Children of the Prophecy

The Great Toad Sage tells Jiraiya about the "Child of the Prophecy".

Child of the Prophecy (予言の子, Yogen no Ko) is a title originally conceived by the Great Toad Sage. He foretold that the Child of the Prophecy would be a student of Jiraiya that would bring a great revolution to the world of the ninja. Jiraiya's actions would determine if this revolution would be for the world's salvation or the world's destruction. Jiraiya believed, at different times, that the following characters could be the Child of the Prophecy:

• Nagato
• Minato Namikaze
• Naruto Uzumaki

While in Amegakure after the Second Shinobi World War, Jiraiya met Nagato, a boy with that possessed the Rinnegan. Because the fabled Sage of the Six Paths, a figure who was said to have saved the world in the distant past, also possessed the Rinnegan, Jiraiya believed that Nagato was the Child of the Prophecy. He trained Nagato and encouraged him to find peace for the world.

When he returned to Konoha, Jiraiya acquired his own genin team. Because of the natural genius of one of its members, Minato, Jiraiya suggested to Minato that he could be the Child of the Prophecy and took him as an apprentice. Minato still remembered this decades later and, during the Nine-Tails' Attack on Konoha, formed his own conclusion regarding the prophecy. He believed that Tobi would bring destruction to the world, and that his son, Naruto, would save the world from Tobi. Because of this, Minato chose to seal the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox into Naruto to help him face this great challenge.

Sixteen years later, Jiraiya returned to Amegakure to investigate Akatsuki, a criminal organisation seeking the world's destruction. When he discovered that Nagato was the leader of Akatsuki, Jiraiya, still believing Nagato to be the Child of the Prophecy, tried to kill him before he could bring about his prophesied revolution. He failed, but as he died he came to the same conclusion as Minato: that Naruto, a boy he had been training for the last two-and-a-half-years, was the Child of the Prophecy. The choice he had to make was whether or not he should give up. Choosing not to, Jiraiya revived himself through sheer will long enough to send clues about how to defeat Nagato, the supposed world's destruction, to Naruto.

At the conclusion of the invasion of Pain, wherein Nagato gave his life to help Naruto achieve peace, as the Great Toad Sage watched on, he realised that both he and Jiraiya had been wrong and that the "Child of the Prophecy" did not refer to a single individual, but to both Nagato and Naruto who were saving the world.

Trivia

• Each of the individuals whom at one time were thought to be the Child of Prophecy were also known as the Saviour of this World.