Chakra

The energy that the ninja of Naruto shape into jutsu.

Chakra is the energy that the ninja of Naruto shape into their techniques. In the anime's account of its history, Indra Ōtsutsuki named the hand formations used to shape chakra "seals" and their effects "jutsu".

Lore & Background

Chakra reached the world through the Ōtsutsuki clan: their Divine Trees drain a world's resources to produce a chakra fruit, and after Kaguya ate the fruit some of her chakra passed to her sons Hagoromo and Hamura. Hagoromo used it to found the practice of ninshū, which in time became ninjutsu.

Reader's Guide

There are five basic chakra natures: Earth, Fire, Water, Wind and Lightning. Naruto's is wind, which Kakashi teaches him to control and to mix into his Rasengan. The Eight Gates normally restrict the flow of chakra through the body, and the hosts of the Tailed Beasts can draw on their beast's chakra, as Naruto does with Kurama's.