Naruto’s Most Complex Character Isn't Who You Might Think (2024)

The Naruto anime excites fans with some wonderfully deep and complex characters, with notable examples including the likes of Itachi Uchiha the anti-villain and even Jiraiya the toad sage, not to mention the rivals Sasuke Uchiha and Naruto Uzumaki. Then there's the matter of Kakashi Hatake, who is not only a powerful and prominent Leaf ninja, but also one of the most complex characters in the anime.

As a character, it's easy to take Kakashi for granted in the Naruto anime. The sheer complexity and layers of his character are sometimes overlooked. In terms of jutsu, his role in the story, and his mental state, Kakashi Hatake is all over the place, creating a multi-faceted character who isn't easy to pin down.

Kakashi Hatake is a Ninjutsu Polymath

He Represents the Entire Combat System on His Own

Not only is Kakashi Hatake a complex character on a personal level, he is also multi-facted in his fighting style. In fact, fans might call him a ninjutsu polymath, using a bit of everything that defines the Naruto combat system. Kakashi has been seen using almost every type of jutsu or weapon there is, starting with basics like Substitution jutsu and simple taijutsu, and before long, he was using the Sharingan. As he copied Zabuza Momochi's water release jutsu in the earliest arcs, fans came to understand how Kakashi became famous as the "copy ninja."

Able to copy 1,000 different jutsu with his Sharingan eye, it was a rarity for him to prove this ability on screen, but everyone in the ninja world knew it for a fact. In Naruto Shippuden, Kakashi upped the ante yet again by developing the Mangekyo Sharingan. Because of his connection to Obito Uchiha through the Sharingan, both of them awakened this ability at the same time, after witnessing Rin's death at Kakashi's hand. The Mangekyo Sharingan granted him similar abilities to Obito, like Kamui, though Kakashi could only use it in a limited capacity. He also eventually gained the ability to make his own Susano'o late in the series, complete with a brand-new weapon for fighting Kaguya Otsutsuki.

Kakashi was an expert in many areas, including taijutsu, genjutsu, battle strategy, and the use of pack tactics with his ninja dogs, or ninken. He was the first Naruto character seen using the summoning jutsu on-screen. And, much to Naruto's surprise, Kakashi was also capable of using the Rasengan, having learned it as a student of Minato Namikaze, Naruto's father and the Fourth Hokage.

Such an immense range of abilities and tactics clearly mark Kakashi as a genius, and Naruto himself commented on it when taking part in the second bell test. Naruto stated that Kakashi had better tactics than Shikamaru and better taijutsu than Rock Lee, and he could even use the Sharingan as well as Sasuke. When blending all this together, Kakashi became an entire team in one, making him one of the strongest Naruto characters and certainly one of the most diverse on the battlefield.

That not only makes Kakashi rather complex, but it also makes him an effective foil to the many Naruto characters pigeon-holed by their techniques. Plenty of shinobi are one-trick ponies, due to either their kekkei genkai techniques or their clan's hidden jutsu, with examples including Kankuro's use of puppets, Shino Aburame's use of insects, Neji's reliance on the Byakugan, and Might Guy's near-exclusive use of taijutsu. Such characters are a great way to show off how rich and deep the combat system is, but not every ninja should feel like a clear-cut example one particular style works. Naturally, that anime world will have geniuses like Kakashi, who resourcefully use a little of each different technique. Kakashi makes it seem so easy.

Kakashi's Goofy, Mysterious Persona Hides His Deep-Seated Pain

He Accepted His Losses But Never Let Them Change Him

Kakashi Hatake's character is truly deep on a personal level, often in bizarre or mysterious ways. When he was first introduced in Naruto's earliest episodes, he seemed peculiar and absent-minded, leading Sakura to wonder if her new jonin mentor was even reliable enough to be Team 7's leader. Sakura's and Sasuke's doubts only deepened when Kakashi acted casual and whimsical, even using crude taijutsu during the bell test and reading erotic books in the middle of that session. The goofiness continued from there, with Kakashi making nonsensical excuses for why he showed up late for every single team meeting.

