Ah, but see I never said she would fight Sasuke herself. I actually believe she might fight Juugo since it may be possible for Juugo to interfere with the battle.
Well yes, Juugo is a possibility. He and Sakura do utilize similar fighting styles. Furthermore, he isn't exceedingly powerful to the point where combating him would be denounced as a suicidal action. Although I do believe he may have an advantage initially against Sakura because of his greater repertoire of abilities and demented mindset when in combat. As with Sasori she would need to analyze his fighting style and develop a battle strategy of avoiding his attacks whilst landing hits of her own. Considering Juugo's durability (as it was displayed against the Raikage when he not only survived a direct hit but managed to counteract) he may not go down in just one hit.
I have this unnerving thought in the back of my mind that if Sakura were to fight Juugo Kishi may have the other female cast members of the K8 assist her. I would prefer it if she fought alone to prove her worth without the assistance of others but factoring in the amount of people on the battlefield everyone else would need to be incapacitated or occupied by someone else for the battle to remain a one on one.
How would they fight anyways? Juugo is presently going go assist the alliance since it is the desire of Sasuke whom he is dedicated to. It would only be possible if Juugo became demented and chose to defy Sasuke's orders or if Sasuke shifted loyalties against the alliance once again.
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And she could possibly help with Sasuke as well. Granted she will get owned, but you never know. There are many possibilities that Kishi could take, but the point is not in whether she can do damage or not, but rather the point that despite many claiming she is so in love with Sasuke she will to side with Naruto. Maybe even prove to him that she truly loves him as seeing that Naruto needs real proof that she no longer sees him that way.
Oh, well of course if you perceive her assistance from an emotional and psychological perspective she will prove to be outstanding. The question is how that newly acquired resolve can applied in a physically practical manner. Perhaps if she attacked Sasuke's Susanoo as he is unsuspectingly preoccupied with Naruto she could damage the ethereal warrior somewhat. It could provide an opening which Naruto would need to reach Sasuke directly for an attack. But then you have the issue of Sakura needing to immediately retreat afterwards as Sasuke would undoubtedly lunge at her for her interference.
Excluding the above and all of Sasuke's MS techniques, if she was given the opportunity to thoroughly analyze his kenjutsu and regular moveset, she may be able to keep up for some duration of time. I don't believe she could win against Sasuke even if he was using only his basic Sharingan but she could potentially hold her own with enough insight into how he fights.
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Many outcomes in many ways, but the message needs to be clear and it seems this is the only way it can happen otherwise Naruto will once again refute it.
Despite Naruto's willingness to allow others to fight the Juubi he would prefer it if he could fight alone as he does not wish for any of them to die. He would rather shoulder the burden by himself. More than anyone else I doubt he would allow Sakura to fight. Her insistence to help could prove to Naruto that she is a strong willed individual but that wouldn't negate his hesitance of allowing the potentiality of her being injured to come to pass. Not against the most significant and powerful of adversaries at least.
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Yet, you have them scream "Hinata" every time even though she has lost all her fights and even nearly caused the death of people because of her recklessness. There is some blame when it comes to that because how can you judge Sakura in such a way, but leave Hinata out of it?
The reasons? Hypocrisy, favouritism towards Hinata, denial of Sakura's character progression, the "mob mentality", Hinata's physical assets (yes, some people actually place more stock in her breasts rather than in her actions or personality), and then there's some people who speak in the manner that they do simply to be jacka**es to others for their dissenting opinion.
Those are some of the primary reasons for their exceptionalism with Hinata and unjustified negativity centred towards Sakura. What I don't understand is why they do not criticize the other female cast members for their so-called "imperfections", "uselessness", or hell even their appearances.
Imperfection - Ino, despite her impressive performance in the war arc, is emotionally imperfect because she clings to her unethical perception of what a "positive love" is involving Sasuke even though the only reasons she had for being infatuated with him, from what we were lead to believe, were his combat abilities, his hardhearted conduct, and the social pedestal that everyone perched him on because of his relation to the illustrious Uchiha Clan. These are all shallow, vain "justifications" for her continued attraction to Sasuke. Sure Sakura may still have feelings for him but she at least has her personal motivation to acquire his recognition and the memories of their time together as Team 7 that can somewhat mitigate the emotional and psychological imperfections that she has when it comes to Sasuke.
