() is a fictional character in the Naruto manga and anime franchise created by Masashi Kishimoto. Sasuke belongs to the Uchiha clan, a notorious ninja family, and one of the most powerful, allied with . Most of its members were massacred by Sasuke's older brother, Itachi Uchiha, before the series began, leaving Sasuke as one of the few survivors. Despite becoming empathetic toward his teammates Naruto Uzumaki and Sakura Haruno, Sasuke's feelings of powerlessness force him to abandon his friends and his home in his quest to become stronger than Itachi, and to find Orochimaru. Sasuke appears in several of the series' animated feature films and related media, including video games, original video animations (OVAs), and Boruto: Naruto the Movie (2015) and its manga sequel, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations (2016), in which he is depicted as a vigilante supporting his village and a mentor to Naruto's son Boruto Uzumaki.
Kishimoto conceived Sasuke as a main rival of the series' title character Naruto Uzumaki. Despite Sasuke's dark character development later in the story, Kishimoto avoided portraying him as a villain; he found designing the character challenging and had difficulty creating a suitable look for him. Nonetheless, Kishimoto has grown to enjoy drawing him. In the manga's animated adaptations, Sasuke was voiced by Noriaki Sugiyama in Japanese and Yuri Lowenthal in English.
Sasuke's character has received mixed responses from anime and manga publications. His impressive fighting skills, plot contribution, and rivalry with Naruto Uzumaki received some praise, but he was criticized as a stereotypical rival in the mold of similar characters from other shōnen manga and as exhibiting a cold personality. Nevertheless, Sasuke's characterization in latter parts of the story and more mature personality in the Boruto sequel earned further positive comments. Sasuke has also placed highly in Naruto reader popularity polls and has also been the subject of studies by scholars. Character-based merchandise, including action figures and key chains, have been released.
Creation
Development Manga artist Masashi Kishimoto did not include Sasuke Uchiha in his original concept for the Naruto series, a story revolving around the character Naruto Uzumaki. Discussing the series' future, his editor, Kosuke Yahagi, advised him to add a rival character for the protagonist Naruto and he created Sasuke. The character's first name came from Sanpei Shirato's manga Sasuke and Sarutobi Sasuke, a fictional ninja character in Japanese children's stories. To introduce Sasuke, Kishimoto wrote a chapter that was set before the formation of his ninja squad, Team 7. The idea was scrapped; Yahagi told Kishimoto to focus the series' first two chapters on introducing Naruto instead and the focus on Sasuke and the rest of the supporting characters were shown in the next chapters for the first time. Once creating Sasuke's character, Kishimoto decided to use him as a protagonist rather than supporting character in order to start his development at the same time as Naruto. When plot developments made Sasuke one of the story's antagonists, Kishimoto called him and Naruto yin and yang because of their differences and complementary natures. During this period, he was asked whether Sasuke was good or evil; he replied that Sasuke was neither and called him a "very pure person." He said although some of Sasuke's actions such as following his clan's ideas were positive, his self-centeredness tended to cause problems with others. Since the beginning of the story's serialization, Kishimoto planned to conclude the series with a fight between Sasuke and Naruto, but he was uncertain whether the characters would end up as friends or enemies.
Kishimoto had read a variety of manga to obtain ideas for the creation of an effective rivalry between two characters, which he incorporated into Naruto and Sasuke's relationship. He was also inspired by his relationship with his twin brother, Seishi Kishimoto; since childhood, Masashi had worried about Seishi when he faced failure and had tried to help him. To contrast Sasuke with Naruto, Kishimoto made him less emotional and depicted him as a "cool genius"; he felt he had created an ideal rivalry in the pair, and when one character progressed he ensured the other did as well. Kishimoto wanted Naruto and Sasuke to seem like brothers and rivals, building on a mutual experience of childhood loneliness. Although Sasuke does not regard Naruto as a worthy opponent at first, he is surprised by Naruto's growth and becomes fiercely competitive. In the Part I finale, their rivalry leads to a fight and they grow further apart. Kishimoto said he did not want Sasuke to recognize Naruto as an equal until later in Part II.
Although both characters had used ninja techniques throughout the series, Kishimoto wanted the two fighters to rely on hand-to-hand combat for the climax of their final battle. He decided to have Naruto forgive Sasuke because he had also forgiven Nagato, another former enemy. The final fight between Sasuke and Naruto was considered one of the biggest challenges ever faced by the staff from Pierrot as it took an entire month to adapt it from the manga. Director Hiroyuki Yamashita elected himself in charge of the battle which left most of the anime members relieved due to his experience. For the scenario, Pierrot received assistance from CyberConnect2, the video game development studio who had already adapted this battle through the fighting game Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4. There was a need to make every movement in the fight look realistic, giving Sasuke a scary look as well as hair movement in order to express the idea of both fighters willing to do anything to kill each other, which confused some due to Naruto's wish to avoid this fate. The final clash between Sasuke's Chidori and Naruto's Rasengan moves involved references from other scenes of the series to give the viewer a bigger emotional impact. The staff noted that following this fight, Sasuke's face became calmer despite his initial look, giving room to explore his redemption.
