Out of all the notable and very memorable characters in the Naruto story line Orochimaru stands out as one of the most complicated and compelling. His back story in both the manga and the anime is about as twisted as any villain and has managed to capture the attention of many a fan. In some ways he’s the perfect antagonist. His story is tragic, interesting, and therefore worthy of many people’s interest since it becomes a point of pride for many people to research and know as much about him as possible so that they don’t feel that they’re missing out. What is typically found however is that Orochimaru has taken his tragic life and used it to manipulate and destroy those in his path and use any means possible to achieve the dreams he has of becoming an immortal. He’s not what you would call an open book since much of what and who he is remains left to interpretation and raises more questions than answers. But he is without any doubt one of the most interesting characters in this story.
Here are a few things some folks might not have known about him.
10. Out of the three Sannin he’s the strongest.
Being that he was teamed with two other very powerful ninjas it’s easy to overlook just how strong he really was and that he managed to utilize the summoning jutsu before the other two. But in terms of power Orochimaru is in fact quite a bit stronger than his teammates.
9. He worked directly under Danzo.
You can easily imagine that someone such as Orochimaru, who is ambitious enough to want to become hokage, would work under a man that was a direct link to that kind of power and learn everything he could from him.
8. He’s the only one of the Sannin that has children.
There are a few interesting things about this, such as the fact that Mistuki is a clone of his father and not created naturally. It’s also surmised that Mitsuki is genetically superior to his father in many ways and more skilled.
7. It was believed that he was a prodigy.
The one thing that many people don’t seem to realize about prodigies is that they can go either way when it comes to good or evil. Orochimaru did in fact prove that he was highly skilled and advanced far quicker than many of those in his age group, but his ambitions tended to lean more to a darker path than anyone would have guessed.
6. His name is taken from Japanese folklore.
A great deal of similarity went into the making of Orochimaru since the name does come from actually Japanese mythology and does correlate with the character. In many ways a great number of civilizations have inspired a lot of different stories that are currently among the most popular throughout the world.
5. His creation was meant to be the opposite of the protagonists.
Every hero need an enemy, an antithesis in other words to make the story engaging and show the constant struggle between good and evil. Orochimaru was meant to be evil from the beginning and also paint a tragic picture of a man that was shown to embrace the dark rather than be pushed towards it.
4. At one point he built his own village.
The interesting thing about this is that he built the village to lure ninjas so that he could learn more about their styles and then copy them. The whole idea that he created a village all on his own however is quite impressive since it details just how powerful he really is.
3. In the English version his intro is different.
The English version seems to be kind of pointless since it introduces him in a way that doesn’t take anything from the original or add to it, but instead just makes it a little more obvious who and what he is. In many ways translation tends to get garbled sometimes and not make as much sense.
2. He shares the same blood type as his former teammates.
This doesn’t mean that they’re related in any way, but they do share the same type of blood and therefore it’s been used to suggest a bond between them that is less than familial and more than just being mere teammates.
1. After his preliminaries he stopped wearing his headband.
The headbands you see the characters wearing are a mark of the village they belong to and most of them will continue to wear them throughout the show. Orochimaru however took his off after the preliminaries and there wasn’t a whole lot of explanation given as to why.
With every hero there needs to be a villain simply because the law of opposites demands it to be so, especially in media. With Orochimaru it seems fair to state that the creators hit the mark on the head when they were thinking of an opposite for the main hero.
Follow Us
