Onionhead Attacks

Arguably the biggest thing Kishimoto could have done for Sakura's character was decide exactly what he wanted for her.

He wanted to add a girl to the mix to balance out two boys, done.

He wanted to create conflict in the team dynamic, done.

He wanted to create romantic tension, done.

But what else is there? He has a female teammate balancing out two hot headed boys in a love triangle. What else does he want to do with her character? He started showing that Sakura started from being a snooty fan-girl and child who has no real experience with ninjas due to her civilian background is slowly learning to grow up and mature as both a ninja and a person.

She is being exposed to the reality of what a ninja will face, will encounter, and what is expected of them. Being a ninja is a dangerous occupation and it's not a game or an occupation where you can clock in and out at the end of a day. She is slowly discovering this in their adventures, such as in the Wave arc and then in the Chuunin exams where they have to sign a waiver to even compete! There is where her self-discovery of her lack of skill comes to light and she makes a goal of improving herself so that she won't hold her team back anymore.

Unfortunately, we get the drive to better herself, but we don't get the execution of her actually improving. Like many have mentioned previously, Part I would have been the perfect place for her to strive for a goal of some sort. If having her eyes opened to being an amazing medic was her goal, it would have made perfect sense for her to approach Tsunade and especially if she were to witness Tsunade in action and be inspired. Otherwise it just looked like she went to find the strongest ninja she knew of to plead to become her teacher to help her improve, but did said teacher's skills and abilities align with her goals? Hm...

It was also in Part I where Sakura had declared that she loved Sasuke enough to the point where she was willing to leave the village, her home of thirteen years, to be with him. Granted you could write that off as being blinded by love because love makes you do stupid things, but what was her reason for loving Sasuke to that degree? Sakura started off being shown as liking Sasuke because he's good looking, he's smart, and he's a skilled ninja. It's a crush before they are formed as Team 7, but what about after they've been a team for a year? What about Sasuke transformed those feelings from crush to love? She started understanding Sasuke's reasons and feelings for why he must avenge his family, but her character wasn't written or shown well doing that and that her feelings started developing into something deeper, whether it was friendship or love.

Then there's the issue with how Sakura treated Naruto. This is probably something harder to overcome since first impressions are everything and she wasn't necessarily given the best first impression. For one, she is shown fawning over Sasuke and then immediately being annoyed by Naruto's presence the next. Even though she started learning to treat Naruto better because she started to understand how it feels to be treated as annoying and then later developing a friendship, her growth was slow in Part I. We can see that she still treated Sasuke better than Naruto even though they grew closer. It's not unrealistic, but since Naruto is the underdog, fans would want for Naruto to be treated better and this change in treatment was probably too slow to curb the Sakura hate.

As many have mentioned before, Sakura is always being overshadowed by Sasuke and Naruto. There is no information regarding her background, her dreams (not counting Sasuke), goals and ambitions, her skill set, and what she will grow to be. In Part I she didn't really participate in any fights outside of the Chuunin exams and the Wave arc. Meanwhile Sasuke is being taught more techniques with private training, Naruto is left alone but somehow bumps into Jiraiya and is taught how to better control his chakra, while Sakura... does what? There were many instances where Sakura could have some relevance to the story or even small moments showing support for Naruto (since Sasuke went into isolation for training) but Kishimoto didn't even allow her that. I thought they were friends at this point and isn't that what friends and teammates would do?

Sakura's character wasn't that bad to begin with. It's always better to start with a slightly annoying and flawed character and watch them grow to be a better person. In Part I there were many missed opportunities and threads that he could have used to prepare and further Sakura's character growth for Part II. Sakura's character was still growing and evolving during Part I but it was too slow and underdeveloped compared to other characters and story lines to garner fan interest.

