Rock Lee, a ninja who was mocked by his peers during his time in the Academy, demonstrated no talent for ninjutsu and genjutsu. However, he persevered and joined Team Guy, along with Neji Hyūga and Tenten. During the team’s first appearance, Sasuke noticed the chakra in Lee’s system, which is not related to Jutsu. Lee can’t perform most Ninjutsu or Genjutsu but still uses his chakra system to perform insane feats.
One common misconception is that Rock Lee does not possess chakra at all. He is able to walk on water and climb objects with the help of chakra, but he doesn’t possess enough chakra or the skill to manipulate it fast enough with hand signs to execute Ninjutsu. Lee has chakra, but he struggles to control it enough to use Ninjutsu. He can still use it to walk on water and along vertical surfaces.
On October 28, 2021, Lee admitted that he has chakra, but he struggles to use it effectively for Ninjutsu. He can still perform basic chakra control skills, such as using chakra to walk on vertical surfaces. Lee’s stamina and spirit/mind are not the same as his chakra, as he can’t mix them properly.
Rock Lee has an interesting trait when it comes to being a ninja: he doesn’t have the chakra or the inherent ability necessary to become one. Although he has very little skill in ninjutsu, he can still perform basic chakra control skills, such as using chakra to walk on vertical surfaces.
📹 A Theory on Why Rock Lee Can’t Use Ninjutsu
Rock Lee is the one character I have always considered the anomaly of all characters in Naruto. Now of course, when you think of …
📹 THE MISCONCEPTON OF ROCK LEE NOT HAVING CHAKRA EXPLAINED
Rock lee is prob based off a hong kong bruce lee or an anglo with a bowlcut from UK or southern usa. Lack of jutsu would seem like a western thing since martial arts are an asian thing. Japanese were in awe of western men at their size and stature, karate was Japan’s answer for western martial arts, boxing. Rock lee could be a version of a white bruce lee, a hong kong chinese. Anglo yet asian.
Does the manga/anime ever outright say that he cant use ninjutsu or genjutsu, i thought it just said he sucked at it so he ‘didnt’ so its less he cant more he just doesnt cause he would rather emphasize what hes good at then try to improve what he lacks, plus gai sensei being a taijutsu master and being rock lee’s idol probly helped with that choice.
not bad but not great having taijutsu talent like Rock Lee has no bearing on other aspect of ninja. Sakura has great talent for charkra control which is why she became a medical ninja and becuase of that she could website charkra into her fist and feet and make it explode on contact giving her superhuman power. Rock Lee only talent is determination/will power, the 8 gates does not require any charkra control because opening the gates is done forcefully via physical exhaustion/limits as seen when Lee opens it against Gaara using the Lotus first which almost drain all of his physical stamina, the most important thing for opening the gates is not large charkra, is not high talent, is not IQ but a very strong body capable of withstanding the load it puts on the users since opening them removes the limits the brain puts on the body for safety and increases charrka in a explosion type way making it completely uncontrallable which is why they need a strong body to survive the side effects of the gates. Using Ninjutsu requires many aspects -> Handsigns and knowledge on Charkra pathway/meridians to follow when releasing it there is also Nature Change as well, when sasuke uses Fire ball Ninjutsu he has to bring Charkra into his Charkra points/path way in his mouth and then the charkra is transform into fire when release externally and is not fire within his body. .it seems like you have forgotten the many Genins and Chunin in the series that also have ninjutsu but their talent are all ordinary, you think they dont want to learn A or evne S Class Ninjutsu?
Nice article. I agree with most of your theory. I just disagree on the statement that rock lee is the only one who cant do ninjutsu. That’s not correct, there are plenty of people in this world that cant do ninjutsu. The difference is that rock lee is only one still trying to be a ninja. I agree with your explanation of him lacking imagination as the talent hes missing. In the End this also means that “he is just no talented enough” was actually true even if a little vague.
