The Naruto has earned a level of fan devotion rarely seen in anime – or any other genre for that matter. Since beginning in 1997, the various installments of Masashi Kishimoto’s epic ninja saga (Naruto, Naruto: Shippuden, Boruto) have established a world and mythos that has only gotten deeper and richer as it’s unfolded. By now, 22 years later, there is so much Naruto iconography and lore that fans keep finding new and more inventive (and/or crazy) ways to celebrate and honor it. Case in point: one Naruto fan has taken the titular character’s torment infamous seal and made it a permanent part of his own body!
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Check out this epic Naruto Eight Sign Seal Tattoo:
If that is not an example of true fandom, we don’t know what is!
Naruto fans of course know that the Eight Sign Seal Tattoo was used by the Uzumaki Clan to seal the Nine-Tails into Naruto’s body. The purpose of the seal is to coerce the jinchuriki and tailed beast into a sort of symbiosis. The way the seal works, the more chakra that a tailed beast donates to its jinchuriki, the weaker the seal becomes; therefore, if the beast and human host establish a free exchange of chakra, the seal no longer becomes necessary.
Recent episodes of the Boruto anime brought the Eight Sign Seal back into focus. When Boruto and Sasuke traveled back into the past during Naruto’s youth (in the period between Naruto and Naruto: Shippuden), Boruto learned that his father’s experience growing up with Nine-Tails inside of him was much more harrowing than he ever imagined. In fact, during a battle with Urashiki Otsutsuki, Naruto’s seal failed for a moment, and Nine-Tails took control of his host. Naruto ended up injuring Boruto to the point that Boruto feared his father afterward. Eventually Boruto had to accept who Naruto really was and has been all this time, with new respect for the literal monster his father holds at bay.
….However, as you will see in the discussion thread, this man’s Eight Sign Seal tattoo may backfire in the sense that Naruto fans are already making jokes about his monster poops!
Originally created by Masashi Kishimoto for Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump in 1999, Naruto follows a young ninja, with a sealed demon within him, that wishes to become the leader of his home village. The series ran for 700 chapters overall, and was adapted into an anime series by Studio Pierrot and Aniplex that ran from 2002 to 2017. The series was popular enough to warrant a sequel, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations which is set several years after the events of the original Naruto story and features the children of many of its key characters such as Naruto and Hinata.
