Kiba Inuzuka

Team 8's brash tracker who fights alongside his dog Akamaru.

Kiba Inuzuka is a Konohagakure ninja in Naruto, a member of Team 8 from the Inuzuka clan, whose ninja fight alongside their dog partners.

Quick Facts

Team: Team 8
Clan: Inuzuka
Partner: Akamaru
Japanese voice: Kōsuke Toriumi

Facts from the source article.

Background

The Inuzuka are ninja with canine traits who train with ninja dogs, and Kiba is loud, brash and impulsive, quite unlike his teammates. He takes Naruto for a rival after Naruto beats him in the Chunin Exams, but he is fiercely protective of his team and of his dog Akamaru, refusing to abandon him and putting himself in danger for his sake.

Akamaru repays that devotion by fighting at his side, lending Kiba his sharper senses and joining him in volleys of physical attacks. Because the dog is naturally better built for combat, Kiba usually alters himself at the start of a fight, growing claws and running on all fours for speed. He can also sharpen his sense of smell dramatically, and by the second half of the series he tracks things that dogs cannot.

In the epilogue he lives with Tamaki, granddaughter of Granny Cat, a supporter of the Uchiha clan, and the pair keep a houseful of dogs and cats. Kōsuke Toriumi voices him in Japanese and Kyle Hebert in English.