Term · Naruto
Akatsuki
Black cloaks, red clouds, and a recruitment policy that appears to require at least one prior massacre.
In Otakana the clue reads: Cloaked criminal organization with red clouds
- Type
- Term
- Series
- Naruto
- Letters
- 8 · Normal
The Akatsuki collect tailed beasts. Ten members, all rogue ninja who left their villages in a hurry, each in the same high-collared coat and each wearing a ring with its own character on it. They work in pairs, which keeps the body count manageable and gives the story a steady supply of two-on-two fights. Their leader talks about peace. His method is a weapon large enough to make war pointless.
Where they came from is the better half of the story. Three war orphans from the Rain village founded the group as an idealistic militia, and it kept the name and the coat long after it stopped meaning that. By the time Naruto meets them the founders are dead, replaced or unrecognisable, and the current roster are collectors of one kind or another.
The costume did a great deal of work outside the manga. Red clouds on black reads instantly on a shelf of merchandise, across a convention hall, or in a thumbnail, and it has outlived several of the people wearing it. Masashi Kishimoto introduced the group late in Part I and spent most of Shippuden taking it apart, member by member.
Spelling AKATSUKI
AKATSUKI is 暁, the word for daybreak, the moment just before sunrise. Eight letters makes a long row, but it splits into four clean beats: a-ka-tsu-ki. TSU is one character in Japanese and three letters in English, and that cluster is where guesses stall. Two A's, two K's, and the only U sits inside TSU.