What Happens in the Five Kage Summit Arc?

The Eight-Tails incident forces politics to the front. The Raikage demands a summit over Sasuke, now an Akatsuki-affiliated criminal who attacked his brother Killer Bee, and Sakura, learning the burden Naruto carries for her promise, resolves to kill Sasuke herself. Danzo, installed as acting Hokage while Tsunade lies in a coma after the Pain assault, arrives at the summit with a stolen Sharingan eye and a arm full of them, hidden under bandages.

The summit itself is a showcase of the five Kage, the Tsuchikage, Mizukage, Kazekage Gaara and Raikage in full, and of Sasuke's descent: his team Taka crashes the meeting hunting Danzo, and Sasuke fights Kage and bodyguards in sequence, burning through his Mangekyo Sharingan's sight with every technique. Gaara's attempt to reach him, one former jinchuriki to a boy walking his old road, fails on panel and lands anyway with readers.

Danzo's duel with Sasuke on the bridge is the arc's dark heart: a man who preached sacrifice spending stolen lives through Izanagi, rewriting his own death ten times, against Sasuke's hatred sharpened by Tobi's account of the Uchiha massacre. Danzo dies sealing himself, and Tobi collects his eye, while Sakura's assassination attempt collapses and Naruto arrives in time to clash with Sasuke one more time, Rasengan to Chidori, and read his heart in the exchange.

The declaration is the arc's true payload. Tobi, calling himself Madara Uchiha, appears before the summit, explains the Eye of the Moon plan to cast an eternal genjutsu from the moon, and when refused, formally declares war. The five villages and the samurai answer by forming the Allied Shinobi Forces, the first alliance in their history, with Gaara commanding its army and the Raikage at its head.

Volumes 49 to 51 carry the summit, the hinge between the Akatsuki era and the war era of the tankobon run. The five Kage designs debut here in full, which dates a large family of figures and game rosters precisely to this stretch of the print run.