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If Sakura dies what about NaruSaku? The NAruHina fans (no offense) will jump at the chance of Sakura dying and Naruto will be single.
Eh, Sakura won't die. I'm content to believe Team 7 is invincible, but if anyone dies it'll be either Kakashi (though I hope not) or Sasuke (though not for a long time, possibly at the end of the series). Spending
years gradually building up the Naruto/Sakura relationship only to chuck it out a window by killing her would be beyond retarded.
Besides, Sakura's too much of a main player, it would offset the balance; and killing her wouldn't accomplish anything plotwise, other than to fill Naruto with blind fury and have him lose complete control of Kyuubi. And personally, I think giving Naruto a vengeance quest when Sasuke already has a big enough one for the entire cast would be a pretty damn lame development.
Now, if
Hinata was killed off by, say, Random Akatsuki Member, I would expect Naruto to be pissed off/sad and swear vengeance, but because he considered her a friend/ally who didn't deserve to die (not because he secretly looooved her, as the NaruHinas would spin it). It would not be half the extreme reaction he'd have if Sakura or Sasuke were killed, because those two are his world, and Hinata is still, in essence, that shy weird girl who always
happens to be standing five feet behind him.
(I hope they don't kill Hinata off, though, because aside from the obvious waste of what little character development she's had, we'd have to put up with endless treatises on "Hinata the Martyr" and how "NaruHina's TRUE love shall survive even in death!" To which I say, gag me with a bulldozer.)
Anyway, I have no clue where I was going with that. Hooray for tangents!
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Anyway I agree that SakuSasu is like a mother-son thing or a really close friend thing.
I don't see SakuSasu as a mother-son thing, although her doting on him is rather mother-hennish at times. I totally see it as that common example of "girl determined to change bad boy through the Power of Love," which I've always hated because it's such a stupid, naive, little-girl fantasy. Then again, Sakura
was all of those things in Part One. And I think the fantasy appealed to her as much as super-cool Sasuke himself did; not merely being recognized by him, but being the one who could "tame" him, so to speak, by getting him to open up. Which leads me back down the Naruto-henged-as-Sasuke road, which I've already posted about, so I'm going to stop babbling now.