Sakura Haruno can't make it big.

Sakura from the Naruto series is stuck

9/26/17

The Naruto series by Shonen Jump is an anime about a warring ninja society made of five leading lands, in a kind of modernized feudal world. It is a fantasy action series, involving the use of hand signs to use “chakra”, a kind of inner energy in the body that is similar to chi, an eastern practice of souls holding supernatural powers. Within fans of the show, this is one the most depressing tropes, in my opinion.

In this series, one of the most main female characters in the series is Sakura Haruno, who does not start out as an aspiring strong lead as a woman and… Has her most major goal to be in a relationship with fellow trainee ninja Sasuke Uchiha, in which the situation is worsened by her other fellow idiot trainee, Naruto Uzumaki the main character, who she rejects his affections and Sasuke rejects hers in return, it’s a nasty immature cycle that breaks them down as they all grow over the course of the show.

In a summary of her place in the series, all three of them grow closer through life risking missions for a regional government, as teenagers. How is this legal? Regardless, in terms of representing her skill, she starts as the most studious and has the most control and knowledge, but she has no idea how to use it. The two boys quickly race between themselves, racing past Sakura’s slow pace of growth. We don’t need to go into detail about what specifically this means, but here is an example of the kind of abilities you can grow into using in this Anime. Here is generally the best showcase at this point in the series of what she's capable of, see the difference?

By the earliest major shift in the story, Sasuke abandons his friends to seek personal strength with a rogue ex-ninja so he can gain revenge. The end result of this is Sakura even admitting herself that she is useless, in which her and Naruto begin to seek strength to ‘bring him back’. Over the course of the rest of the series, she undertakes study in the art of healing jutsu, feeling as though that taking a backseat role to others is the only way she can be useful.

This isn’t quite how it only plays out, as she gains some kind of ridiculous way to enhance her physical strength. While towards the end of the series she proves to be far above the average ninja, being at the head of her ranking in the series, once the two main Protagonist, and anti-Antagonist to-be rise over her once, she never catches up. She is brought to us as a simple girl with a crush going into military training (in a sense?), and is put on a backburner to the characters that are supposed to have just as much value, (granted only in a combat strength way, she isn't really taken away as story importance for the most part, but...). It’s not even just a case of putting a woman in a role of weakness; she always ends up portrayed that for all her hard work as still the worst of their group, it’s actually also a statement on being role locked, similarly to being class locked, she stays at the same comparative level through fighting as hard as she does to keep up with her direct "co-workers".

There is a lot of Women's representation that could be worse, and yet they made her take all these steps, just to make them completely cast aside to her male teammates' efforts, (don't ask if you really don't get anime).

Generally my point is, rather than literally casting and representing the woman itself poorly, is that the representation is flawed and useless itself when you just minimize all they were supposed to have done by glorifying those who don't need more glory, from a representation standpoint, young adult white men who are badasses, and one is an idiot.