Ok lets start with the man himself and his skills, he has the natural IQ 200, yes 200! But looking at him you wouldnt not tell, he's lazy and cant b assed with anything (much like me, the thing is i aint as smart), in the Japanese version everything was troublesome, in english a drag, in both everything sucked. He slept during class yet passed the Ninja academy. Using his big brain the guy can handle nearly any situation, his specialty he can use his shadow, being able to extend, fatten, shorten it using his chakra, he starts of with one move, Shadow Possession, in which he can possess the enemy with his shadow once trapped all they can do i speak, other than that the opponent can only move if Shikamaru moves.  Later Shikamaru learns an advanced form of the attack The Shadow neck bind, after trapping the opponent in Shadow possession Shika then extends his shadow more in the shape of a hand up the opponents body, to there neck and strangles the enemy, The enemy ofcourse unless very strong or Shika be weakened are helpless. After the two and 1/2 year timeskip, Shikamaru shows off more jutsus all involving his shadow ofcourse. Aside from that frightening skill Shikamaru is skilled in all aspects of being Ninja, not very physically strong can fight in close combat and has good evasive skills, he also makes excellent use of Ninja tools.

Images include Shikamaru in many of his battles also a few with him a Temari, one of the most talked about anime couplings, even tho they aint together...yet.

Times he was awsome;

We first meet the lazy Shikamaru at the start of the naruto show making his first appearance in episode one.

He came back in series 2 (The Chuinnin exam) part of team 10 (team mates Ino and Choiji Sensei Asuma).

When the sound ninja attack Sakura and the unconscience Naruto and Sasuke, and after Rock Lee was defeated. Shikamaru made his first action appearance jumping to the rescue along with Choiji and Ino. He captured the leader of them in his shadow possession jutsu, holding him as events unfolded around them, all the while looking after Ino's body was tranfered her mind to another member of the Sound Ninja, unfortunatly he held the attack to long and ran out of Chakra, thus cancelling the attack.

Later in the series Shikamaru fought another member of the sound ninja to qualilfy to the knockout rounds in the exam. By disguising his shadow under the shadow of the strings his enemy used he captures her in shadow possession. Shikamaru won by causing his opponent to hit there head of the wall lol.

In the knock out round he was paired against the sand Kinoichi Temari. It was an alrite battle of wits, Shikamaru stayed to the shadows and avoided Temari's wind attacks, but at the same time keeping her at a distance by demostraighting the range of his shadow, eventually after several attempts Shikamaru managed to capture Temari by using a tunnel underground which Naruto made in his battle against Neji before. Although Shikamaru had thought of ways he could win after being in a promising situation he gave up saying it would b 2 troublesome to win, this shocked everyone cause he had clearly won, even Temari knew she had lost.

Later in that series when the sand and sound ninja armies attack Konoha Shikamaru was successful in displeling Kabutos Genjutsu used on the audiance but decided to fake asleep not wanting to take part, unfortunatly he was forced to. He chased after Sasuke (in persuit of Gaara) with Naruto and Sakura. He stayed behind during the chase to hold off a group of sound Ninja chasing them, Shikamaru successfully capture all eight in his shadow possession demostraighting his abilitys to seperate his shadow, unfortunatly still tired from battling Temari he ran out of Chakra, fonrtunatly Asuma arrived and well and truly owned the sound ninja. (A cool scene in the manga showed Asuma flicking his ciggarette into some blood to put it out, a minor scene cut from the anime, disappoiting cause it looked cool but back to Shika!)

Now here is where Shika truely shined! Out of all the character in Naruto he was the only one to be promted to Chunnin rank making him the first of our heroes to reach the rank. Being Chunnin rank Shikamaru could lead missions, and that he did, he was ordered to create a team of skilled Genin (the Genin were Naruto, Kiba, Choiji and Neji) and the mission was bring Sasuke back!  He lead his team well despite his inexperiance as a team leader but using that big brain of his did well, he ended up like the others get seperated and faced off against one of the sound four in a great battle. It ended in a stand off, the enemy thought they had him in a Genjutsu, but by dislocating his finger got out and wait for the enemy to attack, Shikamaru then captured her in his shadow possession and then used neck bind, unfortunatly being weakened after the big battle he struggled to get the jutsu up to her neck also she was trying to stab him and shika had to also use Shadow neck bind to wrap round her arm and hold her at bay. They pushed against eachother for sometime until Temari came (now and allie) to the resuce and finished off the enemy.

Shikamaru played a lead role in Naruto the movie 2 and also made a few apperances in the filler arc, taking the role as leader once again in the final filler episodes but this time leading all the other Genin apart from Tenten who wasn't there.

Me being up to date in the manga I can say Shikamaru will be even more a legend in the episodes still to come in the anime, im looking forward to what other roles he will play in the manga, (but will have to wait till next week )

And that my friends is why Shikamaru is a legend and my favourite character in Naruto. I will close now with images of the man himself.

-- Edited by The Underdog at 20:08, 2007-02-19