The dark chakra, it's just like... Kyubi's? Itachi's (crow)?
There's plenty of reasons to see an evil chakra without it having to tie into Sasuke, you know.
Who gives a shit about the feudal lord meeting? A waste of two pages with a bunch of no-name characters that nobody cares about. Even their character designs make me angry. The Naruto speech and Karin's observations kinda brought me back to some of the good old days of Naruto, though... nothing to complain about that.