Rasa

Rasa's face, framed by auburn hair and dark eyes, most often wore a hard, stern look. His everyday dress was a plain black jacket and trousers layered over mesh armour, with a small canister clipped at his hip. Two creases deepened around his mouth as he aged, and drawing on his Gold Dust summoned dark rings about his eyes, echoing the ones permanently etched around Gaara's. In his role as leader he wore the office's loose green kimono and white collar, topped by the trademark hat marked with the kanji for wind.

Rasa set Sunagakure's survival above everything, so bound to the village that he weighed an alliance with the criminal Orochimaru to bring down Konoha and restore Suna's fading fortunes, a wager that ended in Orochimaru betraying and killing him. His thinking ran coldly utilitarian, appraising people and choices by their usefulness, a streak the anime sharpens by having him send Pakura to her death for political gain. That same hard arithmetic wounded him as a father. He cherished his wife and children, yet when the council branded Gaara a failure, he put the survival of Suna ahead of his own child, even mounting an elaborate and cruel lie to gauge the boy's resolve.

Only after his reincarnation for the great war, watching Gaara rise to Kazekage and build genuine bonds, does he come to regret the childhood he forced on him. Beaten by his son in battle, he concedes that Gaara has long outgrown him, admits that Karura truly loved the boy while he alone had told Yashamaru to claim otherwise, and through tears hands the future of Suna to Gaara before the seal takes him.

Rasa's might matched his rank; he could pin down even a fully unleashed Shukaku, and the bare threat of his intervention held a mass of Iwa shinobi back from igniting a clash along the border of the Land of Wind. Deep study let him master Magnet Release, the kekkei genkai first wielded by the Third Kazekage, a fusion of earth and wind chakra that placed Gold Dust at his command; he could call vast amounts of the particles seemingly from the air around him. On the attack he drove the dust forward in dense, swift surges that stretched from slim streams to towering waves, and on defence he packed it into thick walls tough enough to halt huge spheres of sand. Since gold weighs more than sand, that extra heft let him hold Shukaku itself in place. He could also shape a floating eye from the dust to observe a scene from safety, handled Water Release including a high-pressure blade able to cut through an absolute defence, and drew on Yin Release as well. His steady work developing fresh techniques for Suna points to a keen mind.