Deidara’s Explosive Clay

Deidara was born with the Explosion Release Kekkei Genkai, native to the Land of Earth. He was known for his talent in clay sculpting and it was with this talent that he took explosive ninjutsu to a higher level. He stole Iwa’s kinjutsu and used it to transform his body, growing mouths on his hands and chest which allows him to “knead” chakra into any material he eats.

He eats clay with one of his mouths, kneads his explosive chakra into it, shapes the clay into a sculpture and then controls it with earth chakra. The explosive chakra controls the explosion’s strength and magnitude and the earth chakra controls the sculpture’s size and movement. Thus Deidara created Explosive Clay and when he used it against one of his pursuers as he defected from the village, he realised that this was the true art he had been searching for.

Its weaknesses are that he is limited by the amount of clay he has collected and his clay bombs are weak to lightning chakra. He can create more clay by changing the composition of earth with ninjutsu but it’s a time-consuming process that makes it hard to restock on the fly. It works best and faster with a natural source of clay but he needs to find it first.

And because the explosive chakra is kneaded into the clay, instead of just channeled into it like many other elemental ninjutsu, it is as weak to lightning chakra as the earth chakra controlling the clay. So lightning chakra can completely defuse Deidara’s Explosive Clay.

Without earth chakra his clay creations would just be inanimate explosives and without explosive chakra they would just be animated sculptures. Only by combining the kinjutsu with his kekkei genkai was this style made possible.