God Tree

This article is about the tree. For other uses, see God Tree (disambiguation).

File:Original Shinju.png

A fully grown God Tree.

A God Tree (神樹, Shinju, English TV: Divine Tree) is a type of gigantic tree. The seed of the God Tree on Earth, originated from space and crashed as a meteorite in the anime, which grew from the landscape that was soaked in blood from countless battles. Due to its massive size and the conditions under which it is grown, the God Tree is revered by some cultures; humans used to worship the God Tree of Earth as a sacred pillar that extended into the heavens.

A chakra fruit.

Every thousand years, God Trees produce a "chakra fruit" (チャクラの実, Chakura no Mi), which human legend holds are never to be touched. Members of the Ōtsutsuki clan travel through the dimensions in search of God Trees so that they can consume the trees' fruit and gain its powerful chakra for themselves. Some Ōtsutsuki, such as Momoshiki and Kinshiki, harvest the God Tree's fruit until it and its respective planet die, at which point they go looking for a new one. Kaguya, after consuming the fruit of Earth's God Tree, chose to settle on the planet and use the power she gained in order to single-handedly bring peace to the human populations.

Kaguya eats Earth's chakra fruit.

As a measure to keep the peace, Kaguya enslaved part of the human population with the Infinite Tsukuyomi and bound those affected to the God Tree, allowing it to feed off of them. By drawing enough power from its victims, the God Tree would be able to bear a new chakra fruit. When Kaguya's sons, Hagoromo and Hamura, were born with chakra of their own, she merged with the Earth's God Tree in order to take the chakra back, thus becoming a monster called the Ten-Tails.

Trivia

• The God Tree is similar to both the world tree and the tree of life, motifs that are present in several real-life religions and mythologies throughout the world.
  • The God Tree bearing the fruit that was deemed forbidden to consume is very similar to the story of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Abrahamic religions, in which Adam and Eve, the first humans, ate the forbidden fruit despite being told otherwise. Ultimately, while becoming wiser, it lead to their downfall by incurring the wrath of God. For disobeying Him, He forever cursed the two and their descendants. Adam's eldest son, Cain, would later murder his younger brother, Abel, in anger and jealousy following God's rejection of his offering while accepting Abel's, similar to the struggle between the two sons of the Sage of the Six Paths.
  • The wooden dragon-like entities at the base of the God Tree may be a reference to Nidhogg, a dragon or serpent who eternally chews the roots of Yggdrasil in Norse mythology. Likewise with the appearance of the God Tree, it is said that should Nidhogg finally be free of its entrapment underneath Yggdrasil, its appearance into the world beyond its roots are said to herald the coming of Ragnarök, the end of the world and ultimate battle of the gods.
• During the Fourth Shinobi World War, Obito Uchiha uses the Ten-Tails' chakra to create a giant tree as part of his Eye of the Moon Plan. The fourth databook and the Eight-Tails calls this both the Ten-Tails' final form and the God Tree itself.
• A voice which speaks to Madara Uchiha, saying "Absorb me. The God Tree… the Ten-Tails. Absorb everything." (「ワレヲトリコメ シンジュヲ… ジュウビヲ スベテヲトリコメ」, "Ware o torikome. Shinju o… Jūbi o. Subete o torikome."). Interestingly, the voice uses Katakana, a unique style of speaking only used by Black Zetsu, while refering to itself using 我 (Ware), an archaic personal pronoun. In Naruto Shippūden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4, the voice is Kaguya Ōtsutsuki.
• In the anime, the God Tree is shown to have a will of its own and became the Ten-Tails to protect Kaguya.