I have Asperger’s disorder. I have a range to my social ability and it’s generally related to my medication and amount of sleep. Autism is a spectrum and Asperger’s exists inside that. Despite being and artist ( I decided to be one when young and have been pretty hyper fixated on it) I have trouble visualizing images in my mind, instead I sort of witness my imagination as an augmentation to the real world. So instead of imagining a circus wheel in my mind, I actually imagine a tiny version of a circus wheel Infront of me. This luckily is very controllable, and sometimes I wonder if this is a few steps away from full blown hallucinations. But out of the spectrum, Rock Lee likely has Asperger’s.
I like the very well even though it is a special like you said that someone with siblings who are autistic another thing that could be explained away via the autistic is how energetic is from personal experience people with autism generally have a lot of energy which lead to them being very hyperactive example of this within Rock Lee is once again his training like how he’s able to train from sunrise to sunset and also from the way he speak and act we’re very loud and noticeable aneurysm even compare to the likes of Naruto who was always loud too to the point where he have the nickname but knucklehead Ninja and lastly speaking from personal experiences again they typically seem to enjoy running back and forth as a way to burn energy and this fit in very well with Rock Lee fighting style being very fast and primarily focusing on his legs
I see how your evidence can result to that conclusion but to be frank I genuinely believe that kishimoto soley made lee stand out and weird to add comedic relief to the show when at the time it was intense and needed to relieve some of that tension. now im not saying that kishimoto only wrote rock lee for the one sole purpose but it is also very evident in kishimoto’s career that his writing and storytelling wasnt his strongest suit.
Well, then. I probably wouldn’t be able to use Ninjutsu either. I have partial aphantasia with some capability for minor visualization. My imagination works differently than textbook visualization, but I do believe some part of me visualizes and I’m just not always able to picture that. If you talk to me about surgery procedures, I’m going to be disturbed. It’s interesting, because it’s not like I can visualize what you’re talking about yet for some reason I still respond as though I’m visualizing something. I’m professionally diagnosed as being on the Autistic spectrum. When I go to sleep, my dreams have imagery. Regardless, visualization techniques fall flat with me and I hate them. I just know they don’t work with me. I’m sure it’s debatable if Rock Lee has Autism, but at the very least, it’s not impossible.
The reason rock lee cannot use ninjutsu because it does not come naturally to him, it’s not that he’s unable to do so but after struggling to amass more than enough chakra to water walk he focused all his efforts on taijutsu. So I think it’s fair to say that lee COULD use ninjutsu but it was such a struggle for him early on that he stuck to taijutsu after comin under guys tutelage
While I do agree, I think that he is just there to be the Bruce Lee fill in for that universe. It would fit given the last name. The only thing that baffles me is how lee uses the ‘drunken fist’ style exactly once and then never again. Shown to be an absolute prodigy in a style that seems to only manifest once in the entire series, I personally think that it being a skill that you have to be born with rather than something you learn or train to achieve, yet abandoning it goes deeper into his character as HE didn’t obtain it. It’s all speculation but i do agree with the spectrum theory mixed with the aphantasia.
It is believed that everybody is on the spectrum. We just have different ways or levels of showing it. Which would make sense. So think about it like that next time you want to be a firefighter, doctor or streamer. Perhaps they are only doing it to full full their needs and reality. You should just be yourself instead of putting pressure to be somebody you aren’t. Rock lee was able to do it
Am I the only person who thinks that the creator of Naruto saw King of the Hill, and low-key walked away with the whole Dale/Joseph/Redcorn thing for Might Guy and Rock Lee? Because, otherwise, Might Guy is just creeping on some kid training in the woods. Unless he’s the father, checking on his son, and choosing to intervene because he sees he has inherited the family jutsu- dysfunction from his grandfather. Has chakra, can’t use it. Who do we know suffer from this? One dude in the sand whom Gara takes under his wing, despite everyone (including the dude himself) saying, “this is foolish” too Gara’s, “Nah, nah, nah! You have no idea how strong my guy here is gonna become!” (It also makes me wonder if he embarked on letting this kid do it before he figured out the final gate means death, what if the kid blows through it in his training on accident?) Might Duy, Might Guy (who seemed to break through those barriers, probably with his rivalry to Kakashi, to eventually use ninjutsu alongside his taijutsu), Metal Lee, and Rock Lee. It doesn’t skip a generation, Guy just literally broke through that handicap, thanks to lining himself up a rival who was really good at ninjutsu. Rock, on the other hand, chose a rival of defense and precision. Seriously, do you have any idea how good Rock Lee is now, because of all those years getting good enough to make a rival that literally couldn’t be touched sweat And what does the Dale Gribble of the Hidden Leaf even LOOK like!? Everybody knows it (“Bushy Brow, Bushier Brow sensei!
