If I'm to be honest, a substantial part of my support for NaruHina stems from my like for Hinata, which in itself correlates with my dislike for Sakura.
As much as I've tried to like Sakura for the sake of her status as the series' heroine, her severe lack of development on both the emotional and physical front irks me to no end. Her peak basically came at the beginning of Part 2, where the results of her training were displayed brilliantly. Afterwards, however, it's essentially been a downward slope for her. Not only has she not had a single fight in years, but even worse is her apparent regression in skills and personality.
I might be generalizing a bit here, but:
How exactly does one go from this:
To this:
And how exactly does one go from this:
To this:
Disregarding the fact that she didn't exactly do much during the Sasuke & Sai arc, I held some semblance of respect for her when she tried to stay strong and encourage Naruto at the end. By the Kage Summit, however, she's the one breaking into tears, and Naruto, who's arguably experiencing a lot more stress at that moment, has to be the one to comfort her. What happened? That's not even considering her misleading words of reassurance that "we'll get stronger together"....
The author really dropped the ball with her development there, and that's not even touching upon her ridiculous love for Sasuke.
Which brings me to my relative liking for Hinata. Despite being severely less prominent throughout the series, what development she has has arguably been more consistent than Sakura's. She starts out as a shy girl with a serious lack of confidence, and it is through inspiration from Naruto that she finally begins to stand up for herself, specifically during her fight with Neji. Likewise, it is through his oath made on Hinata's honor, along with his reassuring talk with Hinata prior to the final matches, that Naruto becomes more motivated and attains the drive to defeat Neji. Skipping all the way to the Pain fight, Hinata is driven by her love for Naruto to the point of disregarding all the odds stacked up against her, and fights for what she believes in: Naruto. One might try to discredit her actions in this situation, but Naruto would disagree:
As one can also see, Naruto is the one bringing her out of her slump in this situation. When we skip ahead once again to Ch.615, Hinata comes back around and becomes the one to bring Naruto out of his slump:
The above reason is also why I don't understand when people claim that Hinata's development with Naruto is one-sided. The majority of their development has involved both parties. Their intrinsic similarities have allowed them to further one another's growth, and perhaps that is part of the reason why I feel NaruHina is a more fitting pairing. Sasuke is an important factor of development on Naruto AND Sakura, its one of the key reasons for their development, hence this is why many of us here feel that Sakura in her development will actually mature away from Sasuke, she won't remain static otherwise kishi just ruins her whole development.
One of the things is that Sakura is the heroine, but that's just it the series is an action series but that does not mean every character in an action series must be located in some type of central battles. This includes heroes and heroines from time to time, if there is anything that Sakura is at this point,
she is a mentally developed character not a physically developed one, part of this is due to how Kishi said he would keep Sakura within the realm of normality, she was not noted to get some major powerup like Naruto and Sasuke, its due to Naruto being a jinchurki and uzumaki clan member and Sasuke being an Uchiha they get their power boosts, Sakura's progress however is the dynamic of how she effects Naruto and others and how they effect her, her focus in the story is one who tries to find insight and perspective on the world around her as it goes by, that is an example of what a mentally developed character does, likewise Naruto and Sasuke take on the simple power up over come role, they are mostly physically developed but gain a new mentality for the reasons in fighting as the story progresses. Sakura's role can be compared to someone like Bulma from the first Dragonball series, she was not a fighter, she was a tech expert but she was still the heroine of the series, she had her role and limited when it came to fighting but she is still the most prominent female character, though this was cut a lot in dragonball z.Also there are a few things you should know about Sakura, design and character wise:
-Kishimoto designed Sakura to display human weakness, the only other character to display this along her was Lee. Sakura displayed a mental weakness when it came to certain things, she experienced this many times from the forest of death to the team 7 reunion. One of her weaknesses is her lack of judgement in the same way Naruto has a weakness for not being the smartest and Sasuke for having a superiority and inferiority complex. Its a mental weakness that she has experienced yet its what keeps her character in a dramatic portion of the story. Lee himself is the embodiment of physical weakness in the naruto world, he is the only known one who cannot use any ninja techniques and so he is only strong due to his peak physical conditioning and the 8 gates, Lee is all physical.
