Rock Lee

Rock Lee is a fictional character in the anime and manga series Naruto.

Personality and Ability

Rock Lee is a very spirited taijutsu (hand-to-hand combat) specialist and is the paragon of hard work. Incapable of using genjutsu or ninjutsu, he only fights using taijutsu. He is able to open five of the eight "chakra gates" inside a ninja's body (being able to open all eight gates results in a temporarily and dramatically increased power surpassing even Kage level in abilities and equal the strength of opponents skilled in genjutsu and ninjutsu but at the cost of the user's life).

No matter who the opponent, Lee always shows respect and never attempts to demean them. As an academy student he was teased for his inability, leading him to spend all his time and concentration on taijutsu under the guidance of his sensei, Might Guy. Through practice, he has become so overcompensatingly strong in the taijutsu discipline that he was allowed to graduate the ninja academy with his teammate and rival Hyūga Neji. Neji originally claimed that Lee was not really a ninja since he can't use genjutsu or ninjutsu, saying that just because Lee is the first student who graduated from the academy with only taijutsu doesn't mean that he is amazing, just unusual.

Lee always keeps a pair of very heavy weights on his legs (dropping them from even waist-height causes them to bury themselves several meters underground) and has trained himself to be amazingly fast despite this hindrance. The possibility of taking off the weights is a huge trump card for him, his speed increases drastically beyond its already impressive normal level when free of them (to the point that he moves faster than the blink of an eye). Guy has restricted him to only taking them off in a situation when protecting people who are important to him, but made an exception during Lee's battle with Gaara. Kakashi ridicules this type of training, calling it 'sentimental' and 'old-fashioned', and also points out that Guy went a little overboard with the amount of weight. Additionally, Lee is seen training with stone sandals in a filler episode of the anime.

Lee has manifested a natural predisposition towards Suiken (Drunken Fist); when he drinks as little as one drop of alcohol, he becomes an unpredictable and unstoppable force of destruction and chaos. As Guy explains to Tsunade during the Sasuke retrieval arc, after Lee accidentally drank a small amount of Guy's sake during a congratulatory dinner, he proceeded to lay waste to the pub they were in. It took the combined effort of Guy and Lee's teammates to hold him down. When drunk, his moves have an extra edge of unpredictability to them, much like the actual Drunken Fist fighting style.

Lee has also shown signs of intelligence. He has a near textbook knowledge of the Hyūga family (As shown before the fight with Hinata and Neji), and is able to understand the strategies of his comrades through mere observation.

Kishimoto Masashi says: "Lee's theme is hard work. People think that hard work is lame these days but that's not the case. I wanted to express that hard work pays off."

Chūnin Exam Arc

Lee is portrayed as somewhat of a ridiculous character from the get-go, particularly his relationship with Guy; their emotional hugging, overstated posing and odd mannerisms weird out Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura and even Uchiha Sasuke to the point of blankly staring with disbelief when they witness them for the first time. Lee's bond with Guy is by far the strongest student-teacher relationship described in the series; Lee owes a large part of his character to Guy's guidance, including his dedication to hard work, taijutsu prowess, outfit, and haircut (Lee already had large eyebrows). Guy himself believes that Lee has "beautiful eyes," and also calls him his "cute student."

Lee is first introduced during the very beginning of the Chūnin exam arc, posing as a weak ninja in order not to draw attention to himself and his two teammates, Hyūga Neji and Tenten. Soon enough, however, he is revealed as far superior than he made himself out to be; he appears before Team Kakashi, proclaims his undying love for Sakura minutes after seeing her for the first time and challenges Sasuke to a battle. When Naruto gets annoyed with all the attention Sasuke is getting and insists on challenging Lee himself, Lee easily deflects his attack and sends him spinning straight into a nearby wall with his whirlwind kick.

After seeing this, Sasuke decides to accept the challenge and is defeated as well, though to his credit it took longer. Through his defeat Sasuke discovers one of the weaknesses of the Sharingan for the first time: It is useless to have enhanced perception of the opponent's movements if your own body cannot keep up with them. At that point Lee gets too carried away and almost uses one of his trump card techniques, Omote Renge (Front Lotus), to secure his win, but Guy interferes and berates Lee for doing so. After a moment of theatrical punching, hugging and crying complete with sunset background and crashing waves, they bid team Kakashi farewell, leaving them mightily dumbfounded.

Lee appears again later during the second stage of the exam, set in the Forest of Death. He wanders off from his two teammates and encounters a desperate Sakura, hopelessly trying to fend off the three Sound-nin attacking her and her two unconscious teammates (knocked out during their encounter with Orochimaru earlier). He does his best to help her, even using Omote Renge against Dosu Kinuta, but fails as there are three of the Sound-nin and he has no experience fighting against sound-based attacks. Ultimately it is the dark form of Sasuke, completely engulfed by Orochimaru's cursed seal, which awakens and drives them away (almost killing them in the process).

