Just a quick glance at the end of the novel rendered an interesting point that I wonder will be in the movie. Just by the choice of honorifics Sakura uses with her mother vs her father gives tons away about the family dynamics. Sakura calls her mother kasan, which is just kind a neutral (like saying Mom. If she said okasan that's rather formal and distant- like calling her "mother") with some formal emotional distance, but calls her father tochan (which is on the level of calling him "daddy") at the return scene at the end of the story.
(But we know already from what's been released that Mebuki is not a warm person and is quite prone to saying insulting things about her daughter to anyone and everyone.) I knew when I saw the way Sakura had so little self-esteem in part 1, and even moreso in the flashbacks when Sakura entered the Academy, that at least one of her parents had to be the type who never praised her, just told her how she didn't measure up,etc... and if it wasn't both parents, the other parent had to be passive about this and just say nothing to contradict the other parent. The passive parent might have felt bad to see their child unhappy though, and be nice and treat her to things when the harsh parent wasn't around. It's that second dynamic.
The illustrations have already been seen online, but the ones used in the back were nice to see clearly- if smaller than what we saw online- the character sketch drawings for Road to Ninja. Including the one of Sakura with a grinning Naruto face sketch to reference the height difference. And the one used of Mebuki is a different one than the one commonly seen with her arm outstreched with a face sketch of an annoyed Sakura used as height reference. The ones reproduced for the novel shows a front view and 3/4 view of Mebuki with a face sketch height reference of Sakura between the two sketches with a kind of scared and upset look. The one with the Kizashi character sketches is the one we saw where Sakura looks embarrassed. There's one of Naruto I don't recall seeing- he's wearing a T-shirt under his unzipped jacket that has either the blue Uzumaki symbol or the red Konoha version on it. His expression is pouty-faced.
Edited by ciardha, 09 August 2012 - 11:08 PM.