Neji Hyuga

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Hyūga Neji is a fictional character in the manga and anime Naruto. Template:Spoilers

Personality and ability

A Genin at the start of the series, Hyūga Neji 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 Chūnin exam during that arc, and is the first of them to become a Jōnin. Neji has a very powerful long-range defense in the form of the Hakkeshō Kaiten (Eight Trigram Palms Heavenly Spin), which is only passed down within the Hyūga main house but which Neji learned himself, and a deadly short-range offense in his natural proficiency in the Leaf's strongest taijutsu style, Jūken (Gentle Fist). To augment his short-range offense, Neji uses the Hakke Rokujuyon Shō (Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms) maneuver (and, in the anime, also Hakke Hyaku Nijūha Shō (Eight Trigrams One Hundred Twenty-Eight Palms)) which effectively seals off a person's chakra points, rendering them completely unable to channel any chakra. However, his Byakugan does not have a complete 360° vision due to a blind spot located behind his first thoracic vertebra.

Neji is in the same Genin team as Rock Lee, Tenten and their Jōnin sensei Maito Gai. Neji and Lee have a long-ongoing rivalry, which, not unlike the rivalry between Gai 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 Hakkeshō Kaiten. The two of them are often equally annoyed with Lee and Gai's overreacting and childish behaviour, 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 Jūken and Byakugan, Neji can never be the leader of his clan because he is a member of the branch house, his father, Hyūga Hizashi, having been born into the world after his uncle, Hyūga Hiashi, even though they were twins. In his childhood, Neji had nothing against the main family as he was probably being 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 Hyūga Hinata, Hiashi's elder daughter and then the destined Hyūga 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 Juin (Cursed seal), putting his brother in immense pain as his nerves were being attacked. It was Neji's first encounter with the Hyūga 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 Chūnin 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 Hyūga clan's secret bloodline.

This chain of events drove him to the point of believing that destiny, a person's future is decided from birth and that there was no way to escape or change it, making him a particularly bitter, cynical and arrogant character with a spiteful grudge against the main house.

Chūnin Exam Arc

The calm, stoic image Neji presents breaks rather violently with pent-up hatred in the chūnin 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 absolute determinism about how people cannot change, bringing her to the verge of tears.

In doing so, however, he terribly enrages Uzumaki Naruto 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 Jōnin supervising the battle.

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 Hyūga branch family member it is his duty to protect her. Though Neji manages to block Naruto's tenketsu completely, Naruto harnesses the power of Kyūbi by reflecting on his promise and the ideals he is fighting for. With the power of the Kyūbi, Naruto is able to overpower Neji, and just before a final, booming clash between his revitalised self and Kaiten he recalls Neji's various disheartening speeches, yelling back at him, "I don't know about the Hyūga fate of hatred, but... if you think it's impossible, then don't do anything! After I become Hokage... I'll change Hyūga 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 Naruto - the unconscious Naruto having been a clone - lunging out of a tunnel 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 Kage Bunshin - Naruto's favorite technique - Naruto replies by telling Neji that he has failed the Academy graduation exam three times because it was always the technique he was worst at, and after a short pause reveals that the move was the very same replication technique the upgraded version of which he has just used to win.

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 the branch house for the sake of the main house but as a Hyūga, for the sake of his brother and family. Though Neji refuses to believe this at first, Hiashi further hands him a letter by his father, where he addresses Neji and tells him to make his own fate.

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 who try hard enough can break free and soar the skies again.

Kishimoto Masashi says: "The theme for the Neji-Naruto fight is "destiny." I wanted to express the difference between Neji who believed that destiny can't be changed and suffers within that belief and Naruto who lives to change destiny while looking forward."

Sasuke Retrieval Arc

Some time later in the series, the reformed Neji joins Nara Shikamaru's squad (consisting of Uzumaki Naruto, Inuzuka Kiba, Akimichi Chōji and later also Rock Lee and Gaara, Kankurō 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 Uchiha Sasuke from crossing over Hi no Kuni (Land of Fire)'s borders and into the Oto no Kuni (Land of Sound) and Orochimaru's control. He confronts Kidōmaru 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 prompty dispatched. During the fight against Kidōmaru 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.

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 Hyūga clan seems to finally be coming to terms with one-another.

Naruto II Arc

File:Neji in Naruto II.jpg
Neji's appearance in Naruto II

Two and a half years later, Team Gai - 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 jōnin, and has learned at least one new technique: Hakke Kūshō (Eight Trigrams Empty Palm). He has changed his jacket in favor of traditional Hyūga robes and has grown his hair even longer than it already was.

Trivia

  • According to the official databooks, Neji's hobby is meditation.
  • Neji is the only known Hyūga clan member whose first name does not start with the voiceless glottal fricative. His name means "Screw" 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."