Kirin

Kirin is an extremely powerful, one-shot lightning technique created by Sasuke Uchiha. The user draws lightning directly from thunder clouds to supplement the power of his or her strike and controls it with chakra. Due to the technique using natural lightning, which travels at 1/1000th of a second according to Zetsu, it is one of the most powerful lightning techniques. However, the preparation time required also decreases the technique's efficiency; if there are no active thunder clouds the user must create them by using fire techniques such as Fire Release: Great Dragon Fire Technique to produce the necessary storm conditions; Sasuke also used the heat of Amaterasu to assist the storm creation. Doing this exhausted Sasuke's chakra supplies.

Once a lightning source has been acquired, shaping and guiding the lightning to the target requires very little chakra. In addition, usage seems to destroy the thunder clouds as the sky cleared up of clouds after use. As such, this technique can only be used once in a fight. However, the blast was strong enough to completely annihilate the Abandoned Uchiha Stronghold as well the mountain on which the stronghold was built, giving credibility to Sasuke's claim that the attack is unavoidable. Itachi withstood this technique by using Susanoo, though he admitted that were it not for his Susanoo, he would have been killed. And even then, Kirin smashed through Susanoo and burned off Itachi's cloak and burned his face.

Influences

 * In Japanese mythology, as following Qin Dynasty Chinese Mythology, the Kirin is the highest ranked mythological animal above the Dragon and Phoenix, which are also in the names of techniques that Sasuke uses.
 * Kirin is also the Japanese word for giraffe.

Trivia

 * In Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2, Sasuke will have three chances of hitting the opponent, with lightning from the Sky, which when hit, will execute Kirin.
 * In Naruto Shippuden episode 53 Sasuke presumably wanted to use Kirin to eliminate Team Kakashi, but was stopped by Orochimaru.