As an autistic person, I have a few issues with the pathologized way things were phrased here. Anyone curious can look up the differences between the medical and social models of disability and skip my explanations, but very simply, autism and aphantasia aren’t medical conditions, but natural variations in brain function, and the only reason they are disabilities is because of the context of how society is constructed being hostile to those ways of being, impairing our ability to function safely, healthily, and with dignity in society. I don’t “have autism”, but rather I “am autistic”. I don’t “have ADHD”, but rather I “am kinetic”. Medicalizing these traits contributes to the normalization of the systemic torture, legislated poverty, and incredibly high murder (especially infanticide/familicide) rate we endure, up to and including what can accurately be described as eugenicist genocide. And obviously I take that pretty seriously. So in Rock Lee’s case, while he has no visual imagination, no “mind’s eye” (assuming this theory is correct, which I think is reasonable), that doesn’t imply he’s incapable of abstract thought or creativity (indeed there are plenty of aphantasic novelists). It just means his imagination works differently, and what makes it a disability is the fact that there are no resources available for teaching him ninjutsu that don’t revolve around visual metaphors. If aphantasia was more common than phantasia, people would be just as capable of ninjutsu, but how they taught it would be a bit different, and phantasic people would struggle in much the same way as Rock Lee.
6:15 Rock might have aphantasia… 6:21 LOL I also have aphantasia and ND. 6:35 Well you can’t visually imagine. I have audio imagination that I can express. So I will hear music, voices, sounds I have heard before. I can recall them speed them up slow them down. But if you aske to visualize… Nothing.
Unfortunately the Ninja acadamy in Naruto seems about as useless as schools in our world so people who have very specific cases can’t learn much and even those who don’t fall into that category still end up learning more outside of school than they did in school and really finding their specialty. School is just too general and tries too much to push everyone in the same direction
As someone with Autism, I can confirm both Naruto (or/and possibly ADHD?) and Lee are on the spectrum. I don’t have Afantasia myself, but I do possess extreme levels of visualization. I speak very monotoned, but, I do try to force myself to exhibit more socially acceptable mannerisms through masking. Something I think Naruto is better at than Lee. Masking is putting on a front, in order to hide our Autistic traits.
At 4:04 you are very very wrong.. guy revealed at the fight with kisame that the gates are not results of chakra manipulation. It’s all about extending the limits of a human body. They are mere physical movements, taijutsu. The flames made by his fists are caused by air friction. It sounds pretty impossible, because you need to punch with 63% of the speed of sound to heat the air up to room temperature. Room temperature is only 28C. Fire temp is 600 C. You need to move more than 20x faster than that to cause actual fire.. but that’s not so important right now, the point is that he doesn’t use any kind of chackra, but his muscles are working so hard that his sweat evaporates. If y’all don’t believe me, it’s somewhere between ep250 to ep260 (in crunchyroll)
The aphantasia bit kinda fits but I think that’s just coincidence tbh, I doubt that was intentional on any level. Which I mean, that’s fine for a fan theory anyway. But while I don’t know that Kishimoto specifically labelled it Autism, I do very much think he was thinking along those lines writing the character, and honestly the themes stretch a lot further than just Rock Lee. Throughout especially Part 1 Naruto there are heavy themes of ostracization, of being just somehow different from your peers, not quite fitting in to the box society wants to put you in. These themes manifest themselves in different ways across many different characters, but particularly Gaara, Lee and Naruto himself ended up really heavily coded as aneurotypical. I’d go so far as to say for Naruto and Gaara in Part 1, having a demon sealed inside them pretty much works as an allegory for the more self-harming aspects of mental illness. While I have some minor quibbles with a few specific details brought up in this article but overall I think the analysis is very much on point.
