Neji Hyuga
' is a fictional character in the anime and manga series Naruto''.
A Genin at the start of the series, Neji Hyuga is the #1 rookie of his Ninja Academy graduating class during the first several volumes of the manga. He is also considered to be the strongest and most talented of all the Konoha Genin who attended the
Chunin exam during that arc, and is the first of them to become a
Jonin. Neji has a very powerful long-range defense in the form of the
Eight Trigram Palms Heavenly Spin, which is normally only passed down within the Hyuga main house. Neji taught himself the technique. He also has a deadly short-range offense in his natural proficiency in Konoha's strongest taijutsu style,
Juken (Gentle Fist). To augment his short-range offense, Neji uses the
Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms maneuver (in the anime, he also uses
Eight Trigrams One Hundred Twenty-Eight Palms), which effectively seals off a person's chakra points, rendering them completely unable to channel any chakra.
Neji is in the same
Genin team as
Rock Lee,
Tenten and their
Jonin sensei
Might Guy. Neji and Lee have a long-ongoing rivalry, which, not unlike the rivalry between Guy and
Kakashi, mostly comes from Lee's side. Lee, who has been fighting against his fate as a worthless shinobi all his life, tries desperately to prove himself to the world in general and Neji in particular. Neji has mocked Lee's dream of becoming a fine shinobi in the past, saying one cannot go against fate, but after Neji's defeat by Naruto, he seems to have warmed up to Lee. Tenten is often seen sparring with Neji, which usually consists of Tenten honing her skill with throwing weapons and Neji deflecting the weapons with his Hakkesho Kaiten. The two of them are often equally annoyed with Lee and Guy's overreacting and childish behavior, but are similarly equally dedicated to fighting for their teammates. Despite his rank, Neji still goes out on missions with his team.
Despite his mastery of Juken and Byakugan, Neji can never be the leader of his clan because he is a member of a branch house, his father,
Hizashi Hyuga, having been born into the world after his uncle,
Hiashi Hyuga, even though they were twins. In his childhood, Neji had nothing against the main family as he was probably too young to fully understand the implications of being a branch family member, but as he grew up seeing his father feeling nothing but hatred for his own brother and the main family, he gradually came to resent it himself. His resentment only deepened as he witnessed his father enraged first hand while watching
Hinata Hyuga, Hiashi's elder daughter and then the destined Hyuga main family heir, train with her father; for he knew that his own son, Neji, will never be the heir of his clan. Detecting Hizashi's vibes of animosity, Hiashi activated the
cursed seal, putting his brother in immense pain as his nerves were being attacked. It was Neji's first encounter with the Hyuga Curse Seal.
It was not until the incident with
Kumogakure (Hidden Cloud)'s and
Konohagakure (Hidden Leaf)'s peace treaty, however, that Neji truly became who he was when he showed up for the Chunin exams. The two villages, which were at war with one another, apparently decided to sign a treaty, and for this representatives from Kumogakure arrived. On the same day, the very same curse seal that tortured his father was put upon Neji himself; and that night, the ambassador from the Lightning country attempted to kidnap Hinata, revealing that the intention of the "treaty" was all along to get into the Fire country and acquire the secret of Byakugan. Hiashi detected the intruder and killed him at once, for which Kumogakure, absurdly, requested payback in the form of Hiashi's dead body. That day, Neji's father was sent to his death instead of Hiashi, and Neji grew up believing that his father was sent against his will to protect the Hyuga clan's secret bloodline (he later discovers that this was not in fact the case; see below).
This chain of events drove him to the point of believing that a person's future is decided from birth and that there was no way to escape or change destiny, making him a particularly bitter, cynical and arrogant character with a spiteful grudge against the main house, making him the mean, evil, and heartless Hyuga he is considered to be by many of the manga/show's fans. He has strong opinions that cannot all be proven. One example is when he was fighting his cousin, Hinata Hyuga, in the Chunin exams, for he kept insisting that "Fate cannot be changed" and that Hinata was meant to be weak.
Chunin Exam arc
The calm, stoic image Neji presents breaks rather violently with pent-up hatred in the chunin exam third stage preliminaries, when he is randomly chosen to be Hinata's opponent. Despite knowing full well that he could win by simply getting to the fight, as he is clearly stronger than her, Neji opts to mentally attack and unbalance her, telling her that she is a harmony-seeking person not fit to be a shinobi, and that he can see that she wants nothing more than to be somewhere else; when she stutters that this is not true, and that she entered the exam because she wanted to change herself, Neji concludes that she is truly a spoiled child of the main family, believing in such absurdities, and gives her a stern speech of
fatalism about how people cannot change, bringing her to the verge of tears.
