Gengo

Before his rise, Gengo trains as a shinobi in Kirigakure and joins Zabuza Momochi in rising up against Yagura Karatachi, the Fourth Mizukage, whose reign the rebels judge brutal. Betrayed from within, the group scatters, and Gengo abandons the Mist with the rest. The exiles take mercenary contracts while pining for home, but when Zabuza starts serving corrupt clients, a disgusted Gengo splits off. Reaching the Land of Silence, he and his followers seize the country, whereupon Gengo has every one of them killed and their corpses tucked away inside Fushu Castle. He then builds a genjutsu keyed to his own voice, a means of steering people toward his ends. As the drawn-out Fourth Shinobi World War leaves many young ninja rootless, he draws them under his spell and names them the Enlightened Ones, piling up wealth by undercutting the Shinobi Union on jobs; his agents creep into all five great nations, poised to ignite unrest at his word.

His swelling operation catches Konoha's eye once shinobi begin deserting, and the brainwashing of the rising Anbu Sai spurs the Leaf to call for his death or capture. Gengo snares Shikamaru Nara together with Ro and Soku when they come to kill him, delighted at the chance to mold the young genius into his second. Temari and a joint Suna and Leaf force storm his hall before the conditioning sets, her giant fan whipping up a vacuum that smothers his chakra-laced voice. Cornered, Gengo bolts and tries to cut Shikamaru down with a blade, but the plan closes around him and he is seized. Hinoko drives a chakra needle into him to strip his speech for good, and he is hauled off to the Shinobi Union base within the Land of Iron. A decade on, the anime shows the Land of Silence decayed into a lawless refuge for criminals.

Gengo styles himself a visionary, one more would-be revolutionary in the mold of Obito and Madara, though his creed sets him apart. To his mind, those able to shape chakra into jutsu are society's rightful rulers, and he dreams of uniting the continent under shinobi rule, stripping the daimyo of power and ending what he frames as the persecution of ninja. From Zabuza he takes a cold maxim: use others or be used, which is why he executes his old allies once their usefulness runs dry. His conviction and hypnotic speech lend him real magnetism, letting him rally crowds with words alone, though Shikamaru reads that same self-assurance as sheer arrogance. Torture comes readily when persuasion fails, as Ro and Hinoko discover, yet he keeps a courteous face toward captives he hopes to raise up, handling Shikamaru with unusual civility. The moment he meets a will he cannot bend, that poise curdles into rage, and he turns murderous toward Shikamaru once the genjutsu loosens its grip.

Gengo ranks among the deadliest genjutsu users, spinning mind-controlling illusions that resist detection and cannot be broken or shaken off even after a victim figures them out. His signature work, Demonic Illusion: Cajolery of Glamour, runs on the sound of his voice alone, dropping targets into a worshipful, obedient trance. He pairs it with a flower native to the Land of Silence whose pollen stirs up particular memories, sharpening the conditioning still further. Robbed of his voice, he loses the technique for good. His years in Kirigakure under Zabuza, one of the Mist's Seven Ninja Swordsmen, also schooled him in swordplay, and the anime depicts him summoning a huge broadsword akin to Kubikiribocho, cutting down several of Shikamaru's clones until the Leaf ninja overwhelm him.