Piece by piece, the grim truth of Kakashi's inner turmoil began to unravel before viewers. Suffering a great burden of grief and loss, Kakashi lost nearly everyone he ever cared about. While little is known about his mother beyond her obvious absence from Kakashi's backstory, his father Sakumo was once a great shinobi who faced disgrace for valuing his teammates and friends over duty. Sakumo took his own life, and it was Kakashi who discovered the body. Bitterly, he vowed to never waver from the path of duty as a shinobi, but that vow would soon turn to ash on his tongue.

During the Third Shinobi War, Kakashi watched his friend Obito seemingly die beneath a crushed boulder. To make matters worse, Obito and Kakashi's teammate, Rin, was kidnapped and forced into becoming a host for the three-tailed beast. Not wanting the beast to overtake her, she begged Kakashi to killer her, and for years after he lived with nightmares and the constant reminder of her blood on his hands. His own sensei, Minato Namikaze, died a hero fighting Kurama, leaving him alone in a world that didn't make much sense at all.

The suffering he endured made Kakashi the right person to lecture Sasuke about dealing with grief and hardship when Sasuke contemplated leaving the Leaf Village to find enough power to face Itachi. As Kakashi put it, everyone he ever cared about was dead, so he knew better than most what Sasuke was going through. Most critically, all that meant Kakashi had enormous emotional strength and resilience to endure all those agonizing losses without ever losing himself in the process.

Though Kakashi internalized his darkness and grief for a time, Might Guy saw what he was going through and refused to let him slip into despair. It took time and plenty of Guy's relentless encouragement, but in time he drew Kakashi out of his darkness and helped him walk in the light again. Despite denying multiple teams along the way, Kakashi warmly accepted Team 7 once they proved themselves. Kakashi had seen the darkest side of being a shinobi, while still embodying the best parts of it. He reconciled those two extremes and never even gave away that inner conflict, presenting himself as a carefree jonin who didn't take life very seriously at all.

Kakashi Hatake Reconciled Duty and Friendship in His Mind

He Didn't Have to Sacrifice One For the Other

The last major factor in Kakashi's complex character design concerns the ever-present power of friendship in shonen anime. Kakashi's true personality was buried under a cold, emotionless exterior following his father Sakumo's death, with Kakashi being outraged that his father had prioritized friendship over the mission and disgraced himself in the process. To protect himself and avoid repeating his father's apparent mistake, Kakashi forced himself to believe that duty came above all, and that friends were not necessary for a shinobi. Interestingly enough, this attitude was exactly what the traditional ninja code called for, a code that described ninjas as emotionally detached tools for their clients to wield.

Kakashi kept up that attitude as he joined his new team alongside Rin and Obito, which brought him into conflict with his idealistic, friend-oriented teammate Obito. While Kakashi said that those who abandon the mission are trash, Obito insisted that those who abandoned their friends were even lower than that, and Kakashi didn't believe those words at first. When Obito seemingly died in the Kakashi Gaiden arc and Rin died at Kakashi's hands, Kakashi had a total change of heart. He embraced Obito's ideals about friendship without abandoning his sense of duty, reconciling those two ideals to become a practical, emotionally balanced shinobi. Suffering personal losses caused Kakashi to both accept and reject the idea that the mission came before friendship, which no doubt confused him for a time.

By the present day, when Naruto joined Team 7, Kakashi had achieved inner peace, being a highly dutiful but also sympathetic jonin who had the heartfelt idealism of Naruto Uzumaki and an impeccable sense of duty that sharpened the power of friendship into a keen edge. That made Kakashi the deepest and most ideal mentor for Naruto Uzumaki, because if Kakashi were mission-only, that would have brought conflict between them, and if Kakashi was friendship-only, the erratic Naruto never would have learned how to be brave and focused in the line of duty. Kakashi blended those two sides into a form of tough love that produced stellar results, a deeper teaching method than anything other jonin like Ebisu or Might Guy ever could have taught the impressionable Naruto Uzumaki.

Naruto

TV-PG

Action

Adventure

Naruto Uzumaki, a mischievous adolescent ninja, struggles as he searches for recognition and dreams of becoming the Hokage, the village's leader and strongest ninja.

Release Date

September 10, 2002

Cast

Junko Takeuchi , Maile Flanagan , Kate Higgins

Main Genre

Anime

Seasons

1

Creator

Masashi Kishimoto

Production Company

Pierrot, Staralis Film Company

Number of Episodes

220