Naruto/Characters/Hidden Sand Village

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Gaara of the Desert

Voiced by: Akira Ishida (JP), Liam O'Brien (EN), Eduardo Garza (Latin American Spanish), Fernando Cabrera (Spain)

Gaara of the Desert is a young shinobi from the Hidden Sand Village who makes his first appearance in the Chunin Exam arc as Naruto's Evil Counterpart. Like Naruto, Gaara had a Tailed Beast, the maniacal sand spirit Shukaku, sealed in him by his father, the Fourth Kazekage, before he was even born. The Kazekage's intent was for him to become a weapon for the village, but after several years declared the experiment a failure and repeatedly tried to have the child assassinated. However, Shukaku's power protected Gaara from all harm. Gaara eventually grew to enjoy killing the assassins his father sent after him, reasoning that only through killing could he validate his own existence.

Gaara speaks in a dull monotone at all times except when he's in a killing frenzy. (This is later explained by the fact that Shukaku eats away at his consciousness when he sleeps, so he's become a chronic insomniac.) Even after his Heel Face Turn, he is quiet, creepy, and not very social.

At the end of the Invasion of Konoha arc, Gaara faces off against Naruto, who beats him with The Power of Friendship. The battle causes Gaara to reconsider his philosophy. He vows to protect the ones close to him rather than attempt to destroy them, and makes it his goal to win the trust and admiration of his village. Gaara feels indebted to Naruto for the insight.

Later, Gaara and his siblings appear as allies in a Big Damn Heroes moment at the end of the Sasuke Retrieval arc. Gaara is matched up with the strongest opponent, Kimimaro, and battled him to a draw before Kimimaro's terminal illness took his life.

All of Gaara's jutsu revolve around sand. He carries a gourd filled with it at all times and can control its movements instinctively. Shukaku, wanting to protect its vessel, always moves the sand as a shield to protect Gaara (even when he doesn't want it to), which wards off most blows, although it can be defeated with sufficient speed. (Before the main storyline, Gaara had never been injured thanks to the sand shield.) In addition to this defense, Gaara can wear the sand as armor, although this is heavier and requires more chakra and effort to maintain. His main battle tactic is to remain stationary and lash out at his opponent with waves of sand from a distance, relying on the sand shield and armor to defend him. When he has finally captured his opponent with the sand, he can use his signature offensive jutsu, "Sand Coffin", to encase his enemy in sand and uses the "Sand Burial" jutsu to crush them, killing them instantly.

In Shippuden, Gaara has become the Fifth Kazekage. The first major arc of the new series revolves around him, as he is defeated and captured by the Akatsuki, who attempt to extract Shukaku from his body as part of their mission to collect all nine Tailed Beasts. The reformed Team 7, as well as Team Guy and Chiyo of the Sand Village, mount a rescue mission. The Akatsuki manages to delay the rescuers long enough to extract the spirit, killing its host; however, Chiyo sacrifices her own life to revive him. It's unknown to what degree, if any, his abilities were affected.

After attending the meetings of the Kages called by the Raikage, he is appointed as the Regimental Commander of the Allied Shinobi Forces, and also commands the 4th/Long-Ranged-Battle Division. Fortunately, he still possesses enough power to be compared with Shukaku itself.

"Three times now, we've fought world wars for our own nations, our own villages. We've hurt one another. We've hated one another. That hatred bred a lust for power, and that lust for power created me. I was a jinchūriki, the embodiment of hatred and power. And I hated this world, and all the people in it. I wanted to destroy it with my own hands. The exact same thing Akatsuki is trying to do today. But one man, one ninja from Konohagakure stopped me. ...I was his enemy, yet he wept for me! I hurt him, yet he called me his friend! He saved me! My enemy, my fellow jinchūriki... He suffered the same pain as me, yet bore no ill will! There are no enemies here because we've all suffered at Akatsuki's hand! So there is no Suna, no Iwa, no Konoha, no Kiri, and no Kumo! There are only 'shinobi!' And if you still hold a grudge against Suna, when this war is over, come and take my head instead! Our enemies are after the friend who saved my life! If they take him, if we hand him over, our world is finished! I want to protect him! I want to protect our world! But I'm too young to protect it all on my own! All of you, lend me your aid! Everyone who's with me, let's go!"

