Orochimaru stolen faces question

[lasaire]

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.

[Hokage17b]

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?

[lasaire]

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.