I also remembered why I was mad at Kishi. Like Naruto and Sasuke, Sakura is the main character in the series but while the first too are almost equal in strength and are extraordinary in some 'field' in a lack of a better word(ninjutsu, stamina, speed etc.) Sakura is no match for either of them. She is let's say famous for her intelligence and chakra control but it's still considered nothing special. Shikamaru and a few other characters are more intelligent than her. Remember in part 1 in the forest Sasuke(who had a lower grade in intelligence as the databook says) was smarter and understood the situation better and even had to explain every little thing to her because she didn't get it.
Actually, Sakura gets her moments too during the Chunnin exams.
This is when we find out just how intelligent she is- on the written exam she answers every question- something no Genin is supposed to be able to do, and none ever had without cheating. Sasuke takes one look and knows he doesn't know how to answer even one. Sakura is even confident that she can answer them all, and does, she does sort of get it about the cheating- "this test almost forces you to cheat" but she's still not quite getting it about reading underneath the underneath. (Naruto doesn't either.) It takes Tsunade's training for Sakura, and Jiraiya's for Naruto to get them up to that level.
Sasuke and the others understand because most of them come from ninja families that trained them in the ninja arts before they even hit the academy. Guy apparently was a better teacher than Kakashi- he made sure all his team knew about ninjutsu as well as taijutsu, but Lee being an orphan, and Tenten probably being from a non-elite ninja family like Sakura (if not a civilian family- she has no family crest like Sakura does, which leads me to think her family aren't ninja, perhaps, considering her love and skill at weapons, as the anime fillers kind of guess- perhaps she's from a weapons artisans family) still show they have less of a background than the others.
Also in the Forest of Death, although Sasuke starts out strong, he falters badly. Sakura has a really strong moment, where despite her lack of strength and stamina and much lesser skills she is able to battle the Sound ninja and last longer than Lee did against them, even is able to fool the Sound ninja a few times. And when she is caught she doesn''t panic but comes up with a solution that frees herself- we get a foreshadowing of part 2 Sakura. She doesn't let Kin's creepy actions and insulting words throw her any more than she let Sasori's insults at her youth and gender in part 2.
Kishimoto does show Sakura being heroic, showing leadership abilities, but readers tend to skim right over them because they aren't as flashy as Naruto's or Sasuke's. Some readers tend to run down Tsunade too, because she also tends to chose to fight in less flashy ways, and leads that way too- Kishimoto wants readers to take away that both Sakura and Tsunade focus on using their intelligence to it's best advantage in both battle and leadership.
We see this in how Tsunade works with the very hot tempered and show-offy Ei. Tsunade has a temper but she doesn't let it impair her as a leader like Ei does. She carefully considers her decisions. Kishimoto writes Sakura similarly, although her youth makes her emotions cloud her judgement more (as it does for all the younger ninja)
But Sakura shows a remarkable mature calmness of thought and action when she becomes resolved or takes on a leadership role: the battle in the Forest of Death, battling Sasori, during almost all of the Pain arc- she even becomes essentially Hokage for a brief time: ordering an evacuation, taking charge of the search and rescue team for Hinata, and deciding what must be done to save Naruto, her planning on taking down Sasuke (she falls apart a bit facing both Naruto and Sasuke, but the rest of the time she is fiercely resolved but a calm and firm team leader. We see this as well in the one battle scene she participated in this current arc- she firmly tells Lee he's acting dangerously foolish and calmly states what battle formation they need to take.
The reader pattern continues, they've already forgotten Sakura's actions in this arc because they weren't flashy. Tsunade's levelheadedness probably isn't registering either, for the same reason.
However, I do agree it would have been nice to have seen more than a couple of panels at the end of part 1 and couple of panels during the Sasori fight in part 2 of Sakura's training with Tsunade. Perhaps Kishimoto or his editors thought is because it is a shonen manga boys won't be interested in seeing female character training.... we don't really see much of any female characters training- Sakura's training is about the only sole female character's training we've seen. (The only other I can think of is we see the end of a training session of Hinata with her father, that according to her father she is weaker than her sister Hanabi who is five years younger)
Edited by ciardha, 08 May 2011 - 04:53 PM.
Dream you dream alone is only a dream, but dream we dream together is reality- Yoko Ono 1971
When you go to war, both sides lose totally- Yoko Ono
Remember, our hearts are one. Even when we are at war with each other, our hearts are always beating in unison- Yoko Ono 2009
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