We should be putting a lot more respect on Sakura's name.
Hello everyone. Today, I want to talk about something in the anime world.
Ride with me for as we'll talk about Naruto. The anime, not the character. Even though his name comes up a lot. Today, we're going to be talking about Sakura Haruno. In the west, a lot of people don't like her, and I set out to figure why.
Or at least, I wanted to know why I take it personally when I see the memes calling her useless. You know what I'm talking about.
Most people don't like Sakura because she's basically useless at the start. Which actually is a fair criticism. Initially, Naruto, the anime, was more character driven in the beginning; we started seeing all of our main characters from ground zero. It was not about being a ninja, it was about what being a ninja meant to it's large and colorful cast of characters.
Initially, we wanted and expected Naruto to become powerful, respected, and Hokage. We wanted to see Sasuke Uchiha break out of his shell, work with his teammates, and either get his revenge on Itachi, or solve his depression about his clan's deaths. In a perfect world we'd get both, but we weren't picky.
Even further among the ninja in their generation, we wanted Rock Lee, a huge fan favorite, to become a great ninja without using Ninjutsu or Genjutsu. We fully expected Hinata to become a worthy heiress to her clan. We wanted Shikamaru to become motivated, Choji to take more pride in himself, and Neji to… well… stop being an ass.
Sakura however, was the only one we didn't truly have expectations for. The quickest we learned about her was that she was smart, and could control her chakra well, even though there wasn't much of anything she could do with it. We see her literally start from square one.
Which is EXACTLY what we were supposed to do.
And that is where we begin to see her the only way we can. Useless. At her age of 12, she didn't have any long-term goals she wanted to strive for. She didn't have the drive and talent of Sasuke. She didn't have the determination to just throw yourself into every fight like Naruto. Add to the fact that as untrained as the entire team was, they all were allowed to hide behind one of the strongest ninja in the world, Kakashi Hatake. So while her teammates Naruto and Sasuke hid behind him only to draft past him in the future, Sakura made the choice to hide behind them all.
And that, she did.
As the series progresses, we see more of Kakashi being a badass. We see more of Sasuke's bloodline techniques and his potential, and Naruto becoming stronger and gaining respect along the way. Sprinkle in some badass fighting with Gaara, seeing the Ino-Shika-Cho formation at it's finest, and Hinata gaining confidence, and we see what Rock Lee had to go through to become the strong ninja he's introduced to us as, we just don't see Sakura making that same progress.
As detrimental to her character development as it was, it was supposed to happen. We were supposed to see her start from the bottom, see how she had nearly nothing to work with, knowing nothing but the basics straight out of the ninja handbook. We could then see how she could find, set and achieve multiple different goals without the tunnel vision that the rest of her compatriots had.
But we didn't notice. And we were unimpressed.
She had the misfortune of being largely overshadowed the entire series. Naruto Uzumaki has an unlimited bastion of chakra he learns to tap into at will. His fearlessness in each situation, while suicidal, can be inspiring. Sasuke Uchiha is the last remaining member of the one of the two strongest ninja clans of all time, and is naturally gifted in every aspect. Her mentor Kakashi Hatake is a prodigy and has always been able to perfectly copy any jutsu after seeing it once.
For those keeping score at home by the end of the series. The other three members of Team 7 produced two Elite-Tier ninja, then died, and revived as two God Level ninja. The team produced two Hokage. Consecutively. All three of them being Kage level in power and leadership ability, power and vision.
By the time he was 16, Sasuke fought all 5 Kage at the time, and successfully killed one.
Kakashi had defeated the most dangerous and efficient assassin, one of the wielders of the legendary hidden mist blades and was one of five commanders of a battalion of ninja in the Fourth Great Ninja War.
Naruto befriended and learned to tap into the chakras of each of the nine tailed beasts, at will, only after fighting seven of them at once, THEN fighting the almighty TEN TAILS. Fought and defeated the Ten Tail's FIRST host. Fought the second, that was a man that was only able to be brought down by a man considered to be the Father of all Shinobi. Fought the woman that was the first being to EVER even HAVE chakra as a weapon, then fought another God Tier shinobi and won, ALL IN ONE DAY. WHICH WAS HIS SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY.
Of the 575 characters that appear just in the Manga, there are no more than 5 characters that can stack up to that roster.
But even expanding further, she is overshadowed by the females in her generation. Even more painfully so. Hinata Hyuga, Ino Yamanaka and TenTen.
At the introduction of Hinata, she does not appear to be a confident person, let alone a ninja capable of taking someone's life if the situation calls for it. However, we give her a pass. We learn quickly of her being passed over for her not having the killer instinct that her younger sister Hanabi had. However motivation to keep moving was always prevalent, and we saw what she could potentially be, in the form of her cousin Neji Hyuga. Neji, was the #1 rookie of his graduating class, and almost mastered his clan's bloodline techniques at the age of 13. With he and Hinata's fathers being identical twins, he and Hinata are genetically close siblings. So as we saw Hinata get knocked down, we looked at Neji and said "she could become that."
