Kaguya Ōtsutsuki

Princess is the former matriarch of the Ōtsutsuki clan and mother of Hagoromo and Hamura Ōtsutsuki. Long before the founding of the hidden villages, during an era of endless war, Kaguya consumed the fruit of the God Tree and became the first wielder of chakra on Earth, before later merging with the tree to become the Ten-Tails.

Background
A millennium ago, Kaguya arrived on Earth with a portion of the clan in search for the fruit of the God Tree, which chakra she was supposed to provide to the clan's main family in another world. In the anime, upon her arrival, she was discovered by the people of the Land of Ancestors, who brought her before their emperor, Tenji. Identifying herself as the God Tree's guardian, Kaguya used a mysterious power to wipe Tenji's memories of the encounter and subsequently settled among his people, becoming recognised as his concubine. Growing closer with the emperor, she eventually fell pregnant. When the Land of That began to threaten the Land of Ancestors over a border dispute, Tenji attempted to prevent the outbreak of war by declaring that anyone who attacked the larger nation's representatives was to be executed, an order which she broke when she was threatened by them, resulting in her and her assistant Aino becoming hunted by their land to be executed.

Losing all faith in humanity but still longing for peace, Kaguya believed that it was necessary for her to attain god-like powers in order to put an end to all of humanity's conflicts. So, despite her clan waiting to harvest that world of its God Tree, she defied the taboo surrounding the fruit and ate it. Doing so, she awakened the Rinne Sharingan and became the sole person endowed with chakra. Using her new-found power, Kaguya single-handedly ended the wars, and took control of the nations. She cast the Infinite Tsukuyomi over the population; whilst in the anime Kaguya released some of the humans from the genjutsu and erased their memories. For her deed of stopping the conflict, she received the blessing of the people and was worshipped as the.

While giving birth to her twin sons Hagoromo and Hamura, she dispersed chakra to them, making the pair the first people born with chakra. Fearing the arrival from the other members of her clan, she turned victims of the Infinite Tsukuyomi into an army of White Zetsu in the course of years; her public image changed in time from that of a benevolent goddess into that of a. In the anime, Kaguya's actions eventually drove her sons against her, in turn she resolved to take back the chakra they inherited. This led to a cataclysmic battle between Kaguya and her children as she merged with the God Tree and became the Ten-Tails.

Assuming the Ten-Tails was an incarnation of the God Tree that attacked them to recover the chakra from its stolen fruit, Hagoromo and Hamura sealed the beast's chakra within the former's body while using its husk as the core of Six Paths — Chibaku Tensei, creating a celestial body that would become known as the Moon. Hamura later took leadership of the Ōtsutsuki clan and departed to the moon to guard the beast's remains, while Hagoromo remained on Earth in order to spread chakra to humanity and teach them the concept of ninshū. However, just before her sons could completely seal her, Kaguya had manifested her will in the form of an artificial human called Black Zetsu. With the agenda of reviving its "mother", Black Zetsu manipulated Hagoromo's eldest son, Indra Ōtsutsuki, as well as his descendants within the Uchiha clan and his brother's descendants within the Senju clan in an attempt to get one of them to awaken the Rinnegan and break the seal. Madara Uchiha would eventually succeed in obtaining the Rinnegan, 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. This was expanded on in the anime where despite displaying an apathetic personality, she longed for peace and eventually fell in love with Tenji, who shared a similar dream, even though she never openly displayed her feelings for him. She also cared deeply for her hand-maiden Aino, even though she never openly displayed emotions to her either until just before Aino's death.

After obtaining the ability to manipulate powerful chakra from the God Tree'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. Black Zetsu noted that Kaguya tried to love humans for the sake of peace, but her distrust in them proved far too great as she came to believe all they did was fight and destroy the world. Despite her initial desire for peace like her sons, grandsons, and in the anime, her lover, Kaguya ultimately 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 Earth, viewing it as a nursery that she does not want humanity itself to damage any further. In the anime, although she had affection for her lover, Tenji, it was not strong enough to stop her from trapping him in the Infinite Tsukuyomi when he betrayed her for his own pursuit of peace. Although she openly stated that she hated her own sons for using their inherited chakra against her and created the Ten-Tails to take it back by force, she openly wept when looking at Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha, who reminded her of them, hinting that part of her loved her sons.

