<p>He needed more chakra control and his stamina is sub-par. That timeskip made everyone get better so that's most likely the reason. Plus, he is a non-Uchiha and that's why he can barely handle it. Maybe he first used his Mangekyou Sharingan during his fight with Deidara.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-02-28T06:59:05.870Z
I'm also not sure he was even aware of it at the time. He fainted immediately after activating it.
Madara's Ghost
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-02-28T01:58:38.887Z
2015-05-12T13:12:00.067Z
2015-05-12T13:12:00.067Z
janbert
<p>Kakashi's first known use of the Mangekyo Sharigan was against Deidara. However, I think your question really is why did he not use it earlier. There could be a number of reasons why he did not use it or was not shown using it earlier.</p>

<p>Kakashi awakened the Mangekyo Sharingan when Rin was killed. He thus failed to keep his promise to Obito. Hence, this was a emotionally painful moment for him, tied to both Rin and Obito. Maybe he did not want to use it since to avoid revisiting those emotions.</p>

<p>As mentioned in lexter's answer, another reason is that being a non-Uchiha, he simply did not have enough stamina to use it effectively in battle. Even after timeskip, he could only use it twice in a day, and had to take rest for a week or so after he used it. Before timeskip, he was in charge of genin-level students, and he couldn't risk getting knocked out and put his students in danger. </p>

<p>Also, before the timeskip, he simply did not get to fight villains against whom he was forced to use it. He only fought Zabuza and Haku during the Land of Waves arc, and unnamed shinobi from Sand Village and Sound Village during the Invasion of Konoha arc. If Orochimaru were to fight him, Kakashi would probably be pushed to using it, but Orochimaru fought with the Third Hokage instead. </p>

<p>Losing to Uchiha Itachi easily may have compelled Kakashi to consider using it, due to the usual shounen/Naruto logic of "If I want to protect my nakama, I have to get stronger."</p>

<p>There could also be a couple of author issues why Kakashi couldn't be shown using it earlier. Sasuke was a protagonist at the time, and his main aim in life was to kill Itachi. Therefore, it was necessary to introduce Itachi as a superpowerful villian. Ensuring that Mangekyo Sharingan is first mentioned when Itachi is introduced would maximize the audience's perception of how strong and evil Itachi is. </p>

<p>The other reason is it was not in the author's plan that Kakashi had already awakened the Mangekyo Sharingan when the series started, and planned to offer an alternate explanation for how he awakened it during the timeskip period. However, as he started addressing the hanging threads while winding up the story, he decided to shoehorn it into Obito's backstory. </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-02-28T04:54:19.203Z
2013-02-28T04:54:19.203Z
Masked Man
<p>My friend just discovered this in the anime (first season, episode 6, at about 6:35) which I think supports the other explanations. Kakashi is about to use it when he is caught in Zabuza's water prison jutsu. You can see it in this image. This would indicate that he is ready to use it in a near death situation.</p>

<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/WSZBZ.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/WSZBZ.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-08-21T20:48:12.157Z
Interesting. Do you have an episode number?  I'd like to revisit that.
Makoto
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-08-21T21:03:19.830Z
We revisted it to, and it is just before he is caught in the water prison, here is a link to the episode and it happens at 6:35

Link: http://kissanime.to/Anime/Naruto-Dub/Episode-008-The-Oath-Of-Pain?id=103875
Simon Rotendahl
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-08-21T21:42:15.217Z
Okay.  It certainly *seems* like he could have used or have chosen to use it, but the real question would be, why *didn't* he?  I won't deny that it looks like he is forming a different level of Sharingan in that shot, but I also wonder if this isn't an error with animation or some other detail that was overlooked.  It's good so I'll give you that, but it's not entirely convincing.
Makoto
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-08-21T22:21:23.477Z
I don't think it is a error in the animation, it's to close to the Mangekyou. I think it might be the reason from earlier, that he didn't have enough stamina/chakra at that point to use it properly, so it would have to be a dier situation for him to use it. It could be a form of easter egg, but that seems weird.

