Rock Lee

Rock Lee (ロック・リー, Rokku Rī) is a fictional character in the anime and manga series Naruto.

Background

A young Rock Lee. His current look was primarily influenced by Might Guy.

Lee's relationship with his sensei, Might Guy, is emotional to the point of comedy; their hugging, overstated posing, and odd mannerisms weird out Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno, and even Sasuke Uchiha to the point of blankly staring with disbelief when they witnessed them for the first time. Lee's bond with Guy is by far the strongest student-teacher relationship described in the series; Lee owes a large part of his character to Guy's guidance, including his dedication to hard work, taijutsu prowess, outfit, and haircut (Lee already had the large eyebrows). Guy himself believes that Lee has "beautiful eyes," and also calls him his "cute student."

Rock Lee is a very spirited taijutsu (hand-to-hand combat) specialist and is the paragon of hard work. Incapable of using genjutsu or ninjutsu, he only fights using taijutsu. He is able to open five of the eight "chakra gates" inside a ninja's body, and has speed and strength far beyond that of most ninja.

No matter who the opponent, Lee always shows respect and never attempts to demean them. As an academy student, he was teased for his inability, leading him to spend all his time and concentration on taijutsu under the guidance of his sensei, Might Guy. Through practice, he has become so overcompensatingly strong in the taijutsu discipline that he was allowed to graduate the ninja academy with his teammate and rival Neji Hyuga. Neji originally claimed that Lee was not really a ninja since he can't use genjutsu or ninjutsu, saying that just because Lee is the first student who graduated from the academy with only taijutsu doesn't mean that he is amazing, just unusual.

Lee always keeps a pair of very heavy weights on his legs (dropping them from even waist-height causes them to bury themselves several meters underground) and has trained himself to be amazingly fast despite this hindrance. The possibility of taking off the weights is a huge trump card for him, as his speed increases drastically beyond its already impressive normal level when free of them (to the point that he moves faster than the blink of an eye). Guy has restricted him to only taking them off in a situation when protecting people who are important to him, but made an exception during Lee's battle with Gaara. Kakashi ridicules this type of training, calling it 'sentimental' and 'old-fashioned', and also points out that Guy went a little overboard with the amount of weight. Lee is also seen training with stone sandals in a filler episode of the anime. Lee has actually trained to the point that he fights while sleeping on occasion, which occurs through muscle memory.

The greatest of Lee's "trump cards" are five of the eight chakra gates. He is the only known person below Jonin-level capable of opening any of these gates. Using this technique is forbidden and Lee was taught to open these by Might Guy, which Kakashi disapproved of. The gates are the endogenous chakra limits. The gates, in order, are: Initial, Heal, Life, Harm, Limit, View, Wonder (also translated as Insanity, implying that the user could possibly lose their mental stability if the gate is opened), and Death. By opening these gates one can release the mind's limits on chakra use at the expense of the body. Lee can open the first five gates, and has done so when performing Reverse Lotus, the final and most powerful of Lee's attacks. Guy and Kakashi (shown in a brief flashback of his training) are the only other people who have demonstrated usage of the chakra gates. Guy can open at least six of the gates, as shown during his fight against a clone of Kisame Hoshigaki. Although Lee has supposedly just worked hard to get to where he is, Kakashi notes that it takes more than hard work to open the chakra gates.

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A drunken Lee demolishes a restaurant in a flashback.

Lee has manifested a natural predisposition towards Drunken Fist; when he drinks as little as one drop of alcohol, he becomes an unpredictable and unstoppable force of destruction and chaos. His actions while drunk are usually misguided attempts to impress Guy, regardless of whether or not Guy's around. As Guy explains to Tsunade during the Sasuke Retrieval arc, after Lee accidentally drank a small amount of Guy's sake during a congratulatory dinner, he proceeded to lay waste to the pub they were in. It took the combined effort of Guy and Neji to hold him down. Guy could have done it on his own, but didn't want to hurt Lee. When drunk, his moves have an extra edge of unpredictability to them, much like the actual Drunken Fist fighting style.

Lee has also shown signs of above average intelligence. He has a near textbook knowledge of the Hyuga clan (as shown before the fight between Hinata and Neji), and is able to understand the strategies of his comrades through mere observation.

Kishimoto Masashi says: "Lee's theme is hard work. People think that hard work is lame these days but that's not the case. I wanted to express that hard work pays off."

