One of Naruto’s famous sayings was “Real strength is not what you have when fighting for only yourself. When you have something special that you want to protect, only then can you become truly strong!” (Lina, 2015). This is one of Naruto Uzumaki’s famous inspirational quotes throughout the Japanese series Naruto, Naruto Shippuden, and Boruto. During the series of Naruto and Naruto Shippuden, Naruto Uzumaki ends up fighting his way to the top, achieving his goal, and becoming known as the seventh Hokage. Naruto and Naruto Shippuden are about a ninja named Naruto Uzumaki who goes on several missions with his friends and mentor and has grown throughout the series becoming a very powerful ninja through training and battles. Naruto Uzumaki proves to have gone through several character developments and has grown overall throughout the series. Naruto has shown his growth throughout the series from a 12/13-year-old boy who is learning more about what he wants to become in the future and his abilities, to a 17-year-old teenager who is determined to become a strong-willed ninja and become the Hokage, to a ninja possessed by the nine-tailed fox, and finally to a teenage boy who finally learned to control his power and become known as the 7th Hokage.
In “Naruto”, the viewers are introduced to the protagonist who is named Naruto Uzumaki. In the beginning, Naruto Uzumaki was a kid who was reckless and caused trouble to the grown-ups not caring about the consequences. He is proven troublesome toward the grownups while he lived in the village. In the anime, Naruto has blonde hair that is spiky and blue eyes. He also has some form of whiskers on the sides of his face. He wore an orange jumpsuit and wore a pair of goggles on his head to substitute as a head protector that is given to shinobis when they pass a test in school. Throughout the series, Naruto is shown to be determined to become a shinobi and become the Hokage, but people do not believe he could live up to his dreams because he could not summon clones for the test and become a ninja. But through determination and his strong personality, he ends up proving everyone wrong and gets his headband which shows he is a shinobi. As said before, Naruto wore an orange jumpsuit where the orange could represent his enthusiasm and determination throughout the series. The blue that is on his shoulders could represent his confident, trustworthy, and loyal personality. As the series goes on, Naruto makes two friends who are introduced as the other main characters, Sasuke and Sakura, and the viewers can notice the difference between each character. But later in the series, as Sasuke Uchiha and Naruto started to become closer, Sasuke ends up leaving and betraying Naruto Uzumaki.
3 years later, Naruto comes back to the village, where he is welcomed back and reunited with his friends. The viewers can see the changes in Naruto’s new outfit and how he has matured and become wiser. Naruto Uzumaki’s new jumpsuit only contains two colors, black, and orange. As the viewers can see, the blue from his previous outfit was gone. This could symbolize Naruto’s lack of trust and faith. Since his best friend Sasuke Uchiha betrayed him, he feels that he was betrayed and lost his trust in his best friend. But he still has a strong-minded personality and is determined to get his friend back. This shows his determination through the color orange in his new outfit. But the black in his outfit portrays death and power. Throughout the Naruto Shippuden Series, Naruto goes through and experiences several deaths such as his mentor, Jiraiya who was one of his closest friends and teacher. But through those deaths, he became powerful and more determined to defeat the enemy. This shows how through his outfits people can notice how the colors are portrayed throughout the series and symbolize several meanings. But viewers can also see the similarities in Naruto throughout the series, such as how he is always dressed in jumpsuits and how he always wears orange and his headband. This can illustrate to the viewers how even though Naruto Uzumaki is growing up and becoming wiser and stronger, some parts of him will stay constant and symbolize how his determination is what made him stronger as he grew.
As Naruto continued to grow and become stronger, he trained to control his abilities of the nine-tailed fox which was imputed into his body for safekeeping and used as a weapon. As he grew stronger and started to control the nine-tailed fox’s power, he started to become more and more powerful. This proved to be hard for Naruto to control the nine-tailed fox’s power, which resulted in the nine-tailed fox using this to his advantage and using Naruto as a vessel to gain control of his body. Naruto was violent and aggressive toward others and started to harm others, even harming his best friend Sakura Huron. But that was not the last occurrence and he lost control of his emotions and the nine-tailed fox used Naruto again to show his hatred toward humankind for trapping him in a boy, aka Naruto Uzumaki. During a fight against an enemy known as pain, Naruto loses control again and transformed into the nine-tailed fox but only when he had 4 tails. The viewers can notice his drastic change to the nine-tailed fox. His appearance is red, and he has a red aura his eyes are wide and pure white, with no pupils, and his mouth is like the mouth of a scary Jack o’ lantern. This gives the audience scary and dangerous vibes from Naruto and shows how he is aggressive and fearful. The red could symbolize danger, anger, and power. Naruto lost control because of his friend who ended up being harmed which shows how he is angry, and the red can portray how that anger affected Naruto and caused him to lose control. As well as power, because in this form he shows great power and fights against the enemies using this power representing the strength of the nine-tailed fox’s power.
Later in the Naruto Shippuden series, Naruto trains and trains until he can control the power of the nine-tailed fox. He successfully learns to control the power of the nine-tailed fox and is introduced as Kurama and becomes friends with Naruto. When Naruto officially becomes friends with Kurama and helps Naruto become stronger and more powerful, a war starts between the Shinobi and the bad guy. This encourages Naruto to come and help his friends fight his newly founded power with the help of Kurama. He ends up inheriting a new appearance with his new abilities. He ends up being surrounded by an orange aura and engulfed by yellow and black symbols on his outfit. The yellow could represent intellect and power. Throughout the series, Naruto has proven to be a powerful person and helping others with that power and protecting his loved ones, and became known as a hero. And he has grown wiser and become more powerful and his outfits throughout the war have shown how powerful he did become and how much he has developed as a character. His yellow aura represents how he is still optimistic and his positive personality and how he was able to encourage people with his positive attitude. The yellow could also represent the friendship between his colleagues and his old best friend who is reunited with him again. This shows how much he developed as a character and is no longer the immature kid who is reckless and acts without thinking to a more mature and wiser adult who is strong-willed and more determined.
In conclusion, Naruto Uzumaki has proven to be a well-written protagonist that viewers enjoy watching. Naruto has represented Japanese values and through value representation, Naruto has represented current Japanese culture. For example, in “Naruto” and “Naruto Shippuden” manga and anime, woman is portrayed as strong individuals but mostly is there to support the main male characters (Harvey, 2019). Naruto has been part of Japanese pop culture for a long time even to this day, Naruto has been continuing as a big part of Japanese culture and expanded across the world. He has developed and started from the reckless kid who caused trouble, to an older kid learning how to become stronger and become a full-fledged ninja and the Hokage, to a kid who was losing control of his power, to someone who tamed his power and became the 7th Hokage and known as a hero. This shows how through visual representation he has shown his growth as the main character and continued to thrive even in the new series “Boruto” as the 7th Hokage and a parent.