Bringing a character back from the dead generally doesn’t work in anime or manga, unless it is done by legends like Masashi Kishimoto. In Naruto, there are a few occurrences where the characters have come back from the dead and either wreaked havoc or helped the protagonist Naruto win battles and wars.
Kishimoto understood the dynamics of bringing characters back and used it in the most useful way in the narrative of Naruto, which not only helped the storyline get better but also grabbed the interest of Naruto fans. Most of the characters that came back from the dead were from the Fourth Shinobi World War.
These characters were brought back through the reanimation jutsu, and only Kabuto and Orochimaru were capable of doing so. While Kishimoto saw this as an opportunity to introduce new characters and bring back old ones, there was one character from the Akatsuki that the mangaka thought would be overkill. This character was none other than Hidan.
Masashi Kishimoto Refused to Bring Back Hidan
In 2015, Kishimoto gave an interview with Japanese comedian Kobayashi, and this interview was later summarized on Naruto Fandom by KirinNOTKarin98. During the interview, while talking about the scene where Hidan’s head is chopped off by Asuma, Kishimoto made the revelation that he initially wondered whether to include Hidan in the war or not.
The summary read:
Kobayashi brings up a scene where Hidan’s head is lopped off, and Kishimoto comments that the editing department told him to add black bars at the side for censoring. Kobayashi asks if Hidan is still buried underground, and Kishimoto says he is. Kishimoto wondered whether to put him in the war, but in the end, he didn’t want to have even more characters to draw, so he didn’t.
Hidan was a complex character. Although he is still buried underground, it has never been confirmed whether he is dead or not. Therefore, bringing him back for the Fourth Shinobi World War would have required creating a storyline and then drawing the character, which felt like a lot of work for Masashi Kishimoto.
Akatsuki Members That Took Part in the Fourth Shinobi World War
Although most of the Akatsuki members were killed before the start of the Fourth Shinobi World War, Kabuto decided to bring back the most important members of the group through reanimation jutsu, as it would have helped him get extra strength for the war and gain control over the Shinobi alliance.
The Akatsuki members who played a vital role in the Fourth Shinobi World War by coming back from the dead were Deidara from Iwagakure, Kakuzu from Takigakure, Nagato from Amegakure, and finally Itachi Uchiha from Konoha. Among the four, only Itachi was the one who was able to break the control of reanimation jutsu.
There were other members of the Akatsuki clan who were part of the Fourth Great Ninja War, like Zetsu and Obito, but they were fully alive and were controlling aspects of the war. Even Orochimaru, who was a former member of the Akatsuki, joined the war, but he worked against his former allies.
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