Part I

Chunin Exam arc

Lee is first introduced during the very beginning of the Chunin exam arc, posing as a weak ninja in order not to draw attention to himself and his two teammates, Neji Hyuga and Tenten. Soon enough, however, he is revealed as far superior than he made himself out to be; he appears before Team Kakashi, proclaims his undying love for Sakura minutes after seeing her for the first time. After a display of exaggerated affection, in which Rock Lee blows hearts at Sakura through winks (she dodges all of them), he challenges Sasuke to a battle. Naruto gets annoyed with all the attention Sasuke is getting and insists on challenging Lee himself, but Lee easily deflects his attack and sends him spinning straight into a nearby wall with his whirlwind kick.

After seeing this, Sasuke decides to accept the challenge. Sasuke is defeated just as easily, though to his credit Lee took longer to do it. This teaches Sasuke the main weaknesses of the Sharingan: it is useless to have enhanced perception of the opponent's movements if your own body cannot keep up with them. Lee explains that Sasuke is just a test for a much stronger opponent. He doesn't give a name, but the opponent is shown to be Neji. During the fight, Lee gets too carried away and almost uses one of his trump card techniques, Front Lotus, to secure his win. At this point, Guy stops the fight and berates Lee for trying to use the technique. After a moment of theatrical punching, hugging, and crying (complete with sunset background and crashing waves), they bid a mightily dumbfounded Team Kakashi farewell.

Lee appears again during the second stage of the exam, set in the Forest of Death. When his team split up for a scouting mission, he encounters a desperate Sakura, hopelessly trying to fend off the three Sound-nin attacking her and her two unconscious teammates (knocked out during their encounter with Orochimaru earlier). He does his best to help her, even using Front Lotus against Dosu Kinuta, but fails as there are three of the Sound-nin and he has no experience fighting against sound-based attacks. Ultimately it is the cursed seal-empowered Sasuke that drives them away (almost killing Zaku in the process).

In the third stage preliminaries, Lee finds himself having to fight Gaara, easily the most difficult opponent for him to have been matched against. During this fight, Lee's many attempts to beat his rival, Neji Hyuga, are shown, each one ending in failure. He almost loses faith in himself, but Guy's guidance gives him hope again. The entire history is actually fractured across several story arcs. In the battle, trump card after trump card is pulled out only to be nullified against Gaara's various defenses. Lee opens the first five chakra gates in an attempt to defeat Gaara, which he had actually hoped to save for Neji, but Gaara manages to just barely save himself. In the end, Gaara avenges his wounds by crushing Lee's left arm and left leg. Guy steps in to save Lee before Gaara can finish the job, disqualifying Lee. Despite his wounds, Lee stands up in his combat stance to continue fighting. Guy informs him the fight is over, only to discover that Lee is unconscious and fighting by muscle memory alone. After Guy stops Lee, the medics inform Guy that Lee's wounds have crippled him and destroyed his career as a ninja. Lee was the first person to ever physically hurt Gaara, demonstrating his extreme potential. Despite the injuries and his subsequent hospitalization, Lee insists on training anyway, sneaking out of the hospital and doing one-armed push-ups and one-legged squats on his broken arm and leg.

Search for Tsunade arc

While Naruto and Jiraiya search for Tsunade, Guy tries various home remedies to cure Lee, none of which work. When Tsunade is finally brought back, Guy, who has heard of Tsunade's legendary medical abilities, asks her whether there is anything than can be done about Lee's condition. Tsunade looks into it and concludes that an operation that would mend his bones is possible in theory, but would be very risky; he has bone fragments scattered near vital nerves, and the slightest wrong movement would mean his death. She estimates the chance of success at about 50% and Lee almost experiences a mental breakdown when presented with the morbid choice of whether to undergo the operation or not. On the one hand, his life is meaningless without his ability to prove his nindo ("path of endurance", refers to one's chosen path in life) - that he can become a great ninja even without ability to use ninjutsu or genjutsu. On the other hand, the only method to recover his nindo is to risk death.

Eventually, after a heartfelt conversation with Guy, Lee decides to take the operation (the anime has Tsunade doing a bit of research and raising the success chance to 58%, but this does not happen in the original manga).

Sasuke Retrieval arc

At the start of the mission to retrieve Sasuke, Neji is seen helping Lee move about. Lee, having survived the operation, is still in physical therapy. After Sakura pleads with Naruto to bring Sasuke back, Lee reassures her by saying that Naruto definitely will, since he made the promise with the "nice guy pose" (Guy and Lee's common mannerism of giving a thumbs up and smiling, though Naruto's teeth don't glint).