In the third stage preliminaries, Lee finds himself having to fight Gaara, easily the most difficult opponent for him to have been matched against. During this fight we find out the extent of Lee's plight. In flashbacks he kept trying to beat his rival, Hyūga Neji, but lost again and again until he almost lost faith in himself completely. In the battle, trump card after trump card is pulled out only to be nullified against Gaara's various defenses. In the end Gaara barely wins the fight. When Lee is unable to defend himself Gaara avenged his wounds by crushing Lee's left arm and left leg and Guy steps in to save him (disqualifying Lee). Despite his mortal wounds Lee stands up in his combat stance to continue fighting. Guy informs him the fight is over only to discover that Lee had stood up while being unconscious. The medics then inform Guy that his wounds have crippled him and destroyed his career as a ninja. In the aftermath of this regrettable battle, Lee is hospitalized but insists on training anyway, sneaking out of the hospital and doing one-armed push-ups and one-legged squats on his broken arm and leg. Even despite his loss his fight against Gaara was inspiring: Lee was the first person to ever physically hurt Gaara, demonstrating his extreme potential.

The greatest of Lee's "trump cards" are five of the Hachimon Tonku (eight chakra gates). He is the only known person below Jōnin capable of opening any of these gates. Using this technique is forbidden and Lee was taught to open these by Might Guy, which Kakashi disapproved of. The gates are the endogenous chakra limits. The gates, in order, are: Initial, Heal, Life, Harm, Limit, View, Wonder (also translated as Insanity, implying that the user could possibly lose his/her mental stability if the gate is opened), and Death. By opening these gates one can release the mind's limits on chakra use at the expense of the body. Lee can open the first five gates, and has done so when performing Ura Renge, the final and most powerful of Lee's attacks. Guy and Kakashi (Shown in a brief flashback of his training) are the only people who have demonstrated usage of the Hachimon Tonku. Guy opens the first six gates in preparation for his Asa Kujaku (Morning Peacock) against a clone of Hoshigaki Kisame formed using the Akatsuki Leader's Shōten no Jutsu (Shapeshifting Technique).

The basis for the idea of Hachimon Tonku come from the body limiting on the body's functions within it. This makes the body much weaker, but it keeps the body from expiring too soon. The gates and what they release are listed below.

Initial: releases the brain's ability to limit the strain on the muscles, but does damage to the muscle fibers.
Heal: releases the brain's limit on the body's stamina making a battle worn person become miraculously ready to fight as if the fight had just started.
Life: located on the spinal cord, it releases the limit on the nervous system, which makes information travel at a faster rate and creates even more stamina.
Harm: releases the limit on oxygen intake in the lungs that creates much more energy for the body to use.
Limit: releases the amount of chakra released because this is the area, the upper abdomen, where chakra is stored before it's released in the body as jutsu.
View: removes the limit on how much the intestines, where the gate is located, can digest fat/proteins and releases otherwise useless energy resources giving the body even more power and stamina.
Wonder/Insanity: removes the limit of how fast the body can move, removes wastes from dead skin cells to feces, the gate is located in the bladder, and gives the body a much cleaner system to work with and seemingly produces more power and stamina.
Death: uses all the body's energy and opens the final gate located at the heart. It makes the heart pump at maximum power and exceeds the power of the last gates. This uses up all the cells energy and gives them power close to infinity, well above that of any Kage. This "big bang" effect lasts only for a while and ends up with the muscles, including the heart, being completely destroyed and killing the user.

Sasuke Retrieval Arc

After Naruto and Jiraiya bring Tsunade back into Konohagakure and convince her to become the fifth Hokage, Guy, who has heard of Tsunade's legendary medical abilities, asks her whether there is anything than can be done about Lee's condition. Tsunade looks into it and concludes that an operation that would mend his bones is possible in theory, but would be very risky; he has bone fragments scattered near vital nerves, and the slightest wrong movement would mean his death. She estimates the chance of success at about 50% and Lee almost experiences a mental breakdown when presented with the morbid choice of whether to undergo the operation or not. On the one hand, his life is meaningless without his ability to prove his nindo ("path of endurance", refers to one's chosen path in life) - that he can become a great ninja even without ability to use Ninjutsu or Genjutsu. On the other hand, the only method to recover his nindo is to risk death.

Eventually, after a heartfelt conversation with Guy, Lee decides to take the operation (The anime has Tsunade doing a bit of research and raising the success chance to 58%, but this does not happen in the original manga). Naruto learns that the operation was a success when, during the expedition to retrieve Sasuke, Lee jumps in to take over his fight against Kimimaro, thus allowing him to continue pursuing Sasuke himself. Lee was still using a crutch to walk just two days before Shikamaru's team left for Sasuke. According to Tsunade, Lee was not supposed to even leave the hospital, but given his character, it is not surprising that he did so when he heard his friends could use his help.