Then came Part II and we see a new and improved Sakura. She's a skilled medic, powerful fighter, and a great friend to Naruto. She always puts his well being first and after finding out the burden of housing the Kyuubi she even despairs about how she is unable to help relieve Naruto's suffering. But then soon after the story became more plot driven and less character driven. In Part I the writing was heavily character driven for a lot of the characters and not just the main characters whereas in Part II it was more focused on plot. As a result, we see power up after power up, focus of the story being shifted, and plot turns after plot turns. Many emotional beats were either lacking (compared to Part I) or fell flat and the focus was rooted solely in the Uchiha clan. Let's not forget lesser and lesser screen time and character regressions as the manga ended either.

All together, Kishimoto didn't have a bad character to start off with. He just needed to develop Sakura more in Part I to strike a chord with readers because Part I was when he was best with characterizations and would have been a good set up leading into Part II. Despite his portrayal of Sakura's growth into being a very caring person and great friend in Part II, all her growth and maturity went out the window when Sasuke was involved because Kishimoto decided not to make it clear what lingering feelings Sakura has for him. Is it longing for a lost love? Longing for a lost teammate or friend? Is it none of the above and she just wants him back around friends and not around a creepy snake? Which is it? And what happens after Sasuke returns? What does she expect? He introduced conflict when Sasuke was officially declared a threat but her reaction feels confusing to the readers when we don't even know what she wants to do or what she feels.

And why did he decide that he couldn't include more of her skills? What exactly did she learn other than what we expected? Kishimoto could have showed us what her end goal was too. Was it to be a medic? The best medic in Konoha? The world? Or was it because that just happened because she trained under Tsunade? He basically had Sakura's character started at A--> B --X--> C but didn't end successfully at point C (end) because she's still stuck in point B throughout all of Part II.

If Kishimoto really wanted to improve Sakura's popularity he should have at the start of Part II started developing her the best he could to make up for lost time by providing an arc for what inspired her to become a ninja, why she wanted to be a medic, show audience how she grew and how she got to that point so that we're rooting for her journey too. And since he established the strong connection between Naruto and Sakura already, he should have just kept it going strong instead of letting it fade under all the other events going on.

Oh and Kishimoto should have asked for advice from people who have experience in writing strong female characters or doing some sort of research to get an idea. Or he could maybe host a fan meeting and throw out questions like what fans want to see next in the manga? How do they want X Y Z characters to evolve in the manga, etc to get an understanding of fans likes and dislikes to determine how he could overcome those barriers.

This is a very good analysis of Naruto's character! Most of the admirable traits and emotional growth of Naruto didn't really carry on to Part II like you've mentioned. In a sense it felt like his character was pushed aside for plot progression since we barely touch upon Naruto's past and his growth during the time skip that much.

The thing I notice about kishimoto years back is; that he best with first impression of his characters, but very poor on the follow through. In fact most of the problems of Naruto could be best summed up as, "kishimoto introduces an idea and then barely if at all follow through on it." Even Itachi and the Uchiha clan which he constantly brought up every-time Sasuke involved with the plot once we learned the truth. Yet we barely learned anything more then we did during Obito's talk with Sasuke. Their was a coup being plotted by the Uchiha, Itachi choose the village over the clan, in order to save his baby brother he made a deal with Danzo, and then found Obito -who was the real murderer of the clan- to help him with the act. Other then more details to make Itachi into a saint we really don't learn anything any other time they were brought up.

Kishimoto as we've noticed didn't even have a solid idea of where he wanted his story to go. He had a loose idea and wrote as ideas came to him. He probably had so many bouncing around in his head that he started incorporating them left and right and didn't get the chance to touch on it later on. Makes sense since there are so many inconsistencies and questions floating throughout the manga. Riverkid pointed out Jiraiya and Kakashi not caring or knowing about Naruto's parentage. I believe in one of Kishimoto's interview that he started having the idea later on and tried to incorporate that in, but at that time the damage had already been done and these characters pretty much looked like massive jerks.

There's also the fact that Naruto's constant tunnel vision towards Sasuke also played heavily into the idea that Sasuke was now the main character rather than Naruto, leading to the constant "development" of Sasuke, the Uchiha Clan, the Sharingan, etc. and yet what do we even know about the Uzumaki Clan? Half of Naruto's own family?

