Naruto Shippuden Episode 31

[masamuneehs]

i think janus has it right on the head. ALL of Gaara's techniques have been about manipulating sand, which has been implied to be a special trait he recieved because he had the Ichibi Bijuu sealed inside of him. With the bijuu gone, I doubt he'll be able to manipulate sand any more (especially not the high-speed sand or the instant defense that were particularly powerful).

Face it, Gaara without the Bijuu powers probably couldn't beat a decent Genin. We'll see if he retains some sand manipulation abilities, but if not, he's certainly one of the weakest Naruto characters now...

[Buffalobiian]

It's pretty much agreed that the bijuu was required to learn Gaara's sand techniques. Now all we can do is wait and see if extraction of the bijuu will cause him to "unlearn" it.

[Crash]

Even if he still knows how to do it, it's use would be extremely limited for him. Without the bijuu his chakra capacity will be massively limited compared to what it was before. Unless he's taken the time to master a lot of good "normal" ninja techniques these last 3 years he's still not going to be that strong because trying to use his old sand tech's isn't going to be chakra efficient. Especially not against an Akatsuki. Hell no one so far has been strong enough to truly kill a member of that organization. Gaara got whooped by Deidara when he had a bijuu, then later Chiyo says Sasori let them kill him, and in the end Deidara held back all of Team Gai with no arms and exploded himself. I really just can't see Gaara being a large factor in the fight after this.

[DarthEnderX]

Face it, Gaara without the Bijuu powers probably couldn't beat a decent Genin. We'll see if he retains some sand manipulation abilities, but if not, he's certainly one of the weakest Naruto characters now...

Well, that one filler arc with Gaara in it showed that he's pretty decent with weapons. But then, that's filler so it doesn't really count.