Sasori

Background

His parents were killed by Sakumo Hatake, Kakashi's father and Konoha's White Fang, leaving him with his grandmother Chiyo, who taught him puppetry to lift his spirits; he refined the art over the years to suit himself. Wanting to make works that would last forever, he secretly found a way to turn human corpses into puppets that let him use whatever ninja abilities they had possessed. He left the Sand village as a teenager, later kidnapping the Third Kazekage and making him his main puppet weapon, and finally converted his own body into a puppet, which gave him effectively eternal life and let him control hundreds of puppets at once.

In the Akatsuki he was first paired with Orochimaru and, after Orochimaru deserted, with Deidara, who reveres his artistic knowledge. He spent much of his time hidden inside Hiruko, a human puppet that served as weapon and armour and wore the Akatsuki robe.

After he and Deidara kidnap Gaara, Sasori fights Sakura and Chiyo. Moved by the sight of puppets he made long ago of his dead parents, he lets Chiyo pierce the scroll that held his heart, the only human part he had kept, and dies, first telling Sakura about a meeting with one of Orochimaru's men who had been spying for him. Kabuto later resurrects him; Kankuro persuades him to make peace with himself and he passes on. Akiko Yajima and Takahiro Sakurai voice him in Japanese as a child and adult, Kari Wahlgren and Johnny Yong Bosch in English.