The same chapter that Sakura’s introduced, she says this:
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Notice Sasuke’s expression? Now I know what Sakura says is offensive to Sasuke but imagine a child in real life reading this who is actually an orphan. What Sakura said here is outright infuriating because 1. you have to consider that in the world of Naruto, lives are more easily lost there than in real life(especially after the nine tails incident) 2. Sakura has an obvious infatuation on Sasuke but somehow doesn’t know that he has no parents himself. Naruto knew Sasuke had no parents. Hinata knew Naruto had no parents. What’s Sakura’s excuse? 3. Sakura takes her parents for granted, which is expanded more into the Road to ninja movie when she’s older and she STILL takes her family for granted, despite that being a filler movie that Kishi had a part in making.
So it’s quite obvious that Sakura started the hate on her own and ironically, it seems Kishimoto INTENDED to make Sakura an annoying character, which makes sense when you consider how many times Sasuke calls her annoying without a care in the world.
Sakura’s crush on Sasuke from the beginning was by far the most annoying thing in part 1 of Naruto because it’s more than just it being a silly fangirl fiasco. It causes Sakura to break her friendship with Ino (the same girl who defended her from bullies and gave her self-confidence). Ino never gave any implication of wanting to break her friendship with Sakura, despite her having a crush on Sasuke as well. The series clearly shows Sakura was the one who stopped their friendship and for what? A guy that she knew nothing about? Seriously, both Sakura and Ino knew nothing about Sasuke other than the fact that he’s cute and he supposedly likes girls with long hair. I was one stupid kid to not realize what Sakura had done there. Needless to say, Sakura is extremely idiotic. I get that she was 12 years old but Ino never let a man come between her friends. Even Sakura mentioned at least once that Ino is more mature than her and it’s true.
But Sakura’s crush on Sasuke is more of a problem for her than this. From beginning to end, Sakura’s goal was always Sasuke. Nothing more, nothing less. Sakura never had a real interest in being a ninja.
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671 chapters later and all Kakashi can say about Sakura at this pinnacle moment is her feelings for Sasuke.
When Sasuke is about to leave Konoha, she confesses in such a way that feels beyond forced.
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Here, Sakura is under the impression that she knows now the same pain that Sasuke was referring to in being alone. First, Sakura states that if Sasuke leaves, she’ll be as alone as he is, even though she just acknowledged she has family and friends. Is she being serious here? Keep in mind that Sasuke has never done anything for Sakura in the way that Minato supported Kushina or how Naruto influenced Hinata. Sasuke is, in fact, a cute boy who’s on her team, nothing more to it. And yet she casts aside her friends and family for this one boy! That is just disgusting! I can’t think of any better word for it. Sorry.
Second, Sakura never takes into account about how Sasuke feels. She simply talks about herself and how she will feel if he leaves. Sakura goes so far as to offer to leave with him, leaving behind her family and for what? A chance for Sasuke to like her back? The main problem here is that she’s just forcing her feelings upon Sasuke at this very moment. Then, when her confession fails, she literally runs to Naruto for help, the same Naruto she always looked at as a failure and took him for granted. When he fails to bring back Sasuke, that’s when she suddenly decides to take her shinobi training seriously.
Overall, Sakura in part 1 is easily one of the worst characters written in manga history. No question about it. She served no purpose than just being emotional baggage. She never made an impact in the story and let’s not forget that she was given the role as the main heroine in the manga.
Fast forward to the shippuden timeline and Sakura in the beginning was showing great promise as a character. However, after the team 7 reunion, Sakura’s character takes a downward spiral.
The five kage summit arc was the biggest regression of her character by far. This is where I question Sakura’s character and her motives here because she ends up being guilt tripped by Sai over what Naruto has been through with Sasuke (which is another f*** up on her part for the fact that Sai, of all people, is making her realize she possibly made Naruto’s life harder by burdening him with Sasuke) and decides to manipulate Naruto’s feelings with a fake love confession.
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Naruto easily sees through Sakura’s lie but this is where Kishimoto leaves up to interpretation. If Naruto did believe Sakura’s confession, what was she going to do in the long run, especially after she made the connection that Hinata loves Naruto? If Sakura was successful in killing Sasuke, what was she going to do with Naruto? Just live a forced relationship with him? Throughout the confession, she just mentions Sasuke’s name, which was probably a huge tipoff to Naruto that she was lying. Any way you look at this, this confession makes Sakura a real ***** because 1- she tried to manipulate Naruto’s feelings. For what Naruto has been through, he deserves better than that, especially from his own teammate. 2- she does this behind Hinata’s back after realizing that she nearly died for Naruto out of love for him. It’s bad enough that she ruined her friendship with Ino over Sasuke but now she almost comes in between Naruto and Hinata for the sake of easing her guilt. 3- she has been with Naruto for so long but never caught onto the fact that Naruto wanted to bring back Sasuke for his own reasons. Sakura was always under the impression that Naruto was doing this for her, which Naruto corrected her on.
