The Ancestral Form technique is one of the first techniques I came up with for Mangetsu and the whole Bloodrage family of Shinjuugakure, but one which I had an especially hard time to come up with a design for until last week. I had a difficult time deciding on what exactly it should look like. I knew that I wanted it to, in some way, resemble sabertooth cats, but apart from having long fangs and a few blotches here and there I couldn't quite come up with a body design that would fit the realities of a shinobi battlefield, namely, that would be both designed for speed and strength. In my sketches, I went through massive quadrupled hulks to some weird bipedal hybrids. Another issue was whether or not the users should be naked or retain their clothes, and if they were to be clothed, would it be the same clothing they wore before using the technique, or would it change? These were just a few of the questions I had to answer myself while sketching the final design. Inspiration came finally to me last week and it turned out I went for a little less smilodon-like look in favour of a 'wilder' image of a given individual that would also, however, show an increase in power. Thus this concept art was born.
As for the technique itself, Ancestral Form is a semi-transformation jutsu that relies on, and takes advantage of, the Bloodrage bloodline limit, the Fiend's Eye (the Akumagan). In order to execute the technique, one focuses on one particularly angering memory, or the situation at hand, and harnesses the rage caused by it to transform. Once in the Ancestral Form, the user's chakra capacity, speed, physical strength and response time are greatly increased, with an almost complete immunity to pain, giving them a major advantage in mostly hand-to-hand combat. In this state, the user is also able to execute more powerful versions of techniques they already know, which would otherwise be too taxing to perform. The Ancestral Form can be compared to a berserker's rage and is what coined the clan's name in the past, which they then adopted.
The way the transformed user looks is different on an individual basis, usually, though, it is connected to the primary chakra nature of the user, or another technique, or feature, characteristic for them. Generally, however, females tend to have more delicate features and a more slender body build than males (which does not, however, make them less deadly). Traits shared among all Ancestral Forms are, however: increase in muscle mass and, usually, size, longer, more ruffled manes, large non-retractable claws on both hands and feet, two long fangs protruding from the mouth, the appearance of pads on both hands and feet, blotches on fur in various places of the body. The user's ceremonial markings or special clothes' patterns may also undergo a slight change.
Due to the extensive use of the Akumagan, the Ancestral Form is very taxing and cannot be maintained for a long time. After it fades, it usually causes extreme exhaustion in the user. Depending on training and the stage of the user's Akumagan's development, this can range from not being able to use the bloodline limit for a while to loss of consciousness, or even the risk of reaching close-to-death chakra levels. There are known examples of nekonin who died from injuries suffered while in the Ancestral Form after cancelling the technique, as well as those who drove themselves past what their bodies could endure and suffered the same fate after regaining their usual form.
Alright, this is it for now on the topic of the Ancestral Form. The above description is mostly final, I guess, if anything changes, I'll be sure to update this post on both the Shinjuugakure blog and deviantArt.
In the meantime, enjoy the picture and the description.
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