WHAT IS THE AKATSUKI?
The Akatsuki clan was an organization whose original goal was to bring peace to the village of Amegakure, a country that suffered from huge collateral damages of wars disputed by other villages such as Konoha, Iwa, and Suna. Over the course of several decades, this organization has evolved enormously both in its leadership or its goals. This is why it’s by far one of the most amazing and complex outsiders clan to analyze in the Naruto Series with its story full of secrets!
In this article, we will, therefore, discuss together the various topics related to the famous Akatsuki clan:
- The origin of the name Akatsuki
- The creation of the Akatsuki clan and its original
- The signification behind the Akatsuki logo symbol
- The different members of the Akatsuki Clan and its different leaders
So, no time to lose, let’s discover all the secrets of the famous Akatsuki clan finally revealed. Are you ready? Here is the complete story of the Akatsuki!????
WHAT DOES AKATSUKI MEAN?
The Akatsuki (暁) meaning literally “Dawn” or “Daybreak” in Japanese, but can also be translated as “Red Moon” is the name chosen by Yahiko for his organization originally created with Konan and Nagato.
However, the reason behind the choice of this name remains unclear. According to episode 253, Obito, impersonating as Madara Uchiha, claims that he was the one who inspired Yahiko to choose this name, but the author of the manga has never really given a definitive explanation on this subject.
CREATION OF THE AKATSUKI AND ITS GOALS
YAHIKO AKATSUKI
The original Akatsuki was founded during the Third Shinobi World War by a group of three ninjas from Amegakure, Nagato, and Konan led by their friend and mentor Yahiko. After becoming orphans during the Second Shinobi World War, the three of them founded the Akatsuki organization with the first goal of bringing peace to their home country, the Hidden Rain Village, which was targeted and was suffering by continuous attacks and conflicts between other neighbor countries for many years, such as Iwagakure, Konohagakure and Sunagakure.
Their powerful desire to end these nonsense conflicts attracted many of Ame’s ninjas to join their ranks. As their actions on helping citizens started of being noticed by the Village, news over their exploits began to flow out around the country.
Picture of the first members of the Akatsuki Clan led by Yahiko, Konan and Nagato
The original Akatsuki’s success was largely due to Yahiko’s leadership abilities and unparalleled charisma, allowing the organization to remain united within its members and goals despite the various difficulties associated with their ambitions.
However, although Yahiko was recognized by all as the official leader of the clan, he never saw himself as the centerpiece of the clan, seeing himself in reality only as chief of armies to allow Nagato, the true leader according to him, to bring peace to world with his Dojutsu, the Rinnegan.
YAHIKO’S DEATH
As the Akatsuki’s popularity among the inhabitants of Amegakure was becoming a threat to his reign, Hanzō (半蔵), also known as the terrible Hanzō of the Salamander (山椒魚の半蔵, Sanshōuo no Hanzō), decided to set a trap for Yahiko and his comrades under the pretext of his desire to end the war with the help of the Akatsuki.
While the various members of the Akatsuki were being decimated one by one by Obito, Yahiko and Nagato went to the meeting alone and fell into Hanzō’s ambush on the hills of Amegakure. After succeeding in taking Konan hostage, the dictator threw a Kunai at Nagato’s feet and ordered him to kill his leader if he didn’t want to see her die.
Nagato, incapable of figuring out how the situation could have gone this far picked up the kunai with shaking hands. His eyes were unable to move from the shining blade, his body was completely frozen to the bones and the only things that his brain could process at this moment were Konan’s screams asking him to not do it.
In a desperate attempt to find a solution, Nagato turned to Yahiko when suddenly…
Yahiko dies throwing himself voluntarily on Nagato’s Kunai and commits suicide to save Akatsuki’s dreams while reminding his best friend that HE is the one who holds the power to save this world:
Yahiko’s final words:
“You and Konan must survive what it takes… You’re the savior… of this world. I know you can… do it.”