Author: “I like Bruce Lee, maybe I’ll make a character like him who is good at fighting!” Naruto comunity: ” its all clear to me now after perusal every episode carefully in .25 speed that because rock lee blinked exactly 745 during the anime that he is actually an otsutsuki in desguise because if you re arange 745 into arabic alphabet code and then re arange the vouls it says strong white guy.” Good, well thought out theory tho. Makes a lot of sense
Lee isn’t the only shinobi who can’t perform ninjutsu. Guy Sensei cannot perform ninjutsu either and that’s why Lee was assigned to Guy’s team. I personally think its a GENETIC trait, and now we have Metal Lee, who also hasn’t shown signs of ninjutsu (as far as I’ve seen in Boruto, im still catching up). Could also be said his ancestral clan wasn’t around to learn or unable to learn ninshu & ninjutsu at the dawn of history passing along their ignorance through genetics. Genetics being very prominent in Boruto. But again lets not forget Guy Sensei was whooping Sage Madera with only Taijutsu and his 8 inner gates.
I really think it’s the Justice League effect. Batman is the only character who is in the group without super powers or some alien tech that helps him defend the earth. Rock Lee is that character where every known style of shinobi is accompanied by ninjutsu or ginjutsu which is viewed as a super power. To balance the art of Rock Lee, he is a master at Drunken Fist or Drunken Style. He is the only one who knows Lotus Style which can kill Rock Lee. He is the batman of the equation. Batman has no superpowers and mediocre gadgets, trains hard in martial arts, and has an encyclopedia like memory to history and figuring things out. Batman is socially abrasive despite being a millionaire who hosts various high scale social charity events. Two very different characters, cultures, and art types but same outcome? It can’t be by coincidence.
I assumed he was just a regular person. It’s stated in the Naruto-Verse that EVERYONE has Chakra but not everyone can use it to its full ability. It’s like the force in Star Wars. Everyone has it but only a few can actually use it. Lee is like a jedi that has no force abilities but is an exceptional Saber user. Lee is an amazing ninja but can’t use Chakra
It’s commonly accepted that people in the autism spectrum excel in the areas they find appealing and totally neglect the areas they don’t, so even without the Aphantasia Lee might had tried to use Ninjutsu or Genjutsu some times, that doesn’t piqued his interest and then he focused totally in Taijutsu that he preferred, hence his motto: become a splendid ninja WITHOUT using Ninjutsu or Genjutsu.
he simply doesn’t desire to learn ninjustu or genjustu, cuz the strong has no need for such techniques…might gai was dubbed the strongest by Madara himself n rock lee ain’t far behind… physically, rock lee is the strongest and he’ll smash on everyone in Naruto or Boruto lol while everyone else using magic n cheat codes my boi thuggin it out, fuckin grinding, training, harder than everyone else. in hand to hand combat, there is none better than gai n lee. Naruto n Sasuke r nuthin without all their hacks lol n even with their hacks, they’ll stil have trouble dealing wit them.Despite all that, y does rock lee get 0 screentime in Boruto?!?! wtf has he been doin?? lol
I just sent this to my friend with aphantasia and said “hate to bear the bad news but you probs can’t use ninjutsu” and linked this hahaha. Also I don’t think Rock Lee mistook sake for his medicine. I’m pretty sure Guy gave him a bottle of sake for emergencies because of his drunken brawler state, but told him it was medicine because Rock Lee probably wouldn’t drink it if he knew it was just alcohol
It’s not shallow it’s like a mage who can’t use fire magic. he only can enhance his chakra not utilize it, is that why he can walk on water because he can focus the chakra but not manifest it ( i’m lost in the sauce cope with me) why don’t guy use jutsu….i’m lost now but guy can summon can lee summon? only thing i hated about boruto and naruto ending nobody explained where we got the 8 gates from (i skipped so much filler)
Guy sensei won’t use ninjutsu out of respect for Lee. Lee CAN use ninjutsu. But the chakra coming from his CP is too small to use a successful attack. So he trained Lee in hand to hand combat since ninjutsu users rely primarily on their Chakra. HE built Lee to out last an opponents Chakra consumption. That’s why everyone notices Lee ability of endurance and strength.
