Naruto’s First S-Rank Jutsu Was So Overpowered, Kishimoto Locked It Away From Everyone Else

Every series needs a do-not-touch button. For Naruto, it is Rasenshuriken — a move so strong it borders on bad idea, and that is exactly the point. Here is why it mattered, why it almost broke its own show, and why no one else ever got to use it.

What Rasenshuriken actually is (and why it was a big deal)

Rasenshuriken shows up in Naruto Shippuden as Naruto’s first S-rank technique and the first time anyone successfully fused a chakra nature into the Rasengan. Even Minato, who invented Rasengan, could not pull off that final nature transformation step. Naruto did — and that alone makes it a historic moment for the series.

On screen, it debuts against Kakuzu in the anime’s Episode 88, lining up with manga chapters 339–342 (VIZ Media). The idea sounds simple: take Rasengan and lace it with wind chakra until it becomes a spinning storm of microscopic blades. The results are not simple. When it lands, those countless tiny wind edges tear into the target at a cellular level, wreck internal organs, and even shred the chakra network. Nasty.

The catch: it also chews up the user. At first, Naruto had to hit it at close range, which meant his own arm was taking that same cellular punishment. Tsunade takes one look at the fallout and bans him from using it. Not a gentle suggestion — a hard stop. The move is a monster, and it does not care who is holding it.

So why could Naruto use it when no one else could?

The short answer is that Rasenshuriken is inherently unstable. Most jutsu drain chakra or strain your body; this one threatens to permanently damage the user from the inside. Naruto only finds a path forward because his toolkit is oddly perfect for solving a problem this specific.

• He has ridiculous chakra reserves, which let him test and fail a lot without keeling over.
• He weaponizes shadow clones for training, slicing months of wind-nature practice into hours.
• Sage Mode changes the game by letting him throw Rasenshuriken like a projectile, which finally removes the self-hit problem.

That last piece is the bridge between unusable and barely-usable. Once he can toss it from a distance, he stops grinding his own arm into dust. But that does not make Rasenshuriken safe — it just means Naruto found a narrow way to live with it. The story never offers another shinobi the right mix of power, method, and motive to replicate that balance. It is not that other characters are incompetent; they are simply not built for this particular grenade.

The behind-the-scenes logic: keep the nuke in one hand

There is also a clear storytelling reason Masashi Kishimoto never spread Rasenshuriken around: if Naruto could spam it consequence-free, half the future fights would be over before they start. Turning it into just another high-damage move would flatten the tension and cheapen Naruto’s growth. Keeping it restricted preserves its weight.

Rasenshuriken is meant to mark Naruto’s evolution — not just power for power’s sake, but a power that demands a cost. Even after Sage Mode, it is really only better managed, not harmless. That is a smart design choice: the move stays terrifying, and it stays uniquely his.

The bottom line

Rasenshuriken is overpowered on purpose and deliberately unsafe. It is not a technique anyone else was ever going to copy, because it was never meant to be a community resource. It is the show’s big red button — press with caution, and only if your name is on the title card.

Do you think keeping Rasenshuriken exclusive made the story better, or should another shinobi have mastered it too? Let me know.

Naruto: Shippuden is streaming on Crunchyroll.