After that failure of a confession, she attempts to go after Sasuke on her own by knocking out her own comrades with gas, showing she’s not much of a trustworthy comrade. Then, after all that, Sakura hesitates to kill Sasuke TWICE after she just did all the things she did. I don’t blame Sakura for hesitating to kill Sasuke. I’m blaming Sakura for not even considering the fact that she may fail to go through with her decision BEFORE she attempted to do any of this like lying to Naruto, lying to her friends, going behind Naruto’s back to kill Sasuke on her own. Sakura let her guilt overcome her mentality which, in the long run, made Sakura a pointless character in that arc entirely. In fact, her involvement caused nothing but a hindrance to Naruto because he ended up getting poisoned by Sasuke through his attempt at saving Sakura from getting killed.
Now let’s move on to the war. Kishimoto does something obviously wrong, weird and kind of ironic. In chapter 633, Sakura achieves a powerup after complaining about always looking at Naruto and Sasuke’s back and always being saved by them but within the same chapter, Sakura STILL ends up needing to be saved by them immediately after showing she can fight alongside them. And in chapter 676, Sakura fails to even attempt teamwork with Naruto and Sasuke by charging at Madara alone to create a diversion and results in the two boys saving her ONCE AGAIN.
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Afterwards, she feels saddened that Sasuke doesn’t care for her, despite the fact that they’re in the middle of a battle for the sake of the world, she still obsesses over Sasuke. In chapter 680, during the Kaguya fight, Sasuke leaves her to fall in the lava without a second thought.
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This is where Sasusaku begins to look like shit for me because it’s bad enough that Sasuke attempted to kill Sakura TWICE but he literally gave NO ****s about Sakura being incinerated. Sasuke catching Sakura falling from exhaustion doesn’t compare that he already tried to leave her for dead. Chapter 693 is the ultimate nail in the coffin for Sakura’s character development and the Sasusaku pairing to me. Sakura confesses to Sasuke a second time and generally, the main idea behind her words are more or less the same because all Sakura is saying is for Sasuke to stay because she loves him. After she’s done talking, Sasuke says she’s annoying once again and casts a genjutsu that has him impaling Sakura through her chest.
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Sasuke’s words rang a lot of realism because what he said after was the truth: Sakura has NO real reason to love him and vice versa. Even Karin has a relatively good reason to have feelings for Sasuke. He saved her life before they even knew each other. Not once has there been any sort of elaboration on Sakura’s feelings for Sasuke, which makes no sense on Kishimoto’s part since Sakura is a main character and the most notable thing about her character is not even that well developed. And this is why the concept of Sasusaku suffers. Sasuke is not a character who you can just throw into a relationship. There is NO commonality between them whatsoever. Minato and Kushina both aimed to be hokage. Naruto and Hinata are both stubborn, headstrong and went through childhood regarded as failures. Shikamaru and Temari are both analytical shinobi. Sasuke and Sakura don’t have anything they share in common. Look at gaiden for example. According to Gaiden, Sasuke never even bothered to have a wedding photo or ANY real photo of Sakura and him together and no one can convince that Sasuke just didn’t have the time. If he had time to impregnate Sakura and marry her, they could’ve taken at least one measly picture together. I mean Sasuke had time to take a picture with team Taka and he was a fugitive at the time. Sarada confirmed my views on Sasusaku when even she pointed how weird the relationship between her two parents are.
Not to mention, Sakura had NO right to be upset about Sarada’s questioning when she has every right to know the business of her OWN family. Sakura has no other person to blame but herself about why Sarada felt the way she did because Sakura was clearly never being completely honest to Sarada regarding her own father. This shows how delusional or ignorant Sakura is when it comes to her relationship with Sasuke because she resorts to an immediate violent response instead of explaining things to her daughter, which is what parents do. Sarada is a growing girl. Did Sakura really think Sarada wasn’t going to eventually grow curious about the things in her life? Here’s the funny thing: remember when Sakura punched Sai for stating the truth about Sasuke? Sakura pulled the exact same immature bullshit again and for what? Hearing the facts?
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