Naruto Hand Seals...

[da_fox2279]

A thought I had...

Are hand seals really needeed? Yes, I know they help shape chakra, help you memerize techniques, but really, wouldn't you be able to do certain jutsu without seals?

During the Bell test, Kakashi managed to do a Kawarimi with one of Naruto's Kage Bunshin without seals.

Rasengan is a seal-less jutsu.

Wouldn't it stand to reason, then, that you could do jutsu simply by remembering how the chakra molds, and/or do the seals in your head?

Just a thought...

 

[Lumias]

Maybe, but it would require a lot of control to be able to mold the chakra properly with out the seals to help and you would have to be able to memerise how to do it exactly or else the technique will be missed and fizzle wasting chakra with no benifit.

 

[Pirazy]

Common belief in the fandom regarding handseals and jutsu are that if you perform a jutsu enough times it kinda becomes hardwired into your system. meaning that you mold the chakra for the technique so often that you're able to do it without handseals, or by focusing chakra using a single seal. This mostly applies to lesser techniques like bunshin/kawarimi/henge because those are the least chakra-intensive jutsu that we know of, hence jounins pulling them off without even trying.

Unless it's just a way to cut down on frames taken up by seals in the manga, Naruto has been doing the Kage Bunshin with one seal for a while now, just thought I should mention it.

 

[GaelicDragon]

Hand seals seem to be the most efficent way to control and maintain the chakra for a technique. Hand seals also mean that just about any ninja can use various techniques that they didn't create.

Rasengan requires a couple of steps to learn it. These steps are rather difficult for the average ninja, but they seem to make creating a rasengan almost automatic.

Like anything, doing a technique often enough means that you know how to manipulate your chakra to pull the technique off without handseals. For something like the Kawarimi that is learned in the acedemy, most chuunin probably learn how to do it without handseals.

 

[ttestagr]

Sasuke did the cidori without seals once, and melted some of his skin off of his hand for his trouble.

 

[da_fox2279]

Ah, but my thought was, handseals are just a way of remembering the sequence. For example, if you can memerise the seals for katon:gokakyu, you would only need to use the tiger seal to focus. (Or whatever seal...) Thereby reducing the amount of time needed to use a jutsu.

Or not. I haven't fully worked this out yet in my mind.

 

[toraneko]

Well, the series' description of it is that handseals are used to mold the chakra into the correct form for the jutsu.

SO, building on that, my theory is that if a ninja is expert enough at the jutsu (in other words, they've perfermed it often enough), they've more or less memorized it. It becomes second nature to mold chakra correctly for the jutsu, and the user no longer needs to use the seals.

In such a case, using even a one-handed seal is just a habit that helps the user focus.

But, also, beginners in a technique would always need the seals to perform it correctly, unless it's their own creation.

You'll also note that early on, Academy students are taught to use the Ram seal to mold chakra. Later, though, that clearly becomes unnecessary after a certain amount of experience, even in the Genin level.