#being in love does not make a character any less complex jgkdhlffdsjk

[shiikadai]

It honestly really frustrates me when people try to act like Sakura isn’t a well written character. Are there issues with her writing, because of the fact that Naruto and Sasuke are ultimately more centered than her? Sure. But people seem to have this idea that because she ended up with Sasuke, it renders all of her character development meaningless, and that confuses the hell out of me. What’s meaningless or simple about a totally normal girl being thrust into a team of boys with indescribable power, years of trauma to parse through, and poor communication skills? How does a character who has never encountered any of these things before deal with that? To see Sakura grow across the course of the manga was one of my favorite things about it. It’s true that she starts off a little self-centered, but it’s only for a short while as we start to see her really come to care for Naruto and Sasuke as her precious teammates. She understands where she’s lacking and works hard to improve in what areas she can so that she can pull her own weight. And she does! To see all that she’s capable of at the beginning of Part II is a testament to that. She molds herself into a reliable shinobi, not just in terms of healing but in terms of strategizing and fighting as well. And sure, she’s not on Naruto or Sasuke’s level, but how could she be? They’re vested with indescribable powers that she could never hope to have, because she’s not a Jinchuuriki, nor is she from a noble clan with a special kekkei genkai. Everything about her abilities is something that she had to work hard to create and learn of her own volition (and this is not to say that other characters didn’t do the same, but she was a step behind because she entered the academy as a completely normal person in comparison to all of her classmates, save Tenten and Rock Lee). A lot of people will also complain about Sakura being a crybaby, but the thing is, when has that ever stopped her? One of the best descriptors I have seen of Sakura is that she’s someone who cries but still eats her food. Even if there are moments where she’s heartbroken because of Naruto or Sasuke, she still pushes on and moves forward. Being rejected by Sasuke because of his extensive issues with trauma doesn’t deter her from improving on herself as a person and a ninja. She doesn’t just stop. It hurts like a bitch, but she takes it, and she resolves herself to focus on the things that she can change. It’s not like she’s abandoning all reason because of Sasuke either. She lectures Naruto about obsessing over Sasuke when she sees it’s clearly affecting his mental health, and she resolves to kill Sasuke herself. And yes, in the end, she’s unable to do it, but can you blame her? One of the things I have always really liked about Sakura is that she is someone grounded in reason, and very few people seem to understand this because they associate crybabies with lack of reason. But Sakura is actually a really logical person. From Part One, we see how adamant she is about Naruto and Sasuke not fighting each other, about Sasuke taking it easy when he gets the curse mark from Orochimaru, and about Sasuke needing to get help so he can deal with his trauma properly. Sakura is someone who cares immensely for her team members and who ends up heartbroken by their constant attempts to emotionally self-destruct. Remember, she entered this team as a total normie. She didn’t know what the fuck she was getting herself into, and in the long run it causes her so much stress and heartbreak because she wants to help Naruto and Sasuke as much as she can, but at some point both of them are people who refuse to be helped or budged on their worldview. We can even see that in the way they exclude her from their final fight. True, the conflict is their own and one that on some level she can never understand, but I think there’s also a conversation to be had in the fact that their inability to listen to her reason plays a huge part in why their conflict is so prolonged. The fact that no one tells Sakura anything about the deeper intricacies of the conflict or politics that Naruto and Sasuke are privy to should tell you something about why people think she’s made to look “useless”. That’s a fault of the plot writing, not the character writing. And in general, things that people criticize Sakura’s character for are more often than not failings of the plot than they are actual faults in who she is as a person. She’s arguably the most complex female character in the series, and getting together with a boy at the end doesn’t negate several hundred chapters of the work that she did on her own, nor does getting together with that boy imply that she’s suddenly weak or a beggar.