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Killer B

Mentor / AllyNaruto Shippuden

Portrait of a muscular dark-skinned man with white-blond hair, sunglasses and a Cloud forehead protector, swords strapped across his back
Also known as
Killer Bee, B, Jinchuriki of the Eight-Tails
Birthday
May 15
Height
194.2 cm
Blood type
A
Rank
Jonin
Team
Kumogakure shinobi; bodyguard unit of the Fourth Raikage; Allied Shinobi Forces
Occupation
Shinobi of Kumogakure; jinchuriki of Gyuki; aspiring rapper and lyricist
Japanese voice
Hisao Egawa
English voice
Beau Billingslea
Affiliation
Hidden Cloud Village (Kumogakure); Allied Shinobi Forces
First appearance
Five Kage Summit Arc
Series
Naruto Shippuden

Who is Killer B?

The Eight-Tails jinchūriki and adoptive brother of the Fourth Raikage, B raps constantly, fights with seven swords at once and treats his tailed beast Gyūki as a friend rather than a curse. Hidden away for safety during the war, he instead trains Naruto to confront and befriend the Nine-Tails, making him the single most important teacher of Shippuden's second half.

Appearance

A towering, heavily muscled dark-skinned man with bleached white-blond hair worn short and spiky, a neat moustache and chin beard, and wraparound sunglasses he almost never removes. The character for iron is tattooed on his left cheek and a bull's horn design marks his shoulder. He wears the sleeveless white Kumogakure flak jacket, a broad red rope belt, forearm guards and his village forehead protector, with seven sheathed longswords strapped across his back in a bristling fan. He usually carries a notebook of lyrics tucked somewhere on his person.

Personality

Loud, theatrical and relentlessly upbeat, B expresses nearly everything in improvised rhyme and treats life as a performance, complete with imaginary fans and dramatic poses. He is also genuinely wise about what it means to carry a tailed beast, and he takes the role of teacher seriously once he decides someone is worth teaching. He is stubborn about his artistic ambitions to the point of faking his own capture for a working holiday, which infuriates his brother. Beneath the showmanship sits deep loyalty to Kumogakure and an unusual friendship with Gyuki, built on years of mutual respect rather than domination. He rarely panics and laughs off injuries that would end most fights.

Background

B was chosen as the eighth host of Gyuki, the Eight-Tails, after previous jinchuriki failed to control it, and grew up alongside A, the son of the Third Raikage, who would become the Fourth. The two trained together and developed a joint attack style. Where earlier hosts feared the beast, B repeatedly challenged it and eventually earned its cooperation, becoming one of the few jinchuriki fully at peace with the creature inside him. He served as Kumo's ultimate weapon and as A's partner and shield, while privately devoting himself to writing rap lyrics that his village mostly declined to appreciate. His control made him a prime target once the Akatsuki began collecting tailed beasts.

Role in Naruto Shippuden

  1. Sasuke's Hunt for the Eight-Tails

    Sent by the Akatsuki to capture him, Sasuke Uchiha's team ambushes B in the mountains. He shrugs off their attacks, wields seven swords in a chaotic style nobody can read, and nearly kills them before Sasuke's Amaterasu forces an escape. B substitutes himself with a severed tentacle and slips away, letting the world believe he was taken.

  2. Five Kage Summit

    His apparent capture drives the Fourth Raikage into a fury that shapes the summit and the eventual alliance. B, meanwhile, is discovered alive and hiding out in a mountain retreat, writing lyrics with a supportive enka singer. Reunited with his brother, he is ordered into protective custody on a hidden island.

  3. Nine-Tails Chakra Control Training

    On the island turtle, B becomes Naruto's mentor. He sends him to the Falls of Truth to confront his own darkness, then guides him through the ritual of wrestling the Nine-Tails for its chakra, offering blunt advice about hatred, self-acceptance and the loneliness jinchuriki share.

  4. Fourth Shinobi World War

    B and Naruto break out of confinement to join the fighting, cutting through reanimated jinchuriki and facing the masked Tobi together. He lends Gyuki's strength to the war effort, fights alongside the tailed beasts against the Ten-Tails, and survives Gyuki's extraction only because a fragment of its chakra remained inside him.

  5. Conclusion

    With the war ended and the tailed beasts freed, B is reunited with Gyuki and returns to Kumogakure and to his songwriting. He keeps up his loud friendship with Naruto and remains his brother's closest ally, having proven that a jinchuriki can be a hero rather than a weapon.

Abilities and techniques

Eight-Tails Transformation

B can cloak himself in Gyuki's chakra, grow tails at will, or release the ox-octopus in full, a mountain-sized beast whose strikes level terrain. Unlike most hosts he keeps his mind entirely his own throughout.

Seven Swords Dance

His signature kenjutsu, in which he grips seven longswords between his arms, teeth, neck and armpits and spins through opponents. The angles are impossible to predict because even he does not plan them, making the style nearly unreadable.

Lightning Release Chakra Mode

By flooding his body with lightning chakra he multiplies his speed and striking power, a technique shared with the Fourth Raikage. Paired with his brother it produces a simultaneous double clothesline attack that few bodies can survive.

Tailed Beast Bomb

He compresses positive and negative chakra into a dense sphere that can be fired as a devastating blast or, in a technique he devised, swallowed and released as a concentrated beam from his mouth.

Samehada

After Kisame Hoshigaki's defeat, the living sword Samehada takes to B, drawn to his enormous chakra. He uses it as a shield, a chakra battery and a partner, and it heals him by feeding him energy mid-fight.

Endurance and Regeneration

Massive physical strength and extraordinary durability let him absorb attacks that would cripple most shinobi, while Gyuki's chakra accelerates healing so severely that even mortal wounds close during battle.

Relationships

A, the Fourth Raikage
Adoptive brother and leader
Their bond drives much of the war's politics. A is fiercely protective to the point of smothering, while B chafes at the leash; their arguments are loud, but they fight as a perfectly synchronised pair.
Gyuki
Tailed beast and partner
The Eight-Tails and B fought for years before reaching genuine friendship. Gyuki tempers his recklessness with dry commentary, and B treats it as a comrade rather than a weapon or a curse.
Naruto Uzumaki
Student and fellow jinchuriki
B teaches Naruto to face his inner darkness and to claim the Nine-Tails' power. Their shared experience of being feared as children turns the lessons into a kinship neither expected.
Motoi
Childhood acquaintance
A Kumo shinobi who once tried to kill B in revenge for his father's death at the Eight-Tails' hands. B knew and forgave him without ever mentioning it, an act that shapes Naruto's own thinking.
Kisame Hoshigaki
Enemy
The Akatsuki swordsman hunted him twice and spied on Kumo from inside his own sword. Their clash ends with Samehada abandoning Kisame for B, who then wields it against the Akatsuki.

Notable moments

  • He fights Sasuke's entire team single-handedly and escapes by tricking them with a tentacle substitute.
  • He fakes his own kidnapping so he can take an unauthorised break to write rap lyrics.
  • He sends Naruto into the Falls of Truth to confront the worst parts of himself.
  • He inherits Samehada, the living blade, after its previous owner is defeated.
  • He survives the extraction of his tailed beast, an ordeal that kills every other host.

Trivia

  • He speaks in rhyme almost constantly and carries a notebook for lyric ideas.
  • He is the eighth jinchuriki of Gyuki and the first to achieve full cooperation with it.
  • The character tattooed on his cheek is the one for iron.
  • He is not related to the Fourth Raikage by blood, but the two were raised as brothers.
  • His unpredictable sword style works because he does not decide his own movements in advance.

More Naruto Shippuden characters