Once Yahiko’s body was lying on the ground, Hanzō ordered his men to finish off the last two survivors. Nagato, completely enraged, countered easily the assaults set against him with his Rinnegan powers and also succeeded in recovering Konan from the hands of Hanzō. He then summoned the Gedô Mazô and used it to exterminate all the remaining ninjas on the field, including the dictator.
NAGATO’S AKATSUKI
After both deaths of the leaders of the Akatsuki and Amegakure, Nagato took place as the new leader of the organization and the village. However, he never succeeded in mourning his best friend.
While Akatsuki’s original goal was to seek to establish peace through symbolically peaceful acts, this trauma completely changed Nagato’s perception of the world to the point where he was considered that trying to save it the way that Yahiko wanted was just a utopian child’s dream.
He therefore completely changed the image and purpose of Akatsuki with the belief that the only way to bring peace to the world was to bring such atrocious destruction to the world that no one would ever think of going to war again. To do so, Nagato set out to recruit the best missing-nins from each village like Kisame, Deidara or Kakazu. It is also at this time that Nagato created the 6 Paths of Pain and began to be known under the pseudonym of “Pain“.
Once the number of 10 members was reached, the organization was able to start sowing the seeds of its success by following 3 successive steps.
- Obtain by any means a significant amount of money to meet the growing needs of the organization and its future projects
- Provide discreet mercenary services to the different villages requiring highly trained teams of Ninjas at an extremely low price. This way, the organization was ensuring both to decimate competition that could not match its prices and make itself indispensable to the different countries. To speed up the process, the Akatsuki also set up a goal to capture a large part of the Tailed-Beasts in order to be able to deploy them strategically and thus accelerate the annihilation of the different shinobi forces of each village.
- Once the majority of the armies would have been decimated, the Akatsuki would have ruled the world and thus established its law over the entire Shinobi world.
This way, any time conflict would begin between two sides, Nagato would unleash the Tailed-Beasts on one side of the field, decimating the first half of the shinobis and scaring to death the other half and prevent them from going to war again.
Furthermore, if and when the fear would dissipate and conflicts would come back, again, Nagato had planned to unleash the Tailed-Beasts randomly to create a cycle of peace and death to keep the population scared indefinitely.
However, the quest for Tailed-Beasts turned out to be far more complex than expected. Indeed, with the exemption of only one of them, all were in the possession of one of the villages, which forced the organization to enter into direct conflict with them.
By becoming a common enemy, the organization became distrusted by various ninja villages who agreed among themselves to no more use their services and thus hinder their quest for power. This situation forced Nagato to prioritize the capture of the Tailed-Beasts, which led him to lose a good number of his limbs and to confront Naruto in the “Bread” bow where he too would eventually die.
AKATSUKI SYMBOL
The symbol of the Akatsuki clan is Red clouds that represent the rain of blood that fell on Amegakure (Hidden Rain Village) during the wars that destroyed its territory. These emblems have been chosen as a symbol of justice by Yahiko, Konan and Nagato and are featured very distinctively on all Akatsuki members cloaks to allow them to be identified even from a distance.
ALL AKATSUKI MEMBERS
WHO IS THE LEADER OF THE AKATSUKI?
The original leader of Akatsuki is Yahiko, later succeeded by Nagato with Madara Uchiha acting as his benefactor.
HOW MANY AKATSUKI MEMBERS ARE THERE?
The Akatsuki clan officially had 10 ninjas in its ranks, all missing-nins from their home village, except of course for Black Zetsu and White Zetsu. However, if we count all the ninjas that had joined on some paint the organization, this number goes up to 18.
OFFICIAL AKATSUKI MEMBERS NAMES
0. Orochimaru
1. Tobi
2. Sasori
3. Deidara
4. Hidan
5. Kakuzu
6. Itachi Uchiha
7. Kisame Hoshigaki
8. Konan
9. Nagato
10. White Zetsu and Black Zetsu