In doing so, however, he terribly enrages
Naruto Uzumaki who had sympathy for Hinata as it was, and is probably the last person who will stand aside while somebody else carries speeches on how dropouts remain dropouts. Naruto interrupts his speech by yelling for her to stand up for herself and this actually gives her the willpower to do just that, something Neji definitely did not fathom was a possibility. Even though he is far stronger than Hinata and manages to knock her out again and again, she refuses to give up and carries on fighting, and Neji, though still in a superior position, starts sweating as people who fight against their "fate" do not fit into his world-view. When Hinata actually dares to tell him that he is in fact the one suffering at the hands of fate, and trying with all his might to fight against it, he nearly kills her in a fit of rage, but is stopped at the last moment by the Jonin that were in attendance.
Neji further calls both Hinata and Naruto dropouts subsequently after the fight, and this is the bursting point for Naruto who runs toward Neji to attack him, only to be prevented by
Rock Lee who reasons that even a dropout can defeat a genius with enough training, but it has to happen in a proper fight. Naruto grudgingly accepts this, but is still so outraged that he swears on Hinata's spilled blood that he will defeat Neji in battle. A month afterwards when Naruto and Neji actually engage in battle in the third stage main event, Naruto continuously confronts Neji about his attitude and the way he treated Hinata, until Neji decides that if he cares so much, he will share the sad story of his twin father and uncle. While Naruto is shocked at the tragedy, he refuses to acknowledge it as an excuse for how Neji is acting, and berates him for his hypocrisy, going on about fate but defying his in a twisted way, almost killing Hinata while as a Hyuga branch family member it is his duty to protect her. Though Neji manages to block Naruto's tenketsu completely, Naruto harnesses the power of
Kyubi by reflecting on his promise and the ideals he is fighting for. With the power of the Kyubi, Naruto is able to overpower Neji, and just before a final, booming clash between his revitalized self and Kaiten he recalls Neji's various disheartening speeches, yelling back at him, "I don't know about the Hyuga fate of hatred, but... if you think it's impossible, then don't do anything! After I become Hokage... I'll change the Hyuga for you!"
After the smoke clears from quite powerful explosion that follows, Neji is finally seen standing up while the unconscious form of Naruto lies in a nearby small crater. Thinking he had won, Neji turns off his Byakugan and starts on yet another speech, but is interrupted by the real Naruto - the unconscious Naruto having been a clone - lunging out of a tunnel that he dug in the ground, almost knocking Neji out with a powerful uppercut. His hands dripping blood (his own this time, from digging the hole) and having won the fight, Naruto chooses to appeal to Neji in hopes of reforming his bleak outlook on life somewhat. To Neji's comment that he was careless, losing to a Shadow Clone - Naruto's favorite technique - Naruto replies by telling Neji that he has failed the Academy graduation exam three times because the exam was always based on the technique he was worst at, and after a short pause reveals that the move was the the regular clone technique, the upgraded version of which he just used to win (in direct defiance of Neji's assertions that one's talents and skills are set from birth). While Neji lies on the ground
Shiranui Genma tells him, "When a bird trapped in a cage grows wiser, they will try to open the cage with their beaks. They don't give up because they want to fly again". This is relevant to Neji who sees himself as a bird trapped in a cage by the fate of the Hyuga clan. Throughout the series Neji sees birds flying free, imagining he could be like them.
After this fight, Hiashi - Neji's uncle - decides to finally tell Neji the truth of Hizashi's death. Hizashi was never sacrificed after all; he volunteered to die as an act of defying his fate, by dying not as a member of a branch house for the sake of the main house but as a Hyuga, for the sake of his brother and family. Neji refuses to believe this at first but then he sees Hiashi on the floor bowing. He turns away, tears streaming down his face and smiling.
After Hiashi leaves, Neji is left looking out of the room's window, wondering about the nature of fate and the legacy of his father. He reaches a turning point as he starts to finally accept what people can change, after all, and even birds in cages that try hard enough can break free and soar the skies again.
Neji's defeat to Naruto and Naruto's words are able to help Neji see the light that destiny is capable of being changed, and they become good friends from that point on. Neji may never admit it, but he is thankful for Naruto showing him a brighter part of life.