Uselessness - I'm sorry, what? Sakura has been making important contributions to the story since the beginning. She is one of the primary motivations for Naruto persisting as far and long as he has. If you mean direct contributions that she made personally, well let's go down the list of some.
1. Saved Naruto from Zabuza's weapon as it was being propelled towards the unsuspecting Team 7 in the Land of Waves
2. Provided Naruto with some knowledge about how to more easily master the tree climbing exercise
3. Prevented Naruto from plummeting to the earth after he was rendered unconscious which may have severely injured him
4. Protected Naruto and Sasuke whilst they were unconscious
5. Safeguarded Sasuke from Gaara's wrath as the latter was hastening to kill the former
6. Removed a potentially fatal poison from Kankuro; thus saving his life
7. Defeated an Akatsuki member with assistance from Chiyo (Honestly, this feat alone is one that only a few members of the core cast can claim that they have accomplished; she's also the only female character to defeat an Akatsuki member with comparatively little assistance, excluding the White Zetsu army or clones, if I am correct. Honestly, even Naruto needed assistance or handicaps to fight against Kakuzu/Pain.)
8. Restored Naruto to capable strength levels after he transformed into 4TK
9. Assisted in the mass restoration of those injured in Pain's attack on Konoha
10. Defeated a boss level summoning with one strike
11. Discovered the White Zetsu's guerrilla tactics strategy which saved a continuous amount of lives and helped to reveal Zetu's affinity to Mokuton
12. Restored Kakashi's stamina and healed him so that he could battle once again
13. Is restoring Naruto to full strength after he was rendered essentially helpless against the Jubi and Madara
Compare all of that to someone like Hinata, Shizune, Tenten, Temari, or most of the cast's contributions in general. In the grand perspective of things she has provided quite a bit to the story. Perhaps she doesn't do as much as some of the male cast but a large part of the reasoning for that has to do with Kishi's blatant incompetence with writing females in a "shonen-esque" effective manner. For who she is as a woman and the mindset of the author that writes for her character Sakura is very important. The only ones who rival her in on-screen contributions would be Tsunade and Ino (the latter having only recently become comparable).
Appearance - Disregarding the detestable nature of how someone would use this as a crutch to denigrate someone's character I will state that Sakura's appearance is quite womanly in physical apearance. Some of the fanbase criticizes her for "looking manly" due to her less than humongous breasts (not that she doesn't quite adequately make up for it in other areas) or because of her facial features? Why? These people do realize that beauty is subjective, correct? But even if we abide by their standards Sakura is quite womanly. Sakure has a curvy figure, her "lower assets" are probably the best of any female's in the manga, her breasts aren't absurdly small (quite the contrary as they're decently sized, just not as big as Hinata's or Ino's), and she has a beautiful face. Have they observed some other characters that could quite literally be considered flat frontally? Why do they not criticize Karin, Karui, or Shizune who have quite literally been depicted as having no protrusions coming from their chest at all? Or what about Shizune's strangely "masculine" appearance at times (once again, subjective)? The woman literally has no curvature at all. Then you have Hinata. What is it about her that makes her physically appealing? I assume it's not her eyes because they resemble the vacant, lifeless expression of a doll.
Considering everything that is stated above, why is Sakura's character exclusively denigrated? I have not seen anyone on other forums criticize Ino's stupidity for "loving" Sasuke, the "uselessness" of someone like Temari (her contributions to the general plot are arguably less than Ino's), or the "manly" appearance of Shizune? I have never once seen the criticisms people assign to Sakura placed onto others. It's as if they have this deep-rooted, irrational proclivity to tarnish anything and everything that Sakura does, thinks, and feels regardless if others have committed equally "questionable" or worse actions. Even if you ruminate upon what validity there is to their grievances over her character, many of these can be explained and dismissed with supporting evidence from the manga.
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If heroine describes how many battles they have fought and or won then Sakura is still the bigger heroine as she has done things. She has saved people's lives and not just the main hero. Are we supposed to neglect that she saved kankuro's life or that she is healing Naruto right now despite being an easy target? What about the time she beat Sasori? if it describe about how many times she has helped the hero, again Sakura has done more.
