In all of Naruto, there are few visuals more iconic than those of Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha, charging towards each other with their two signature attacks — the Rasengan and Chidori respectively. The complex relationship between the two old friends and lifelong rivals is the emotional nucleus that the series' narrative revolves around. Even for the large segments of the story in Part II where there is little, if any interaction between the two, the tension building up to their final face off serves to provide the story with a sense of direction, a well-defined final point of resolution, so to speak.

Clashes between Sasuke's Chidori and Naruto's Rasengan have been central to every confrontation between the pair, inspiring much debate about which of them is actually stronger. While each of these clashes has ended in something akin to a stalemate, where the two attacks collide and create massive explosions, there has been no clear answer on which of them is actually more powerful. The only clear instance of comparison between their relative power throughout Naruto, came during Naruto and Sasuke's fight on the rooftop of the Konoha Hospital, which saw both attacks used on the building's water tanks. In effect, this also served to highlight the underlying mechanics of both techniques, which are incredibly important to carrying out this comparison.

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How Does The Chidori Work?

When it was initially introduced at the finals of the Chunin Exams, during Sasuke's fight against Gaara, Might Guy described the Chidori as a jab. The simplest way to describe it would be a formless concentration of lightning natured chakra coating a user's hand, to augment its destructive power. Manifesting as a mass of electricity around the user's hand, the jutsu focuses on its use of nature transformation and does not involve any shape transformation. As the creator of this jutsu, Kakashi Hatake, had made extensive use of it for assassinations and missions that required stealth during his time in Konohagakure's Anbu, due to its effectiveness at quickly eliminating opponents with only a single hit.

The jutsu focuses the lightning chakra at the point of impact, delivering a pinpoint hit with incredible piercing power, capable of slicing through virtually any resistance it may encounter. As a result, the area of its impact is relatively smaller and more focused, making it ideal for targeted hits on a victim's vital spots. This is why Kakashi preferred such an attack to complement his fighting style, delivering calculated hits to deal maximum damage. Additionally, the speed at which the attack is delivered is just as important as the volume of chakra the user concentrates in their hand, which presents another problem for most ninja who attempt to use it.

Ideally, Chidori should be delivered while charging towards an opponent at high speed, augmenting the lightning chakra with the force of the user's momentum, to heighten its piercing ability and impact. Unfortunately, charging towards an opponent in a straight line causes the user to develop tunnel vision, leaving them vulnerable to attack. Hence, this is why they must possess heightened ocular abilities such as the Sharingan to safely use the technique and guard against this scenario. This is why Sasuke learned it so early on in his journey as a shinobi, and his later applications of shape transformation along with other enhancements, took it to an entirely different level of power.

Deconstructing The Rasengan

Regarded as the pinnacle of shape transformation, the Rasengan is essentially a sphere of compressed chakra rotating in different directions at high speeds. Invented by Minato Namikaze, the late Fourth Hokage, this jutsu was inspired by the Tailed Beast Ball. While searching for a countermeasure against this formidable technique for his future wife, Kushina Uzumaki, who was a jinchuriki of the Nine-Tails, Minato took inspiration from it and spent nearly three years honing the Rasengan to perfection.

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On its own, the Rasengan does not involve any kind of nature transformation, but later variants have seen users apply their innate chakra nature to it as a means of enhancing certain aspects of its power. Generally delivered as a short range attack, the user's hand does not need to make direct contact with a target while using the Rasengan. When used on an opponent, the attack itself may not have much piercing power, but its greatest strength lies in the blunt force delivered by the high speed rotation of chakra. Those who fall victim to the Rasengan will be sent flying backwards and suffer internal damage to their body due to the grinding force of the rotation.

Extremely difficult to learn and master, the technique is usually taught in three steps that focus on rotating chakra in multiple directions, increasing the intensity of the chakra, and finally, containing it within a clean orb shape. Due its destructive force, the Rasengan is an exceptional all-purpose short range offensive jutsu, as it does not require hand signs to execute and can deal devastating amounts of damage on impacting a target. This is why so many characters have employed it as mainstay in their repertoire of techniques, developing more variations of the jutsu to suit their needs.

The Root Of This Debate

What is interesting to note about the debate is that it has been more or less officially settled in the series itself, with Jiraiya having stated that the Rasengan is superior in terms of destructive power, when comparing their most basic variants. On the face of it, this might be easy to agree with when weighing up the relative damage to the water tanks on the rooftop of the Konoha Hospital. Whereas Sasuke's Chidori left a well-defined hole in its rear surface, a fair distance away from the point of impact, Naruto's Rasengan had entirely destroyed the rear wall of the water tank it struck, highlighting its raw power. Contrastingly, the many variants of the Chidori are definitely comparable to their Rasengan counterparts.

However, this does not get to the root of the issue, as the Rasengan and Chidori are fundamentally different techniques meant to be utilized in very contrasting situations. In fact, the rooftop fight provided a clear hint towards this when Sasuke saw the two water tanks. Where the Rasengan embodies raw power, the Chidori is a more focused and deadly attack. At first, there were a number of hand signs required to perform the Chidori, but this gradually decreased until hand signs were more or less done away with at the end of the series. Initially, neither of the attacks could be used over long ranges, although this ceased to be a problem later on in the series, as Naruto and Sasuke honed the two techniques even further. The two techniques have generally neutralized each other and triggered monumental explosions on clashing, which makes comparison all the more complicated.

For the variants and derived techniques, it is also quite hard to distinguish between them, as this can vary wildly from user to user. Some variants such as Sasuke's Susanoo: Chidori, or even Kakashi's Kamui Raikiri, are far more powerful than many versions of the Rasengan. Naruto and Minato, the two most prominent users of the Rasengan at the end of Naruto, used it in wildly different ways, due to the several kekkei genkai enhanced versions of the Rasengan and Rasenshuriken that Naruto created after receiving chakra from all the tailed beasts. Where the Rasengan exceeds it in power and force, the Chidori is more than a match for it when looking at precision and accuracy, so an uneven stalemate may be as far as this debate ever really progresses.

Naruto is available to stream on Crunchyroll.

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