Kishimoto Masashi says:
Sasuke Retrieval arc
Some time later in the series, the reformed Neji joins
Shikamaru Nara's squad (consisting of
Naruto Uzumaki,
Kiba Inuzuka,
Choji Akimichi and later also
Rock Lee and
Gaara,
Kankuro and
Temari who arrive just in the nick of time to bail out various members of Shikamaru's squad who are in dire straits) on the failed mission to prevent
Sasuke Uchiha from crossing over
Land of Fire's borders and into the
Land of Sound and
Orochimaru's control. He confronts
Kidomaru of the
Sound Four, risking his life for the sake of his comrades, sustaining critical injuries and at one point coming inches from death, surviving only thanks to treatment by a medical-nin team that is promptly dispatched. During the fight against Kidomaru he feels for once how it is to be on the hopelessly disadvantaged side while your opponent taunts and mocks your hopeless predicament, as he has done to Lee, Hinata, and Naruto. Much like they did when up against his former, bitter self, Neji refuses to give up and fights with feverish determination; and this is what enables him to emerge victorious in the end. Neji reveals to Kidomaru that there is a specific reason that he cannot lose. Referring back to Naruto's last words to him after beating him at the Chunin exam, "Unlike me, you're not a loser" meaning that Neji shouldn't complain about his fate because truth be told, he was born excellent. Neji takes those words as inspiration declaring that he cannot lose because since he has always been called a genius, there are people who rely on him as a genius, and he can't let them down. Neji then reveals that if anyone can save Sasuke from the darkness, it's Naruto, for Naruto also saved him from the darkness.
At the epilogue of the first part of the manga and anime, Neji is shown having friendly conversation with Hinata and training with Hiashi, and they later all have tea together, symbolizing that the internally bleeding Hyuga clan seems to finally be coming to terms with one-another.
Neji makes a number of appearances in the filler arcs that end the first part of the Naruto Anime.
He appears in the Raiga Story Arc, Bird Country Story Arc, and the Star Village in Bear Country story arc. He and Naruto seem to get along very well in these story arcs, though they tend to argue from time to time. Overall, he does treat Naruto and his teammates better. They usually work well together when they are fighting opponents, and they usually end up winning.
New Personality
|
Neji's appearance in Naruto II |
Neji's personality has changed a great deal after the timeskip (mostly due to Naruto's influence). He has changed his jacket in favor of traditional Hyuga robes and has grown his hair even longer than it already was. Neji is still a very serious person, but he seems to be somewhat more cheerful. He no longer has a pessimistic attitude that his fate cannot be changed, and he seems to encourage his teammates to a certain extent. Neji seems to care more about his teammates than he did before, and he seems to have developed a stronger bond with them. Neji also seems to be more willing to use teamwork in battle, rather than always fight alone.
New Abilities
Two and a half years later, Team Guy - including Neji - is sent as backup for Naruto, Sakura and Kakashi on a mission to rescue Gaara from the hands of the criminal organization Akatsuki. Neji has become a jonin, and has learned at least one new technique:
Eight Trigrams Empty Palm.
* According to the official databooks, Neji's hobby is meditation.
* Neji is the only known Hyuga clan member whose first name does not start with a kana from the
Ha-gyÅ (
ha (ãƒ),
hi (ãƒ'),
fu (フ),
he (ヘ), or
ho (ホ)), like Hiashi, Hanabi, Hinata, and Hizashi.
* His name means "Screw", "Spiral", or "Helix", which probably refers to his Kaiten (Heavenly Spin) technique.
* In the databooks, Neji is the strongest of the Konoha Genin with extremely impressive Taijutsu, as well as speed and stamina, all rating above 3/5, an incredible number for a 13-year old, and thus showing why he is a "genius."
* In the original Japanese manga, Neji's seal is in the shape of a Buddhist
Manji (å). However, in the anime and English manga, it was altered to an "X" because of its resemblance to the Nazi "Hooked Cross"
swastika.
* During the filler arc Neji seems much kinder, showing that he is starting to change from his old ways. This emphasizes the changes in his character that become more apparent in Naruto II.
* In episode 195, Neji is seen along with Tenten wearing one of Guy's trademark spandex suits. The scene is a "What if?" scenario which never took place because of Lee's obvious excitement about getting the suit. Both are rather thankful he was there.
* In Shonen Jump's annual character popularity polls, Neji often ranks in the Top 10, usually in the 6th-8th range.
*As with all the konoha teams, Neji's teams all share a smiliar trait. They all have some aspect of chinese fighters. Tenten's design is overtly chinese, Rock Lee's resemblence to Bruce Lee and Neji's techniques have Chinese aspects in them.