- Masters of Fuinjutsu (nearly a lost art outside of more basic things from the looks of things given Jiraiya seems to be the only known Fuinjutsu master at present)

- They all had red hair.

- They had "special chakra" (never explained; but is what made them the best Jinchuriki for the Biju and also what allowed Nagato to survive as long as he did with Madara's Rinnegan and connection to the Gedo Mazo).

- They were attacked and largely destroyed because other villages feared their power, and they ended up scattered around the land.

- Could literally make a mask that can instantly summon the Shinigami (though used only as a plot device) and most likely what was used to help Minato create the Shiki Fuin.


....that's it. No real detail into anything.

What do we know about Minato's background and family? Nothing.

What do we know about the Senju Clan? The literal rivals and "other half" to the Rikudo Sennin's legacy and whom the Uzumaki are distantly related to? Outside of Hashirama and Tobirama (to a lesser degree) specifically, nothing. Why did they seem to just disappear while the Uchiha Clan prospered? Heck, we never even learn how exactly Hashirama died (supposedly in battle).

Because all of that time was dedicated towards Sasuke and the Uchiha Clan which itself can't even seem to remain consistent..

This is pretty much a prime example of Kishimoto having too many ideas, starting a little and never touching on it again, focusing on something that really interests him and somehow that becomes 1/3 of the whole manga...

A good read, but at the end of the day, the real problem (and more or less every point you raise) can be attributed to the fact that the author did not do any serious storyboarding or advanced planning when he began the series. At best, he may have had a loose idea that Naruto and Sasuke were gonna fight one day, but that was about it. He never really sat down and summarized the character development roadmap for each character (i.e. Character A starts at point X, goes to point Y and ends at point Z) or how the plot would progress through the story arcs. As a result, the characters are incomplete and the story arcs are ALL disjointed. Granted, I understand Kishimoto had some issues with his editors, but even still, deep advanced storyboarding is feasible in this industry as we've seen from the greats like Eichiro Oda.

This is my main complaint too. Kishimoto only has a vague idea of where he wants his story to go. He knows what he wants to end the story with but he isn't sure how to get to that point. In the end he doesn't have a clearly thought out story and is just throwing it together as he goes. It's one of the faults of weekly publications. If it were different he'd probably have time to write out a more consistent story and probably have a better time writing his characters. His biggest issue is his characters that either made them either murderous and mentally unstable (Sasuke), underdeveloped with wasted potential and gives no clear indication what's on her mind (Sakura), or no real growth in skill and suddenly has tunnel vision at the expense of everyone (Naruto).

This is a very well written review and I agree with all of your points. One of the reasons why many of Sakura's fans like her is because she was written to be a strong and caring character and we can see her growth to become one. It's just that Kishimoto skimped on her development and had many missed opportunities that he could have used to attract more fans.
 

Yeah, I have to agree too. She was my favorite character too. In a way, she still is. The old Sakura, of course, not the one from Gaiden and the Boruto manga. Even then, I feel sad for what she has become. She just feels so foreign to me, so stagnant, in a way. 

 

But you are definitely right. There was so much potential for Sakura to grow into her own and develop into a strong character, but in the end, she just reverted back to her old ways in the beginning of the manga, which makes me sad. This is because when looking at the first volume she appeared in, and then the very end, the last two chapters, it didn't feel like she changed or grew at all. Idk, that's just how I felt when reading it, and it devastated me, because watching the end of Part One or Shippuden where she was developing into a great heroine, it felt like all of that was taken away.

 

It's like we saw a glimpse of what she could become, but Kishi never delivered. 

 

Really great job with this review on Sakura, by the way! I am really enjoy reading these! 

This is exactly what it is! She could have become something awesome and a force to be reckoned with! We are never showed that and she was never developed enough to show her true potential.  Her development took a backseat to everything. Even Naruto wasn't as developed as he could have been and he's the main character!

