How Did Hagoromo Defeat The Ten-Tails And Why?

Kaguya's connection to the Ten-Tails is one of those lore bits that always makes me pause and re-read the pages of 'Naruto' at 2 a.m. I ended up sketching timelines in the margins of my manga copy to sort it out, so here's how I think about it. She started by eating the Divine Fruit from a mysterious tree that sprouted after an extraterrestrial being planted itself on Earth. That fruit gave her chakra — not just power, but the origin of chakra for humans. Over time she used that power to control nations, and when her sons turned against her she tried to reclaim absolute control. To preserve or enforce her will she merged with the God Tree (the same tree that produced the fruit), and by doing so she effectively became the Ten-Tails or the Ten-Tails' host. In other words, the Ten-Tails isn't some separate stranger — it's the God Tree and Kaguya fused, a monstrous culmination of the chakra she once ate. Later, Hagoromo and Hamura confronted her and sealed that monstrous form, splitting its chakra into the tailed beasts. So the Ten-Tails is both a transformed Kaguya and the God Tree manifest, which is why sealing it required her sons' combined power — it was their mother and a planet-scale entity all at once.

Man, thinking about the ten-tails always gives me goosebumps — it’s like the ultimate cheat code in 'Naruto' lore. When someone becomes its jinchūriki they suddenly inherit an absurd ocean of chakra, not just more stamina but a qualitatively different wellspring: access to every chakra nature (wind, fire, earth, water, lightning) plus yin–yang release. That unlocks Truth-Seeking Balls — those black orbs that nullify ninjutsu and reshape into shields, weapons, or destructive spheres. Beyond personal power, the ten-tails lets the host manipulate reality on a massive scale. You get regenerative miracles, flight, massive chakra constructs (think forests, giant rods, even the Divine Tree), and the ability to spawn Zetsu-like matter or propagate the God Tree to make chakra fruit. Madara and Obito used those traits to manipulate landscapes and erect planetary-scale attacks. Mental effects are huge too: the entity can overwhelm willpower, blur identity, and sometimes grant ocular changes like Rinnegan traits or a Rinne Sharingan-like eye, which ties into casting the Infinite Tsukuyomi. In short, you go from top-tier shinobi to near-godhood — at the cost of your autonomy and, often, sanity.

Back when I first binged 'Naruto', the Ten-Tails origin felt like this huge, mythic reveal that rewired everything in the story for me. In-universe, it starts with Kaguya Otsutsuki — an off-worlder who ate the fruit of the God Tree (the Shinju) and became the first being to use chakra. Over time she absorbed more power, eventually merging with the God Tree itself and transforming into a monstrous, planet-level entity: the Ten-Tails. That fusion is basically the origin point for chakra as a force and for the tailed beasts that populate the rest of the series. Her sons, Hagoromo and Hamura, had to confront and defeat her. Hagoromo (the Sage of Six Paths) split the Ten-Tails’ chakra into multiple pieces, which became the nine tailed beasts we know, while the husk or body aspect of the Ten-Tails became the sealed corpse often referred to as the Demonic Statue (Gedo Mazo). Centuries later, Black Zetsu — actually a manifestation of Kaguya’s will — manipulates events, helping Madara and later others to re-summon or revive the Ten-Tails, culminating in Kaguya’s return. The whole origin ties cosmic, familial, and political threads together, and honestly it’s one of those plotlines that makes me want to re-read the manga while sipping coffee and taking notes.

When I break down the Ten-Tails, I can’t help but picture it as this ancient, biological war machine — huge, slow, and deceptively simple in some ways. Its most exploitable weakness is scale: because it's so massive and so reliant on raw chakra, sustained, focused attacks that drain or disperse chakra can gradually strip its offensive edge. That means anything that absorbs chakra, severs chakra pathways or forces massive chakra expenditure (continuous high-level ninjutsu, sealing attempts, or repeated Bijuu bombs) will wear it down over time. Another thing I lean on in my headcanon is vulnerability around control points. The Ten-Tails often relies on a central chakra core, roots with the God Tree, or a host link to direct itself. Isolating and attacking those connectors — be it the seed/tree, chakra core, or the jinchuriki link — is far more efficient than smashing its limbs. Sealing techniques like the 'Reaper Death Seal' or collaborative multi-bijuu sealing combos are classic because they cut off what makes the thing dangerous: the free flow of chakra and the ability to manifest. I also think sensory denial (blinding its ocular arrays or scrambling its sensory chakra) and terrain denial (trapping it in barriers so it can't use space) are smart tactical plays. In short, patience, coordinated chakra control, and precision beats brute force for me, and I still get chills thinking about how teamwork wins these huge fights.

