woot, finally a good chapter, even I can't really bitch about it...

first of all, Gaara's case.

while I also think the the kage should be someone with leadership qualities and not just a big bag of violence about to explode, there are also good reasons to put gaara in charge.
First of all, the sand village had to put up a mask of competnce (like the leaf did) in order to maintian it status and to keep all the job orders. If they had put someone lik baki in charge, it would be like saying ' remember the guy who was number seven last year? guess what, now he's number one' and therefore, it's a decleration that they've lost all the elite of the village. But say Gaara's coming to meet a fedual lord, the lord sees a kid and thinks 'oh, he's a small idiot that i can cheat and get low priced missions from' or 'damn, the village is usless' but when gaara displays his power (by killing some anbu-like masked guardians of the lord) then the lord goes 'whaa!' and gaara gets a better position.

besides, it's baki who's really handling the stuff, Gaara's a mascot that unites the sand and keeps them from rebelling against baki.

other than that, the chunin exam will probably take place in the next arc, and we'll see Sasuke there (even though he was supposed to be taken over by then), so there's that to look ahead for.

the ranks are pretty logical, considering that the sands were held back to genins in order to be part of the attack on the leaf, so they were most likely able to get past the jounin rank in the years which passed, and so is neji. the only real suprise is that Temari is only a chunin, i half expect here to be a jounin as well, since she's the eldest among the sang sibilings...

now, in page 16, the one who killed everybody was yuura, right? it seems so since he's covered in so much blood...

and Sasori is a girl, right? and i guess her husband has been killed by the sand, my perssonal guess is that sasori is Yashamaru's wife, but it's only my own twisted plot making...