Ino Yamanaka is the descendant of the clan who's main jutsu is to transfer minds with someone else, to manipulate them to do their bidding. While it is high risk/high reward on it's own, we see how well it fares alongside Choji Akimichi, and Shikamaru Nara. These three clans pride themselves on them working with each other in each generation, so right away we see how Ino both fits into, and contributes to her teammates success. She can't truly succeed without them, they can't do the same without her.
TenTen is a tactician for her group. She is the perfect long range fighter to complement her teammates, Lee and Neji, as both rely almost exclusively on close quarters combat, providing them with much needed balance in combat.
From their introduction, each of the girls has a defining characteristic. They all have a specific contribution to their team. They all have personality quirks. And they all have reasons to root for them immediately after their introduction. Sakura simply doesn't have any of those. She was just kind of… there.
But let's take combat out of it.
Ino was sexier with all the exposed skin in her character design. Few other females in the early years had this. Hinata was prettier and wanted Naruto, and attractive and innocent in both dialogue and action. TenTen was cooler to talk to and be around. That's just the way it was.
We didn't feel anything with Sakura, and we weren't really expected to.
We were weren't pushed to feel a way about her. She was just along for the ride as Naruto and Sasuke pushed each other to be stronger. She starts off with a dysfunctional team. The ever aloof Kakashi, the eternal screw up Naruto, and "I'm going to do this by myself stay out of the goddamn way" role in Sasuke. There was no place for her to really fit in.
But, like all Naruto characters, they have a defining moment. An episode, a chapter, a fight, a scene, where they take the hardest step towards becoming who they truly want to be. Where the spotlight is on them. Sakura had two such moments, but unfortunately, we were unimpressed with each of them.
The first came in the Chunin exams. With Naruto and Sasuke incapacitated from an earlier fight, Sakura fought three ninja from the Hidden Sound Village. No longer able to hide behind her teammates, the fight led to Sakura being knocked prone, on her knees, held by the hair, looking for sure like a loss. And in this moment, she cuts her hair.
The long hair she grew because she thought Sasuke liked girls with long hair, the hair she takes so much pride in, she cuts it to free herself, and continue the fight. This endeavor proves successful, as she buys enough time for Rock Lee to come to her aid, Sasuke to wake up, and Team Asuma to come to her aid in victory.
This scene has been mocked all over the internet forums. And even I, being just a preteen at the time of me watching this, thought she was going to do something a lot cooler than just cut her hair. But looking back, this was her moment. There was no long speech. There was no cool music in the background, there was no secret technique she was saving. There was no cool light show, or a display of power.
It meant she was going to stop waiting on Naruto and Sasuke to come to her rescue so she could hide behind them. It was raw emotion, but a different kind of feeling than was previously in the Naruto series. It was her cutting off things literally holding her back from moving forward, instead of just walking behind the strong Sasuke and the quickly progressing Naruto. Her cutting her hair was the moment she was going to take herself seriously. Her hair was a metaphor for her holding herself back, and she literally cuts the binds off. She doesn't just get stronger overnight, but from this point, we can see the effort. We can see the determination, and we can see that instead of her being simply ok being behind her teammates, she is determined to catch up and surpass them. Here, she not only just takes respect when it is given, but tries to outright demand it.
That, to me, was beautiful.
Which leads to her second defining moment. Her battle with the Akutsuki member, Sasori. This is indeed overshadowed because of all of the other fantastic Akatsuki fight scenes. Nobody's fault really, but only because the fights in this arc are so iconic to the anime as a whole. Sasuke vs. Itachi. Shikamaru vs Hidan. Sasuke vs Deidara, Obito vs folded paper lady we forgot about, Kisame vs Might Guy and most importantly Naruto vs Pain.
Sakura versus Sasori is forgotten about so easily because… well… nobody in the Naruto fandom is really impressed by puppet masters. Sasori is lethal, analytical, and one of the smartest people in the series. It's just that when you put him next to fellow Akatsuki members, he doesn't seem as…interesting.
Theres Hidan, who is immortal. Not in a gag way either, I mean he cannot die. There's Pain, with 6 paths and the Rinnegan, most powerful of eye techniques. There's Itachi Uchiha, the man who slaughtered his entire clan, who's Genjutsu is unmatched, and also speculated to be one of the most powerful ninja of all time. Kakuzu, a man with five beating hearts who's techniques and battle experience is unparalleled among the living. Then there's Kisame Hoshigaki who looks like a shark, is referred to as the "Tail-less Tailed Beast," and has a blade that literally, LITERALLY eats chakra.
Next to that lineup, Sasori doesn't quite have the staying power.
