they do that because otherwise the numbering could confuse people, and because there are significant differences in some european naruto games compared to american ones.
ninja council 1 EU version is actually ninja council 3, and i think this is actually ninja council 4.
but we never got 1 and 2 for the GBA, so they call these 1 and 2.
btw, you're better off getting the latest japanese one, this one is quite bad.
techniques are random for supports, and for the main it's based on how fast you can draw circles on your touchscreen.
oh, and you can have only 1 fighting character, the rest is support and do nothing untill you tell them to do something, and then they do a random technique.