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Naruto: Katsuyu’s Strangest And Strongest Summon

Naruto is perhaps one of the most popular shounen Ani-Manga (Manga with popular Anime adaptation) there is, tied with the likes of Hunter X Hunter and Dragon Ball.

It takes us through the life of Naruto Uzumaki, whos a ninja, with a particular lack of talent and skill in Ninjutsu (Elemental attacks powered by chakra).

Think of Ninjutsu as the power system for the Naruto world, In a similar way to Nen in Hunter X Hunter.

Perhaps one of the reasons for its massive success is because of very unique and creative power System.

I mean with Chakra and Ninjutsu, you could do things as meager as cloning yourself or stuff as crazy as dropping entire meteors and changing up the entire landscape of an area.

Summoning Jutsu is yet another form of Ninjutsu. This Jutsu enables the user to summon or teleport an animal or creature of their liking, that they have signed contracts with (I suppose the closest example would be something like a familiar in witchcraft).

Note that these summonses are sentient and their strengths are completely dependent on themselves instead of the summoner. The strongest summoner could summon the weakest summon and vice versa.

Katsuyu is yet another very popular and powerful summons. So let’s go over her busted abilities and background.

What is the background of Naruto?

The Nine-Tails raided Konohagakure twelve years before the story began, devastating most of the village and claiming countless lives.

The village’s leader, the Fourth Hokage, gave his life to seal the Nine-Tails inside a baby, Naruto Uzumaki. Naruto, orphaned by the incident, was shunned by the locals, who mistook him for the Nine-Tails out of fear and hatred. Since the Third Hokage forbade discussing anything related to the Nine-Tails, the children acquired the same anger against Naruto from their parents.

In his desire to be recognized, Naruto swore to become the greatest Hokage the village had ever seen.

Katsuyu

Summoning Katsuyu in Naruto
Katsuyu, a slug-like beast of unfathomable size, is an animal summon.

Appearance and Background

Katsuyu is an animal summon, who’s a slug-like creature of incomprehensible size. The actual creature resides in the magical and fabled Shikkotsu Forest. Katsuyu serves as the personal summoning of the Fifth Hokage Tsunade and her apprentice Sakura Haruno.

The summoned piece of Katsuyu is approximately as tall as the tallest structure in Konoha.

In reality, unlike other summonses, which can be many and vary in size, Sakura and Tsunade’s summoned slugs are all parts of the same creature, who’s so large that it can actually be summoned as a whole.

Tsunade has stated that even if She and Sakura were to combine all of their chakras to summon Katusyu, they would only be able to summon 1/10th of the actual Katsuy who resides in the Shikkotsu Forest, bear in mind, A summoned Katsuyu smaller during the 4th war easily dwarfed neighboring mountains.

So yeah, Even the combined likes of Sakura and Tsunade (both of whom are monstrous in terms of Chakra reserves and strength) can’t even summon more than 10% of Katsuyu at a single time.

It is mostly white in appearance, with three blue streaks running vertically across the center and sides of its body from its head to its tail. It possesses two sensing tendrils on either side of its mouth, as well as two optical tentacles with a little grey tinge to them.

Alright we get it, she’s incomprehensibly large and slightly frightening, but why is she one of the strongest summons?

Summon NameKatsuyu
Creature TypeGigantic Slug
Known SummonersTsunade and Sakura
SizeUnknown
Everything you should know about Katsuyu.

Abilities

Let’s get one thing clear, Katsuyu might be one of the weakest summonses when it comes to offensive capabilities, which she has none of except for a few.

Where she truly dominates however is her defensive, supportive, and healing capabilities, and I’ll break them down in a bit.

Offensive Abilities

Katsuyu's acid Jutsu
She has the power to instantaneously disintegrate into smaller pieces using her acid.

Katsuyu can spew acid utilizing her Tongue Tooth Sticky Acid Jutsu, which is powerful and corrosive enough to melt through an entire boulder. Imagine what it would do to you.

Katsuyu, using its Slug Great Division, may separate itself into tiny clones to dodge assaults or fulfill small-scale purposes, and can rapidly reconstruct itself if necessary.

