Orochimaru

Main article: Orochimaru (Naruto)

Orochimaru (大蛇丸^?) is one of the primary antagonists of the Naruto series. To emphasize his role as a villain, Kishimoto worked towards making him appear "pasty and sickly" as part of his theme of distinguishing villains from the protagonists.^[2] In the series, Orochimaru is a former ninja of Konohagakure and a student of the Third Hokage. During his time in the village, he distinguished himself as one of the village's most powerful ninja along with his teammates, Jiraiya and Tsunade.^[3] His desire to obtain immortality led him to conduct experiments on other Konohagakure ninja, and he eventually fled the village and joined the criminal organization Akatsuki.^[4] After a failed attempt to take over Itachi Uchiha's body, he left the Akatsuki and established his own ninja village, Otogakure, in the hopes of destroying his former home.^[5] His immortality technique involves transferring his soul between different host bodies, and his desire for a new host, particularly Sasuke Uchiha, is one of his driving motivations throughout the series.^[6] Because of his different host bodies and the disguises he assumes, a panoply of voice actors are utilized for Orochimaru; his most common seiyū in the Japanese anime is Kujira, and the corresponding English voice actor is Steven Blum.