Naruto's Four-Tails vs. Six-Tails Form: More Powerful?

Naruto’s Four-Tails vs. Six-Tails Form: More Powerful?

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Here’s everything about Naruto’s four-tails form being more powerful than his six-tails form:

The six-tails form is unquestionably stronger than the four tails-form.

With six tails, Naruto has access to considerably more kyuubi chakra, and that chakra is much denser and more potent than what is available with four tails.

Some people think four tails is stronger because of a mistake in the anime adaptation.

So if you want to learn all about Naruto’s four-tails form being stronger than his six-tails form, then this article is for you.

Let’s get right to it!

Naruto's Four-Tails vs. Six-Tails Form: More Powerful?

Who Is Naruto?

Sure, Naruto is the protagonist of the anime and manga series named after him.

He’s the knuckle-headed ninja who is one of the most recognized anime characters of all time.

I’m hoping you know that much.

But, to talk about Naruto and his tailed forms, we need to get into more detail.

Since some of you might not be Naruto superfans, I’m going to have to explain a lot of details along the way.

That means I have to cover major spoilers in both the Naruto manga and the anime series, so this is your spoiler warning.

Speaking of anime and manga, it’s probably worth taking a little detour to clarify some things.

As you know, manga is like a Japanese comic book, and many manga stories are used as inspiration for popular anime shows (Japanese cartoons).

In the case of Naruto, both the Naruto and Shippuden anime series were direct adaptations of the Naruto manga.

This is particularly important today because of a discrepancy in the anime adaptation is why I even wrote this article in the first place.

I’ll get to that in due time.

First, we need to talk about Naruto.

You already know he’s a ninja, and for those who are unaware, he’s from the Hidden Leaf Village.

More importantly, Naruto is a jinchuuriki.

This is a special term that describes a ninja who has a chakra beast sealed inside of them.

In Naruto’s case, the nine-tailed fox is sealed inside his body.

The nine-tailed fox (also called the kyuubi), is a giant chakra beast that once terrorized the Leaf Village.

To stop the fox’s rampage, the Fourth Hokage (leader of the Leaf Village) used a technique to trap the fox inside of Naruto.

Because of this, Naruto and the kyuubi are linked, and Naruto has access to the kyuubi’s chakra.

That’s really the central point of everything we’re discussing today.

What Is Naruto’s Tailed Form? (3 Categories)

Since Naruto has the kyuubi inside of him, he can actually draw out and release kyuubi chakra.

He learns to do this in stages throughout the series, and eventually, he and the kyuubi become partners, and Naruto can use as much of the chakra as he wants rather freely.

Until that point, Naruto has to force out kyuubi chakra, and he largely does this through emotional releases.

When he is extremely scared, angry, or otherwise stressed, he can release some of that chakra.

If he releases enough kyuubi chakra, it will collect around his body and form a chakra “cloak.”

This cloak resembles the fox in shape, and tails begging to appear.

As Naruto releases more and more kyuubi chakra, more tails appear, and eventually, Naruto’s entire appearance changes.

In other words, the tailed form is a power-up for Naruto that is based on accessing kyuubi chakra.

#1 Four Tails

One of the best examples of the tailed form is the four-tails form.

When Naruto sprouts one to three tails, he still looks like Naruto.

There are subtle changes to his appearance, such as the growth of whiskers on his face and elongated fingernail claws, but he’s Naruto.

He’s in control of himself, and he looks the way we expect him to look.

At a four-tail release, this completely changes.

Naruto is completely shrouded in kyuubi chakra, and he no longer looks human.

He looks like a dark mass of chakra that takes a shape somewhere in between that of a human and a fox.

You can’t see any Naruto at all in there.

He also sprouts the signature four tails.

In this mode, the chakra density around Naruto is immensely powerful.

Orochimaru even stated that being hit by such a mass of chakra would instantly kill him.

Naruto is incredibly fast, strong, and powerful in this mode, and it’s so extreme that there are only two clear instances when it happens.

The first time Naruto ever enters this mode happens off-screen. When he was training with Jiraiya, he went into this mode, and Jiraiya almost died trying to bring Naruto back under control.

The second time happens when Naruto confronts Orochimaru.

He loses control, and his four-tails mode is able to fight Orochimaru to a standstill.

It’s clear that Orochimaru has to remain careful throughout the fight to avoid devastating injury or death.

#2 Six Tails

This six-tails form is similar to four-tails in a lot of respects with a few key differences.

Most obviously, there are six visible tails, all made from chakra, when Naruto is in this mode.

Also, as Naruto progresses from four tails to six, his appearance changes.

He is still a dark red and black mass of chakra, and the general shape of his appearance is the same, but bone protrusions begin to appear around his jaw and in other places.

It’s as if the four-tails mode removes everything that looks like Naruto, and the six-tails mode begins to add structure that looks like the kyuubi.

In this mode, Naruto is releasing even more kyuubi chakra, so the chakra density and volume both increase.

This mode is only ever seen once.

When Pain attacks the Leaf Village, he destroys everything.

Naruto shows up to fight against him, and they trade blows for a bit.

Eventually, Pain overwhelms Naruto and disables him.

At this moment, Hinata races into the fight to try to save Naruto.

She is quickly and brutally defeated by Pain, and upon seeing it, Naruto completely loses it.

He jumps right through the first several tail modes and ends up in six-tails mode.

In this mode, he fights Pain aggressively, and through the fight, he becomes more enraged—eventually getting to eight tails.