Lee eventually lends his assistance to Naruto by taking over the fight against Kimimaro, thus allowing Naruto to continue pursuing Sasuke. Lee was still using a crutch to walk just two days before when Shikamaru's team left for Sasuke. According to Tsunade, Lee was not supposed to even leave the hospital, but given his character, it is not surprising that he did so when he heard his friends could use his help.

After a few exchanged hits, Lee briefly seizes the advantage over Kimimaro when he drinks what he thinks is his medicine but is actually a bottle of sake he took by mistake, revealing for the first time in the series Rock Lee's natural abilities in the powerful Drunken Fist style. Drunken Lee's power and unpredictability soon becomes too much for Kimimaro to handle on his own and he is forced to tap power from his cursed seal, reversing the situation as he is now able to counter and stop Lee's attacks with his bones alone. Lee attempts the Lotus attack, but, having just left the care of the hospital, it was a vain effort. When his death seems inevitable, a cloud of sand creates a powerful blast between the combatants, knocking the two away from each other. More sand rises to allow Lee a soft landing. Gaara, now Konoha's ally and his attitude changed by his earlier battle with Naruto, has arrived to aid in the battle. Gaara fends off Kimimaro, using his most powerful attacks just to keep Kimimaro at bay, but is almost overcome and killed. Lucky for Gaara, Kimimaro's sickness finally catches up with him, and Kimimaro dies with a spear held directly in front of Gaara's eye.

Having just been saved by Gaara, Lee tells him that he doesn't hold a grudge, and they have a friendly conversation about the ideals that fueled Kimimaro before they go back to Konoha to meet up with everybody else and see how the mission played out. In the epilogue to the first part of the manga, he is shown much more muscular training with Guy, who can't seem to keep up.

Filler arcs

Raiga arc

In the Raiga arc, Lee takes the rest of Team Guy and Naruto to the Curry of Life shop while on their way to their mission. The shop specializes in a super-spicy form of curry that can supposedly cure anything. Lee loves the curry, but the others aren't quite used to it. During his battle with Raiga, Lee ends up drunk after being fed some curry accidentally spiked with liquor. Despite this, he is eventually repelled. After the incident, the shop owner makes an even spicier curry for Lee (it's "super spicy bright red" in color), but the others drag him off before he can taste it.

Hoshigakure arc

During a mission to the Land of Bears, Lee and Tenten show off a more goofy side by trying to follow two ninja of Hoshigakure in a wooden barrel. It's quite obvious to the ninja that they're being followed, but they humor it for a while. Later on, when they're trying to sneak into a house, Lee uses a technique called Kabe Nuke No Jutsu (Wall Removal Technique) to get inside. He labels it as ninjutsu, despite his inability, which momentarily freaks Tenten out. It is only after he reappears that she realizes what it really is. Lee simply used his speed to run inside the house, creating the illusion of ninjutsu.

Lee's Dojo arc

In this episode, Lee builds a dojo after seeing one while on a mission. The location he builds it in, however, is fairly difficult to reach, and as such no one comes to challenge him. Naruto is the only one to bother taking the entire trip, which convinces Lee that he wants to challenge the dojo. Naruto would rather not, so he tries to get Guy to do it in disguise (the "disguise" being a mustache and an afro wig). When Guy is called away on a mission, still dressed in his diguise, a ninja spy decides to impersonate him, and is quickly pulled into a fight with Lee by Naruto. The spy is nowhere near as strong, so he convinces Naruto to take his place. Naruto relents and challenges Lee while disguised as Guy. Despite the rather obvious disguise, Lee can't tell that the transformed Naruto is Guy.

During the battle, Naruto uses a variation of his Harem Technique to surround Lee with Sakura clones (with clothes on this time). This causes Lee to break into one of his odd, tear-filled moments, which Naruto uses to get an attack in. After Guy returns and the ninja spy disguises himself as Lee, a good portion of the dojo is destroyed by the two subsequently fighting (Guy kicks the ninja through two walls, and causes several holes by himself). The spy is eventually delivered to Tsunade, who has a warrant for his arrest.

The Third Great Beast arc

In this episode, Lee's body condition seems to get worse due to his intense training; to the point that Tsunade had to relieve him from his duty to carry out missions and asked him to rest for a while. Tsunade also forbade Lee from using Reverse Lotus. Lee, depressed, left the hospital alone, making Tenten and Naruto think that his condition must be really bad. Lee later met Guy and told him that he can't use Reverse Lotus. Guy just tells Lee to train harder and develop a technique that surpasses Reverse Lotus. Afterwards, they go to the academy dojo, where Guy has been training a visiting ninja, Yagura. Yagura ends up sparring with Lee, and nearly breaking his ankle with an advanced intercepting technique.

