Naruto Series: Naruto Uzumaki (ESFP)
Se:
“I don’t care who I have to fight!
If he rips my arms out, I’ll kick him to death!
If he rips my legs off, I’ll bite him to death!
If he rips my head off, I’ll stare him to death!
And if he gouges out my eyes, I’ll curse him from the grave!
Even If I’m torn to shreds, I’m taking Sasuke back from Orochimaru!”
“Like anything, you’ve gotta learn by doing and feeling.”
“How am I supposed to focus on all these tiny little details? I’m the type that learns by doing, you know?”
While many people type Naruto as an ENFP, he is a very clear Se dominant, and I will explain why. For starters, Naruto likes to charge head long into battle. He doesn’t have a creative fighting style or strategy. His team is constantly ragging on him about being reckless, and not thinking before he acts. He constantly uses the same strategies, like the shadow clones and variations of the rasengan. Instead of learning new, creative tricks or strategies, he just hones the few that he has. He learns by doing (Se) and feeling(Ni), and encourages others, like Konohamaru, to do the same. Naruto’s very physical. He allowed himself to get stabbed through the hand, in order to stop Kabuto, so that he could, once again, use his rasengan to stop him. Naruto lives completely in the moment. He’s motivated by rivalry, and quick to pick a fight. When he was a kid, and trying to garner attention, he pulled physical pranks, like graffiti on the stone faces and an eraser hidden on the top of the sliding door. When he swore to get stronger, Naruto stabbed himself in the hand to do a blood oath. There is nothing creative, unorthodox, scattered, or non-linear about anything Naruto does, and he is incredibly action oriented.
Fi:
“I won’t run away anymore… I won’t go back on my word… that is my ninja way!”
Naruto’s Fi is very obvious. He is constantly declaring who he is, and who he will become. Identity is very important, along with others recognizing that identity. He frequently shares his values and ideals, like in the above quote. His value system becomes contagious, in a sense, and others around him begin to adopt those values. This leads me to another point: Fi auxiliary users tend to be good at connecting with people and exciting them. Naruto does this extremely well. He doesn’t try to change them; he just declares who he is, and eventually people begin to follow. Naruto is clearly emotionally fueled and frequently clouded by it, hence the drive to bring Sasuke back in spite of all the evil things Sasuke had done. As a kid, Naruto did whatever he could to make people realize who he was and that he existed. It didn’t matter how people saw him, good or bad, but simply that they saw him. And in spite of how they saw, Naruto always knew who he was. In the “Road to Ninja” when he was transported into the alternate reality, Sakura told him to pose as his alternate self. Incredibly unhappy with this prospect, Naruto kept muttering “I’m still Naruto Uzumaki” throughout the entire movie.
Te:
“Don’t underestimate me! I don’t quit and I don’t run! You can act tough all you want! You’re not gonna scare me off! No way! I don’t care if I DO get stuck as a Genin for the rest of my life! I’ll still be Hokage someday!”
Naruto’s Te surfaces when he begins enforcing his values. He frequently makes absolute, commanding-type statements like “I WILL become Hokage” and “Hey, you stupid fox! You’re in my body and you owe me rent! So for payment, I’ll take your chakra! You got that?!” His Te makes him very stubborn, which is what makes him bull-headed and causes him to butt heads with people constantly. His stubborness also allows him to push forward to achieve his goals, never giving up for a second. Naruto is very disciplined when it comes to training. He’s constantly honing his skills, ever moving toward his goal. Te is a very goal oriented function.
Ni:
“You just gah it and then you bam it!”
Naruto is very short-sighted, and lacks any kind of future planning beyond achieving his goal. He has no direct plan accompanying that goal beyond hard work and perseverance. Naruto’s goal, to become Hokage, is his only focus throughout the original series and Shippuden, other than the period of time in which he is determined to save Sasuke. (Of course, this secondary goal doesn’t replace the main one.) He doesn’t jump from dream to dream, or idea to idea, like an Ne user would. Instead, he focuses on those goals, and hones his skills in order to reach them. He has no concept of strategy, constantly leaping into action without thought or consideration as to what might happen, which is characteristic of inferior Ni. In addition, Naruto’s Ni really surfaces in his attempt to teach Konohamaru the rasengan. He’s unable to find words to explain how to do the jutsu like those on the Ne/Si axis usually could. Instead, he resorts to sounds, hand motions, and gestures, in an attempt to convey the abstract data in his mind (Ni).
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How would you argue Naruto’s fighting tactics manifest themselves through Se-Ni? Naruto is quite reckless in battle but at the same time has produced a number of unorthodox yet effective tactics in the past (shadow demon shuriken against Zabuza, how he fought Kiba, figuring out the Third Raikage’s weakness, his idea on how to teleport the Ten Tail’s attack away).
An Fi moment I found for Naruto is when is confronted by A heading to the Fourth Shinobi warfront. Naruto argues that he is not the type of person who can let other people sacrifice their lives to protect him and the wouldn’t be able to live with that, which to me made me think of Fi having a set of internalised standards.
Also the way in which Fi gave him some strong insight into the parallels between him and Gaara in the hospital scene- “we are the same”. In fact he does this with a lot of people- Konohamaru and Inari yet his tertiary Te makes him fairly blunt. Even with Kurama, he placed a strong emphasis in connecting to his heart and emphasising him as an individual, as a member of Konoha.
Well, I think it’s an insult to Se users to say that they can never be unorthodox or creative. After all, it’s kind of a prerequisite for all ninja, or they won’t survive. But that aside, Naruto has a very limited number of techniques that he just refines, like incorporating wind style into his rasengan. I would think Se-Ni would be more prone to further developing or refining a limited number of attacks, while I would expect a Ne user to have more of a broad range of techniques. Also, Naruto’s style of attack is just about always to rush in headfirst with a bunch of clones and essentially pumel the enemy with attacks (usually physical ones), and then later slip in some kind of sneaky attack that no one saw coming. That strikes me as more Se-Ni.
I totally agree with naruto being an ESFP!!!!
I am an ESFP myself and I have also studied the differences between the cognitive functions of ESFP and ENFP.
I like the way you described his Se-dom!
Naruto is all about action, his first instinct in every battle is to charge into it headfirst, he does not think that much before he acts and that’s also what his peers and senseis criticize about him.
Ne-Doms are more likely to explore things mentally and not necessarily act out on it in reality.
Speech is also a giveaway, because I noticed that ESFPs speak more straightforward and ENFPs kinda scattered and well Naruto always goes straight to the point.
I just rewatched the episodes when he first started training with Jiraya. Naruto wanted to just train NOW and nothing else and he was confused when Jiraya kept making him do things and telling him things that have nothing to do with his training.
Idk man, people who state that he is an ENFP say things like „he is funny“, „he dreams to be a hokage“, BITCH this is not limited to ENFP and this is not cognitive functions!!
Thanks! Naruto is certainly the epitome of an ESFP.