  • Sanity Strengthening: Gaara starts out quite insane and Ax Crazy but over the course of the series (thanks to his friendship with Naruto) becomes slowly more and more sane.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: As a Jinchuriki. But not anymore since the Shukaku was removed.
  • Serial Killer: When he's introduced.
  • Sibling Team: With Temari and Kankuro.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: Post-timeskip, Gaara's much more reserved and introspective than his more boisterous and rowdy older siblings.
  • Slasher Smile: In the Rock Lee fight.
  • So Proud of You: Gaara's resurrected dad is shocked that his failed experiment of a son is now the leader of an allied ninja army (and Kazekage to boot) and realizes what an idiot he's been.
  • The Spock
  • The Stoic
    • Not So Stoic: In his fight with Rock Lee, Gaara's stoic face is revealed to be a mask made of sand, with his real face wearing a Slasher Smile.
    • Post-timeskip, Gaara's reaction when he finds out the truth about his mother. See Manly Tears above.
  • Supporting Leader: He's turning into this, especially as of chapter 516 with that epic Rousing Speech.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Like many, many others during the timeskip. We see him beforehand and his whole gimmick is to stand still behind an ultimate defense and deal environmental damage, so much so that he freaks out on seeing his own blood. Then afterwards, he's flying around and controlling Kaiju-sized masses of sand to interdict the skies over Suna.
  • Tyke Bomb: Was implanted with the Shukaku in utero, by Chiyo at the command of his father, the Fourth Kazekage.
  • Unusual Eyebrows: Of the "not there" category.
  • Warrior Prince: The youngest child of the Fourth Kazekage.
  • Warrior Therapist: Gaara was like this towards Sasuke in Part I. Interestingly, they still have this dynamic the next time they meet several years later, except, well, they have exchanged their places as Ax Crazy and The Stoic.
  • Wise Beyond His Years: Not the sort of person you'd expect to display this, but after becoming Kazekage, Gaara becomes one of the wisest characters in the Narutoverse. Specifically, in Chapter 491, when it comes to the risks Naruto takes, Gaara displays a cooler head and quite frankly, much better judgment than Tsunade concerning that matter.
  • Youngest Child Wins: Sort of.


Kankuro

Voiced by: Yasuyuki Kase (JP), Michael Lindsay (EN), Miguel Ángel Montero (Spain)

Kankuro is the second child of the Fourth Kazekage and Gaara's older brother. He tries to control Gaara's homicidal tendencies as best he can, but fears the younger boy's abilities and is thus fairly ineffectual in that respect. He's pretty confident and doesn't have a whole lot of respect for other people; his first appearance in the series sees him bullying Naruto's young friend Konohamaru. Kankuro always wears the robes and face paint of a theater performer, and speaks in that fashion in the original Japanese.

Kankuro fights Shino during the Invasion of Konoha arc and is defeated, but not before poisoning the latter. He reappears along with his siblings at the end of the Sasuke Retrieval arc, saving Kiba and easily killing Sakon and Ukon.

Kankuro is a puppeteer, which means he fights with mechanical contraptions, controlling them with strings of chakra that he can extend from his fingertips. Puppets are unliving machines, so they can't use chakra, but each of them is outfitted with an array of weapons and poisons. Kankuro can also use the Substitution jutsu to seamlessly switch places with his puppets, causing his enemies to attack the puppets instead. He picks up a new puppet with each new appearance. All of Kankuro's puppets were designed by Sasori before he joined the Akatsuki.

In Shippuden, Kankuro is Worfed by Sasori after Gaara is defeated and abducted by the Akatsuki, giving Sakura a chance to show off her new medical skills, but he managed to get a piece of Sasori's clothing which lets Team 7 track them down. He spends the rest of the arc recovering from his injuries and arguing with the village elders to focus on looking for Gaara instead of choosing his replacement.

Recently, he has revealed that he's acquired a new puppet body: Sasori himself. Later he goes on to defeat the revived Sasori when they face off a second time, gaining the puppets of Sasori's parents in the process.

Sasori... your strength came because of your soul, not in spite of it. You tried to erase it, to become a puppet yourself, but couldn't change completely. Now you've got your immortal body but you've fallen, sunk to the level of the puppets you used to control. You were supposed to be a top class ninja puppeteer, not a worthless nobody who lets someone else pull the strings.

  • Sibling Team: With Gaara and Temari.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Is named Captain of the Ambush Company in the Fourth Great Ninja War and leads to a victory against Sasori and Deidara with few casualties.
  • Took a Level In Kindness: Showed his more caring and protective side post-timeskip.
  • Verbal Tic: Has a tendency to end his sentences with 'jaan'.
  • Warrior Prince: The middle child and oldest son of the Fourth Kazekage.
  • Weak but Skilled: When compared to his siblings who are both people of mass desctruction who specialize in area attacks, he's definitely this, focusing on sneak attacks with poisoned weapons and single target techniques. Fans have picked up on this with one story referring to him as a garrote wire, not a buster sword during a weapon-related character study.
  • Wrecked Weapon: Gets all of his puppets destroyed in his first fight with Sasori. Luckily, they get fixed in time for the Shinobi World War.