With Lee out of commission, Yagura ends up going on a mission with Guy. He makes it a point to discourage Lee with this information. During the mission, he reveals that he is in fact a spy intending to get revenge on Guy for defeating his father. His clan specializes in fighting with kung fu training posts in a style akin to that used with puppets. The training posts, however, are nowhere near as versatile. Lee, Naruto and the rest of Team Guy, eventually find out and come to help.

While Naruto and the rest of Team Guy fight the weaker posts, Lee and Guy are trapped inside a castle constructed of other training posts. Lee and Guy are trapped in separate rooms, in which a single training post is kept. As they fight the posts, the posts seem to know their moves exactly. In reality, Yagura is using a jutsu that causes the posts to mimic Lee and Guys moves. After Lee begins to unravel his bandages to attempt the Primary Lotus, Guy sees through the technique and communicates to his student through morse code with his feet. The two then work out a way to defeat the posts: break them apart through stress. They both open the first five chakra gates and bounce around the room at high speed, breaking the jutsu and the entire castle along with it. After the ninja is defeated, Guy reveals that his father was an honorable man, who just wanted another match with Guy, not revenge.

Part II

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Lee two and a half years later, with his sensei Might Guy.

Two-and-a-half years later, Team Guy is sent as backup for Naruto, Sakura, Kakashi, and Chiyo on a mission to rescue Gaara from the hands of Akatsuki. Lee has yet to display any major new techniques, but it stands to reason that he at least knows some, if not all, of Guy's more advanced techniques. In terms of his appearance, he now sports a ninja vest (further increasing his comical resemblance to Guy). If it weren't for the fact that Guy is almost twice as old as Lee, they'd look identical. He also seems to be more suited to teamwork now, no longer letting his thirst to prove himself lead him head first into a fight. Much of his personality remains the same; he still looks up to Guy and tries to follow in his footsteps. When Guy is forced to carry Kakashi back to Konoha piggy-back style, Lee mistakes it for training and attempts to do the same with Neji, who refuses, finding it humiliating.

Trivia

Rock Lee resembles Bruce Lee and shares his birthday of November 27.
Rock Lee's haircut is the same as his sensei, Guy's. Like his sensei, the shine on his hair reads "Nin," repeatedly, all around his head.
According to the official databook, Rock Lee's favorite food is medium-spicy curry rice and curry udon, revealing his taste for curry in the "Raiga Arc". Like his sensei, when asked about his least favorite food, he replies "There is no such thing!"
His hobby is hard work. He has been called a genius at hard work.
According to an interview with Kishimoto Masashi, the creator of the manga series, in Shonen Jump's 'Naruto Anime Profiles Episodes 1-37', Rock Lee is his most fun character to draw.
Rock Lee's weighted clothing is a training method that allows him to move faster once it is removed, a common concept in martial arts shōnen manga. Such methods are also practiced among some martial artists, although the practice is dangerous and controversial.
In an episode of Attack of the Show!, a fan sent a picture of Rock Lee to Kevin Rose, the host of the show, claiming Lee resembled him.
Rock Lee, who speaks in formal Japanese even to his friends, is one of the characters with a unique style of speech. Similarly, in the dubbed English version, Lee almost never uses contractions.
In Volume 5 of the Viz English adaptation of the manga, the preface incorrectly states that Rock Lee is "one of the many students from foreign villages who have traveled to Konohagakure for the Junior Ninja Selection Exams," while he is in fact a native of the village. However, this could mean he is from a different part of the village, such as a ghetto or a slum.
In an interview in the May 2006 issue of U.S. Shonen Jump Magazine, Masashi Kishimoto, the creator of the manga series, stated Sakura and Rock Lee were meant to symbolize human weakness (at least in the beginning).
Rock Lee was the tallest of the Konoha Genin during Part I. Neji was the second.
As of the second data book, Rock Lee has completed 22 D-rank, 12 C-rank and no B, A, or S-ranked missions.
In Shonen Jump's character popularity polls, Lee consistently ranked in the Top 10 in the first four polls, even making the Top 5 once. In the more recent polls, however, Lee has fallen out of the Top 10.
Almost every attack Lee and Guy use are named after some sort of plant.
Might Guy and Rock Lee are the only two characters (with a first and last name) to not have their names reordered in the English version of the anime.