In the anime, Hagoromo and Hamura understood that their mother committed immoral acts for the sake of protecting them from those she feared, and they still felt affection for her because she was simply a mother doing what she could for her children. Even Kaguya herself told her sons prior to their battle that she had given them nothing but unconditional nurture and protection, and willingly shared her chakra with them before their betrayal prompted her to try to claim it back. However, whatever love she harboured for her children was small, as shown in the anime where she was willing to take Hamura hostage and force him to fight Hagoromo in order to reclaim her chakra. Although, Kaguya did claim Hagoromo's love would prevent him from killing Hamura, suggesting she wanted to claim her chakra back without killing her children. It was later revealed she was on a mission to provide chakra to her clan, but after falling in love with a human and bearing his children, she created a White Zetsu Army to fight them off and protect her children. This suggests had it not been for her clan, she would have been a benevolent ruler.

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
Kaguya was a pale-skinned woman with delicate facial features. She had extremely long, sweeping white hair (grey in the anime). Kaguya possessed white clear eyes and her eyebrows were cut very short and round— a symbol of nobility, and she wore a red shade of lipstick on her lips. In the anime, after consuming the forbidden fruit, her hair grew even longer, dragging across the ground and her fingernails grew long and dark. Most noticeable, she grew two brown horns that stuck out from her head and a third eye formed in the centre of her forehead. She wore a high-collared hime-kimono which has tomoe running down the centre and edges of the gown and in the anime, adorned with intricate gold and purple lines.

When her power went out of control, Kaguya transformed into a conglomerate of the tailed beasts. Her original body turned into a gigantic rabbit creature with a humanoid upper body, jagged teeth and her signature Rinne Sharingan on its forehead. On its back was a great spherical mass of chakra with the heads of the nine tailed beasts emerging from it, along with chakra arms. When Kaguya had her powers stripped away, she briefly reverted 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
In the anime, Kaguya showed otherworldly powers long before she consumed the fruit of the God Tree. She could perform interstellar travel, subdue people into sleeping, hypnotise them, erase their memories or even unleash a powerful shock-wave from her eyes, which is able to repel or even slaughter people. After eating the fruit, 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 combined with his brother's. Kaguya has demonstrated unique abilities, such as merging with nature to give her control of the enviroments of her dimensions, such as ice and snow, flight and in the anime, the ability to read thoughts and feelings of a person.

Chakra and Physical Prowess
After eating the God Tree's fruit, Kaguya gained unparalleled reserves and strength in chakra, noted by both Naruto and Sasuke to be greater than Madara's as the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki. In the anime, just a simple release of her chakra could create massive shock-waves capable of subduing Hamura. As the first person to ever wield chakra, she can absorb any technique that she encounters. When making physical contact with an enemy, Kaguya is able to halt their movements while absorbing their chakra. Through her bond with the God Tree, she becomes stronger by gaining chakra from the tethered victims of the Infinite Tsukuyomi.

Kaguya has shown a degree of unarmed combat skills, as seen from her being able to easily block several attacks from Naruto's omnidirectional shadow clone-assault. She can also move very fast, as shown when she suddenly appeared before Sakura Haruno in the blink of an eye, and later when she reacted quickly to evade Sasuke's teleportation-supported Chidori, even though she first had to switch dimensions. Claiming to be immortal, Kaguya can quickly regenerate any lost anatomy, such as severed limbs. She also retained the ability to mould chakra even though she was hit with nine different variations of the Rasenshuriken and only escaped with superficial damage.

Ninjutsu
With her absolute mastery of chakra, Kaguya can utilise all five nature transformations along with Yin–Yang Release. She can make use of her extremely long hair as a makeshift weapon for capturing and tossing foes around the battlefield. Kaguya can also create life to serve on her behalf as her will. She can also use the Summoning Technique.