Temari

Voiced by: Romi Paku (JP), Tara Platt (EN), Mayra Arellano (Latin American Spanish), Inés Blásquez (Spain)

Temari is the oldest child and only daughter of the Fourth Kazekage, and the older sister of Gaara and Kankuro. She clearly has an attitude, being quite upfront and abrasive, sometimes to the point of crudeness. But she's also a strong ninja - notably the only female to have made it past the Chunin exams preliminaries - who despises war and who values her family.

Like Shikamaru, she's a master strategist, and most of their appearances have been together. She is defeated by him during the Chunin Exam arc (even though Shikamaru technically forfeited to her), and saves him from Tayuya during the Sasuke Retrieval arc. In Shippuden, she and Shikamaru work on the upcoming Chuunin Exams together. When Naruto sees them walking together, he believes Shikamaru and Temari are dating. Similar to scene a few years earlier, when Kakashi thought the same thing while watching Asuma and Kurenai together.

Temari fights with a giant metal fan which she can use both as a blunt weapon and to create cutting whirlwinds. She's a better fighter at range, according to Kankuro. She believed herself to be the only genin in the Chunin exam capable of using the Summoning Jutsu before Naruto demonstrated his ability to do so.

In Shippuden, Temari has become an emissary between the Leaf and Sand Villages. She wanted to pursue the Akatsuki along with the Leaf Village's rescue team, but the village elders forbade her from doing so, instead putting her on border patrol. She doesn't have much of an effect on the arc.

During the events of the Fourth Ninja War, she is serving under Gaara, and alongside Shikamaru and Choji, in the Fourth Battalion.

Baki

Voiced by: Joji Nakata (JP), Sam Riegel (EN), Javier Moreno (Spain), Humberto Velez (Latin American Spanish)

The instructor for the Sand Siblings's team. Discussed the joint Sand/Sound invasion of Konoha with Kabuto, and killed Hayate for overhearing as a sign of trust.

When Deidara invades the Sand Village he leads an unsuccessful attempt to hold him off. He's later seen objecting to suggestions to pick Gaara's succesor as Kazekage while he is missing.


Chiyo

Voiced By: Ikuko Tani (JP), Barbara Goodson (EN)

Sand Village Elder and Sasori's grandmother. An expert on medicine, poison, and puppets as well as a veteran of the Second Great Shinobi War, she holds a great contempt for both Tsunade for countering her poisons and Sakumo Hatake (Kakashi's father) for killing her son and daughter-in-law. After Sasori's parents died by Sakumo's hands, she took care of him and taught him of puppetry. She was the one who Gaara's father asked to seal the One-Tailed Tanuki into Gaara before he was born, after which she ceased involvement with the villages affairs.

When Gaara is kidnapped, she decides to accompany Team 7 as they try to retrieve him. She fights together with Sakura against Sasori, and she capitalizes on an opening left from Sakura taking the blow from a poison sword to finish him off. She is able to heal Sakura using an ability that transfers her own Life Energy, but doesn't die because Sakura wasn't quite dead. When she discovers Gaara dies, she transfers what's left of her energy and some of Naruto's into him, reviving him, but dying in the process (considering it an act of redemption).

Kabuto has just resurrected her with Edo Tensei.


Yashamaru

Voiced by: Soichiro Hoshi (JP), Brian Beacock (EN)

The younger brother of Gaara's mom Karura, and his main caretaker until Gaara was six years old. He provoked little Gaara into killing him as a Secret Test of Character from the ruthless Kazekage, which is what throws Gaara past the Despair Event Horizon. Gaara himself wouldn't know about it for many years, thinking that Yashamaru truly hated him.


Karura

The Kazekage's wife, Yashamaru's older sister, and the mom of the Sand Siblings. She died when Gaara was born, having been used as a sacrifice for the Shunkaku to be implanted into her youngest child.

