The Rasengan is a niche technique passed down by a select group of ninja. But how long did it take its inventor, Minato, to learn the Rasengan?
It took Minato three years to learn the Rasengan. It’s considered an A-ranked ninjutsu and one of the Fourth Hokage’s legacies that few ninja could ever hope to learn.
The Rasengan is a combination of both the tree-climbing technique and the walk-on-water technique. The tree-climbing technique involves focusing and maintaining a set amount of chakra emission from specific areas of the body, whereas the walk-on-water technique is the continual emission of only a small amount of chakra.
Each technique is combined to create a stream of chakra that rotates. Chakra is focused and maintained on the center of the palm. Then, the following technique helps continually emit chakra out of the palm.
Jiraiya Tells Naruto How Long It Took Minato to Learn Rasengan
Jiraiya first introduced the Rasengan to Naruto in Chapter #150. He explained the concept of combining multiple techniques to generate the Rasengan. He also offers Naruto some context on the creation of the jutsu. Naruto felt a lot of frustration with the jutsu’s difficult learning curve.
This jutsu is one of the legacies of the Fourth Hokage! It took Lord Fourth a full three years to perfect this jutsu… A level five out of six. Second from the top! An A-ranked super-advanced ninjutsu.
Jiraiya to Naruto | Chapter #150
Each time the jutsu is passed down, it seems to take each user a slightly faster amount of time to learn it. Naruto in particular had an issue using a single hand to both emit the chakra and rotate it simultaneously. He opts to use two hands instead.
To make the water swirl around while holding the water balloon in his left hand and bringing his right hand to it… It’s a bit unorthodox, but… He’s such a funny fellow.
Jiraiya On Naruto’s Two-Handed Rasengan | Chapter #152
So there’s the answer. It took Minato over three years to learn the Rasengan. It took so long because Minato was starting from scratch and had no reference point to build off.