#finally finished reading uzumaki after i stopped in 7th grade

[g0nta-g0kuhara]

Does anyone have any good horror manga recommendations?

[unwiltingblossom]

koukishido replied to your post “I came across a random stupid comment about how Sakura was so weak,...”

I’m sorry, but Sakura may be not weak, that doesn’t mean she’s well written. Yes, she’s freaking strong, but all his story arc is about how she desperately love a killer in hope he change, even if she know he’s bad. She has strong abilities, but each time, it’s like « yeah, she can do that, but hey, I have other character to develop and make flash back about ! ». BUT, if you have another opinion about it, I will gladly read it. It’s good to see the character being loved for once.

Is she badly written, though? She doesn’t get much focus, this is objectively true and because of the fact that Sakura-haters would send Kishimoto a truckload of hatemail every time he tried to give her focus, but is what’s written bad? I don’t think so.

First off, her story arc isn’t actually about her love for Sasuke. Arguably a big part of Naruto’s story arc are his feelings of brotherly love and rivalry and etc with Sasuke, but this is not so for Sakura. Her love for Sasuke is a constant through her arc, but it’s not what it’s about.

Sakura’s arc is actually all about her insecurities and struggle to keep up on a team full of:

1 - The Copy Ninja, a legendary figure in the legend who fought in the previous war while still a child, possesses a Sharingan, and has 1000 jutsus stolen from his enemies, He trained under the 4th Hokage and became the 6th Hokage.

2 - The last Uchiha, a genius close to the level of Itachi Uchiha, with natural sharingan able to copy any technique he sees, huge wells of chakra, a natural talent for genjutsu that surpasses anyone not born with an ocular jutsu, and heir to his clan even if it hadn’t been massacred.

3 - Naruto Uzumaki, son of the 4th Hokage, jinchuuriki of the Nine Tails, the kid with a freakishly huge chakra pool capable of using a forbidden jutsu in an almost infinite way no one else can use, with augmented regeneration and the ability to become progressively stronger at the cost of his self control via nine tails mode. Eventually became the 7th Hokage, the Hero of the Leaf, and basically the #1 hero of the modern age

4 - Yamato, the genetically modified ROOT soldier who is the only person still (known to be) living possessing Hashirama’s genes, allowing him to use legendary wood jutsu.

5 - Sai, a ROOT assassin with an entire bingo book full of high profile VIP enemies he’s assassinated by the time Sakura became a genin, who uses some kind of unique ink jutsu style no one else is seen to use.

Sai is the most normal person ever on her team, and he’s a super ninja assassin that’s murdered hundreds of people and uses a unique form of ninjutsu no one else ever uses.

Comparatively, Sakura comes from nobody important, and her grades in the academy aren’t anything notable, she has no family techniques built up, no blood jutsus associated with her, and nothing grafted into her. She spent her childhood playing around and being girly, not training to kill people, and she’s not a genius capable of learning things in a snap.

Basically...Sakura Haruno is just normal on a team of super heroes, and she knows it. Her character arc is about her confronting this inferiority, addressing the handicap she faces and the pervasive, all-consuming sense of frustrated hopelessness she experiences facing all these things that endanger the people she cares about (who are all endowed with insane skills and magical tricks she lacks).

Sakura Haruno’s story is about a girl who goes from nothing to a legendary sannin figure all on her own power. She learns confidence, she finds peace with her inner and outer self so she doesn’t have to hide her true feelings behind a mask all the time, she finds something that she excels at and she devotes herself completely to mastering it so that she can help the ones she loves. In Wave, all she can do is stand there and try to protect the bridge maker from death even at the cost of her own life. When facing Kaguya, she’s healed the entire shinobi army consisting of 50k men multiple times, fully refreshed Naruto (and his giant chakra tanks) multiple times, personally kept Naruto alive through her own sheer effort alone, rescued Sasuke from wandering an entirely different dimension, and even punched a goddess so hard that the woman ends up stunned long enough to be captured.

Sakura goes from kneeling in the dirt crying because she knows she can’t do anything, while another girl mocks her for keeping her hair long, to falling through the sky toward certain death, readying her fist to punch the origin of all chakra, shouting at her not to underestimate a fellow woman. That’s her character arc.

Now, yes, there’s more to her. She also struggles with the pain, grief, and guilt associated with Sasuke leaving them, with the knowledge that Sasuke is ‘bad’ but the inability to stop loving him anyway, with the guilt of watching Naruto be harmed and blaming herself for this because she assumes is hunt for Sasuke is because of her begging him to bring Sasuke back when she was younger, with her self-loathing for being unable to get Sasuke back herself and unable to kill her love for him enough to dispatch Sasuke as she feels is her responsibility, but that’s not really the basis of her character arc.

Sakura never hoped Sasuke would change because of her love, she loved him knowing it was hopeless, because love doesn’t care if the person is ‘worthy’ of it or not. Though it’s worth noting Sasuke’s hardly ‘a killer’. He kills some samurai in his way after he warns them and he kills Danzo, who is better known as ‘that awful guy we blame everything bad that happens on, especially the Uchiha massacre’. He’s either uninterested or unsuccessful in killing anyone else.

Now, post war she does eventually marry him, settle down, have kids, build a facility to provide mental help to children affected by the Shinobi wars, and become the most prestigious medical ninja in Konoha - possibly the world - but most would argue the main thrust of her arc was finished when she proved herself to be equal to Naruto and Sasuke by contributing equally to sealing away Kaguya - or, perhaps when she saves both Naruto and Sasuke’s lives, and by extension the whole world’s, by closing their life-threatening amputation wounds after their squabble.

Perhaps it’s both. She proved herself their equal and she saved them both, exactly what she always wanted and needed to do.

I do agree that there wasn’t NEARLY enough focus on Sakura and her history (and I wanted more Sasusaku focus), and that she should have been a part of the final showdown with Sasuke, as basically every narrative hook up until that point including what she says to Naruto after the Sasuke retrieval mission failed pointed to her doing it, but that’s not really ‘bad writing’ per se. That’s just the insane Sakura hate squads gradually wearing Kishimoto down until he made sad jokes about how he never bothered to explore her past because it ‘would only make people angry if he tried’.