But I definitely do not have the answer, my friend just saw it, and it so weird why it show up here.
Simon Rotendahl
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-10-26T10:10:33.760Z
@SimonRotendahl even though he awakened the Mangekyou when Rin was killed, the Jutsu Kamui took time to be mastered by him. So in the fight with Zabuza he uses Mangekyou for its better visual powers like seeing chakra run through body but he can't use Kamui to escape in that fight.
Bej
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-05-03T22:23:52.793Z
Really looks like an MS, but when I zoomed in it just seemed the pupils became bigger for some reason. I could faintly see tomoe still present, without the lines in between each like Obito and Kakashi's MS. I think the problem is that they made the pupil bigger, yet didn't move the tomoe accordingly, thus being very close to the pupil and from afar looking like a Mangekyou Sharingan. This is what I'm speculating.
ᴅᴀɴɪᴇʟッ
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-08-21T20:44:49.073Z
2016-08-21T21:40:50.533Z
2016-08-21T21:40:50.533Z
Simon Rotendahl
<p>I think the only real reason here is <strong>retcon</strong>. The Sharingan history is one of the most retconed plots in the Narutoverse and the Kakashi-Rin-Obito relationship is up there too. If what is being suggested by these answers and comments is true, then we have to ignore the fact that Kishimoto admited not yet having a design for the Mangekyou Sharingan for the scenes that show Itachi using it on Sasuke without the design we now know. Because of that, we can infere that at the time kakashi was fighting Zabuza, him having the Mangekyou too was unthinkable. Not to mention that when he truly first used it against Deidara, he spent a good hour &quot;working&quot; on his new Sharingan (see image below), so even at the point it still wasn't defined that he had awakened it in Rin's death.</p>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/uah79.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/uah79.png" alt="Kakashi preparing his mangekyou" /></a></p>
<p>Now, if we MUST make it work for the sake of the Narutoverse, even then we can't presume that those were his intentions when fighting Zabuza, simply because there was no point in using his Kamui in that specific situation.</p>
<p>About his ability with it, yeah, he probably did use it before his fight with Deidara simply because he knew what his eye would do. Since he's not an Uchiha, he had no way of knowing the details of the Mangekyou's power (other then watching Itachi, which was not helpful since their eyes didn't have the same jutsu) without testing on a tree, or a rock. He did faint afterwards, but it wasn't after a single use, he spent a lot of time trying to sever Deidara's arm and even &quot;Kamui'd&quot; his Jibaku Bunshin (Suicide Bombing Clone) entire explosion away.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-05-04T14:13:16.753Z
2021-08-12T15:14:32.153Z
2021-08-12T15:14:32.153Z
guilofrano
<p>In kakashi's fight with deidara (episode 29) he references using it before so I think it's safe to assume he has at least practiced the mongekyou sharingan before this fight</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-10-24T15:19:19.173Z
2016-10-24T15:19:19.173Z
Lustin
<p>He awakened when he killed rin, but he learned about the existence of the mangekyou in the first fight with Itachi, i think kakashi maybe have trained using this fight as "inspiration"</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-08-02T20:54:26.873Z
2019-08-02T20:54:26.873Z
user48372
<p>In Naruto, when does Kakashi first use his Mangekyou Sharingan? Because as far as I know, he and Tobi both awaken their Mangekyou Sharingan when Kakashi saw Rin and Obito get killed, but he never uses it in the series until Shippuden.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-02-28T04:55:51.043Z
Your question probably is, "Why didn't Kakashi use Mangekyo Sharingan earlier?", because I am pretty sure you know when he first used it.
Masked Man
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-03-01T09:54:37.327Z
Well.. Account has been suspended anyways ..
Rookie Programmer Aravind
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-03-02T16:44:43.877Z
@Sai Just as I had suspected, this account was using a sock puppet account named "laxter". The answer below was given by the sock puppet. The accounts got merged, so it looks like that.
Masked Man
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-03-02T16:46:50.523Z
I don't understand the need to use a sock puppet to answer own question, especially when [SE explicitly encourages answering own questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/its-ok-to-ask-and-answer-your-own-questions/).
Masked Man
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-03-03T08:16:02.663Z
to gain (more) reputation! probably he thought no one would know, being unaware of admin privileges..
Rookie Programmer Aravind
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-12-01T13:47:25.407Z
In a fight with Itachi and kisame when Kakashi jumped in to help kurenai and asuma he had to suffer tsukoyomi of itachis sharingan. Why he couldn't do a counterattack with his mangekou sharingan.
xpioneer
<naruto>
When does Kakashi first use his Mangekyou Sharingan?
# When does Kakashi first use his Mangekyou Sharingan?
Posted by: username_0 on 2013-02-28
In Naruto, when does Kakashi first use his Mangekyou Sharingan? Because as far as I know, he and Tobi both awaken their Mangekyou Sharingan when Kakashi saw Rin and Obito get killed, but he never uses it in the series until Shippuden.
**Tags:** naruto
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Your question probably is, "Why didn't Kakashi use Mangekyo Sharingan earlier?", because I am pretty sure you know when he first used it.  
> **username_2**: Well.. Account has been suspended anyways ..  
> **username_1**: @Sai Just as I had suspected, this account was using a sock puppet account named "laxter". The answer below was given by the sock puppet. The accounts got merged, so it looks like that.  
> **username_1**: I don't understand the need to use a sock puppet to answer own question, especially when [SE explicitly encourages answering own questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/its-ok-to-ask-and-answer-your-own-questions/).  
> **username_2**: to gain (more) reputation! probably he thought no one would know, being unaware of admin privileges..  
> **username_3**: In a fight with Itachi and kisame when Kakashi jumped in to help kurenai and asuma he had to suffer tsukoyomi of itachis sharingan. Why he couldn't do a counterattack with his mangekou sharingan.  
---
## 6 answers
### Answer by username_0 on 2013-02-28. Score: 3 | Accepted answer
He needed more chakra control and his stamina is sub-par. That timeskip made everyone get better so that's most likely the reason. Plus, he is a non-Uchiha and that's why he can barely handle it. Maybe he first used his Mangekyou Sharingan during his fight with Deidara.
> **Comments:**
> **username_4** (2013-02-28): I'm also not sure he was even aware of it at the time. He fainted immediately after activating it.  
---
### Answer by username_1 on 2013-02-28. Score: 16
Kakashi's first known use of the Mangekyo Sharigan was against Deidara. However, I think your question really is why did he not use it earlier. There could be a number of reasons why he did not use it or was not shown using it earlier.

