</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Elessar @ Dec 10 2003, 01:59 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Sure, 5 genin taking out 4 sounds that almost killed two jounins. Sure.

Sasuke&#39;s betrayal resulting in Choji&#39;s death and Skiamaru having to take responsibility for his death also has a narrative purpose in developing the characters. The world isn&#39;t nice with many many cute little thingies running around.

If Choji survives the story progress is somewhat around 0. There is no need for a second death of Neji or Kiba, but I regard choji&#39;s as mandatory. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
You give great supporting evidence as to why some of the characters might die, and I whole heartedly agree with you. The genins are seriously outmatched and it looks like not all of them are going to come back, but I still don&#39;t think that&#39;s going to happen. Reason: I don&#39;t think Kishimoto has the balls to kill off one of his young &quot;hero&quot; characters. Yes, Haku was young, but he was a villian. The 3rd Hokage was a hero, but he was old. Keep in mind Kishimoto is writing for a Japanese audience and one thing I notice is that they hate to see their heroes die (unlike us here in the US who love to see our heroes go out in a blaze of glory).