Naruto/Mizuki

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CHARACTER · FIRST ANTAGONIST Mizuki ミズキ · Mizuki
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Mizuki, chapter 1
Debut	Manga: chapter 1, "Uzumaki Naruto!!"[1] Anime: episode 1, "Enter: Naruto Uzumaki!"[2]
Affiliation	Village Hidden in the Leaves — Ninja Academy
Position	Instructor at the Ninja Academy[1]
Status	Imprisoned in the Maximum Security Prison; escapes in an anime-original story[3]

Mizuki (ミズキ) is an instructor at the Ninja Academy of the Village Hidden in the Leaves and the first villain of Naruto. He teaches beside Iruka Umino, wears the same uniform, and speaks with the same authority, which is exactly what makes him dangerous. In chapter 1 he tricks the freshly failed Naruto Uzumaki into stealing the Scroll of Sealing, then breaks the village's strictest law by telling him the secret of the Nine-Tails. Before the night is over he has tried to kill both the student and the teacher who shields him.^[1] Across a series full of world-ending enemies he remains the smallest of its villains, and also the first opponent ever beaten by the Shadow Clone Technique, which makes him a permanent footnote in its history.

Mizuki spends the first half of the chapter looking like the nicer of Naruto's two teachers. When Naruto fails the graduation exam, it is Mizuki who suggests passing him anyway, and Iruka who refuses. Afterward, while the new graduates celebrate with their parents, Mizuki finds Naruto alone on the swing and offers him sympathy, a gentle voice and a way out: a "secret makeup exam". All Naruto has to do, he says, is take a certain scroll from the Hokage's residence and learn one technique from it.^[1] The scroll is the Scroll of Sealing, a store of forbidden techniques, and the exam does not exist.

The mask comes off in the forest that night. Mizuki arrives to take the scroll from Naruto, finds Iruka there first, and decides the situation still works in his favor, because the thief is the boy the whole village already distrusts. When persuasion fails he reaches for something crueler and tells Naruto the secret every adult has kept from him: he is the container of the Nine-Tailed Fox. He adds a twist of his own, telling the boy that Iruka, whose parents the fox killed, must surely hate him.^[1] Iruka takes a giant shuriken in the back to shield the boy, and answers with the opposite of Mizuki's lie by calling Naruto a proud ninja of the Hidden Leaf. When Mizuki moves to finish them both, Naruto fills the forest with hundreds of shadow clones and beats him half-senseless.^[1]

Mizuki's weapon of choice is kindness, and chapter 1 is built on the contrast between his kindness and Iruka's. Iruka is strict, fails Naruto honestly, and buys him dinner; Mizuki smiles, flatters, and hands the lonely boy exactly the story he wants to hear. The series' first moral lesson sits in that pairing: the adult who tells a child a hard truth may care for him, and the adult who tells him only what he wants to hear may not. Mizuki's own motives stay small and ordinary. The chapter gives him no plan grander than getting the forbidden scroll into his own hands, and greed on that scale needs no explanation.^[1]

The manga is finished with Mizuki once his trap fails, and its story moves on without him. The anime is not. An anime-original story in the middle of the series' first part brings him back. Mizuki has been held in the village's Maximum Security Prison, and he breaks out alongside two fellow inmates, the brothers Raijin and Fujin, overpowering Shizune when she pursues him.^[3] The story exists only in the anime, so manga readers lose nothing by skipping it, but it is the one time the series returns to its first villain.

• Naruto Uzumaki
• Iruka Umino
• Shadow Clone Technique
• Scroll of Sealing
• Nine-Tails
• Village Hidden in the Leaves

1. Naruto, chapter 1: "Uzumaki Naruto!!" (Shueisha, Weekly Shōnen Jump, 1999).
2. "Enter: Naruto Uzumaki." NARUTO OFFICIAL SITE (official). naruto-official.com/en/anime/naruto1/list/01_225. Retrieved July 2026.
3. "Tonton! I'm Counting on You!" NARUTO OFFICIAL SITE (official). naruto-official.com/en/anime/naruto1/list/01_367. Retrieved July 2026.