Kakashi awakened the Mangekyo Sharingan when Rin was killed. He thus failed to keep his promise to Obito. Hence, this was a emotionally painful moment for him, tied to both Rin and Obito. Maybe he did not want to use it since to avoid revisiting those emotions.

As mentioned in lexter's answer, another reason is that being a non-Uchiha, he simply did not have enough stamina to use it effectively in battle. Even after timeskip, he could only use it twice in a day, and had to take rest for a week or so after he used it. Before timeskip, he was in charge of genin-level students, and he couldn't risk getting knocked out and put his students in danger.

Also, before the timeskip, he simply did not get to fight villains against whom he was forced to use it. He only fought Zabuza and Haku during the Land of Waves arc, and unnamed shinobi from Sand Village and Sound Village during the Invasion of Konoha arc. If Orochimaru were to fight him, Kakashi would probably be pushed to using it, but Orochimaru fought with the Third Hokage instead.

Losing to Uchiha Itachi easily may have compelled Kakashi to consider using it, due to the usual shounen/Naruto logic of "If I want to protect my nakama, I have to get stronger."

There could also be a couple of author issues why Kakashi couldn't be shown using it earlier. Sasuke was a protagonist at the time, and his main aim in life was to kill Itachi. Therefore, it was necessary to introduce Itachi as a superpowerful villian. Ensuring that Mangekyo Sharingan is first mentioned when Itachi is introduced would maximize the audience's perception of how strong and evil Itachi is.

