What Happens in the Kazekage Rescue Arc?

Part II begins with Naruto's return to a Leaf that has moved on, and the news that Gaara, now Kazekage of the Sand, has been taken. Deidara, the Akatsuki's explosive artist, defeated him in single combat over his own village, choosing the moment Gaara had to shield the Sand to land the blow. The Akatsuki's goal is stated plainly for the first time: gather all nine tailed beasts.

Team Kakashi, re-formed with Kakashi, Naruto and a Sakura rebuilt by Tsunade's training into a front-line medic and powerhouse, pursues with the Sand's elder Chiyo as guide. The pursuit is shadowed by Akatsuki delaying actions, including a remote-controlled Itachi duplicate that gives Naruto his first real measure of how far he still has to go.

The arc's centerpiece is Sakura and Chiyo against Sasori of the Red Sand, Chiyo's own grandson, a puppet master who turned himself and the Third Kazekage into human puppets. The fight is a genuine two-on-one chess match of antidotes, puppet armies and the mother and father puppets Sasori made from his parents, and it ends with Sasori letting Chiyo's blades through, leaving behind a spy's rendezvous tip that drives the next arc.

Gaara is already dead when they reach him, the extraction complete. Chiyo, persuaded by Naruto's example, spends her own life in a forbidden resurrection technique to bring him back, the arc's thesis in action: the older generation of the ninja world choosing to pay for the younger. Gaara wakes to a village that loves him, the inverse of his childhood.

Volumes 28 to 32 carry this opening of Part II, and the volume 28 cover relaunch look, with the older Team 7 designs, marks the most visible design break in the tankobon run. Collectors note this arc as the start of the Akatsuki cloak era in earnest, with Sasori and Deidara goods beginning the wave of Akatsuki merchandise.