TV-Series
Description
Pain, whose true name is Nagato, is a central figure in Naruto Shippūden and the public leader of the criminal organization known as the Akatsuki. He was born in the Hidden Rain Village, a small nation repeatedly caught between the larger shinobi countries and devastated by war. Nagato was a descendant of the Uzumaki clan, and from a young age he carried the Rinnegan, a legendary eye technique considered the most powerful dojutsu in the shinobi world. It was later revealed that these eyes had been secretly transplanted into him by Madara Uchiha as part of a long-term plan, though Nagato himself grew up unaware of this origin.
His early life was shaped by tragedy. During the Second Great Ninja War, his parents were killed in front of him by enemy ninja from the Hidden Stone, and in his grief and rage he unconsciously awakened the Rinnegan for the first time, destroying the attackers. Left alone and starving, he was found by two other war orphans, Yahiko and Konan, and the three began living together. Some time later they encountered Jiraiya, one of the legendary Three Sannin of the Hidden Leaf. After witnessing Nagato use the Rinnegan, Jiraiya came to believe the boy might be the child of prophecy destined to bring peace to the world, and he trained the three orphans for three years, teaching them ninjutsu and the values of protecting others.
After Jiraiya left, Nagato, Yahiko, and Konan founded an organization called Akatsuki, initially a peaceful group dedicated to ending war and reforming the Hidden Rain. As its influence grew, the village's ruler, Hanzo of the Salamander, saw them as a threat and conspired with Danzo Shimura of the Hidden Leaf to eliminate them. In a trap set under the pretense of peace talks, Konan was taken hostage, and Hanzo forced Nagato to choose between killing Yahiko or Konan. Rather than allow Nagato to bear that choice, Yahiko impaled himself on Nagato's weapon, asking his friend to survive and carry on their dream. This event broke something in Nagato. In his fury he summoned the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path, slaughtering Hanzo's forces, but the strain and injuries left him crippled, unable to walk, and permanently weakened in body.
From that point Nagato abandoned his former identity and adopted the alias Pain, meaning that he had become the embodiment of suffering. He took control of the Akatsuki and reshaped it into a force that would bring brutal change to the world. Using Yahiko's body as his most prominent vessel, known as the Deva Path, he presented himself as a god ruling the Hidden Rain, where he maintained a constant artificial rain as a surveillance system. His personality became cold, detached, and relentlessly rational. He no longer acted on personal emotion but on a fixed ideology built from his losses. He was patient, calculating, and utterly certain of his mission, yet beneath that composed surface remained genuine grief and the remnants of the idealistic boy who had once believed in peaceful change.
Nagato's central motivation was peace, but his method was rooted in the conviction that human beings only understand what they have suffered. His philosophy is often summarized in his belief that those who do not know pain cannot understand true peace. He concluded that the world would never stop fighting through goodwill or diplomacy, and instead decided to create a weapon of immense destructive power by gathering and controlling the tailed beasts. By forcing every nation to fear absolute devastation, he intended to impose a forced peace through shared suffering, a deterrent that would make war too costly for anyone to begin. He genuinely saw this as salvation, not cruelty, which made him a tragic figure rather than a simple villain.
In the story, Pain operates as the mastermind behind the Akatsuki's campaign to capture the tailed beasts from their hosts. He directs members from behind the scenes while personally leading the organization through his six controlled bodies. His first major onscreen confrontation is with his former teacher Jiraiya, who infiltrates the Hidden Rain to investigate. In that battle Jiraiya discovers the secret of the Six Paths of Pain and manages to decipher a coded message revealing that Pain is not truly in the village and that the bodies are puppets, but he is killed before he can escape. Pain then leads his six bodies directly into the Hidden Leaf Village to capture Naruto Uzumaki, who carries the Nine-Tailed Fox. The assault devastates the village, with Pain using his gravitational abilities to annihilate the entire settlement and kill many prominent ninja in the process. When Naruto arrives having mastered Sage Mode, he manages to defeat all six bodies by exploiting a weakness in the Deva Path's power and, through his own perception and tracking, locates Nagato's true physical body hidden in the Rain Village.