At that point, a chakra trigger is released, and the Fourth Hokage is able to intervene, all within Naruto’s consciousness.

We don’t need to really delve into all of that.

The point is that this is the moment where Naruto releases the most kyuubi chakra until he eventually reconciles with the kyuubi later in the story.

#3 Other Tails

Theoretically, Naruto can release any number of tails.

I already mentioned how he gets up to eight tails in the fight against Pain.

At that point, Naruto is in danger of dying from releasing so much kyuubi chakra.

It’s incredibly dangerous.

Theoretically, if Naruto ever released all nine tails, he would be completely consumed by kyuubi chakra, and the kyuubi would be fully released, free to roam the world.

Naruto would die from such an event, and that’s why the Fourth Hokage had a failsafe mechanism in place to prevent such a catastrophe.

At the lower end of the spectrum, Naruto releases one to three tails of chakra many times.

The very first time he ever gets into this mode, he releases one tail of kyuubi chakra to fight against Haku and protect Sasuke.

The first time he gets up to three is in his fight against Sasuke when Sasuke leaves the village.

As I mentioned before, Naruto is still largely in control when he releases these numbers of tails.

The chakra release gives him a massive boost in speed, strength, and durability, but it’s not until a four-tail release that Naruto loses himself.

Which Naruto’s Tailed Form Is More Powerful? (2 Explanations)

The six-tails form is clearly and unquestionably stronger than the four-tails form.

This is clearly stated in a number of exposition periods in both the manga and the anime.

Each additional tail correlates with a massive increase in chakra release.

Releasing more chakra further enhances Naruto’s speed, strength, and durability, at the cost of his sanity and reason.

Also, releasing more than four tails does damage Naruto’s body, but in every event in the story, he is able to fully recover from that damage.

It’s just plain canon that the six-tails form is stronger than the four-tails form, but if you have some doubts, we can go through two specific reasons why six-tails Naruto is considerably stronger than four-tails Naruto.

#1 More Chakra

This is the primary reason that six tails is stronger.

It involves a greater release of chakra.

It’s why Naruto’s tail releases go in numerical order.

He can release a little bit of chakra to get to one-tail mode.

By the time he gets to four tails, he’s releasing far more chakra than most ninjas ever possess.

But, he doesn’t have to stop there.

He can release more chakra, and that’s what we see in the fight against Pain.

The circumstances are more extreme, Naruto has been pushed further, and in response, he releases more kyuubi chakra.

As a result, he gets to six tails for the first time.

The chakra is greater, the density is more extreme, and the overall power output is multiplied.

In the world of Naruto, more chakra generally equates to more power, and in this case, that’s definitely true.

#2 More Emotion

The thing is, there’s more going on than just raw power.

Sure, the six-tails form is far more powerful in terms of chakra and raw capability, but there’s a second component that makes this a much scarier form, and that boils down to Naruto’s emotions.

In order to release his tails, Naruto has to feel extreme emotions.

He released three tails for the first time when he had to fight his best friend to prevent him from abandoning the village.

The stakes were very high.

He released four tails against Orochimaru to try to find Sasuke and to try to protect his team.

The stakes there were considerably higher.

The six-tails release happened when the Leaf Village was wiped out and Hinata was seemingly killed in front of his eyes (she actually survived).

It was the most extreme emotional moment of his life, and that’s on top of the fact that Naruto was fighting the very person who killed his mentors (both Jiraiya and Kakashi).

All of this is to say that Naruto’s emotions are more extreme in the six-tails form, and that actually translates to more effective fighting.

When he went four tails against Orochimaru, he was enraged, but he attacked everything in sight.

He even wounded Sakura.

When he released six tails against Pain, his hate was so focused that no one other than Pain was in direct danger (maybe they would have been if Pain had died right away).

The clear hatred stayed focused even in the six-tails form, and that allowed Naruto to concentrate all of that power on a single enemy, making the fight that much more extreme.

Why Do People Think Naruto’s Four Tails Is More Powerful?

Ok. Six tails is more powerful.

But if it’s so clear, why do so many people think that four tails is the stronger form?

This comes down to two things: a mistake in the anime adaptation and a misread between the abilities of Pain and Orochimaru.

Let’s start with the latter concept.

When Orochimaru fights against four-tails Naruto, he explicitly states that the chakra is so dense that he could die.

That’s a big statement because Orochimaru constantly survives all kinds of things that look fatal.

Meanwhile, Pain fights against six-tails Naruto and takes multiple blows without fighting.

The first thing to understand is that Pain is considerably stronger and more powerful than Orochimaru.

Orochimaru is the big bad ninja in the first half of the story, but when it gets to Shippuden, he’s outmatched by a number of other ninjas, and Pain is one of them.

The second aspect of this comes down to the anime mistake.

It’s technically more of a choice than a mistake, but it’s the real reason for this ambiguity.

Even though Orochimaru is afraid to take a single blow, Pain takes tons of hits from a seemingly stronger Naruto.

Well, in the original manga, Pain never gets hit by six-tails Naruto.

He evades desperately because any hit could end him.

In the anime adaptation, Pain tanks all kinds of hits that don’t really make sense.

It’s an artistic choice, but it definitely undermines the tension of the fight.

In the original story, the whole point is that the script is flipped.

Using sage mode, Naruto couldn’t quite keep up with Pain and was defeated.

Once he released six tails of chakra, Pain was fully on the defensive and desperate to survive.

That was kind of the point, but it didn’t translate in the anime.

So, the real reason people misunderstand how much stronger six-tails Naruto comes down to that choice in the anime adaptation.