That’s about it for her offensive capabilities. I know, seems sort of underwhelming considering how she’s regarded as one of the strongest summonses.

But with her acid and her ability to instantly break down into smaller versions and be able to reconstruct herself equally as fast, she was able to compete with Orochimaru’s personal summon Manda, a huge snake.

He’s also a very dominant offensive summon, which further accentuates her offensive abilities.

Defensive and Supportive Capabilities

Now let’s get onto her defensive prowess, this is where she truly shines.

Cloning and Duplication

As aforementioned Katsuyu also has the ability to divide her large body into several thousands of tiny versions of herself. All of these versions are individually sentient as well as connected in a sort of hive-mind system. Which is quite broken if you think about it.

Katsuyu’s clones may attach themselves to injured or incapacitated people, allowing the summoner to channel chakra via it to heal the victim.

This works as the summoner for Katsuyu (Tsunade and Sakura) both possessing healing Jutsus. Let me make you realize the boost this would provide for an army.

Katsuyu’s clones may also telepathically transmit information with one another, allowing the slug to fulfill other functions when separated, such as gathering and distributing information and orders.

Think of her as a massive walkie-talkie, a clone can be attached to a person thousands of kilometers away and you’d be able to converse with that person as well as be aware of their situation.

Imagine having to fight an army, whose soldiers could easily and quickly recover from mortal wounds (due to Katsuyus clones) as well as the soldiers being aware of the enemy’s positions and tactics. Hence why this ability is busted as a support ability.

Katsuyu could also rejoin Tsunade’s bisected body, yes Katsuyu healed her summoner who was split in half albeit owing to Tsunade’s weakness, the procedure took a long time since Katsuyu needed help bringing the two parts of her body together before Katsuyu could rejoin her.

Furthermore, as demonstrated during Pain’s assault, Katsuyu is very immune to injury owing to her genetic and physical constitution. I mean it’s a slug that can replicate and heal itself nigh infinitely as well as be able to consistently change its shape, how do you even expect to hurt it?

So it’s borderline unkillable.

Katsuyu may also wrap humans inside its body to shield them from physical damage, similar to the large-scale Shinra Tensei, or place them in stasis to avoid death. Yet another broken support ability.

Katsuyu's clones healing an injured shinobi
Katsuyu’s clones heal an injured shinobi.

Why is Katsuyu so strange?

Besides being one of the few summonses which are more defensive than oppressive, she’s only one of the only known summons, whose strength is directly tied to its summoner. More precisely, her strength is directly proportional to the potency of the summoners’ Hundred Healing Jutsu (A healing Jutsu).

As a result, when Tsunade summoned the slug in her debilitated state during the Fourth Shinobi World War, the healing was sluggish since Katsuyu was multi-tasking and Tsunade’s chakra supplies were severely low.

The fifth Hokage, Katsuyu’s summoner

What is the weakness of Katsuyu?

Bacteria and poison is Katusuyu’s greatest weakness.

Katsuyu is an unknown size object. The slug summoned in the Narutoverse is never her full size because the user can only call a fraction of her based on the chakra put into the summoning, and no one has ever had enough chakra to summon her entire being.

The greatest real threat to her is bacteria or possibly a parasite or poison, as those things can be brought back to her whole being and kill her true self; however, poison would be diluted by being brought back to her whole being and might not be enough to kill her once diluted, while parasites might simply be too small.

Conclusion

  • Summoning Jutsu is yet another form of Ninjutsu, This Jutsu enables the user to summon or teleport an animal or creature of their liking, that they have signed contracts with.
  • Katsuyu is an animal summon, who’s a slug-like creature of incomprehensible size, The actual creature resides in the magical and fabled Shikkotsu Forest.
  • Katsuyu serves as the personal summoning of the Fifth Hokage Tsunade and her apprentice Sakura Haruno.
  • Katsuyu can spew acid utilizing her Tongue Tooth Sticky Acid Justu, which is powerful and corrosive enough to melt through an entire boulder. Imagine what It would do to you.
  • Katsuyu’s clones may attach themselves to injured or incapacitated people, allowing the summoner to channel chakra via it to heal the victim. This works as the summoner for Katsuyu (Tsunade and Sakura) both possessing healing Jutsus.

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