Problem with Sakura's character's lack of development has always felt like for me, Kishi's lack of understanding between the vocal minority against the silent majority that could see the characters potential. Atleast in my experience, there was this core fanbase that hated Sakura for her interaction with Naruto early on, they saw the Naruto mistreated by villagers part and they saw Sakura's interaction with him, and came to the conclusion she was part of the crowd that mistreated Naruto for what he had sealed inside him. Something that was a stupid conclusion, Sakura's reasons for disliking Naruto had been obvious early on, she didn't like him getting in her way of pursuing her crush and his idiotic behavior that got in the way of his studies, there was also the hint she enjoyed his pranks but her straight faced outside persona did not want that known.

 

Anyway no matter how Kishi changed her character and had her grow, these people never forgave her and were vocal about it, and near the end Kishi didn't know what to do to make the character liked by these so called fans,

 

 

Then there was the other fanbase that loved Sasuke and felt Sakura was his property, so  Kishi could not cut that tie worrying he'd lose that fanbase. If she'd cut that tie her character could have grown to the levels we saw hints of early after the time skip.

 

Sakura had so much potential for growth, her intelligence and chakra control meant she had untapped potential to grow, but you always felt Kishi was holding back on showing that growth, I don't think it helped that he was likely surrounded by Hinatard that felt jealous seeing someone other than Hinata take the spotlight.

It makes me wonder where he gets his fan reactions from? Is it based only on fan mail? Or is there someone skimming the internet and forums somewhere to get an idea? Because I feel like he isn't getting the whole picture. Either that or he's getting faulty info and only getting opinions on character fans and rapid shipping fans rather than true fans of the story.  

Because honestly as one of the main characters of his story he was developing her nicely and with some work to fill in the gaps he could've fully developed her. Instead, her character feels incomplete and was then re-written at the end of the story... It also doesn't help that the opinions and advice he gets on character design isn't helping in his writing. It's as if they themselves don't know what advice to offer during the course of his writing to help with her character development so he ended up struggling for the majority of the publication and then ended up with lots of hate for her character.

Then there's also the anime... with how much filler they add into the anime it's no wonder that some fans take the anime as canon when it was never written into the manga to begin with. It also does not help that she's shown to be much more violent in the anime too. Like many have mentioned before, Sakura's character is a mild tsundere and she's actually depicted as very caring, often putting others well being before her own... well before her character was reverted back to Part I.

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

• This is a very controversial section and it can differ among cultures. This is based off of what I have personally observed so DO NOT take this as absolute.
   
• Japan and asia has an obsession with first love/past love story lines. It's in almost every romance related story. Western audiences are not as hung up on this and move past this more easily since they are always searching for "the one." This is why Sakura seen as moving on is considered to be "a bad woman" but of course there are double standards for males. Double standards will never die in asian cultures, sadly. Also, traditionally divorce is frowned upon and despite how dysfunctional a family is, they will either try to work it out or stew together in misery. Newer generations are becoming increasingly westernized, but traditionally this is what they believe in.
   
• As mentioned before by previous posters, Japanese beauty standards of the ideal woman is a beautiful, soft spoken housewife who caters to husband and family. Their purpose in life is to serve their husband and the family. In lots of asian cultures, especially those that are very traditional, women are not on equal footing as men and must always defer to them. Always respect elders first and foremost, but men is supreme. I will not expand on this since it is controversial and can start a debate. DO NOT debate this point.
   
• In asian media, there are always alpha males with less emphasis in beta males (especially if you look at Shounen and Shoujo mangas). If you consume these media then you would have recognized that the majority of these media consist of most females attracted to alpha males.
   
• Since this is a Shounen manga, the main audience is male. Most of them will imagine or put themselves in the viewpoint of the protagonist, which these mangas tend to do. With a typical asian mindset, males prefer the Yamato nadeshiko type of woman so they will naturally gravitate toward them (realistically) and just like tsundere types only fictionally.
   
