Anime Manga: Orochimaru

Orochimaru

Personality

Orochimaru grew to disdain the fragility of human life and how it affected those still living, which lead him to desire immortality. To that end, the primary purpose of Orochimaru's human experimentation is to test what modifications the human body can endure and harness a subject's unique abilities for himself.

Once accomplishing this goal, Orochimaru had hoped to achieve his secondary goal to learn every ninja technique in the world, which would normally take many lifetimes to obtain.

Taking Sasuke as an apprentice, seeing him as a prodigy like himself, Orochimaru intended to take the youth's body to obtain the Sharingan to reach another step in his goal of immortality and learning every technique in the world. This goal has developed to the point of obsession. However, despite knowing that Sasuke was willing to do anything for revenge, including sacrificing his own body, Orochimaru did anticipate treachery from his disciple and showed only a small level of surprise when it actually occurred. Orochimaru also had an initial disdain toward Naruto Uzumaki, believing him to be a poor excuse for a ninja until he defeated Kabuto with the Rasengan. Despite attempting to kill Naruto at the time after coming to the realisation that he would become a threat to him in the future, Orochimaru became interested in Naruto's development, provoking Naruto during their battle to see his full abilities at the time.

An aspect of Orochimaru's personality is also his greatest weakness: his arrogance. He truly believed he is an invincible immortal at times, attacking recklessly against powerful opponents such as his former teacher and Itachi Uchiha.

Abilities

1. Ninjutsu

Wishing to obtain all of the techniques in the world, Orochimaru has a vast arsenal of techniques at his disposal, ranging from simple offensive ones, which nonetheless become deadly when performed by him, to higher ranking, more complicated ones.

1.1 Edo Tensei

Orochimaru is one of the three people capable of performing Summoning: "Edo Tensei" perfecting the technique developed by the Second Hokage, Tobirama Senju.
This is a forbidden technique where, using a living person as a vessel, a deceased person's soul can be called back to the world of the living and bound to it. The vessel will then take on the form that person had in life, thereby reincarnating them to do their summoner's bidding.

1.2 Immortality Techniques

In his quest to gain immortality, Orochimaru has made a number of modifications to his body, resulting in his natural form taking on the appearance of a giant, white snake composed of many smaller snakes. The snakes that compose Orochimaru's body can extend themselves to strike and bind targets, and if Orochimaru is sliced to pieces, the body simply can reform, making him very difficult to kill. Additionally, the blood that is released by killing the snakes is poisonous, evaporating into the air and paralysing anyone who has breathed it in, something that makes long lasting fights against him a bad choice.

The primary use of the form is with his "Living Corpse Reincarnation", which allows him to transfer his soul to another body and extend his life indefinitely.

Orochimaru's last method of immortality are the cursed seals he developed. In addition to his senjutsu chakra, each cursed seal contains a portion of Orochimaru's consciousness, which allows him to share the senses of those who bear his seals. In the event that he is killed or sealed, he can be revived through one of his cursed seals if an individual presses flesh containing his DNA up to the cursed seal and uses the "Evil Releasing Method". Through this process, Orochimaru can be completely resurrected any number of times, as long as there are enough remaining cursed seals and pieces of his DNA.

1.3 Snake Techniques

Orochimaru's trademark trait is his affinity with snakes that, in addition to impacting the appearance and composition of his true form, and granting him the ability to extend his limbs to abnormal lengths and to take on snake-like traits in battle, caused him to learn a number of snake-related abilities, including learning Sage Mode.

One such ability is being able to summon giant snakes to fight alongside him in battle, made possible by the summoning contract tattooed on his arm. His signature summon was Manda, a colossal snake which was described as the largest in the world, with immense fighting capabilities.

Another usage of snakes comes in the form of his signature weapon, the Sword of Kusanagi, the Kusanagi of Japanese legend. The sword, kept within the mouth of a snake within his own throat, is able to extend to great lengths to attack enemies that are very far away, can be controlled remotely by Orochimaru, and can return to him by turning in a snake.

His strongest technique is the Eight Branches Technique, which allows him to transform into an eight-headed, eight-tailed giant serpent bigger than the already colossal Manda, another reference to the Japanese myth. This was described as the ultimate snake-related technique, which turned the user into an immensely powerful "Dragon God".

2. Senjutsu

During his research on Jugo's clan, Orochimaru eventually tracked down the source of their power. There, he attempted to learn senjutsu as well as Sage Mode. However he was unable to use this power to its full potential due to being unable to find a host body that could bear such an ability, making it an unsuitable option for battle altogether.

To compensate for this flaw, Orochimaru developed other novel uses for his senjutsu chakra: "the cursed seals". Combining this chakra with the enzyme produced by Jūgo, he was able to create these unique seals, These seals also carried the additional benefit of acting as anchors to Orochimaru's consciousness, allowing him to observe events through anyone branded by the seal and even revive him any number of times under the right circumstances.