  • Death by Childbirth: She was dying from complications after giving birth so she offered herself as the sacrifice to seal the Shukaku in her son.
  • Hot Mom
  • Mama Bear: Little Gaara convinced himself that Karura was protecting him via his sand and the Shuukaku, as psychological defense against his horrid life. It has recently turned out that this was true: it's confirmed in her Famous Last Words ("What a small, feeble child... No matter what happens, I'll always protect you! Gaara...!" and by how Gaara's sand, as he gets free from the Kazekage's Gold Dust, takes Karura's form.
  • Missing Mom
  • Posthumous Character

The Fourth Kazekage

Voiced by: Masahiko Tanaka (JP), Crispin Freeman (EN), Ricardo Brust (Latin American Spanish)

The former leader of the Hidden Sand Village, a Knight Templar who reaches horrible extremes to protect his village. These include: using his own wife Karura as a sacrifice to seal the Shukaku into his youngest child, subjecting said child to Training from Hell and abuse, then attempting to get him killed several times when Gaara didn't turn out to be the perfect Tyke Bomb he wanted.

Kabuto has just resurrected him with Edo Tensei. He's now facing the much more adult and mature Gaara, who calls him out on what he did to him ever since he was born. And we also get to see exactly why he was such an asshole..

  • Abusive Parents: He was a Doting Parent until Gaara lost control over the Shukaku at around six years old.
    • Parents as People: Acknowledged by Gaara in the manga, as he faces the revived Kazekage.
  • Archnemesis Dad
  • Expy: With a twist. Even if he was introduced years before Danzo, he ends up looking quite similar to him, through his methods and motivations. This is because the 4th Kazekage was given little to no characterization back then.
  • Extra Ore Dinary: Uses Gold like Gaara uses sand.
  • Faceless Eye: He can use his Gold Dust to make a third eye just like his son. It makes sense given Gaara said his father personally tutored him in ninjutsu when he was young.
  • Heel Realization
  • Jerkass -> Jerkass Realization
  • Kick the Dog: His treatment of Gaara as a kid, and specially telling Yashamaru to put on a Jerkass Facade and lie to him about Karura and himself, purely to test Gaara's strenght. It worked as well as you'd expect.
    • Pet the Dog: Ultimately telling Gaara that Karura did love him.
  • Knight Templar
  • Love Makes You Evil: He loved Sunagakure and wanted to protect it. He pulled horrible crap on everyone in his surroundings, and specially on his own family, to make sure things would be the way he wanted.
    • Hoist by His Own Petard: Siding with Orochimaru was his biggest mistake, aside of what he did to his family and village.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Nice job turning your youngest child into a Jinchuriki - resulting in most of the village hating and fearing him - sending his uncle, the one person he thought genuinely cared for him, to die on a suicide mission and ordering him to lie to Gaara about how his mother never loved him in order to test Shukaku, and leaving Gaara to grow up hating everyone and everything, believing that no-one ever loved him, and killing people to verify his own existence. Not to mention the impact it must have had on Temari and Kankuro.
  • No Name Given
  • Offing the Offspring: Tries that on young!Gaara more than once.
  • Strong Family Resemblance: Both of his sons strongly resemble him despite looking quite different themselves.
  • What Were You Thinking??: So you thought that ordering Yashamaru to kill and mentally torture Gaara to see if the already instable boy was able to have a grip on his beast was a good idea? What an Idiot!!


Matsuri

Voiced by Maaya Sakamoto (JP), Lara Jill Miller (EN original), Michelle Ruff (EN current)

A girl from the Sand village, who is training to become a kunoichi. She's among the first friends Gaara makes after his Heel Face Turn, and has a huge crush on him.

  • Adaptation Expansion: In the manga she first appears after Gaara's resurrection. She's just one of the two fangirls, with no more importance. The anime makes her to appear much earlier. It also gives her a backstory and some characterization (Nice Girl, Parental Abandonment, Does Not Like Weapons).
  • Fan Girl: For Gaara complete with Squee.
  • Mentor Ship: Has a BIG crush on Gaara, somewhat interesting since she is a year older then him.
  • Nice Girl
  • Parental Abandonment: Her parents got killed when she was a kid.
  • Rank Up: After the timeskip, she is seen donning a full kunoichi outfit, proving that she has graduated to genin status.
    • In episode 261, she's seen wearing a Suna flak jacket and standing with the rest of the Allied Shinobi Forces after listening to Gaara's speech, implying that she's been made a chuunin since the time Shippuden started.
  • Satellite Character: Her entire characterization centers around her relationship with Gaara.
  • Ship Tease: With Gaara.
  • Shrinking Violet
  • Whip It Good: Uses a jouhyou which is a flexible rope with a metal dart at the tip used in Chinese Martial Arts.
  • Zettai Ryouiki

Third Kazekage

Considered to be the strongest leader of the sand village, Assassinated by Sasori, his disappearance lead to war and the election of the 4th Kazekage.

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