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Naruto‘s ending threw a lot of overpowered techniques at the wall, but one single attack from the Valley of the End rematch still gets debated more than almost anything else in the entire series. It isn’t a new mode or a sudden bloodline awakening – it’s just one arrow.
Sasuke’s Indra’s Arrow, fired straight out of his upgraded Complete Body Susanoo, matched Naruto’s single biggest Rasenshuriken head-on without flinching for even a second. Chidori made Sasuke dangerous once upon a time. This move made him mythic, and here’s why it still holds up more than a decade later.
Sasuke’s Upgraded Susanoo in Naruto Basically Turned Him Into a True God
Indra’s Arrow from Naruto | Credits: Studio PierrotHere’s the thing people forget: Indra’s Arrow isn’t a standalone jutsu Sasuke just pulls out of nowhere whenever he feels like showing off. It only exists because Sasuke absorbs chakra from all nine tailed beasts and pours every last drop into an already-enhanced Complete Body Susanoo, the fully armored giant with its tengu-like nose, sheathed katana, and wing-shaped secondary arms folded behind its shoulders. That’s the vessel.
The arrow is what happens when a god-sized construct decides to go full archer instead of just swinging a sword. Sasuke Uchiha draws a longbow out of pure lightning chakra and fires a single shot, and he flat-out calls it his strongest offensive technique, no qualifiers attached whatsoever. Not Amaterasu; not Kirin, and not even his strongest Chidori variant from earlier arcs. One arrow, made of thunder, treated as the absolute ceiling of everything he’s capable of by the story itself. There’s also a mythology layer that gets glossed over constantly by fans who only care about the numbers.
The whole move is a direct nod to Indra, the Hindu god of thunder and war, who famously fired lightning arrows off a rainbow-shaped bow according to the legend. Even the thunderbolt itself carries the name Vajra in a Japanese context, which basically means “diamond” or “unbreakable.” So this isn’t just a flashy visual thrown in for spectacle. Kishimoto built an entire piece of religious iconography into one panel, and it lines up perfectly with how Sasuke’s whole arc constantly borrows from his ancestor, Indra Otsutsuki. The power isn’t just big for the sake of being big. It’s thematically loaded, tying his final form straight back to the root of the Uchiha bloodline itself.
5 Strongest Lightning Release Techniques Including Indra’s Arrow, Ranked
Indra’s Arrow tends to get treated as its own category, completely separate from every other lightning jutsu in the series, and honestly, that’s fair given what it took to create it. But it’s still built from Lightning Release at its core, which means it technically has to answer to the rest of the field before it can claim the crown outright.
Kumogakure alone has already produced two separate Raikage with lightning techniques strong enough to headline a list like this on their own merits, and Sasuke’s own arsenal has more than one contender besides the arrow itself. Here’s how the strongest Lightning Release techniques in the entire franchise actually stack up against each other once everything is on the table.
| RANK | TECHNIQUE | USER | RANKING REASON? |
| 1 | Indra’s Arrow | Sasuke Uchiha | Fired from an enhanced Complete Body Susanoo loaded with all nine tailed beasts’ chakra, this single lightning arrow matched Naruto’s Six Paths Ultra-Big Ball Rasenshuriken head-on – and per the wiki, Sasuke himself calls it his strongest offensive technique, period. |
| 2 | Kirin | Sasuke Uchiha | Instead of generating lightning from chakra, Sasuke hijacks an actual storm and drops it on the enemy. It’s described in canon as devastating and basically undodgeable – Itachi only survived it because his Susanoo took the hit for him. |
| 3 | Lightning Release Chakra Mode | A (Fourth Raikage) | Wrapping his entire body in raw lightning chakra turns the Raikage into a walking wrecking ball. While using it, his Liger Bomb slam was strong enough to crack the ribs of Sasuke’s Susanoo, and Sasuke’s own Susanoo cushioning is the only reason he survived. |
| 4 | Hell Stab | Third Raikage | His signature move, concentrating lightning chakra down into just the fingertips for a piercing thrust that gets stronger the fewer fingers he uses. Simple concept, but it’s on record as his strongest technique for a reason. |
| 5 | Raikiri (Lightning Cutter) | Kakashi Hatake | Technically the same jutsu as Chidori, just Kakashi’s own personal name for it after he famously sliced a real bolt of lightning in half with it. Sasuke’s Chidori and all its later variants trace straight back to this one technique. |
What jumps out looking at this lineup is how much of it traces back to just two sources: Kumogakure’s line of Raikage and the Uchiha clan. Kumogakure clearly treats lightning as a birthright rather than just an affinity picked up through training, and the Uchiha somehow turned that exact same element into a weapon tied to actual gods and myth.
Indra’s Arrow sitting at number one isn’t really a surprise once the full list gets laid out like this, since everything ranked below it is working with a single body’s own chakra reserves at most, while Sasuke’s arrow is being fired from a construct fueled by nine entire tailed beasts at once, wrapped inside armor powerful enough to fight one of them on its own terms. That’s the actual gap between “a strong lightning jutsu” and “the strongest one in the series,” and it’s a big part of why this particular ranking probably isn’t changing anytime soon, no matter how many new techniques the franchise adds down the line.
What are your thoughts on Indra’s Arrow from the Naruto series? We’d love to know your thoughts in the comments below.
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