Character · Naruto
Kurama
The fox that flattened the village in the first episode spends the next decade sulking inside the boy it orphaned.
In Otakana the clue reads: Nine-tailed fox sealed inside the hero
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Naruto
- Letters
- 6 · Normal
Kurama is the Nine-Tailed Fox, the largest of the tailed beasts and, for most of the story, an enormous quantity of concentrated resentment behind a cage door. It attacked Konoha on the night Naruto was born, killed a great many people including his parents, and was sealed into the newborn by the Fourth Hokage at the cost of his own life.
For years the arrangement is one-sided. Naruto draws on the fox's chakra when he is angry or losing, gets stronger and less himself in the process, and the seal holds by a margin that keeps shrinking. The fox has every reason to want him dead and says so at length. It is one of the few power-ups in shonen that openly hates the protagonist.
The name arrives late. For hundreds of chapters everyone calls it the Nine-Tails, Kyubi, until the beast finally gives the word up, and the shift from monster to named character is the entire arc compressed into one detail. Kurama is also a mountain north of Kyoto associated with tengu, and the name of a well-known fox demon in Yu Yu Hakusho.
Spelling KURAMA
KURAMA is six letters, three beats, ku-ra-ma, and nothing about the romanisation fights you. A sits on tiles four and six, one U, one letter each for the rest. The difficulty is naming rather than spelling: the beast is called Kyubi for most of the series, so the row wants the name it hands over later.