Orochimaru stolen faces question

Hi all, I'm new to the forum as u can see.

I have watched thru ep 78 and still can't figure out something that happened back in ep 28 (or thereabout).

When Sasuke first meets Orochimaru, Anko finds the three Chuunin exam takers with missing faces and indicates this has something to do with Orochimaru. I never got the connection. Does this have something to do with the stolen body or with the sacrifice needed to summon the first & second? If it is still an upcomming spoiler u can just say that.

The stolen faces is just a technique that Orochimaru can use to cover his own identity.

In the case of episode 28, he took the faces of the three Grass ninja's in order to provide himself with a cover to enter the second phase of the exam. From then on he uses different forms of his own face, both the one he had when he left the Leaf, and his new, younger body.

It doesn't have any relationship to the bodies used to summon the coffins of the past Hokages. The actual identities of the bodies used for the summons is a slight spoiler, so I won't say.

I had surmised this before, given there were three exam takers. The technique did require the life of another to make the 1st and 2nd flesh, and the third exam taker was intended to be the 4th had the 3rd not stopped the coffin from rising. I'm sure the sacrifices made the red tags on the knives to perform the technique.

The connection was made because the examiner who found them knew it was Orochimaru because she had been a former student of him. She bears the same seal Sasuke does on her neck, and she knew only her former sensei could do such things.

The examiner is the woman with the purple hair in the trenchcoat that saw to the second exam. I think her name is Anko.

Ahh I see. Thanks Iasaire for the fast reply. I was a bit confused between the younger body that Orochimaru stole (whoever that is) and the face(s) that he used in the exam.

Also, ever notice how his face gets stripped away to his original form when he gets damaged in battle, even though that old form is really a disguise just for effect (at least I think it is)? You'd think it would be harder to maintain that illusion if he were hurting.

Actually, never mind, the bodies used for the summons are not a spoiler, since the Third defeated the summons a few episodes ago, before beginning to try and seal Orochimaru himself.

The corpses used for the summons are Zaku and Kin, the two Sound ninja who were eliminated from the third round preliminary by Shino and Shikamaru respectivly. We assume that Orochimaru killed them to both punish them for their failure and use them in the summoning.

The third summoning corpse, which would have been the Fourth Hokage, is assumed to have been Dosu, the third member of the Sound Team, who passed the preliminary by beating Chouji but then was killed by Gaara.

In all that incident, what blows my mind is the fact that Anko didn't sense Orochi right away.
When she throws the kunai at Naruto, and Oro retrieves it and give it back to her, they were pretty close. I mean, the guy must be *really* good at disguising himself.
She just figures that he's around when she recognizes his stealing face-no-jutsu.

Hmm, I thought the technique required live sacrifices, not just corpses. That might work for Zaku and Kin (though I have no idea how u know this unless it's in the manga), but not for Dosu since he was already dead, and I'm assuming his body was also destroyed, so he couldnt be the life or corpse body to summon the Fourth.

If this isn't too far off my own topic, I'd also like to know how the summoned Hokages had their original powers or if they were just puppets. I guess I can just take it as given but I'm guessing this had been talked about somewhere.

EDIT: I thought the same thing Neji-Aniki-sama. How much closer do u have to get to the dark powerful chakra... and that snake tongue, how many Genin have that?

Go back and rewatch the early episodes of the Hokage battle.

The faces of Zaku and Kin can be seen when the Third finally seals away the souls of the First and Second and the bodies collapse into dust.

The red tags of the back of the kunai embedded into the heads of the First and Second (this is explained by the Anbu watching the battle) make them into puppets, fighting machines controlled by the will of the person who put in the tags.

[Spoilers up to ep 72]

k this thread seems to have gotten off topic, and no one has answered the qeustion yet. This isn't about Edo Tensei, it's about Orochi's Face-Stealing jutsu. In 28, the three bodies that were discovered had their faces ripped off. Anko immediately recognizes it as Orochi's trademark technique. This kinda implies that in order for him to cop a face, he has to actually rip off the face of the target (which usually means death). However, Orochi has copied another face, namely himself. I suppose it's possible that he ripped his own face off his first incarnation after he changed bodies. Also since he was able to restore his 1st-incarnation mask after he ripped it off, this leads me to believe that after he's stolen a face it can be used over and over. However, there's one thing that doesn't quite add up. He copied another face over the course of the series as well: Kazekage. So... in order for this to stay consistant, he would have had to KILL Kazekage!

Wait a sec....

Did I just figure out a spoiler?
>_>
<_<

I dont think that it was really a spoiler because it is implies in the storyline that he was already killed i think [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-confused.gif[/img]

Edit : I guess my 2nd message after this just cancels this one out lol. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-tongue.gif[/img]Text

the fact that orochimaru had to kill the grass nin (i don't really care who's face it was) to use his face should be the obvious indicator that the kazekage is dead.

EDIT: Nevermind. i cannot explain this further or i'll be giving away spoilers. just trust me on this. read #1 in my sig.

But orochimaru could also maybe copy the peoples faces but kill them wioth it if he wanted to and that would make it so that Kazakage was still alive because maybe orochimaru needed him for other stuff or something. Thats an idea i think[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

Well the only problem I have with that is the various Sand nins around seem to be fine about it. If using that jutsu really does mean death for the target, do you really think Baki and the others would be okay with it? But I digress, we can drop this if it's too spoiler-ish

well, logic would tell you that if someone killed your kage, you would not be happy. so they must not know about it. i mean...could you see the leaf ninjas happy with orochimaru after he killed the hokage?

Thats why i came up with my idea of not having to kill the target unless you want to. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-tongue.gif[/img]

well....the main part of the kazekage facial disguise is a big freakin sheet thingy over most of your face...so i dont think it wouldve been anything tricky for oro even if the kazekage is still alive

yeah it could be just a mask that orochimaru made and he just disguised his voice to be kazakages voice.

Dunno, the voice seems to be part of the face-copy jutsu, as shown by the mega uber voice difference between Oro #1, Oro #2, Kazekage, and the Grass nin.

Yeah thats what i am talkin about. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

well think of it this way.......orochimaru is like a snake and like a snake he can shed his skin. this would explain how he can rip his face off all the time and have his original face on under. and the face ripping thing would probably be a jutsu that lets him assume the identities of other people.