The Naruto franchise is a massive success akin to other anime legends like One Piece and Dragon Ball before it. For over a decade the series has entertained anime enthusiasts and casual viewers alike. The series has spawned two different continuations that have proven that its success can't be stopped. What truly makes the franchise a force to be reckoned with are its fantastic and unique cast of characters. Like most successful anime each fan favorite Naruto character features a distinct style, personality, and fighting style.
One of the most interesting concepts in the Naruto universe is the villainous Akatsuki and their secret machinations to capture all of the tailed beasts. The organization is like a ninja Legion of Doom with several distinct villains teamed together for a common end. The Akatsuki represent all that is great about Naruto and all of its faults. At its best, it features some of the most interesting and complex characters in the series. At worst, it is the fulcrum for the convoluted storylines the series is often criticized for.
The organization features many of the series most famous characters. Characters like Itachi and Madara are often thought of as among the most complex villains in the series. Conversely, the organization's many twists involving its leadership are often cited among the franchise's weakest and most overwritten moments. The team's mixed bag of legendary and problematic characters had a tug of war over the quality of the franchise in the later days of Naruto Shippuden, but its finer moments make cement it as a legendary team in the pantheon of anime villains.
Here are 20 Akatsuki That Hurt The Show (And 10 That Saved It).
saved - Itachi
Ask pretty much any Naruto fan who their favorite Akatsuki member is and the most likely answer you’ll get is Itachi Uchiha. Sasuke’s brother is not only the most complex of the organization but he is also widely regarded as one of the best characters of the series. In fact, he was the character that introduced the organization in the first place. That Mangeyko Sharingan made quite the first impression.
Motivated to preserve his little brother’s life, Itachi went on an extensive undercover campaign inside Akatsuki. His true motivations were only revealed when he tragically ed away fighting the brother he’d secretly loved the entire time. Like Harry Potter’s Professor Snape, fans will always debate whether or not the character is truly good, truly evil, or more likely something in between. He may have had good intentions in the end but that doesn’t mean Kakashi was any less psychically crucified.
hurt - Nagato
When Pein first made his appearance as the mysterious leader of Akatsuki, fans were sure they’d just seen the ultimate villain of the series. He made even more of an impression when he went on to eliminate Jiraiya in his first full out battle. As things went on, it really looked like Pein was going to be the villain MVP of the series. Except he wasn’t. Not even close.
Pein, or Nagato as we would learn later, was actually the first of many red herring villains in the convoluted Akatsuki super villain hierarchy. While some of the fight scenes and backstory of the character are interesting still, it’s hard to look back on Shippuden as a whole and wonder if the entire Akatsuki arc wouldn’t have been better had he just been left out entirely. Either that or just not have had him pose as the first of many faux masterminds who look like Hot Topic regulars.
saved - Deidara
The Akatsuki made quite an impression on the original Naruto. Itachi’s brief but brutal showdown with Kakashi was a wonderful set up for what was to come. When Shippuden began, one of the biggest challenges was capitalizing on that set up from so many years earlier. Luckily, they picked Deidara for that job.
Deidara made his explosive entrance when he took on and defeated fan favorite character Gaara. His signature explosives, mouth hands, and grinning sadism proved to be extremely memorable. He went on to have several more impressive fight scenes before finally being eliminated by Sasuke. Still, he will always be ed for winning his first fight by nearly annihilating an entire village. That's quite the explosive entrance.
hurt - Kakuzu
Naruto is known for having a wide range of great and memorable characters. Between its villains, main cast, and ing players, there are dozens of magnificent characters with a unique power set and a signature style. Unfortunately, that can be a hard standard to live up to. It's in this way that the character Kakuzu falls short. He has a fairly generic personality. His backstory isn't particularly memorable. The style he's drawn in looks like he's just an extra in one of the massive ninja war battle sequences. His signature jutsu is also one of the most forgettable of the team.
The best thing about the character is his animosity towards his partner Hidan. Their back and forth is one of the more entertaining interactions of the team . It's just too bad he wasn't as interesting as his partner.
saved - Sasori
Deidara may have made the first big impression in Shippuden but Sasori ended up being the star of the arc. Initially, Sasori seemed like a really odd character who mostly just used his metal tail for attacking. His fight scene with Kankuro wasn't nearly as memorable as Deidara's with Gaara. All that changed when he squared off against Sakura and Chiyo.
