'Naruto' Creator Shares His First Sasuke Sketch

If there is one thing Sasuke Uchiha liked, it is to be first. The manga legend is one of the leads [...]

If there is one thing Sasuke Uchiha liked, it is to be first. The manga legend is one of the leads in Naruto, and his surly disposition made him hotheaded whenever competition came into play. If there was a contest to be won, Sasuke would want to be in first, but the ninja may not feel be feeling that way right about now.

After all, fans just dug up the very first sketch of Sasuke by his creator, and Masashi Kishimoto penned some interesting notes about the moody character.

Over on social media, fans began passing around a long-forgotten sketch of Sasuke that Kishimoto released. The artwork was included in an early volume of Naruto, and as you can see below, a few things about Sasuke changed from conception to debut.

sasuke
(Photo: Shueisha)

For the most part, much of Sasuke's hair looks the same as it does in canon. Even his wide-collared shirt is the same, and his shorts don a similar bandage wrapping. In fact, the only difference between Sasuke's first and final design has to do with his necklace.

"This is the first image of Sasuke. It hasn't changed very much up to now. The only big difference is that he lost that thing around his neck. It's the same for all the characters, the more you draw them, the more you add more and more lines. You add accessories and such," the artist said, nodding to the design's main divergence. "With a main character, you get really excited and keep adding stuff. Afterwards I wondered, "Can I really have a character with so many lines in a weekly series?" So I reduced the amount of lines and made Sasuke's image closer to that of Naruto."

Continuing, Kishimoto opened up about why drawing Sasuke is such a challenge, and it all comes down to his unnaturally serious attitude.

"In my opinion, Sasuke's face and movements are the hardest to draw," Kishimoto wrote. "And if I'm not careful, his face ends up looking to adult. I've never had a child character with likes like that in any of my mangas, so it's very hard to draw."

Of course, fans can understand why Kishimoto would make note of Sasuke's adult personality. While the boy was cheerful at a young age, his persona changed drastically after his older brother Itachi murdered their entire clan. Sasuke was orphaned at a young age under the most traumatic of circumstances, and the sights he witnessed on that day prompted him to dedicated his life to getting revenge. With his mind focused on one goal, Sasuke grew up faster than all of his peers, and Kishimoto conveyed the boy's heart-wrenching backstory better and better with his design he debuted.

What do you think of this first character design? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics, k-pop, and anime!

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