After a few exchanged hits, Lee briefly seizes the advantage over Kimimaro when he drinks what he thinks is his medicine but is actually a bottle of sake he took by mistake, revealing for the first time in the series Rock Lee's natural abilities in the powerful Suiken (Drunken Fist) style. Drunken Lee's power and unpredictability soon becomes too much for Kimimaro to handle on his own and he is forced to tap power from the Cursed seal, reversing the situation as he is now able to counter and stop Lee's attacks with his bones alone. Lee attempts the Lotus attack, but, having just left the care of the hospital, it was a vain effort. When his death seems inevitable, however, a cloud of sand powerfully blasts and knocks him and Kimimaro away from each other, some more sand rising up to allow Lee a soft landing. Gaara, now Konoha's ally and his attitude changed by his earlier battle with Naruto, has come to Lee's aid and essentially saved his life. Gaara fends off Kimimaro, using his most powerful attacks just to keep Kimimaro at bay, but is almost overcome and killed. Lucky for Gaara, Kimimaro's sickness finally catches up with him, and he dies with a spear held directly in front of Gaara's eye.

Having just been saved by Gaara, Lee tells him that he doesn't hold a grudge, and they have a friendly conversation about the ideals that fueled Kimimaro before they go back to Konoha to meet up with everybody else and see how the mission played out. In the epilogue to the first part of the manga, he is shown much more muscular training with Guy, who can't seem to keep up.

Naruto II arc

Two and a half years later, Team Guy is sent as backup for Naruto, Sakura and Kakashi on a mission to rescue Gaara from the hands of the criminal organization Akatsuki. Lee has yet to display any major new techniques, but it stands to reason that he at least knows some, if not all, of Guy's more advanced techniques. In terms of his appearance, he now sports a ninja vest like Guy (further increasing Lee's comical resemblance to him). He also seems to be more suited to teamwork now, no longer letting his thirst to prove himself lead him first into a fight. If it weren't for the fact that Guy is almost twice as old as Lee, they'd be identical. Much of his personality remains the same; he still looks up to Guy and tries to follow in his footsteps.

When Guy is forced to carry Kakashi back to Konoha (he carries him piggy-back style), Lee mistakes this for training. Lee then attempts to do the same with Neji, who naturally refuses. It's also unknown whether his feelings for Sakura have changed in the last two years, as there's been barely any interaction between them thus far.

Trivia

Rock Lee resembles Bruce Lee and shares his birthday of November 27.
Rock Lee's haircut is the same as his sensei, Guy's. Like his sensei, the shine on his hair reads "Nin," repeatedly, all around his head.
Rock Lee's habit of wearing his Konoha symbol around his waist bears an odd resemblance to the belt Kamen Rider wears.
According to the official databook, Rock Lee's favorite food is medium-spicy curry rice and curry udon, revealing his taste for curry in the "Raiga Arc". Like his sensei, his least favorite food is "There is no such thing!" His hobby is hard work. He has been called a genius at hard work.
According to an interview with Kishimoto Masashi, the creator of the manga series, in Shonen Jump's 'Naruto Anime Profiles Episodes 1-37', Rock Lee is his most fun character to draw.
Rock Lee's weighted clothing is a training method that allows him to move faster once it is removed, a common concept in martial arts shōnen manga. Such methods are also practiced among some martial artists, although the practice is dangerous and controversial.
In an episode of Attack of the Show!, a fan sent a picture of Rock Lee to Kevin Rose, the host of the show, claiming Lee resembled him.
Rock Lee, who speaks in formal Japanese even to his friends, is one of the characters with a unique style of speech. Similarly, in the dubbed English version, Lee almost never uses contractions.
In Volume 5 of the Viz English adaptation of the manga, the preface incorrectly states that Rock Lee is "one of the many students from foreign villages who have traveled to Konohagakure for the Junior Ninja Selection Exams," while he is in fact a native of the village. However, this could mean he is from a different part of the village, such as a ghetto or a slum.
In an interview in the May 2006 issue of U.S. Shonen Jump Magazine, Masashi Kishimoto, the creator of the manga series, stated Sakura and Rock Lee were meant to symbolize human weakness (at least in the beginning).
Lee is one of the few Konoha ninja that didn't see Naruto use the Kyūbi power in the fight against Neji.
Rock Lee was the tallest of the Leaf Village Genin during Naruto I. Neji was the second.
Before the Chūnin Exam started, Rock Lee had completed 22 D-rank, 12 C-rank and no B, A, or S-ranked missions.
Lee can fight while sleeping or unconscious due to muscle memory, and he's been known to sleepwalk for miles at times when training with Guy-sensei. He also uses Suiken (Drunken Fist) when he's drunk, but it's unknown whether he can do the same when sober.
Lee shares a distinct resemblance between Nobita from Doraemon due to their close haircut, big round eyes (without Nobita's glasses), and had a rough past (both were picked on to the point of tears). Nobita was also sometimes drawn with dark eyebrows, increasing his resemblance between Lee.

External links

Surpassing Genius
Pride of the Fist Rock Lee shrine with media, information, downloads, and more.