Hinata Out-Ninjas Naruto at the One Skill Kishimoto Forgot Matters Most

Hinata Hyuga has never been the loudest, flashiest, or strongest ninja in Naruto — and that was kind of the point. She mattered anyway. She carried the Hyuga clan’s whole idealism thing on her back and quietly became crucial to Naruto’s story, especially once Shippuden hit its final stretch and her relationship with him actually went somewhere. And while she never matched Naruto’s raw power, she did beat him in one very old-school shinobi skill: hand signs.

Hinata’s low-key flex: technique over brute force

Naruto is all heart and nuclear-level chakra dumps. Hinata is the opposite. Her entire Gentle Fist style is about control, timing, and precision — not smashing mountains, but shutting down chakra points with surgical accuracy. That mindset shows up in the stats too. The official databooks track hand sign proficiency, and Hinata’s ratings actually climb in a way that tells a story about discipline and growth. Naruto’s? Not so much.

What hand signs actually do (and why they used to matter)

When the series starts, Kishimoto makes it clear: hand signs are the scaffolding for most ninjutsu and genjutsu. At the Academy, kids learn the twelve basic seals. Those patterns help you gather, shape, and direct chakra so a technique doesn’t blow up in your face. In the lore, this whole system traces back to Indra Otsutsuki, who codified hand seals to let people use chakra in a consistent way — the groundwork for basically everything ninjas do.

Early on, we even see the craft of it. Kakashi strings together long, deliberate sequences in battle. It sold the fantasy that being a shinobi was part martial art, part technical ritual. Then the show evolves. As characters get better, they use fewer seals because their control gets sharper. By the later arcs, though, battles are less about finger choreography and more about who’s bringing the bigger chakra bomb. Hand signs slide into the background.

Naruto vs. Hinata on the numbers

If you care about the technical side, the databooks back all this up. Naruto’s whole thing is power over polish. Hinata’s is the reverse — and she actually pulls ahead of the main character in the only stat that measures pure technique.

• Naruto Uzumaki: hand sign proficiency nudges from about 1 to roughly 1.5 across the series. Huge power spikes, minimal improvement in the nuts-and-bolts execution.
• Hinata Hyuga: starts at 2 while she’s still at the Academy, then improves to 3 once she’s an active ninja. That tracks with a style built on chakra control and precise execution.

So what does that say about being a shinobi?

It kind of depends on which version of the show you prefer. Early Naruto treated technical mastery — including hand signs — as core to the fantasy. Later Naruto let power scaling take the wheel. Hinata is a reminder of the original thesis: control and craft matter. Naruto is the counterpoint: sometimes sheer will and overwhelming force rewrite the rules.

I do wonder if Kishimoto intentionally phased out hand signs because keeping that system front-and-center gets complicated once the power levels go sky high. Either way, if you ever felt like Hinata didn’t get her flowers, this is one place she absolutely outclassed the hero.

Naruto is streaming on Hulu.