There’s A Reason Why Naruto’s Rasengan Keeps Changing Colors

In the world of anime, there are loads of powerful characters who wield some very terrifying powers. Whether you’re watching Dragon Ball Z or Bleach, heroes like Goku and Ichigo are known for the ability to kick butt and wipe the floor with unassuming baddies. For many fans, one particularly knuckle-headed ninja ranks amongst the most powerful heroes in anime, and his signature move is none other than the Rasengan.

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You may think you know everything there is about the insanely powerful jutsu, but you may want to think again. The swirling vortex of chakra may look pretty, but did you know the jutsu isn’t as blue as you think?

If you have a close eye, then you may have noticed that Naruto’s rasengan tends to flip-flop between colors. In one scene, the wind-chakra attack may be blue, but it may have turned yellow in another frame. Of course, some may wondered if the shift had anything to do with the Kyubbi’s interference, but the hypothesis was busted. Naturally, fans were confounded by this discrepancy when The Last: Naruto the Movie debuted in 2015, but there is a rather simple answer for it all.

To put simply, Pierrot Studio took some creative license with the move.

In Masashi Kishimoto’s manga, Naruto has canonically yellow chakra. Chapter 91 had Naruto explain that if he were to put a color to his power, he’d “say that normally it’s yellow” but that changes when his chakra is affected by the Kyubbi. As such, when Naruto’s chakra manifests itself into a ball like it does with the rasengan, it looks yellow.

So, you might be wondering just what the anime studio elected to color the signature move differently from Kishimoto. While there is no official word on the matter, it seems likely that Pierrot made the switch to make quicker illustrations. In the art world, yellow can be notorious difficult to give shape, and the circular rasengan would be difficult to manipulate if it were yellow.

And, for you artists, then you likely know that television has a thing for pairing colors. Call is symmetry or superstition, but there are dozens of popular color tropes littered in anime, and the orange-and-blue pairing is one of them. Considering that Naruto wears an orange jumpsuit for the anime’s entirety, it’s not hard to see why Pierrot would choose a cool blue to compliment the uniform than a like-minded yellow.

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Have you ever noticed the color discrepancy before? Are there other parts of the Naruto anime that deviate from its manga? Let us know in the comments below!