• The insane levels of Hinata love actually makes sense. I will quote this other popular manga, Nisekoi, once again (quality is questionable since it became a harem and slap-stick comedy in the middle). There was a character called Kosaki Onodera who is the personification of the perfect Japanese woman. In real life she was insanely popular everywhere, with even her anime face plastered over an aircraft (This is real, look it up). The main character liked her because she was cute. He liked her all the way until the end until he was forced to realize that he had someone fallen in love with the heroine, Chitoge Kirisaki (the tsundere). The pairing war for this not pretty either and many were upset when the hero chose the tsundere. At this point it's kind of a hit or miss with the audience. Sometimes they like the tsundere more while other times they like the non-tsundere more. For me it's character portrayal and how the story was written. 
   
• Western audiences don't understand tsundere at all. They will think there's something wrong with the girl and that she is crazy violent rather than find it funny. Ironically it does exist in America culture, but oh so rarely depicted, such as in "Hey Arnold" with Helga Pataki. Other times the females are quoted as saying "hiding your true feelings" but it's still uncommon. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong and list any show/movie/book that you can think of please! Generally, females in western culture are more straight forward and blunt about their feelings whereas in asian cultures both men and women are more vague and require lots of interpretation about their meaning, but they understand the meaning regardless.

WRITING DIFFICULTIES

• No clear direction
  • Kishimoto had no clear mapped out plan for the story. Many book writers have plans/outlines written out and an idea of where the story is going with constant revision with each volume (for series). For series, each volume already has a majority of the story written and reviewed and changed before it is published and then gets new material added in subsequent volumes. This is obviously not the case with a weekly publication.
     
  • The writing schedule is weekly, so there is lots of pressure and it does not allow time to sit down and plan/revise/rewrite the story for something that works. For example, movie scripts go through many iterations, is trashed, rewritten, revised, etc. Same for books. In the end it does not allow the writer to see the big picture and he is just writing it arc by arc unless he already had the story mapped out.
     
  • Kishimoto has no clear idea for what he wants in the story. He wanted a story about two lonely boys developing a friendship/brotherhood bond from their shared orphan status with some drama tearing them apart but ultimately reconciling at the end. Details are sparse and fuzzy, being added in based on others input and random ideas being added in on the fly that is made more complicated the more he adds later. For example, Naruto being the Yondaime's son and Kakashi didn't know, making him look like a jerk. The same goes for Jiraiya for abandoning Naruto for his entire childhood. Who took care of young Naruto? Wouldn't friends of Yondaime know based on Naruto's name? Kishimoto also added in too many characters and story arcs which he should not have to expand on that extensively (too much on all the villians' backstory and the Uchiha backstory). Sometimes simpler is better because if it's too complicated, it's too complicated. It only works well with 1 or 2 main villains not every single villain and some of these end up being antiheroes.
     
  • This is reminiscent of amateur fanfiction writers who have great ideas and just write as they go without planning everything out (I certainly did and I can see it in many others). Very few completed fanfics had been planned well while others just end when the author decides that they want to and end it either well or awkwardly or horribly.
• Relying too heavily on others' input not conducive to good storytelling
  • There is too much input from staff and company heads to increase sales at expense of story quality and integrity. A good example would be the Justice League and Batman v Superman movies. Another example for manga includes an author called Komi Naoshi who had a couple of promising mangas started but it got cut because it didn't appeal to the audience, so he pushed for lower quality stories that seemed to sell. His popular manga dragged forever with no real plot but finally ended with his intended pairing despite lots of fan protests. I speculate this push for sales also happened in background during the serialization of Naruto.
     
  • Kishimoto has no skill in writing strong female characters and it shows. He should have gotten advice from someone who does or do some research by reading some sources instead of not trying it or promising but not delivering with teases. As a result, many of the females' characterizations suffered.
• Romance
  • Kishimoto and Shueisha was too focused on pairings/romantic feelings and teasing it to the very end. If it was established at some point it would work better for the story. For example, Harry/Ginny in the Harry Potter Universe. I personally disliked it because of story and character progression, but was more willing to accept because it wasn't shoehorned in at the 11th hour, but more like the 9th hour. If Kishimoto started off the story as the girl having no feelings then the route he was taking would have looked very natural and like a slow-build romance rather than one girl obsessing over a toxic first love, falling in love with best friend, going back and declaring that she never stopped loving her first love and that she felt absolutely nothing for her best friend. It's just cruel. He make Sakura a sad lonely, wife waiting for her emotionally stunted and mentally unstable, absent (I'm being brutally honest and not bashing Sasuke) husband to return. Hinata was also made to look super obsessive and just popped out of nowhere from friend zone with minimal interactions to instant reciprocation of feelings. 
     
