Naruto Uzumaki's Entire Backstory Explained

To understand Naruto (and Naruto), first you need a handle on the world in which it takes place. Naruto was born during a time of relative peace in an era of world history known as the "Shinobi World."

The Shinobi World is marked by the division of five great Shinobi countries: powerful nations who became as much via their military powers. Wars are occasionally fought between these five great powers but the world has no conventional weapons of war, as we would understand them. Instead battles are fought between ninjas, who are trained from a young age to harness their life force (or "chakra") to create attacks and illusions.

The five nations are split along geographic and elemental lines, as each nation has an elemental flavor to the types of ninjutsu skills their warriors can recreate. The countries are the Land of Earth, the Land of Lightning, the Land of Wind, the Land of Water and the Land of Fire. All of their warriors are trained in hidden villages built around the training academies where young soldiers-to-be learn to control their powers.

Naruto was born in the Land of Fire and, as the show opens, we see him attempting to graduate from the Village Hidden in the Leaves' first level of ninja training. But before we get to that, we need to understand the way that humans in this world came to possess supernatural powers.

The newly empowered humans formed the aforementioned nations after hundreds of years of feudal wars. The conglomerated nations did not end all wars, though. As you might imagine, given that each nation's main concern is spitting out warriors, there were frequent battles between the great nations. Every so often this spilled over into a Great War between all five of the power players.

Prior to Naruto's birth, there were three of these Great Shinobi Wars. The first was similar to our own World War I, in that it was a war of attrition that found many of the nations grappling with new tactics and techniques in warfare. All of the major nations were badly damaged before an armistice was called.

That peace lasted only 20 years before the Second Shinobi War broke out. This war was born out of the discontent of minor nations in the Naruto world. Seeing the economic disparity between the five great lands and the smaller countries, these disadvantaged nations began to form alliances and blocs to protect themselves from invasion and exploitation. After the smaller nations began to challenge previously unquestioned invasions and occupations by the Five, a massive war broke out.

A third war occurred less than a decade before the start of the series, as smaller countries began disputing borders of the Great Nations and attacking in the hinterlands. Naruto's father Minato fought in the war and his performance was so impressive that he was made the leader of his village (called "hokage" in the series).

While most people can agree that keeping the beasts sealed away seems sensible, there exists a rogue group of shinobi who want to unleash all ten of the sealed beasts and revive Kaguya. Known as the Akatsuki, these breakaway ninjas are reviled criminals orchestrating a grand scheme to remove all of the seals placed over the beasts.

They aren't Joker-style agents of chaos, however. All of the members of the Akatsuki share a hatred for war. The ranks of the group swelled following the Third Shinobi War, as warriors who had seen incomprehensible killing and bloodshed returned home and feared another worldwide conflict. Kaguya was able to create a period of world peace before going mad with power, these pacifist ninjas hope to recreate it and avoid anyone ever going to war in service to a Great Nation ever again.

Because of Kushina's sealed beast, she lived under constant threat of attack from this splinter group. And she was right to fear them, as an attack from these ninjas would end her life. Given the extreme power that Kushina possessed, they waited until she was at her most vulnerable to attack: the night she was giving birth to her son.

Naruto is ostracized from that point on. Many of the villagers look at him and know that the beast that killed their brother, father or son lives within him. Though he was just an infant at the time, the village by and large blames Naruto for the deaths the spirit caused.

This treatment is compounded by the fact that Naruto has no parental guidance. He was orphaned during the tragedy and no one wants to be responsible for him, given that they can't look at him without seeing the village's destruction. Naruto is completely unaware of the fact that he has a demon spirit sealed in his body and an edict from the village leadership keeps villagers from telling Naruto anything about the circumstances of his birth or his latent power. Because the villagers ignore him, he acts out as a means of getting attention. Naruto is a nuisance to the entire village, frequently vandalizing property or pulling pranks on shopkeepers.

Naruto is also hated by children his own age. While the village children do not know why Naruto is bad, they can pick up on the way that their parents treat the young boy and they act accordingly.

Naruto enrolls in the village's ninja academy with the goal of becoming hokage. He wants to become a ninja of such undeniable skill that the village people all have to respect him. Unfortunately, Naruto is a clown and his lack of parental guidance leads to him performing poorly in school. The series opens with nine-year-old Naruto taking a test for the third time to attempt to graduate from novice levels at ninja academy. In spite of his considerable chakra, Naruto is rough around the edges and fails his test miserably.

When he finally does pass his final, after saving his teacher by using an incredibly advanced ninjutsu technique that he taught himself out of a forbidden scroll, the story begins in earnest. Naruto sets off to the second level of training, is assigned a core group of fellow trainees, and begins to unravel the mysterious circumstances of his birth and early life.