-Sakura represents the best of what a normal person could be in the Naruto world yet she is above average, she represents what a good enough person can become. Others without any real clan or special powers include Minato and Jiraiya, otherwise normal, as Sakura represents what someone can become, Minato and Jiriaya represent the pinnicle of skill in the ninja world anyone can reach, even if they are normal.
-Sakura is a medic first, fighter second. She fights when its appropriate or nessessary. As a medic Sakura was taught not to simply heal, being a medical ninja means
dodging enemy attacks and learning their attack patterns so they cannot hit the medic and prevent them from healing, basically being a medical ninja means keeping yourself alive. Even then Sakura has good analytical skills and knowledge of the human body so she knows the vital points. She is not as skilled in analyzing stuff as Shikamaru but she still displayed this analytical skill in discovering how Obito's phase power worked in the itachi pursuit arc and how finding zetsu neji. Sakura has not had a fight in a long time but still has the skills she learned and displays them from time to time.-Sakura has not had much panel time but then again, who has? Its been a long war arc, Kishi introduced so many characters in the 5 kage summit, he had to chop up and give a small amount of time to so many people, this included people from the lore like Hanzo and yet give others so minor like Mifune a bit of time for a battle, this also included Durai and the gold and silver brothers, you get the point, we were stuck in so many shifts for the war arc. Even then we had a good portion of last year dedicated to Kabuto with a flashback after his fight with Itachi and Sasuke. The war arc diverted so many scenes and gave so many events from those minor like mentioned before to development critical to others like team 10 and gaara. Even Naruto himself has been sidelined numerous times in past arcs.
there is one thing Kishi actually failed at immensely,
its just plain giving enough screentime to just about any female fighter. Aside from Tsunade, any female with actual skill like Anko, Yugito, Temari, Tenten, and Sakura, he just did not give it, it was a missed opportunity. I agree, he could have done more with this, yet its only due to fillers we actually see more fights with the konha 11 at least, this means we at least see more fights for others like Sakura, Ino, and yes Hinata to take place in, sadly for Hinata this is the only realm she fights in, she has practically no fights of anything major in the manga, and sadly in her 2 fights she loses, badly, not trying to ruin anything or provoke you but that is what Hinata has been in the manga, an abuse taker. Sakura has her Sasori fight and zetsu reveal, both of which gave 2 important plot elements, even on Narutos part.
Kishi could have done more with Sakura, I mean it would have been neat if in the Sasuke and Sai arc, she faced Kabuto, that would have been neat but she was sidelined. Kishi could have made time for Sakura and Sai to aid Shikamaru in fighting Hidan but cut it short so Shikamaru could win. Pain was all Naruto due to his orders for everyone to stay back save Hinata who ran in there. But as Sakura lost time for potential fighting, sadly Hinata suffers more, just for lack of screentime. In so much of the downtime between fights and arcs, there was time when Kishi could have put Hinata in but he chose mainly Naruto AND Sakura for these times, Hinata usually vanished for nearly 50 chapters till we either just see her for a short time or she got a small moment. If there is anything that does not help Hinata, she is not even in 100 chapters of a 600 plus chapter manga. This is what I personally see harder for Hinata to be considered major to the plot, I'm sorry but thats just how it is, look at part 1, she has one arc of importance, the chunin exams and then vanishes basically for the rest of part one, nothing major. Part 2 she does nothing until pain, and even then
kishi could have killed her off without impacting the story overall, it would have let Naruto know what it would have been like to loose a friend much eariler if he chose to gave Hinata the axe. Hinata can have a bigger role in 615 but its still overall limited, this late in the series, it would just rush NH if anything, it would be too crammed and underdeveloped and just upsurp a lot of story elements. Bee appeared even less than Hinata yet he has a much more important role than she did. 2 major characters who are very important are Tsunade and Shikamaru, if kishi did more with Hinata like he did to these 2, many including me would consider her a major character but for all purposes, she is still a minor character, not being present for 1/6th of the story is not going to help in the long run. There are more NS moments than hinata even appears, thats just the short answer many of us here see.
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