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Minato creating his first ever successful Rasengan
Minato creating his first ever successful Rasengan (Image via Masashi Kishimoto/SHONEN JUMP CHANNEL OFFICIAL)

Naruto: Did Minato Namikaze Create Rasengan?

Priya MajumdarBy Updated:5 Mins Read Anime

With Naruto Gaiden: Whirlwind in the Vortex having released on July 18, 2023, the major focus of the entire Naruto fandom now fell on Minato Namikaze, the winner of the NARUTOP99 poll. The release of the 55-page one-shot had a solid success as fans celebrated the fresh change that deviated from Boruto, with many even calling the art and aesthetic of Masashi Kishimoto superior, and rightfully so.

What was initially thought to be a Minato-centric one-shot saw the celebration of love in the 55 pages as Kushina Uzumaki, his lover and future wife, also made a comeback. However, alongside Son Goku and Kokuo, the legendary Kurama also featured through Kushina. As the Nine-Tailed Beast planned to wreak havoc, Minato used his new technique to go up against Kurama’s Tailed-Beast Ball. This technique was later given a new name by Kushina, who called Rasengan, or Spiralling Sphere. 

Note: As per filler contents, it was Asura who had been shown to create the Rasengan. However, going by canon source materials, it is Minato Namikaze who came up with and developed this technique first.

Minato was inspired by the Tailed Beast Balls to create Rasengan

How did Minato create Rasengan?

The first few pages of Naruto Gaiden: Whirlwind in the Vortex showed Roshi and Han with their jinchurkis and attacking the Leaf Village ninjas, among which Jiraya and Minato were also there. As the two Son Goku and Kokuo released their Tailed-Beast Balls, Minato uses his Flying Thunder God Technique to teleport his comrades to safety. However, at this point, Minato surmised the jinchurki’s presence inside Kushina, further taking note of the two Tailed-Beast Balls he had encountered earlier.

This served as an important reference for him to create his Rasengan. After he went to his village, he refused to train Kushina and apologized to her in favor of creating his own technique, which was unnamed at that point. Few pages later, Minato spent time in a desolate area along with his mentor, Jiraya. The area around him was filled with a spiral like crater, likewise suggesting the use of the spiralling technique of chakra to create the ball. However, it wasn’t of much success. 

Jiraya, the legendary Sanin, suggested Minato to knead chakra like “the rotation of the hair whorl” (a pattern of spirals or concentric circles). By this, he meant rotating the chakra to the right since Jiraya’s hair whorl moves in the right direction. 

Turns out, the same posed a conundrum for Minato, who had two hair whorls and both of which moved in the opposite direction. Later, during the break, when Jiraya broke the popsicle into two halves and asked Minato which one he wants, the yellow-haired Leaf shinobi replied that either is fine. 

At this point, he was struck with a realization that if opposite moving whorls are kneaded in the same direction, they can be brought together from all sides to spin rapidly and form a singular ball of chakra. Thus, this is how Minato Namikaze created the first Rasengan in the Naruto-verse. 

Minato may be a genius, but he wasn’t good at naming his techniques. Although his intention was to show a tribute to his master, Jiraya, he ultimately ended up naming the technique “Halo Hair Whorl of Jiraya Inspired by Frozen Dessert Twin Style Sphere,” which both Jiraya and Kushina thought was long and lame.

The first practical use of Rasengan

Later on, when Kushina sneaked in to meet Minato, he revealed to her that as a vessel for the Nine-Tailed Beast, she may be used on the battlefield to turn the tide of the war. As a result, the Yellow Flash of Konoha wanted to create a new technique that can correspond with her massive chakra as a jinchurki. The reason behind this was simple – he didn’t want to lose her.

However, Kushina accidentally activated her Tailed-Beast Mode on, resulting in Kurama to come out, provoke Kushina, and launch an attack on Minato. Despite the latter using a sealing technique, Kurama became feral, so Minato tells Kushina that they will subdue the Nine-Tailed Beast together. Fortunately enough, they were successful.

As Kushina chained Kurama with her sealing technique, the latter summoned a Tailed-Beast Ball to launch at an air-borne Minato. For his part, the Yellow Flash instantly created the Rasengan (unnamed at that point) and released it at Kurama to counter his attack. The victory was in favor of the couple.

In a separate scene, when Kushina took Minato to the top of the Spiral Staircase to show him the view, Kushina suggested the name “Rasengan” for Minato’s new technique. Predictably, the Yellow Flash of Konoha showed his approval with the name as he smiled at Kushina. Interestingly, Minato’s head was smartly placed against the end of the Hokage rock, foreshadowing his upcoming role as the Fourth Hokage of Konoha.

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Priya is an anime lover and writer at GamesHorizon. A graduate from EFL University, she is deeply interested in anything remotely anime, manga, and fan culture. In her free time, she likes to draw, cook, visit cafes, and read fanfiction on a variety of anime fandoms' ships.