Character · Naruto
Gaara
The Sand Village raised a weapon with a demon inside it, then acted surprised when the weapon grew up angry.
In Otakana the clue reads: Sand-wielding jinchuriki who became a young Kazekage
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Naruto
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
Gaara controls sand, which is less a technique than a permanent condition. It rises to block anything aimed at him without his input, so he has never in his life been struck by something he did not decide to let through. His father made him a jinchuriki before he was born, sealing a one-tailed beast into him, and then sent assassins to test the result.
The kanji on his forehead is the character for love, carved there by Gaara himself. It reads as a wound, which is the intention. He arrives in the Chunin Exams as the arc's monster, and the fight with Naruto turns on nothing more complicated than one of them recognising the other's childhood. The Sand Village later elects him Kazekage, the youngest it has had.
That arc is the whole series in miniature, and Kishimoto reuses its shape again and again afterwards. Two people handed the same curse, one of whom found somebody who stayed. Gaara's later appearances are mostly as a leader, calm and dry, and they land harder because of what the earlier version was.
Spelling GAARA
GAARA has a doubled A in the second and third positions, which is unusual in a five-letter row and enormously useful once you spot it. The name is written 我愛羅, self and love and a phonetic character, the same love that sits carved on his forehead. Two A's in a row, then one more at the end: three A's out of five tiles.