Neji Hyuga is a member of Team Guy and a child prodigy of the Hyuga clan. Despite his natural talent, Neji's membership in one of the clan's lower houses leaves him ineligible to learn the clan's most secret techniques.At the start of the series, Neji openly hates the main house because of this, readily attacking its members verbally or physically when given the chance. At this point in the series, Neji believes in a fatalistic philosophy: that one's destiny is inescapable and that a weak person will always be weak.After being defeated in battle by Naruto Uzumaki, a character that has proven his "destiny" wrong by getting stronger, Neji has a change of heart. He abandons the idea of a predetermined fate, and resolves to get strong enough to never lose a battle.He also tries to remedy the estranged relations between himself and the members of the main house, resulting in his training with the leader of the main house at the end of Part I.
Neji displays his title as a prodigy of the Hyuga throughout the series; when first introduced he is highly proficient with the Gentle Fist style of combat, with which he can directly attack an opponent's internal systems. Though never having been trained in the form, Neji has been able to replicate it and its most powerful attacks through simple observation.As the series progresses, Neji refines these abilities into more powerful counterparts, either to increase their potency or to fix an inherent flaw. One such example is his Byakugan, an eye technique that by default grants the owner a near-360-degree field of vision within a fifty meter radius. Neji constantly trains to overcome a small blindspot and to increase the Byakugan's range of sight. In the Japanese anime, his seiyū is Kōichi Tōchika, and when he is featured as a child, he is voiced by Keiko Nemoto. His voice in the English anime is provided by Steve Staley, and Wendee Lee provides his child voice.