[~Deidara and Tobi~]-*The perfect team*-

[eriounios]

wahmbulance Deidara wahmbulance

[Sources: Wikipedia/Akatsuki]

Picture coming soon.

Membership status: Active
Ring: 青 ("blue", "green")
Ring position: Right index finger
Partner: Tobi, formerly Sasori
First cameo: Chapter 238; Naruto Episode 135
First appearance: Chapter 247; Shippūden Episode 2
Defining characteristics: Specialist in explosive-based jutsu using clay, clay manipulation with mouths in palms of hands, scope on left eye, left eye trained to counter Sharingan genjutsu
Seiyu: Katsuhiko Kawamoto

Deidara (デイダラ, Deidara?) is a missing-nin from Iwagakure and the partner of Tobi. A fancy and skillful fighter, Deidara uses special mouths in the palm of each hand to create Exploding Clay (起爆粘土, Kibaku Nendo?), ranked by number in a fashion similar to C-4. As the name suggests, Deidara can make the clay explode using the command Katsu (喝, Katsu?). By infusing the clay with chakra and molding it into various forms, Deidara can create living explosives to sneak up on opponents. Deidara can even create clones from the clay, named Suicide Bombing Clones (自爆分身, Jibaku Bunshin?), that can be a deadly surprise for opponents. Deidara's clay creations can range from microscopic to gigantic in size, allowing him to adapt to any situation. Deidara can also use the clay for other purposes, as he is frequently seen creating birds to be used for transportation. Deidara wears a scope on his left eye for long-range observation, and he has trained the eye itself to dispel genjutsu, which he did in response to Itachi's powerful genjutsu skills.

Deidara refers to his ninjutsu as art, believing each bomb he makes to be such works. He refers to style as superflat (the word itself used to refer to certain types of manga), and claims pop is dead. One of Deidara's catchphrases, "Art is a bang" (or variations therein), was originally coined by famous Japanese abstract artist Tarō Okamoto. Deidara is very proud of his art, to the point that he is simply unwilling to accept that anything could defeat it, leading to frequent overconfidence in battle.

Deidara's gender is sometimes confused due to the Japanese language's sparse use of third person pronouns, which forces translators to use their own ideas of Deidara's gender to make sentences flow smoothly. This caused a lot of confusion, since both "he" and "she" were used to refer to Deidara in early English fan translations. However, Deidara speaks of himself using male pronouns and was initially given a very deep, male voice in the anime. His current anime voice is significantly lighter, but still clearly masculine. Deidara also has a habit of ending his sentences with a mumble/grunt, usually transcribed as un or mmm, in the same way Naruto ends most of his sentences with -ttebayo. Deidara has become the most popular member of Akatsuki among fans in Japan. In the most recent character popularity poll, Deidara ranked in third place, even higher than Naruto Uzumaki.

Before joining Akatsuki, Deidara was a terrorist bomber for hire, seeing it as an opportunity to use his "art" on a regular basis. He was recruited by Itachi under the orders of the leader, who partners him with Sasori. Deidara refers to Sasori as Master Sasori (サソリの旦那, Sasori no Danna?). This is probably because Deidara greatly respects him as a fellow artist. He also admits that Sasori was a lot stronger. Despite that, Deidara still argued with Sasori about what art is and directly disobeyed his command in spite of a threat to be killed. Deidara held that art is transient, departing quickly. Sasori believed that fine art is something wonderful that's left long into the future. This reflects their individual natures (Deidara makes clay sculptures that explode, Sasori makes long-lasting puppets out of humans). Deidara outwardly seems to respect Sasori's beliefs, but couldn't resist getting a final jab in after Sasori's death: "Like anything that is left for the future as a thing of eternal beauty... He got killed straight off!"

Deidara is assigned to capture the one-tailed beast, which requires capturing Gaara. While he succeeds in this task, Gaara is able to crush one of his arms before being defeated. After the beast is extracted from Gaara's body and a rescue team attempts to retrieve him, Deidara has his second arm severed, though makes sure to find it after he manages to escape. Both of his arms are repaired by Kakuzu, allowing him to return to battle-readiness. After Sasori's death, Tobi is assigned as Deidara's new partner. Deidara gets impatient with Tobi fairly easily, since Tobi rarely pays attention to what he is saying. Tobi also tends to take credit for their work, despite whatever Deidara did. After they capture the three-tailed beast, Deidara lectures Tobi about being too overconfident. He becomes greatly annoyed when he discovers that Tobi has fallen asleep and proceeds to "wake him" by blasting Tobi with his exploding clay.