The other reason is it was not in the author's plan that Kakashi had already awakened the Mangekyo Sharingan when the series started, and planned to offer an alternate explanation for how he awakened it during the timeskip period. However, as he started addressing the hanging threads while winding up the story, he decided to shoehorn it into Obito's backstory.
---
### Answer by username_5 on 2016-08-21. Score: 5
My friend just discovered this in the anime (first season, episode 6, at about 6:35) which I think supports the other explanations. Kakashi is about to use it when he is caught in Zabuza's water prison jutsu. You can see it in this image. This would indicate that he is ready to use it in a near death situation.

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/WSZBZ.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/WSZBZ.png)
> **Comments:**
> **username_6** (2016-08-21): Interesting. Do you have an episode number?  I'd like to revisit that.  
> **username_5** (2016-08-21): We revisted it to, and it is just before he is caught in the water prison, here is a link to the episode and it happens at 6:35

Link: http://kissanime.to/Anime/Naruto-Dub/Episode-008-The-Oath-Of-Pain?id=103875  
> **username_6** (2016-08-21): Okay.  It certainly *seems* like he could have used or have chosen to use it, but the real question would be, why *didn't* he?  I won't deny that it looks like he is forming a different level of Sharingan in that shot, but I also wonder if this isn't an error with animation or some other detail that was overlooked.  It's good so I'll give you that, but it's not entirely convincing.  
> **username_5** (2016-08-21): I don't think it is a error in the animation, it's to close to the Mangekyou. I think it might be the reason from earlier, that he didn't have enough stamina/chakra at that point to use it properly, so it would have to be a dier situation for him to use it. It could be a form of easter egg, but that seems weird.

But I definitely do not have the answer, my friend just saw it, and it so weird why it show up here.  
> **username_7** (2016-10-26): @SimonRotendahl even though he awakened the Mangekyou when Rin was killed, the Jutsu Kamui took time to be mastered by him. So in the fight with Zabuza he uses Mangekyou for its better visual powers like seeing chakra run through body but he can't use Kamui to escape in that fight.  
> **username_8** (2021-05-03): Really looks like an MS, but when I zoomed in it just seemed the pupils became bigger for some reason. I could faintly see tomoe still present, without the lines in between each like Obito and Kakashi's MS. I think the problem is that they made the pupil bigger, yet didn't move the tomoe accordingly, thus being very close to the pupil and from afar looking like a Mangekyou Sharingan. This is what I'm speculating.  
---
### Answer by username_9 on 2018-05-04. Score: 5
I think the only real reason here is **retcon**. The Sharingan history is one of the most retconed plots in the Narutoverse and the Kakashi-Rin-Obito relationship is up there too. If what is being suggested by these answers and comments is true, then we have to ignore the fact that Kishimoto admited not yet having a design for the Mangekyou Sharingan for the scenes that show Itachi using it on Sasuke without the design we now know. Because of that, we can infere that at the time kakashi was fighting Zabuza, him having the Mangekyou too was unthinkable. Not to mention that when he truly first used it against Deidara, he spent a good hour "working" on his new Sharingan (see image below), so even at the point it still wasn't defined that he had awakened it in Rin's death.

[![Kakashi preparing his mangekyou](https://i.sstatic.net/uah79.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/uah79.png)

Now, if we MUST make it work for the sake of the Narutoverse, even then we can't presume that those were his intentions when fighting Zabuza, simply because there was no point in using his Kamui in that specific situation.

About his ability with it, yeah, he probably did use it before his fight with Deidara simply because he knew what his eye would do. Since he's not an Uchiha, he had no way of knowing the details of the Mangekyou's power (other then watching Itachi, which was not helpful since their eyes didn't have the same jutsu) without testing on a tree, or a rock. He did faint afterwards, but it wasn't after a single use, he spent a lot of time trying to sever Deidara's arm and even "Kamui'd" his Jibaku Bunshin (Suicide Bombing Clone) entire explosion away.
---
### Answer by username_10 on 2016-10-24. Score: 2
In kakashi's fight with deidara (episode 29) he references using it before so I think it's safe to assume he has at least practiced the mongekyou sharingan before this fight
---
### Answer by username_11 on 2019-08-02. Score: 0
He awakened when he killed rin, but he learned about the existence of the mangekyou in the first fight with Itachi, i think kakashi maybe have trained using this fight as "inspiration"
---