The confrontation between Naruto and Nagato is the turning point of his character. Naruto, rather than answering Nagato's despair with hatred, offers a different answer: that he does not yet know how to achieve peace but will find a way, and that he will never abandon his bonds or his master's beliefs. This response, which echoed the words of the hero in Jiraiya's novel and reflected the same dream Jiraiya had once placed in Nagato, reached the man beneath the mask of Pain. Nagato acknowledged that his own path had been wrong and chose to place his faith in Naruto instead. Using the ultimate power of the Rinnegan, the Outer Path technique of the Samsara of Heavenly Life, he gave up his own life to revive all those who had been killed during his attack on the Hidden Leaf. His final act was one of atonement and trust, passing on Jiraiya's dream to the next generation.
His most significant relationships define his entire arc. Yahiko was his closest friend and the original heart of the Akatsuki, whose ideals Nagato carried forward even after his death, and whose body he continued to use as his Deva Path so that Yahiko could symbolically remain the leader. Konan was his loyal companion and partner, the only person who stayed beside him through everything, sharing his pain and supporting his decisions until the end. Jiraiya was his mentor and father figure, the one who gave him hope and training, and the person whose belief in him ultimately proved correct even though Nagato took a tragic path. Naruto served as his mirror, another student of Jiraiya who had suffered loss but chose understanding over vengeance, and it was Naruto who finally broke the cycle of hatred in Nagato's heart. Behind all of this stood the masked figure claiming to be Madara, later revealed to be Obito, who had guided and manipulated the Akatsuki from the shadows toward his own separate plans.
Nagato's notable abilities were overwhelming by the standards of the series. The Rinnegan granted him mastery over all basic nature transformations, allowing him to use a wide range of jutsu with ease, and provided him with the unique powers associated with the six paths. Because his body was crippled, he fought remotely through six corpses known as the Six Paths of Pain, each connected to him by black chakra receivers and all sharing a single field of vision. The Deva Path, using Yahiko's body, controlled gravitational forces, including Shinra Tensei, a powerful repulsive blast; Bansho Tenin, which pulled targets toward him; and Chibaku Tensei, a devastating technique that created an enormous gravitational sphere of crushed earth capable of obliterating a village. The Asura Path transformed its body into mechanical weapons and armor. The Human Path could extract a person's soul and read their memories, killing them instantly. The Animal Path summoned a variety of creatures for battle and reconnaissance. The Preta Path absorbed and nullified enemy ninjutsu, and the Naraka Path could summon a King of Hell that interrogated victims and repaired or revived the other bodies. Beyond these, Nagato could summon the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path and, at the ultimate cost, use the Rinne Tensei to bring the recently deceased back to life with his own life force. His existence, power, and final sacrifice make him one of the most influential and tragic characters in the series, a person whose desire for peace was genuine but whose methods were shaped by relentless suffering.
His early life was shaped by tragedy. During the Second Great Ninja War, his parents were killed in front of him by enemy ninja from the Hidden Stone, and in his grief and rage he unconsciously awakened the Rinnegan for the first time, destroying the attackers. Left alone and starving, he was found by two other war orphans, Yahiko and Konan, and the three began living together. Some time later they encountered Jiraiya, one of the legendary Three Sannin of the Hidden Leaf. After witnessing Nagato use the Rinnegan, Jiraiya came to believe the boy might be the child of prophecy destined to bring peace to the world, and he trained the three orphans for three years, teaching them ninjutsu and the values of protecting others.
After Jiraiya left, Nagato, Yahiko, and Konan founded an organization called Akatsuki, initially a peaceful group dedicated to ending war and reforming the Hidden Rain. As its influence grew, the village's ruler, Hanzo of the Salamander, saw them as a threat and conspired with Danzo Shimura of the Hidden Leaf to eliminate them. In a trap set under the pretense of peace talks, Konan was taken hostage, and Hanzo forced Nagato to choose between killing Yahiko or Konan. Rather than allow Nagato to bear that choice, Yahiko impaled himself on Nagato's weapon, asking his friend to survive and carry on their dream. This event broke something in Nagato. In his fury he summoned the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path, slaughtering Hanzo's forces, but the strain and injuries left him crippled, unable to walk, and permanently weakened in body.
From that point Nagato abandoned his former identity and adopted the alias Pain, meaning that he had become the embodiment of suffering. He took control of the Akatsuki and reshaped it into a force that would bring brutal change to the world. Using Yahiko's body as his most prominent vessel, known as the Deva Path, he presented himself as a god ruling the Hidden Rain, where he maintained a constant artificial rain as a surveillance system. His personality became cold, detached, and relentlessly rational. He no longer acted on personal emotion but on a fixed ideology built from his losses. He was patient, calculating, and utterly certain of his mission, yet beneath that composed surface remained genuine grief and the remnants of the idealistic boy who had once believed in peaceful change.
