

Because Chōji audibly pleaded his desire to leave and not fight, unlike his other two teammates, Zaku was willing to let Chōji go though angered him into a fight by insulting his weight. Observing the situation from afar, Team 10 arrives and intervenes. Zaku immediately retaliated by punching her repeatedly, causing her to bleed. After numerous times attempting to attack Zaku, Sakura manages to finally injure him.
#SAKURA NOVA WATER FREE#
With Lee out of the way, Kin captures Sakura, leading her to cut off her long hair to get free of Kin's grip and fight back. Surviving the attack, Dosu resumed his fight and defeated Lee. As Dosu got caught in Lee's Front Lotus, Zaku emitted air into the ground to soften his landing. After getting past the traps, Team Dosu was intercepted by Rock Lee. Seeing an open opportunity to kill Sasuke, Team Dosu attacks Sakura, activating her traps she had hidden in the process. After several days in the Forest of Death, Team Dosu finds Sakura alongside her injured teammates. After Zaku passed the written portion of the Chūnin Exams, he moved onto the second phase alongside his teammates.ĭuring the second phase of the exam, Dosu initiated the team's real mission of killing Sasuke. To prevent the situation from escalating, the exam proctors, led by Ibiki Morino, appeared and settle things down. After Zaku threw Kunai as a distraction, Dosu attacked Kabuto and damaged his hearing. Before the exam started, Zaku and his teammates overheard Kabuto Yakushi talking about their village and decided to attack him. Team Dosu travelled to Konohagakure to participate in the Chūnin Exams with the secret goal of killing Sasuke Uchiha. A proven downside of Zaku's ability was, that should the air tubes be clogged, it would result in a terrible backfire, as the air cannot escape out, instead they would burst out of the side of his arms, causing great backlash damage, to the point of having his arms being destroyed inside out. In his fight against Shino, Zaku claimed to be able to control the sound more precisely than simply firing it in one direction, but this was never shown. Zaku, like many ninja from Otogakure, had been physically altered with unnatural enhancements that improved his abilities in his case, he was fitted with hollow air tubes that extended through his arms and opened through his hands, allowing him to propel a combination of air pressure and sound in various ratios, controlled by his chakra. As with his teammates Dosu and Kin, he wore a snake-patterned scarf around his neck. His forehead protector had an attached happuri under the cloth rather than connected to the metal plate, resembling Yamato's. He wore a beige shirt with two black stripes and three prints of the kanji for death ( 死, shi) down the front. Zaku had spiky, black hair and dark eyes. He had pride in Otogakure, considering retaliating against Kabuto when he deemed their country and village less prestigious.

He was also described as loyal, and a show-off. He was seen to have some sense of care for his teammates, as when Dosu was plummeting to the ground from Lee's attack, Zaku used his air waves on the ground to soften the blow, though he showed no such concern for Kin, being fully willing to kill her when Ino Yamanaka took her hostage.

Zaku also had a tendency to say whatever he wanted without regarding the consequences, as he called Chōji Akimichi fat, and then had a difficult time blocking the enraged genin, and then told Sasuke that he is the one who injured Sakura Haruno, leading to the crippling of his arms. As such, he believed no one could beat him, and had a strong desire to win however, he managed to be unaware of the enemies' plan until it was too late, as seen with his last opponent Shino Aburame. Like his teammates, Zaku was overconfident about his powers, especially the ones coming from his arms, as noted by Sasuke Uchiha and the fact he went into elaborate detail about his abilities. From that day forward he refused to give up, even at the cost of his own life, not knowing that Orochimaru only took him in as a disposable pawn, a fact that his teammate started to suspect at the Chūnin Exams. Sometime later Zaku was seen singlehandedly fighting and defeating several Takigakure shinobi. When Orochimaru found him, he told Zaku that he saw potential in him and offered to help him develop it in exchange for his loyalty, which Zaku accepted. In the anime, growing up as an orphan that lived on the streets and stole for a living, he was beaten for it.
