The Kurama Clan Arc is the fourteenth filler arc in the original Naruto anime and the thirteenth of the Post-Sasuke Retrieval filler arcs.
Short Summary
Kurenai resigns from her post as Team 8's leader, much to her subordinates' dismay. Her reasons lie with a girl from the Kurama clan, Yakumo, who possesses a powerful and deadly Genjutsu that could potentially destroy the entirety of Konohagakure. Naruto gets involved and teams up with Team 8 in order to bring back Kurenai and free Yakumo from her suffering.
Tropes:
- Art Attacker: Yakumo uses her paintings as a medium for her Genjutsu.
- Blessed with Suck: with a dash of Cursed with Awesome, Yakumo can cast illusions which can turn into reality, but she also has a hard time controlling it, and her subconscious takes charge of it instead, making her a danger to everyone around her. Her subconscious eventually took control and manifested into a monster called Ido.
- The Clan: The Kurama clan, once a famous clan of Konohagakure due to their exceptional genjutsu prowess, but now it barely produces shinobi.
- Crippling Overspecialisation: Justified, Yakumo was born with a weak body that meant she couldn’t become a shinobi, but she tried to do it by focusing on her genjutsu prowess. While she didn’t become a kunoichi, her ability in the field is on par with Kurenais', Konoha’s premier master in the field.
- A Day in the Limelight: This arc is this for Kurenai.
- Evil Uncle: Unkai seems to be this to his niece Yakumo. But the situation turned out to be more complex.
- Master of Illusion: Multiple cases of this, as this is a genjutsu heavy arc.
- Kurenai gets to show some of her competence in this field in this arc.
- A downplayed case for the Kurama clan members, who fight mainly using genjutsu to create openings for an attack or to knock out their opposition. Unkai Kurama manages to hold his own against Kurenai though.
- Taken Up To Eleven with Yakumo, who has been born with a Kekkei Genkai that enables her to turn illusions into reality for her victims, such as fires and lava.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Kurenai sealed Yakumo’s to ensure they didn’t grow out of control, this eventually broke, and Yakumo’s subconsciousness took control as the Ido Monster.
- Self-Made Orphan: Yakumo, courtesy of the Ido monster, who used a fire illusion to end her parent's lives. Yakumo, however, was unaware of this and thought her parents were assassinated on orders of the Third Hokage.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Unkai (and by extension the entire Kurama clan) wants to kill Yakumo, not to take power, but to prevent her Genjutsu powers from destroying the Kurama clan and Konohagakure.