Nagato's central motivation was peace, but his method was rooted in the conviction that human beings only understand what they have suffered. His philosophy is often summarized in his belief that those who do not know pain cannot understand true peace. He concluded that the world would never stop fighting through goodwill or diplomacy, and instead decided to create a weapon of immense destructive power by gathering and controlling the tailed beasts. By forcing every nation to fear absolute devastation, he intended to impose a forced peace through shared suffering, a deterrent that would make war too costly for anyone to begin. He genuinely saw this as salvation, not cruelty, which made him a tragic figure rather than a simple villain.
In the story, Pain operates as the mastermind behind the Akatsuki's campaign to capture the tailed beasts from their hosts. He directs members from behind the scenes while personally leading the organization through his six controlled bodies. His first major onscreen confrontation is with his former teacher Jiraiya, who infiltrates the Hidden Rain to investigate. In that battle Jiraiya discovers the secret of the Six Paths of Pain and manages to decipher a coded message revealing that Pain is not truly in the village and that the bodies are puppets, but he is killed before he can escape. Pain then leads his six bodies directly into the Hidden Leaf Village to capture Naruto Uzumaki, who carries the Nine-Tailed Fox. The assault devastates the village, with Pain using his gravitational abilities to annihilate the entire settlement and kill many prominent ninja in the process. When Naruto arrives having mastered Sage Mode, he manages to defeat all six bodies by exploiting a weakness in the Deva Path's power and, through his own perception and tracking, locates Nagato's true physical body hidden in the Rain Village.
The confrontation between Naruto and Nagato is the turning point of his character. Naruto, rather than answering Nagato's despair with hatred, offers a different answer: that he does not yet know how to achieve peace but will find a way, and that he will never abandon his bonds or his master's beliefs. This response, which echoed the words of the hero in Jiraiya's novel and reflected the same dream Jiraiya had once placed in Nagato, reached the man beneath the mask of Pain. Nagato acknowledged that his own path had been wrong and chose to place his faith in Naruto instead. Using the ultimate power of the Rinnegan, the Outer Path technique of the Samsara of Heavenly Life, he gave up his own life to revive all those who had been killed during his attack on the Hidden Leaf. His final act was one of atonement and trust, passing on Jiraiya's dream to the next generation.
His most significant relationships define his entire arc. Yahiko was his closest friend and the original heart of the Akatsuki, whose ideals Nagato carried forward even after his death, and whose body he continued to use as his Deva Path so that Yahiko could symbolically remain the leader. Konan was his loyal companion and partner, the only person who stayed beside him through everything, sharing his pain and supporting his decisions until the end. Jiraiya was his mentor and father figure, the one who gave him hope and training, and the person whose belief in him ultimately proved correct even though Nagato took a tragic path. Naruto served as his mirror, another student of Jiraiya who had suffered loss but chose understanding over vengeance, and it was Naruto who finally broke the cycle of hatred in Nagato's heart. Behind all of this stood the masked figure claiming to be Madara, later revealed to be Obito, who had guided and manipulated the Akatsuki from the shadows toward his own separate plans.
Nagato's notable abilities were overwhelming by the standards of the series. The Rinnegan granted him mastery over all basic nature transformations, allowing him to use a wide range of jutsu with ease, and provided him with the unique powers associated with the six paths. Because his body was crippled, he fought remotely through six corpses known as the Six Paths of Pain, each connected to him by black chakra receivers and all sharing a single field of vision. The Deva Path, using Yahiko's body, controlled gravitational forces, including Shinra Tensei, a powerful repulsive blast; Bansho Tenin, which pulled targets toward him; and Chibaku Tensei, a devastating technique that created an enormous gravitational sphere of crushed earth capable of obliterating a village. The Asura Path transformed its body into mechanical weapons and armor. The Human Path could extract a person's soul and read their memories, killing them instantly. The Animal Path summoned a variety of creatures for battle and reconnaissance. The Preta Path absorbed and nullified enemy ninjutsu, and the Naraka Path could summon a King of Hell that interrogated victims and repaired or revived the other bodies. Beyond these, Nagato could summon the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path and, at the ultimate cost, use the Rinne Tensei to bring the recently deceased back to life with his own life force. His existence, power, and final sacrifice make him one of the most influential and tragic characters in the series, a person whose desire for peace was genuine but whose methods were shaped by relentless suffering.