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Rock Lee...SPOILER!!!!!!!!! |
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Quote: Discliamer: I did not write this; Wikipedia does. I just copy and paste. Do not read if you do not like spoilers...I warned you.
Rock Lee (ロック・リー, Rokku Rī?) is a fictional character in the anime and manga series Naruto. He is modeled after the martial artist Bruce Lee.
According to an interview with Masashi Kishimoto, 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. He also has stated that Sakura and Rock Lee were meant to symbolize human weakness (at least in the beginning).
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 current polls, however, Lee has fallen out of the Top 10 due to his lack of recent appearances. Despite this, he still ranks at a relatively high position.
BACKGROUND
As an academy student, Rock Lee was teased for his inability to use ninjutsu or genjutsu, 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'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 to match). Guy himself believes that Lee has "beautiful eyes," and also calls him his "cute student."
ABILITIES
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 fights using taijutsu alone. At the start of the story, he is able to open five of the eight "chakra gates" inside a ninja's body, and already has physical speed and strength far beyond that of most ninja. However, Lee often matches up against opponents with perfect defenses against taijutsu, such as Gaara's sand shield and Kimimaro's bone manipulation, testing his taijutsu skills.
Lee always keeps a pair of extremely heavy weights on his legs (covered by leg warmers) and has trained himself to be amazingly fast despite this hindrance. Dropping them from even waist-height causes them to bury themselves into the ground; Guy once stated they were ten tons. The possibility of taking off the weights is a huge trump card for Lee, as his speed is increased drastically beyond its already impressive normal level when he is 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. This weighted clothing training method is a common concept in martial arts shōnen manga. Such methods are also practiced among some martial artists, although the practice is dangerous and controversial. Kakashi Hatake ridicules this type of training, calling it 'sentimental' and 'old-fashioned', while also pointing 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.
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. 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 noted that it takes more than hard work to open the chakra gates.
Lee has also 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 a combination of misguided attempts to impress Guy, regardless of whether or not Guy's around, and drunken attacks on anyone who might happen to be near him. When drunk, his moves have an extra edge of unpredictability to them, much like the actual Zui Quan (Drunken Fist) martial art. 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.
PERSONALITY
Rock Lee's hobby is hard work; he has even been called a genius at hard work. Masashi Kishimoto 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." Lee has actually trained to the point that he fights while sleeping on occasion, which occurs through muscle memory.
No matter who the opponent, Lee always shows respect and never attempts to demean them. One notable characteristic is that he never speaks in contractions. He never uses words like "he's" or "doesn't" and instead uses the long forms such as "he is/has" or "does not." In the Japanese version, Lee only speaks in formal Japanese. He also is one of the few who addresses others with proper titles ("-san", "-kun", etc.), even to his friends.
Lee seems to put much work on mental training and studying as well. 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. However, he has shown a lack of common sense, as he thought he could fool the random draw into choosing him by not wanting to be chosen (it worked, but Lee believed the superstition was responsible). He also tried to take last-minute notes about Gaara's suspicious gourd while failing to realize that he would not be able to review them during the battle, even noting that fact in the notes when reminded by Guy.
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!"
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 a weak whirlwind kick and a push with his arm.
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 greatly 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.
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 his inability to use ninjutsu or genjutsu. 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 unbroken arm and leg. During Lee's rest in the hospital, Gaara tries to kill him again, but is stopped by Naruto, Shikamaru, and Guy.
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 that 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%, the other 50% is that Lee would die 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, or ninja way, 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. Remarking to Lee that his speed was not the same as it was in their own fight, Gaara fends off Kimimaro using his most powerful attacks just to keep Kimimaro at bay, but is still almost overcome and killed. Luckily 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 with his speed.
RESCUE GAARA arc
Two-and-a-half years later, Team Guy is sent as backup for Team Kakashi on a mission to rescue Gaara from the hands of Akatsuki. In terms of his appearance, he now sports a Konoha 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. Lee is shown to be talking vigorously with Guy about reaching Suna before the estimated time, showing his hard-work attitude still very much exists. At the end of the Rescue Gaara arc,when Guy is forced to carry Kakashi back to Konoha piggyback style, Lee mistakes it for training (Guy does actually treat it as such) and attempts to do the same with Neji. Neji, of course, flatly refuses.
[b:c1c7a693a0]The more things change, the more they remain the same.[/b:c1c7a693a0][/color:c1c7a693a0][/align:c1c7a693a0]
 Tenshi-Eclipse · Sun Jan 28, 2007 @ 03:16am · 0 Comments |
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