Naruto/Shadow Clone Technique

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Shadow Clone Technique (影分身の術, Kage Bunshin no Jutsu), the Shadow Clone Jutsu of the English-language anime,^[1] is a forbidden ninjutsu in Naruto that creates real, solid copies of the user.^[3] Where the Academy's basic Clone Technique projects empty images, a shadow clone can run, strike, carry out orders and use techniques of its own. It is the signature technique of Naruto Uzumaki, who teaches it to himself from a stolen scroll on the night of the series' first chapter, and no technique appears more often across the manga's fifteen-year run.

Each clone is a genuine body, and the user's chakra — the energy behind every technique — is divided evenly among all of them. One clone leaves the user at half strength, and a hundred leave every body, the original included, holding only a sliver.^[5] A clone that takes a solid hit vanishes, and the user can dismiss them at will. The technique's most consequential property is that a vanishing clone's experience returns to the original. Whatever it saw, learned or practiced comes home with it, which makes the technique a scouting tool, a training method, and occasionally a source of very unwelcome memories.^[5]

The technique enters the series through the trap that ends chapter 1. Tricked into stealing the Scroll of Sealing by the instructor Mizuki, the freshly failed Naruto opens it, finds the Shadow Clone Technique listed first, and groans, because clones are the one thing he cannot do.^[3] He practices in the woods for hours anyway. When Mizuki wounds Iruka Umino and moves to kill them both, Naruto produces hundreds of solid, grinning copies of himself and beats his first enemy with a technique he learned that same night.^[3] Iruka graduates him on the spot, and the stolen skill becomes the foundation of everything Naruto does afterward.

The technique was sealed away for a reason. Splitting chakra evenly means a large batch of clones can drain an ordinary ninja to the point of collapse, so the official guidebooks grade it B-rank and mark it forbidden.^[2] Naruto is the walking exception. The Nine-Tails sealed inside him gives him reserves far beyond his age or training, which is how a failed Academy student can safely use an elite-level technique in bulk on his first night.^[3]

The Multi Shadow Clone Technique (多重影分身の術, Tajū Kage Bunshin no Jutsu) is the mass version: hundreds of clones at once instead of a handful, first used against Mizuki.^[3] Its cost rises with the head-count, which is why the guidebooks set it a step higher, at A-rank among forbidden techniques, and why almost nobody but Naruto treats it as an everyday move.^[2]

For most ninja shadow clones are an occasional tool, used sparingly and carefully by elites such as Kakashi Hatake. For Naruto they are a fighting style. Clones open nearly every battle he takes, serve as decoys and scouts, and combine with everything else he learns. Several of his most famous attacks are, in practice, teamwork between Naruto and himself. In Part II his teachers turn the memory-return property into a formal training method, letting a hundred clones compress months of practice into days.^[5] The technique follows him to the very top. As Seventh Hokage, the adult Naruto still splits himself with clones to cover the busiest job in the village, and the official continuation volume opens with him using them to babysit his own son.^[6]

• Clone Technique
• Naruto Uzumaki
• Iruka Umino
• Mizuki
• Nine-Tails
• Scroll of Sealing

1. Naruto, episode 1: "Enter: Naruto Uzumaki!" English-language broadcast (VIZ Media, 2005).
2. Naruto: Hiden — Rin no Sho, Character Official Data Book (Shueisha, 2002).
3. Naruto, chapter 1: "Uzumaki Naruto!!" (Shueisha, Weekly Shōnen Jump, 1999).
4. "Enter: Naruto Uzumaki." NARUTO OFFICIAL SITE (official). naruto-official.com/en/anime/naruto1/list/01_225. Retrieved July 2026.
5. Naruto, chapter 315: "Special Training!!" (Shueisha, 2006).
6. Naruto: The Seventh Hokage and the Scarlet Spring (Shueisha / VIZ Media, 2015). viz.com. Retrieved July 2026.