner - Sasori was waiting. The two Akatsuki members then took their captive to their hideout where they began the three day long jutsu to extract the tailed beast out of its host while Team 7, and Team Guy attempted their rescue operation. By the time they broke into the hideout, the jutsu was completed and Gaara was dead. Naruto was enraged and began to chase after Deidara with Kakashi following him, leaving Sasori to deal with Sakura and Chiyo.

In the chase, Deidara first tried to seperate Kakashi from him and Naruto by dropping explosives clay. When the attempt failed, he simply went faster, baiting Naruto. When Kakashi revealed his Mangekyo Sharingan, destroying Deidara's right arm, Naruto finally caught up with him. Deidara dodged the attack Naruto threw towards him and Naruto managed to tear Deidara's clay creation(which held Gaara within it) apart. Naruto then proceeded in beating Deidara up but he only managed to beat up Deidara's Clay Clone. Deidara meanwhile hid himself and learned that Sasori was dead, killed by Sakura and Chiyo. Team Guy found out Deidara's hiding place with Neji's Byakyugan. Deidara managed to escape by setting off another larger explosion by eating the clay of the remains of his clay bird(which Naruto had tore up earlier when he tried to save Gaara). Kakashi sent the explosion into another dimension using his Mangekyo Sharingan. Deidara survived and went to find his missing arm and ring. He then became Tobi's new partner after Tobi retrieved Sasori's ring.

Hidan and Kakuzu arc
Deidara accompanied Tobi to capture the three-tailed beast, but noted that he did all the fighting. It is revealed in this period that Kakuzu had sewn his arms back on using his body threads.

Current arc
Deidara attacked Sasuke after hearing of his (seemingly) killing Orochimaru. Sasuke's lightning-elemental Chidori proved a good counter to Deidara's earth-elemental clay bombs, and Sasuke managed to survive each new bomb Deidara used against him. Deidara was eventually defeated, but rather than telling Sasuke where Itachi was, he decided to feed himself clay in an attempt to self-destruct and kill Sasuke. The attempt failed, though, and Deidara was killed in the blast, while Sasuke summoned Manda to protect himself at the cost of Manda's life.