My wife thinks i have mild aphantasia, but based on your diagram thing id say I’m just a bad visualizer. Its like the more I try to picture something the less detailed it gets. lol For example, you can be like “picture your dad” and ill try it. But then if youre like “does he have a wrinkle next to his eye” or you ask about any detail of what im picturing then it all falls apart and I’m like, i have no idea….
Your first Statement that Lee has aphantasia was a good theory why Lee cannot use proper Ninjutsu. I don‘t personaly think that Lee has authism but is just a more goofy intendet Charackter treat. In general I think authism as a disorder has become somethink of a favourite to explain social akward charackters in fiction or to a lesser extent in real life. I also have to say that you presented you point well. But as soon as you started you 2nd point I thought: „Oh well I know Where this is going”. Authism has got a raised awarness in the last few decades and as a sideeffect people think to read patterns into charackters behaviour and see it as autistic. I wanna repeat I like your article just disagree with some points Authism is a rare disease.
You’re overthinking it. He simply has no talent for nin/genjutsu which is perfectly reasonable. Think about it; there are clans with specialized jutsu and kekkei genkai that nobody else can use, but at the same time its pretty much the only thing they can use. Lee’s talent just happened to be Taijutsu which everyone thinks is just throwing hands when in reality it’s moulding chakra to strengthen or manipulate the body. Kakashi even mentions that opening the gates is not something you can do with hard work alone. Also consider how the average abilities of most ninja are set to cannon fodder. The main characters we follow (most of the rookie 9, their sensei, the Akatsuki, sanin, kage, jinchuriki) are not representative of how the rest of the verse operates so we tend to forget how low the bar is really set. There are a lot of ninja school dropouts simply because they lack the talent.
seems like the majority, i’d guess like 70% of humans dont have chakra at all. because humans got it from either being descendants of hagaromo. or descendants of normal humans that hagaromo gifted chakra too, which was a good amount of people, and over hundreds of years people in clans and some random people outside of clans have chakra now, but not everyone.
What if Guy intentionally lied to Rock Lee about not being able to use Ninjutsu so that he could take a student with aptitude for the Gates and have him focus his entire life on opening them, forsaking all other ninjutsu in the process but creating an experimental shinobi, ive always thought Guy had a sense of sadness about him when talking about Lee but now I think it may be guilt for keeping ninjutsu from him.. If my teacher told me to give up and focus on something else I may never in my life try that thing again.
He’s not unique though. He’s just like a civilian with not enough chakra to do jutsu but only enough to exist. Basically lee is like any other civilian the only difference is he has the willpower to train hard enough to be on the same level as other ninjas. He does have chakra btw otherwise he wouldn’t be able to use inner gates. People forget that it’s still a chakra technique. There’s no mystery behind this lol.
i love the theory but the only problem i have is your use of statistics, you said 1 percent of the pop has aphantasia and 5 percent of autistic people suffer from it, which are both true. you then went on to say thats 5 times greater but that would be false, while 5 is 5 times as great as 1, the affected people would overlap. in this situation the one percent of the population with aphantasia would be equal to the one percent population with autism and 5 percent of one percent is 0.0005%. which is not a lot. its a common mistake people make and im mostly nitpicking as nothing ive said actually takes away from your point. great article though!
Im gonna call them konoha natives or KN for short. It seems that they have high chakra manipulation. With that, they can easily learn the gates and everyone of those KN’s are born different. So lee its different. Here’s my theory that matches the article. He does have aphantasia but my guess is learning the gates has made himm get used to it more than ninjutsu because you’d have to imagine it. Solely why lees hard work and determination comes in because the only way he can learn through is muscle memory and never imagination.
rock lee along with L and Near are examples of japanese people taking shots at people they dont like, as if to say all them round eye gaijin weebs are autistic. also, i know that rock lee’s loosely based on bruce lee, but the japos dont much like the chanks either, plus i think bruce lee has some white in him. *insert conspiracy theory music*