Watching the big Ten-Tails show up in the war arc flipped everything for me — tactics that worked against normal jinchūriki fell apart in an instant. When a threat can obliterate a battlefield with a single tailed-beast ball and regenerate from almost any wound, the whole playbook shifts toward attrition, containment, and sealing rather than brute-force elimination. First, teams stop trying to duel it head-on. I’ve noticed the successful strategies focus on layered defense: sensory units to track its moves, long-range bombardment to keep it pressured, and dedicated sealing teams waiting for an opening. The Uzumaki-style sealing tags, massive arrays drawn by multiple shinobi, and chakra-constricting traps become the primary objective. Even if you can hurt it, you need to buy time for the sealers, which means coordinated sacrifices and decoys. Second, synergy matters more than ever. Combining nature transformations to disrupt its attacks, using tailed-beasts for raw counter-chakra, and having one or two supremely powerful operators (think person-level threats who can handle Truth-Seeking Balls or manipulate the battlefield) to split its attention—all of that turns a chaotic slugfest into a strategically winnable encounter. I still get chills thinking about how teamwork turned the tide in 'Naruto Shippuden'.

What a wild scene that whole finale was — even now when I rewatch the flashbacks in 'Naruto' I get that chill when the Sage of Six Paths turns the tide. From how I saw it growing up, and from digging into the manga panels again as an adult, the core of it is that Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki (the Sage of Six Paths) and his brother Hamura teamed up to stop Kaguya, who had become the Ten-Tails. They didn’t just beat her in a slugfest and walk away; it was a spiritual, chakra-based sealing that shaped the entire future of the ninja world. Hagoromo used his mastery of chakra, his deep understanding of spiritual energy, and those fundamental Sealing and Yin–Yang techniques we see scattered through the series to neutralize her. The way I mentally picture it is less like slamming a lid on a monster and more like breaking down an enormous, corrupt river of chakra into smaller, manageable streams. After subduing Kaguya, Hagoromo split the Ten-Tails’ raw chakra into separate portions — which later became the nine tailed beasts. That act was both a sealing and a transformation: instead of one unstoppable celestial beast, the power became dispersed into individual entities that could be contained and given form. He also became intimately involved with the Ten-Tails’ power himself; the sources portray him as the first jinchūriki in the sense that he internalized and controlled the beast’s leftover power, using his unique Sage abilities to stabilize and lock it away. Then, to make the next generation safer, he distributed pieces of that chakra across the world as the tailed beasts, essentially preventing the whole power from ever coalescing again. I love how this reads like myth — an ancient teacher splitting cosmic power and teaching humans how to use chakra properly. In practice, this setup explains all the later plot mechanics in 'Naruto': why tailed beasts exist, how jinchūriki function, and why sealing techniques are so revered. There are small differences depending on whether you look at flashbacks in the manga or the anime filler bits, but the essence is that the Sage used sealing and dividation along with his spiritual authority to neutralize the Ten-Tails and turn its power into something less apocalyptic. Whenever I watch scenes where Naruto or Naruto’s world deal with tailed beasts, I always feel that sense of continuity — that everything painful and complicated stems from this gigantic, sorrowful act of splitting and sealing done millennia ago.

The first person to effectively seal the Ten-Tails in 'Naruto' history is the Sage of Six Paths, Hagoromo Otsutsuki — and honestly, that moment always gives me chills. He and his brother Hamura confronted their mother Kaguya after she absorbed the God Tree and became the Ten-Tails. Together they subdued her: Hamura helped restrain and seal Kaguya, while Hagoromo did something even more pivotal — he extracted the Ten-Tails' chakra and split it into the nine tailed beasts. That splitting is basically the original sealing move that dispersed the Ten-Tails' power across those new creatures, preventing the Ten-Tails from existing in full again for centuries. Thinking about that scene now, it feels like the origin point for almost every major conflict that follows in 'Naruto' — tailed beasts, jinchūriki, the shinobi world's fear of power. It’s wild how a family showdown set up so many of the series' themes, and I still find myself rewinding those manga panels on slow nights just to soak it in.

I got obsessed with the Ten-Tails lore the week I binged the War arc, and I tracked down as many official sources as I could. The short and honest take: there isn’t a big, standalone novel solely about the Ten-Tails’ origin. Most of the canonical origin material lives in the original 'Naruto' manga (the latter chapters where Hagoromo, Hamura, and Kaguya’s history is revealed) and was adapted into flashback episodes in 'Naruto Shippuden'. Beyond the manga and anime, the official databooks and guidebooks are super useful for filling in details and terminology—things like the nature of the God Tree, the Otsutsuki’s motives, and how the Ten-Tails relates to chakra. There are also character-centered novels like 'Itachi Shinden' or 'Kakashi Hiden' that expand personalities and side plots, but they don’t focus on the Ten-Tails itself. If you want more, the best route is a combo: re-read the final manga arc, rewatch the Kaguya/Hagoromo flashbacks in 'Naruto Shippuden', and skim official databooks. For fan-made deep dives, try long-form essays or translations of interviews with the creator—those filled the gaps for me and sparked a lot of neat theories.