Kishimoto found Sasuke a difficult character to write, requiring considerable planning. In the series finale, Sasuke leaves on a solo journey; Kishimoto later stated that in addition to atonement, Sasuke wants to discover the origin of the final antagonist, but this was not explained in the story. He planned Sasuke and Sakura Haruno's romance early in Naruto production and decided that despite having a good relationship with his allies, Sasuke would remain a rogue ninja at the end of the series.
Kishimoto wished to further explore Sasuke's role in the series after Naruto finale. He wanted to explain the connection between Sasuke and Sakura in the spin-off manga Naruto: The Seventh Hokage and the Scarlet Spring (2015), which focuses on their daughter, Sarada Uchiha. Despite their separation during Sasuke's mission, which draws him away from his village, the story explains the bond between the three characters. Kishimoto focused on the final scene of the Uchiha family, which he regards as the spin-off's most important facet. Because Sasuke had few appearances in the Naruto films, Kishimoto decided to give him a bigger role in Boruto: Naruto the Movie (2015), in which he teaches Naruto's firstborn child, Boruto Uzumaki; a reference to Piccolo and Gohan in Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball manga series and also depicted in the manga Boruto: Naruto Next Generations (2016). Kishimoto identified Naruto's fights alongside Sasuke against Momoshiki as the highlights of the film and asked that the film's staff pay close attention to those sequences. Two other scenes written by the staff which surprised Kishimoto were Sasuke's use of one of his taijutsu moves and the combination of his Susanoo technique and Naruto's recreation of the Nine-Tailed Fox. Studio: Pierrot. Another relationship the novelist Jun Esaka wanted to explore was the one Sasuke has with his wife in Sasuke Retsuden most notably in the manga adaptation where liked the focus on romance.
Design
Kishimoto regarded Sasuke as his most memorable character design because he was developed as Naruto's opposite. He said the design of Sasuke and his ability were influenced by the character Hiei in Yoshihiro Togashi's manga series, YuYu Hakusho. Sasuke originally had necklaces and ties around his arms and legs because Kishimoto had a habit of giving characters as much ornamentation as possible; realizing he could not draw such a complex character on a weekly basis, Kishimoto simplified the design to a basic contrast with Naruto's costume. The – one of Sasuke and Kakashi Hatake's best-known fighting techniques – originally had a different name that Kishimoto forgot. He found the name "Chidori" and its variant, the "Lightning Blade", appropriate.
Kishimoto considered Sasuke his most challenging character to design and draw. He lacked a clear idea of how his face should look, saying Sasuke seemed older than Naruto, his contemporary, and felt this inconvenience was a result of his inexperience in drawing characters who were mature beyond their years. Sasuke's hair, originally short to save Kishimoto time, slowly grew longer as the series progressed. Mid-way through Part I, he drew a new costume for Sasuke with belts strapped around his arms and legs, but he returned to the character's original design because it took less time to draw. Sasuke is his favorite character to draw despite the time and energy required, and he compared Sasuke with Sakura in difficulty. Kishimoto's superiors sometimes asked him to redraw parts of the manga that did not illustrate Sasuke well.
Kishimoto's design focus for Part II was Sasuke's older appearance. Originally, Kishimoto had wanted to draw him as a more attractive person, but the idea was discarded. An outfit he initially planned combined the younger Sasuke's outfit with new, more modern clothes. Kishimoto tried several other looks, including the use of Shimenawa to evoke the antagonist Orochimaru, and a turtleneck and military uniform to connote cleanliness. He avoided the second option due to similarities with cold weather clothing and eventually chose Japanese clothing and a chokutō sword.
For The Last: Naruto the Movie, Kishimoto gave Sasuke a new, young-adult design with sharper facial features. In contrast with the older Naruto, who cut his hair, Sasuke's hairstyle grew longer to cover part of the character's face. In the original concept, the hair hid Sasuke's mysterious left eye – the . According to Kishimoto, he decided to give the character a large hood because Sasuke concealed his identity during the events of the film. Sasuke's design was specifically created to support his actions; the area that showed Sasuke had lost his left arm in the Naruto finale was also covered by his clothes.
Personality and voice actors
Sasuke is voiced by Noriaki Sugiyama in Japanese media. At the beginning of the anime's first part, Sugiyama had difficulty voicing Sasuke because he knew little about his personality; he began to understand the character at the point in the story where Sasuke encounters his brother, Itachi Uchiha. Sugiyama read the manga and became particularly interested in Sasuke's development when the character left Konohagakure; he wanted to revoice some scenes from the anime, including Sasuke's departure from Konohagakure. In Behind the Scenes of Uchiha, a feature about Sasuke and Itachi's backstory, Sugiyama said he had become emotional during the recording sessions of the sixth season of the anime's second part (Naruto: Shippuden), in which Sasuke learns the truth about his brother's role in the massacre of the Uchiha clan.