What seemed at first like the less interesting fight than the one raging between Kakashi, Naruto, and Deidara quickly proved itself to be one of the best parts of the early days of the Naruto spinoff. As each layer of Sasori's fascinating puppet jutsu was revealed, the battle and Sasori himself became more and more memorable. He came to a tragic end and ed the likes of characters like Haku and Kimimaro in the Naruto pantheon of characters you love, despite the fact that you should hate them.
hurt - Orochimaru
Orochimaru made quite the stir in Naruto. His anime Voldemort antics were some of the best parts about the first series. His attack on the Hidden Leaf village during the Chunin Exams and the hunt to reclaim Sasuke from him are widely considered to be the best arcs of the original Naruto series.
Not everything about Orochimaru was great though. Initially, the revelation that Orochimaru was part of the Akatsuki seemed as though it was going to make an interesting plot point. In the end, however, it amounted to very little. Orochimaru's brief hip in Akatsuki proved to be just more of the convoluted plot points that plagued Shippuden. In Shippuden, all roads lead back to the Akatsuki whether they really should or not.
saved - Obito
There are many twists that fell flat in the series. Like many long-running anime, the series became bloated with too many intermingling plot points at an excess amount of characters. Despite this, the show frequently showed that it could still defy expectations and deliver the goods. The Obito twist was definitely one of those times.
Kakashi was one of the biggest fan favorite characters but he was also one of the most mysterious. His origin (and actual face for that matter) remained a secret for many years. One of the first big mysteries the show set up was how Kakashi got his Sharingan. Boy, did that wait pay off. The episodes that show Obito and Kakashi's story and the painful reunion were some of the most brutally emotional of the entire franchise. Of all the many many many Akatsuki secret string puller reveals, Obito's was by far the best.
hurt - Konan
There are a lot of tragic characters in the Naruto franchise. A ton of tragic characters. In fact, almost every single character is a tragic character. While most of the tragic origin stories were really gut-wrenching, at a certain point there starts to be diminishing returns on the bloody ninja tragedies.
Unfortunately, Konan is one of the characters that fall into this latter character. There's nothing wrong with her arc per se, but when taken into context with the larger story, it just a drop in the shinobi tragedy bucket. Ultimately, Konan and Nagato's origins (and by proxy the origins of the entire organization) was just more par for the course for a series that had gone to great lengths already to show the horrors of the Naruto universe.
saved - Madara
At a certain point, the series' Russian nesting doll of secret evil masterminds got to be taxing. While Madara at first seemed to just take away from Obito as a villain, he more than proved himself to be one of the most memorable villains of the series.
Between him taking on an entire Shinobi army or his legendary battle with Might Guy, Madara was the second wind Shippuden so desperately needed that far into the lengthy Shinobi war arc. While his mastermind who masterminded a mastermind to mastermind another mastermind while secretly being masterminded by a mastermind goddess was needlessly and painfully convoluted, sometimes with anime the fight scenes can really make up for a lot. Also, he was responsible for the initial Nine-Tails conflict that began the entire series. That's some impressive villainy.
hurt - Kaguya
Kaguya's reveal at the end of Naruto was met with some extremely mixed reactions. The Akatsuki organization was already in pain from hardcore "too many chefs in the kitchen" syndrome before she got there. The entire thing being the secret machinations of what was basically the Shinobi god was a pretty hard right turn just as fans got used to the idea of Madara as the series antagonist.
It's basically like if The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ended with Aragorn, Gandalf, and Frodo finding out that Sauron wasn't the main bad guy the entire time. Then the final act of the series would take a hard right to refocus the fight on the Fellowship battling out with Morgoth despite Sauron being the character that was so wonderfully set up as the main antagonist. The Kaguya story is not bad if it is separated from the larger narrative. Her creation, in fact, has led to quite a lot of great things in Boruto. It just would've been better had she been given her own separate arc instead of piggybacking on the back of an arc several other villains had piggybacked on already.