Kekkei Mōra
Kaguya possesses a number of unique abilities, some of which predate those shown in the series and are deadlier in comparison. The Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack allows Kaguya to materialise enormous chakra fists to attack the target, which are powerful enough to overcome a jinchūriki's chakra arms and destroy a Complete Body — Susanoo with ease. This technique can also be used defensively. She can also harden her long hair to fire countless needles, with enough ferocity to pierce Susanoo, an "absolute defence".

With the All-Killing Ash Bones, similar to the Shikotsumyaku, Kaguya can harden her bones and launch them as weaponised projectiles from her back or hands. When used on a living target, it will cause the victim's body to disintegrate into a pile of ash, killing them. Kaguya's strongest ability is the Expansive Truth-Seeking Ball, formed by the accumulated chakra of all the people connected to the Shinju. According to Black Zetsu, it houses every nature transformation, with the power to reshape the world by reducing it to nothing first, essentially serving as the start of a new dimension.

Byakugan
Kaguya wields the Byakugan in both eyes, granting her a near 360° field of x-ray vision (with the presumed exception of a small blind spot at the upper thoracic vertebrae) and the ability to see the chakra pathway system. She notes that her Byakugan is especially powerful, far more so than her younger son Hamura. Using her Byakugan, she identified that Naruto and Sasuke had similar chakra to her sons and Hagoromo's children after seeing the chakra accumulated in their palms and pathway systems. In conjunction with her hair, Kaguya is able to see an opponent's 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 the Rinne Sharingan's 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.

Kaguya is able to manipulate the roots of the God Tree 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 God Tree.

Tailed Beast Transformation
Combined with the God Tree, Kaguya became the Ten-Tails to take back the chakra inherited by her sons. While fighting Team 7, the tailed beasts' chakra in Naruto's Sage Art: Super Tailed Beast Rasenshuriken 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.

She apparently 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. Later on, she became an unstable Ten-Tails from Naruto's attack, she needed to absorb chakra from victims trapped within the Infinite Tsukuyomi to return to normal.

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 the left hand of Obito Uchiha whose body Black Zetsu had taken control of. Madara was left shocked and horrified, remarking that Black Zetsu was his will with Black Zetsu berating Madara before Black Zetsu also revealed that his will was that of Kaguya's much to Madara's horror. Black Zetsu then began covering Madara's body with his own malleable mass. As Sasuke and Naruto attempted to intervene to stop the revival from going ahead, 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 growed till Black Zetsu's mass completely engulfed him, thereby completing Kaguya's revival who now stood in Madara's place, Kaguya having been successfully brought back into the modern ninja world. 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 Uchiha 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, Naruto remarking that he thought Obito was awesome. 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. Kaguya attempted to flee, only for Sakura to arrive at the last second and land a blow on the princess, which caused one of Kaguya's horns to break, injuring the Princess. This gave Naruto and Sasuke the chance they needed and they both 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 later sent Black Zetsu, who was hiding in Kaguya's severed arm sleeve, into the new moon, preventing it from returning and reviving Kaguya ever again, thus resulting in both being permanently and finally eliminated as threats to the shinobi world.

Legacy
Despite Kaguya's genuine desire to bring forth peace, her methods only brought it about temporarily at the cost of much death. 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 before she was finally and permanently defeated by both Naruto and Sasuke.

Many years later, Sasuke Uchiha began investigating Kaguya's reasoning behind creating the White Zetsu Army in the first place. His ultimate theory was that there was a threat which even Kaguya was afraid of, and spent a large majority of his life researching Kaguya's history and her separate dimensions. His suspicions were confirmed true when he eventually met Momoshiki Ōtsutsuki and Kinshiki Ōtsutsuki. During his travels, he found information regarding the threat documented in a highly encrypted scroll, stored inside a castle within her ice dimension. When it was eventually deciphered in Konohagakure, it provided crucial information about Kaguya's enemies and was extremely valuable in cementing their defeat.

In the anime, Danzō Shimura unknowingly got close to one of Kaguya's techniques, when he cultivated some of the First Hokage's cells to produce Gozu Tennō.

Influence

 * 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