sasuke uchiha – UchihaSavior

[[ Sasuke’s sword post war: a bunch of rambling by me.

Alternatively titled: In which Esu thinks too hard about Sasuke’s weapon. ]]

So this morning I got to thinking about Sasuke’s switch from his Grass Cutter Kusanagi (his signature Chokuto) to….whatever sword he has in Gaiden.

Originally, I thought Sasuke lost the entire sword in the lava while fighting Kaguya.

I was incorrect. Sasuke only lost the sheath/scabbard.

His actual sword was left on the battlefield, where Madara had stuck it. Provided no one else picked it up.

This is somewhat of a relief because I was slowly losing my shit over the fact Sasuke has the sword (and a new scabbard) in his reference sheet for The Last. I pulled up an anime reference sheet first but I generally don’t trust those, not with how many edits they made to Kishimoto’s original sketches.

Here’s the image.

Right, so, he clearly still has Kusanagi. As in he picked it back up, it was given back to him, etc etc, one can kind of freely headcanon how he got his sword back but he made a point of traveling with it and get the scabbard replaced with an identical one.

This, however raises the question of…..when did he choose to give this one up? More importantly, why? What would drive Sasuke to pick up an entirely new sword? We’ve seen how durable and useful his Kusanagi is, what’s so good about the sword he’s using that he gave up his previous one completely?

My running theory, for the when, at least, is he started with the new sword around the time of his novel, but, the only image I can find by Kishimoto doesn’t even properly depict a sword.

(That still doesn’t answer why, I guess that is lost to the ages.)

Image here

Unfortunately this is….unclear. It certainly seems to look like his new sword, as the scabbard doesn’t have the black line running through it like his Kusanagi did. We also have little way of telling if this end of the sword is the hilt or the blade, ugh. (It does extend slightly under his cloak, between the foot and the cat, so this is a sword scabbard.)

Now, about that new sword….

AFAIK, Sasuke’s novel (the original text) doesn’t go into detail about the sword. Not in the sense of “this sword is new and different.” It only mentions when he’s using it. So for someone who doesn’t know Sasuke has switched swords they could very well visualize him using his original Kusanagi.

But the animated version of Sasuke Shinden absolutely depicts his Adult Sword. Granted, I did choose not to watch Sasuke Shinden because they shifted story elements around. I did some googling and was completely unable to find screenshots/stills of Sasuke’s scabbard during the duration of his animated novel (if he even has one in the animated version).

More about the scabbard….

Top Photo: Official Reference sheet of Sasuke from Boruto The Movie. His scabbard is a dark red.

Middle Photo: Official Kishimoto Illustration of Sasuke’s scabbard during his novel. It is a dark blue/purple.

Bottom Photo: Screenshot of Sasuke mid-fight with Kinshiki in Boruto The Movie. Scabbard appears Maroon– but this is due to the overall color palette in the scene. The scabbard matches the top photo I twould be a dark red.

Now for some colors from Ikemoto, Boruto’s current artist.

This sword has a black scabbard.

Ikemoto has currently updated Sasuke with a new outfit and this probably means a new scabbard.

Conclusion: Sasuke just changes scabbards pretty often.

The sword itself is exactly the same, just with a shiny new scabbard. Makes sense, since he loves to change outfits, too.

Now….what exactly is this sword? I honestly just keep calling it Kusanagi because that’s what I’m used to, but this sword doesn’t have a name and as outline above, we have no insight as to why Sasuke chose it and replaced his previous chokuto with this one.

Let’s see what the actual Kusanagi sword looks like…