Bench scene.
At this point you have the debacle where the real Sasuke returns and Sakura trashes Naruto for being an orphan. This infuriates Sasuke who is also an orphan so he tells Sakura that she makes him sick. Truly, SS was planned from day 1. Honestly, even if Sasuke wasn't himself an orphan (Something Sakura certainly would have been aware of), it's hard to imagine how she thought saying that would make him like her.
What happens in this scene? Naruto henges himself to look like Sasuke so he can have a chance to talk to Sakura. He sees her determination and thinks that he finally understands why he likes her. He runs off with a stomachache when they're about to kiss. Then Real Sasuke shows up and verbally dismantles Sakura. Sakura thinks that in the future, she should probably be nicer to Naruto because being put down by someone you like hurts, as she discovered.
Why is this significant? Well, Naruto learns something about why he likes Sakura. The scene also establishes that Naruto understands her well enough to say exactly what she wanted to hear. Also, Sakura never realized that this was in fact Naruto talking to her. No one bothered to tell her and she didn't ask either of them.
The inner Sakura dialogue shows how shallow her feelings for Sasuke were. She wanted to possess him. She thinks "He's mine!!!", as if he's a great prize. There are no thoughts like "I can't wait until I'll be able to make him feel better about his dead family!". I realize that Inner Sakura acts a certain way as a rule, but it's also the case that Inner Sakura is her real feelings. See the scene where Naruto pranks Kakashi with the eraser. Though she certainly got closer to Sasuke later on, and would have grown to care about him legitimately, there's no indication that the romantic feelings ever evolved in any way. And certainly no indication of any depth whatsoever at this point.
So what does this mean for NaruSaku? The reader has an expectation that at a later date, it would be revealed that it was in fact Naruto who said the exact words she wanted to hear. This could very easily have been used to make the pairing canon, but it was never revisited. In the end it meant nothing. The fact that they never came back to it considering Sakura ultimately did end up with Sasuke, is frustrating at best and has disturbing implications at worst.
It's a really questionable choice to have Sakura never actually find out what happened. As written, the scene made her think something about Sasuke's personality and the way he views her that actually wasn't true. She never finds out about this despite the fact that she does end up getting married to Sasuke. It's not the most heartwarming thing to consider.
Did Naruto love Sakura at this point? Actually, no. She was just introduced in the same chapter as "a girl Naruto really likes". So it hadn't progressed that far yet.
Did Sakura love Naruto at this point? She hated him at this point.
Rating: 4. I gotta say that it's not the worst. Because this girl doesn't really like Naruto. There are other scenes that are worse because Sakura obviously likes or even loves Naruto, and then in the ending that is just thrown out the window. Also the clearly established fact that Sakura was not willing to abandon Naruto for anything, and then she abandons Naruto for someone who isn't even in the village.
But I digress. Storytelling wise, it is extremely bad that this scene exists at all. It's a red herring targeted at Sakura. Sakura is misled by this red herring, the contents of which are that Sasuke likes her, likes her forehead and could understand how she felt and even wanted to kiss her. She never learns that it was Naruto. So it doesn't even work, because it's a mislead that ends up pointing to the actual result due to a lack of integrity by Kishimoto and his editors.
There are some mitigating factors. The complimentary line is followed up by "That sounds like something Naruto would say" to which Sakura is like "damn", so the weight of it is somewhat reduced since Naruto-As-Sasuke essentially played it off as a joke. The real Sasuke roasting her afterwards also contributes to this. You are given a fair bit of reason to think that Sakura was suspicious of what had taken place, but it's not confirmed and there is every reason to think that she absolutely wanted it to be Sasuke who said those things so she would overlook any misgivings that she did have.