So to a lot of people, Sakura's chance to prove she's useful, prove how much she learned and prove how much she grew, came far too late. She was labeled as useless early, and nobody wanted to shake the tag.
Never mind that she fought through particularly lethal poison injection, fought 100 puppets at once who's' attacks on her were coordinated flawlessly, and with just her fists and her brains managed to win that fight. For a lot of viewers, it was unfortunately too little too late.
There is not a doubt in my mind however, that if she fought anyone else in the Akatsuki and won, she would have gotten substantially more credit. Imagine her pushing Kisame into his sacrificial death instead of Guy. Or if she were to fight Deidara and kill him, instead of Sasuke.
At the start of Shippuden, she is roughly on the same level of Naruto and Sasuke. They each were trained by the Legendary Sanin for three years. Grew towards their goals. And in the Team 7 Reunites scene in The Great Ninja War, in that instance, they all are on the same level. At the height of their powers. (at least at the time. Naruto and Sasuke become gods shortly after.)
But here is where it starts not to make sense to me why she is unliked. Ask any Naruto fan who is their favorite side character, they'll consistently say Hinata, or Rock Lee. We first see Rock Lee see skirmishing with Sasuke and Naruto, and puts on an iconic fight with Gaara in the Chunin Exams. We only then respect him more, because we later find out he was a talentless good for nothing, and fought to become the powerful shinobi he was introduced to us as. We watch as Hinata was passed over in favor of her younger sister, and forges her own path ahead, despite being in Neji's shadow, on a team that had no real identity.
We witness it firsthand, and in more detail with Sakura. We see her start from nothing. We get to follow the growth alongside Naruto, yet most fans were still not interested.
As much as I love the work of Masashi Kishimoto, here is where I have to criticize him. Tragically left behind in the dust of Naruto and Sasuke, her role becomes reduced as the Akatsuki saga draws to a close with Naruto's victory over Pain. Her two teammates accomplish their goals they set out to accomplish since the first time they all met.
Sasuke accomplishes his goal of revenge by killing Itachi and became the avenger he always wanted to be.
Naruto defeats Pain, and earns the respect and admiration of the entire Hidden Leaf Village and became the hero we all thought he would.
Sakura never had such a goal. Her initial pull was to do one thing, woo Sasuke. By the time her next goal comes to light, to become a worthy teammate, interest in her had waned in favor of more interesting and relatable side characters, Hinata and Lee.
The potential for her to start from base zero, and grow with Naruto more in the beginning would have been amazing. The scenes where those two later talk about getting Sasuke back would carry more weight. Their bond could have been stronger by training together, before they all went their separate ways in the shippuden time skip. Unfortunately, their bond got pushed to the side as Sakura invests her time in making a bond with Sasuke, only for it to not matter when he left.
Yet as Naruto accomplishes his goal, the story of Naruto changes. It no longer becomes a character driven Shonen anime that pushed it to be a worldwide sensasion. It focuses now on the lore, and the Great Ninja War becomes a narrative about Madara's Infinite Tsukuyomi, Kaguya and the origin of chakra, and Hashirama discussing what it means to be a Shinobi, and what a village is.
For some viewers, it was cumbersome. Uninteresting. And at times, difficult to follow. It was no longer about trying hard and never giving up. It was about having an Eye Technique, or a Tailed Beast, or being simply born better than everyone else.
And right there, it halted Sakura's progress, pushing her and the remainder of the cast into irrelevancy.
Sakura is the most realistic character though, and the more I think about it, the more she represents what I personally love about anime. She isn't from some age old clan with a very specific and deadly technique. She doesn't have a Demon sealed inside of her. She doesn't go through the same life altering tragedies that her teachers Kakashi and Tsunade have. She isn't the prettiest girl in the series. She doesn't have the biggest breasts, and she is frequently shown to be self-conscious about it. She is nowhere near the most powerful character, and she admittedly doesn't have it all figured out. There are times, even as she works as hard as she can, where she feels there's nothing she can do.
And that's ok.
That is what it means to be human.
She is undeniably powerful with her chakra control and medical ninjutsu. Sakura's progression just goes on to prove that you don't have to be an extraordinary talent, or be blessed or given with something to be powerful. She learns her medical techniques through study. She trained to become as super strong as she is. She worked hard to get that "killer instinct" in a fight that everone else has. She had to earn her place alongside her teammates, without having those advantages. And it is downright frustrating she is upstaged so often by characters who are perceived better because… that's just how they're born.
Your ancestor doesn't have to be the god of all shinobi for you to be strong. Your father doesn't have to be Hokage for you to be powerful. And you don't have to have a special pair of eyes to prove that you matter.
She is an ordinary human. But she is living proof and testament that ordinary people can to extraordinary things. That is what I love in movies. Books. Life, and that is what I love about this anime, and that is why we need to give a bit more respect, to Sakura Haruno.