Character · Naruto
Kiba Inuzuka
Half of a two-man team where the other half is a dog riding on top of his head.
In Otakana the clue reads: Leaf ninja who fights alongside a white dog
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Naruto
- Letters
- 4 · Normal
Kiba Inuzuka fights alongside Akamaru, a ninken raised with him, and their techniques only work as a pair. Fang over Fang spins both of them into a drilling attack. Man Beast Clone turns the dog into a copy of Kiba, which is unsettling the first time you see it. His clan trains with dogs from birth, and the family name has the word for dog sitting inside it.
He is loud, competitive and regularly outmatched, which the series is honest about. Team 8 puts him with Hinata's eyes and Shino's insects, a tracking unit built for finding people rather than beating them, and Kiba's nose does most of that work. He smells a lie a fair while before he hears one.
The best running detail is Akamaru's size. He starts as a puppy small enough to sit inside a coat and by Shippuden he is a mount, which is a quiet way of showing readers how much time has gone by. Kiba's fangs, his hearing and his tolerance for strong smells all come from the same clan inheritance.
Spelling KIBA
KIBA is four letters and means fang, 牙, which is about as direct as a ninja name gets. Nothing here is tricky: two beats, ki-ba, no long vowels and no doubled letters. The competition comes from outside the series, since Wolf's Rain has a wolf called Kiba and the word turns up as a name in a dozen other shows.