It doesn't make sense that canonically, this scene made Sakura love Sasuke or was even a major contributor to it. Think about it logically. We know for essentially a fact that NS was intended. This scene was written with that end result in mind. It's possible, though we will likely never know, that this scene would have been used to make NS canon. If that was the case, then obviously the scene did contribute to Sakura loving Sasuke. But at some point near the end, plans were changed to NHSS. The ending was changed. The changed ending trashes the meaning of the whole manga including this scene. This scene was supposed to be a red herring for Sakura and character development for Naruto liking Sakura. Instead, it's just nothing. It can't continue to mean something while all the other NS scenes mean nothing. It has to also mean nothing.
There are a lot of stories where Sakura, not knowing the truth of the bench scene, is going to marry Sasuke and Naruto suffers a huge amount of psychological anguish and torment as a result. Sakura is aware of this and doesn't do kitten about it. At a later date, their relationship ends and Sakura learns the truth about the bench scene and is like "Damn it, I only loved Sasuke because he said that to me back then. If I had only known that was Naruto, I wouldn't have had any feelings for Sasuke at all and would have married Naruto. For some reason I never thought to ask Sasuke about it despite how vitally important it was." It gets worse when they try to paint it as actually being Naruto's fault. No, Fanfic Sakura, it was your fault. Naruto was your best friend, you knew he loved you, and you knew that he was suffering over the fact that you were going to marry Sasuke, yet you didn't even try to explain it to him. It is a virtual certainty that one of the topics of conversation would have been why you love Sasuke so much still despite all of the things you went through with Naruto and Sasuke himself. At this point you would have brought up the bench scene and Naruto could have told you that it was actually him. Then you could have been happy. Instead, you just ignored him.
It's not even in character. Sakura would never accept being the source of so much suffering for Naruto. She would hate herself for it. She would seriously consider every possible solution to solve it, and this would have included just not being with Sasuke. At the very least, she would keep trying to talk to Naruto and make him understand why she thinks she needs to be with Sasuke. She would never give up. And in this scenario, the reason why she thinks she should be with Sasuke is because of the bench scene. So the problem would have been solved. If she didn't already solve it by asking Sasuke about it very early on. Why wouldn't she? What the hell else is there to talk about with him? You have nothing in common.
But the idea is absolutely ridiculous. You cannot take one compliment and have that outweigh everything that has ever happened. The Sakura in those stories, and Sakura in general, has a sum of experiences with Sasuke, and a sum of experiences with Naruto. If the sum of experiences with Sasuke + the bench scene outweighs what she has with Naruto by so much that she's willing to cut Naruto out of her life completely just to be with Sasuke, then she would have picked Sasuke no matter what. Even canon Sakura ended up being better than the Sakuras in those stories, despite the fact that those Sakuras did end up with Naruto usually. For the simple reason that the canon Sakura chose to be with Sasuke but without the stipulation that Naruto would be utterly destroyed as a result.
While I think the existence of this scene is really screwed up given the ending, I'm really not interested in exploring the idea that Sakura chose to fall in love with Sasuke, date Sasuke, marry Sasuke, get knocked up by Sasuke, then chase him around the nations before finally settling down to raise his daughter alone and be his housekeeper until she finally dies a lonely death - all based on something Naruto impulsively said while wearing his face. It's hugely dismissive of the character that Sakura actually was. Sakura did those things because Kishi was told that they would make more money with a NH/SS ending. That's the only reason. You can't take this ending, which was an asspull, and ascribe meaning to past scenes based on it. Because said scenes were not written with that ending in mind.
This scene itself helps prove that. Why on earth, if Sakura was intended to be with Sasuke, would they write in ANYTHING that could imply that Sakura's love for Sasuke was in part based on something Naruto did? No writer would do something like that. Especially when Sakura never even finds out about it.
It was confirmed by Kishi in an interview that Sakura loves Sasuke because she just does. There is no reason.
This scene only has narrative value if she ends up loving Naruto, and canonically, she didn't. So it's just a waste of paper.
Edited by DrK, 06 February 2018 - 02:09 PM.