  • Kishimoto is indecisive about which direction he wants to go once everyone started obsessing over the romance more than the action and the main plot. He ends up emphasizing and teasing pairings more, which just dug him into a deeper hole all for the sake of increasing sales, though it was probably at advice of editors and higher ups.
     
  • I'm speculating this, but please confirm. Kishimoto started writing too much romance drama leading toward SasuSaku that he decided to go with it and even directed the anime in the direction. He told the voice actors of Sasuke and Sakura this, according to Wikipedia. But as he developed his story in Part II and Sakura and Naruto grew closer he started teasing NaruSaku and considered that as the end pairing due to the natural progression of their relationship. Fan and staff pressure led him to return the pendulum back to SasuSaku and incorporate NaruHina once Hinata became super popular more than Sakura despite his best efforts to increase her likeability. It was his inability to write Sakura well and how he portrayed her that made it difficult. He took the easy way out and decided to put the more popular pairings together thinking it would appease the majority of the fanbase and secure sales for Shueisha to continue onto a spin-off and sequel. As stated previously, he should have just left pairings open ended after all that character growth. Kishimoto just wanted to write a shonen frenemies story but somehow bit off more than he could chew.
• Audience
  • Kishimoto was trying to cater to a Western audience but incorporated way too much asian cultural influence that would not be understood. He needs to do more research into Western thinking if he was actually aiming to appease to Western audiences.
     
  • Main goal of ending Naruto was attracting new audiences for future development in franchise. The target audience is young boys to teenage boys (Shounen), who don't care as much about pairings, so he ends the story that appeases the greatest number of fans and focuses on continuing story with new ideas. New and young audiences will not look as deeply into the characters as much as older fans since we are more invested and basically tore apart every detail of the story for our enjoyment. Also, all fans inherently have bias based on what they like so there is bound to be upset no matter which direction he chooses so it's a lose-lose situation for him. He just chose the easy way out and let others continue the franchise while he supervises because he was sick of all the drama that put strain on his family life.
     
• My main qualms with the manga and ending of Naruto that left a bitter taste in my mouth to this very day has less to do with the pairing war (that's only a small reason), but it has more to do with how he wrote his story. There are so many loose threads, teased story lines, underdeveloped characters, over explained villain backstories to gain reader sympathy that takes away from the story, retroactive character growth, inconsistent character portrayals and extremely flawed characters that showed either no remorse or corrective action for their wrong doings. For example, Jiraiya or Kakashi upon "finding out" Naruto is the Yondaime's son did nothing to make up for their absence nor did they train him with the necessary skills to be a skilled ninja and not just a mini powerhouse with only a small handful of attacks. Sasuke is bent on world destruction, changes his mind to take out the Big Bad, fights Naruto, is reformed, is forgiven immediately without question, and leaves the village again to look for the next threat. I don't care how many reasons they shoehorn in to explain away his absence and how much he loves Sakura and Sarada, but it's so unrealistic to me that all I can see him as is a psychotic mental patient who could snap at any moment. He's the type of person you want any and all weapons taken away from him for fear of him harming more than just himself after all that mental torture he was put through. I think I mentioned this point several times by now, but Kishimoto should have just written the story with an open ending and allow the fans to decide what they would like to believe instead of having the characters act all over the place just to place pieces on a chess board for the new franchise. And like I mentioned, it probably would have been more enjoyable with all new characters with some tie-ins with our favorites without them being direct descendants (i.e. Legend of Korra). This would probably work if done well, but there are some cases where it would work better to continue with the current generation a la Dragon Ball Super. However, Dragon Ball Super wasn't plagued by pairing wars there so it was in a good place.