I agree. Proponents of characters need analyze the actions and flaws of their favourites before acting critical towards others'.
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This is the biggest problem when I see with this "heroine" stuff. What the hell is expected from the heroine? If heroine is described by bravery, saving lives, and working to do the right thing, then Sakura fills all those criteria. Like you said, Hinata was mostly self-satisfaction, but again, they think she is a heroine. Why?
I explained my personal interpretations for why they perceive her in the way that they do but to reiterate much of the reasoning has to do their misconceptions about who and what Hinata and Sakura stand for. Granted, there is an element of Kishi having suggestively incapable skills with writing females as equally important figures next to the male cast. Sakura, unfortunately, suffers the brunt of the repercussions from this weakness as she is intended to be depicted as a "realistic" girl (from Kishi's perspective at least).
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I have come to the conclusion that no one will ever see Sakura as the heroine no matter what she does, but Hinate will despite screwing up, despite being selfish, and despite not really doing anything.
Well after the Sasori fight I would surmise that even though some may people may not have liked her character still they did have more respect for her for what she accomplished in that fight. Sakura was awesome back in that arc, it was the prime of her character in many regards, even I will admit to that opinion. I suppose if Kishi had continued to allow her to progress in combat abilities whilst giving her more fights in later arcs the general fanbases' opinion of her may be more positive as it would reinforce Sakura's status as a "useful" character from their perspective. They may still dislike her Tsundere personality and timidity when Sasuke is brought up but they would have respect for her in other ways.
Sakura is just a questionable character in general to these people. No matter what they would acquire some self-gratifying reason to unnecessarily criticize her. If it isn't due to some hypocritical, jaundiced fixation on her flaws then she will be abased through her relation to the pairing wars.
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Again, people argue 615, but this is the ONLY moment that she has actually done something useful...
Well that's not entirely true. She did provide words of encouragement before Naruto's battle with Neji. Later during the events of P2 she acted usefully as reconnaissance and a scout during the Itachi Pursuit arc. Furthermore, whilst her actions against Pain did imperil Konoha, she did indirectly help to save Naruto. If she had not arrived to assist then Pain may have very well have absconded with Naruto's body and we would be witnessing an entirely different timeline with Konoha in a relatively worst condition from their destruction at the hands of Pain, much of the population remaining permanently dead (a few noteworthy casualties being Kakashi, Shizune, and Fukasaku who would not be revived), a war where the White Zetsu guerrilla army is continuing to internally destroy the alliance forces with Killer Bee complacently enjoying what he thought was a "vacation" far behind the front lines, and Naruto would be imprisoned in some cell deep within Akatsuki's lair in preparation for the extraction of Kurama after Gyuki has been captured; and with Pain, Konan, and Kisame all still active members, it would not be that long before Killer Bee is actually captured. That is if he did not allow Kurama to be unleashed during that period but even then with some of Akatsuki's most powerful members still at peak condition, he would probably be contained. Then of course there's Hinata popping Naruto's shoulder back into place.
Hinata's actions do have long lasting effects due to cause and effect, they're just not as frequent or as significant as Sakura's contributions.
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and she didn't even do anything. All she did was repeat everything everyone else said and Kurama had a hand in it.
Hinata's motivational speech was akin to the one she provided to Naruto before his battle with Neji. Only it was much more grand in scale and the depth behind it was thickened tremendously with this recent bout of encouragement.
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This moment now is Sakura being the heroine. Not because she saves the day or defeats that one big opponent. Heroes are people that do whatever it takes to help people whether it be through actions or teachings.
I wholeheartedly agree. It isn't through actions alone that one is able to become a hero, but their determination, intentions, and will to persist even when they are confronted by insurmountable tribulations that define them for who they are. The flaw with this has to do with the ignorance of the general fan base's opinion of Sakura.
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So, yes, Atheck I do blame people sometimes because they keep changing what it means to be a heroine and not sure what they want to see. Do you want her to see her take out the Ten-tails? Do you want to see her kill Sasuke? What? What would make Sakura a heroine in your eyes that she hasn't done already?
Not all fights are won with fists.
I refer you to my previous answers to address this segment of your response.
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