Tenten

Character
Name:	Tenten (テンテン Tenten)
Occupation:	Ninja
Relationships:	Team Guy - Might Guy (sensei), Hyuuga Neji (teammate), Rock Lee (teammate)
Fandom:	Naruto
Other:
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Tenten (テンテン Tenten) is a minor, recurring character in Naruto media.

Canon

Tenten (テンテン) is a member of Team Guy who longs to prove that a female ninja can be just as skilled as a male ninja. Of all the Konoha 11, Tenten receives the least amount of screen time in the series. Despite her lack of appearances, series creator Masashi Kishimoto favors her design more than those of any of the other female characters he has created. In battle, Tenten specializes in weaponry, ranging from projectiles to close-combat weapons and even explosives by the second part of the series. During a fight, she uses the hundreds of weapons stored in scrolls she carries with her to bombard opponents with pinpoint accuracy. Tenten uses this expertise to help Neji Hyuga train his defensive techniques, and she holds him in high regard since he can always block her attacks. In the series epilogue, Tenten runs her own weapons shop and was a proctor of the Chunin exams.

Reception and meta

Tenten placed 24th in the first and fifth, 30th in the second, 29th in the third and ninth and most recent poll, 22nd in the third and 15th in the seventh.

Fanon and common tropes in fan works

Tenten is almost invariably the daughter of a weapons shop owner or blacksmith in fanon as an explanation for where she gets her weapons and interest in them, though whether either are alive anymore depends on the fan. A few authors have also adopted the last name "Higurashi" for her. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Tenten was orphaned (or abandoned) as a baby, never was adopted by anyone, and literally has no surname.

In many fanworks, Tenten and Hinata happen to be best friends. She roots for Neji (or at least thinks with pleasure that he will win) in his fight with Naruto, despite him almost killing Hinata (which, admittedly, happened while she was most likely unconscious after losing her own fight). An alternative take on that is that they became friends sometime after the Chunin Exams.

[...]

Tenten as the mother of Rock Lee's son, Metal Lee. They have relatively similar eye shapes and Metal's name could be seen as relating to weapons. In canon it's unspecified who Metal's mother is. An alternative fanon is that Tenten is Metal Lee's aunt figure.

[...]

Even amongst fans who do not particularly ship them, Tenten having feelings for Neji (be they unrequited or not) is common in fanworks if only to give her character more depth. Neji will usually be The Lost Lenore to her.

Tenten is often known by the fanon epithet Weapons Mistress of Konoha.

Shipping

In a sample of 758 Naruto stories published or updated on FanFiction.Net between 13 October 2013 and 14 March 2018, using the site's pairing filter, Tenten was overwhelmingly listed as paired with Hyuuga Neji (78%), followed distantly by Uchiha Sasuke (8%), Uzumaki Naruto (5%), and Rock Lee (2%), with several others being around 1% each. As of 13 September 2021, among the 3638 works tagged Tenten, NejiTen is her most-tagged relationship (856 works), followed by Aburame Shino x Tenten (110 works).

• Tenten x Neji (NejiTen)
• Tenten x Lee (LeeTen)

Example Fanworks

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.

External links

Archives and Communities

• FanFiction.Net (FFN): Naruto stories and crossovers featuring Tenten
  • Ten Squared
  • TentenXCentrics
  • Ten―Cen
• LiveJournal (LJ): ten_squared
• DeviantArt (DA):
• Tumblr:
• Archive of Our Own (AO3):
• Reddit: