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<div style="color: #ffffff; font-size: 0.82em; letter-spacing: 2px;">NINJUTSU · ACADEMY BASIC</div>
<div style="color: #EC7124; font-weight: bold; font-size: 1.4em; margin: 3px 0 1px 0;">Clone Technique</div>
<div style="color: #ffffff; font-size: 0.92em;">分身の術 · <i>Bunshin no Jutsu</i></div>
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| colspan="2" style="background: #111; text-align: center; padding: 0;" | ![[naruto_chapter1_trying_clone_technique.jpg|alt=Naruto's failed clone lying limp on the exam room floor]]
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| colspan="2" style="background: #111; text-align: center; padding: 2px 0 6px 0; border-bottom: 2px solid #EC7124;" | <div style="color: #ffffff; font-size: 0.82em;">Naruto's "clone", chapter 1</div>
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| colspan="2" | {{Collapse|text="'''[ Details ▾ ]'''"|color="#EC7124"|style="width:100%;"}}
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! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #EC7124; text-align: center; width: 36%;" | English
| "Clone Jutsu"<ref name="ep1dub">''Naruto'', episode 1: "Enter: Naruto Uzumaki!" English-language broadcast (VIZ Media, 2005).</ref>
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! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #EC7124; text-align: center;" | Classification
| [[Naruto/Ninjutsu|Ninjutsu]] — supplementary
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! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #EC7124; text-align: center;" | Rank
| <span style="background:#000; color:#EC7124; border:1px solid #EC7124; font-size:0.78em; font-weight:bold; padding:1px 6px;">E-RANK</span> (Academy basic)<ref name="databook">''Naruto: Hiden — Rin no Sho, Character Official Data Book'' (Shueisha, 2002).</ref>
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! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #EC7124; text-align: center;" | Debut
| Manga: chapter 1, "Uzumaki Naruto!!"<ref name="ch1">''Naruto'', chapter 1: "Uzumaki Naruto!!" (Shueisha, ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'', 1999).</ref><br>Anime: episode 1, "Enter: Naruto Uzumaki!"<ref name="ep1site">"Enter: Naruto Uzumaki." ''NARUTO OFFICIAL SITE'' (official). [https://naruto-official.com/en/anime/naruto1/list/01_225 naruto-official.com/en/anime/naruto1/list/01_225]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref>
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| Academy students and virtually every trained ninja
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'''Clone Technique''' (分身の術, ''Bunshin no Jutsu''), called the '''Clone Jutsu''' in the English-language anime,<ref name="ep1dub" /> is a basic [[Naruto/Ninjutsu|ninjutsu]] in ''[[Naruto]]'' that creates intangible, illusory copies of the user. It is one of the fundamental techniques every student must master to graduate from the Ninja Academy of the [[Naruto/Village Hidden in the Leaves|Village Hidden in the Leaves]] — and it is famously the one technique [[Naruto/Naruto Uzumaki|Naruto Uzumaki]] cannot perform in Chapter 1. His failed clone in the graduation exam is the very first problem the series poses, and it sets in motion the events that put the far more dangerous [[Naruto/Shadow Clone Technique|Shadow Clone Technique]] in his hands before the opening chapter is over.<ref name="ch1" /> After Chapter 1, Naruto is never again shown performing it.

== What it does ==

The Clone Technique produces one or more duplicates of the user. To an opponent the copies look identical to the original, but they are illusions: they have no physical substance, cannot pick anything up or land a blow, and simply wink out when struck. Their value is misdirection — surrounding an enemy with false targets, disguising which body is the real one, and covering a retreat or setting up an ambush.

In the Leaf's Academy curriculum it sits alongside the [[Naruto/Transformation Technique|Transformation Technique]] as beginner material that every child ninja drills, and the reference books grade it E-rank — the lowest tier on the scale used to rank techniques.<ref name="databook" /> For everyone except Naruto, it is the easy part of the exam.

== Naruto and the graduation exam ==

Chapter 1 of the manga hinges on this technique. To pass the Academy's graduation exam, each student must demonstrate a working clone — and Naruto, hearing the topic announced, despairs, because it is his very worst technique. He manages to produce exactly one copy: a pale, limp thing that flops onto the floor, dead-eyed. [[Naruto/Iruka Umino|Iruka Umino]] fails him on the spot. When the assistant instructor [[Naruto/Mizuki|Mizuki]] suggests letting the result slide, Iruka refuses — the other students produced multiple working clones, and a ninja who cannot manage even one is not ready to graduate.<ref name="ch1" />

That failure is the pivot of the whole first chapter. Alone on the swing outside the Academy, Naruto is approached by Mizuki with talk of a "secret makeup exam" — a trap that ends, by the end of the same night, with Naruto mastering a forbidden technique that makes real bodies instead of empty images. That story is told at [[Naruto/Shadow Clone Technique|Shadow Clone Technique]].<ref name="ch1" />

There is an irony here that the series never stops enjoying: the boy who could not make one convincing illusion becomes the ninja who fills battlefields with hundreds of solid copies of himself. As the story goes on it becomes clear that Naruto's problem was never too little chakra but far too much of it, without the fine control that a small, precise technique like this one demands.

== Related techniques ==

The basic Clone Technique is only the first member of a whole family. As the world of the series widens, ninja of various villages demonstrate solid variants — clones shaped from water, earth, and other materials that can genuinely fight, at the cost of more chakra and preparation. By far the most important relative is the [[Naruto/Shadow Clone Technique|Shadow Clone Technique]], the forbidden version that creates true flesh-and-blood duplicates; it appears within pages of Naruto's failed exam and never really leaves the story again.

== See also ==

* [[Naruto/Shadow Clone Technique|Shadow Clone Technique]]
* [[Naruto/Naruto Uzumaki|Naruto Uzumaki]]
* [[Naruto/Iruka Umino|Iruka Umino]]
* [[Naruto/Ninjutsu|Ninjutsu]]