Sakura is Naruto’s Most Disrespected Hero, and Boruto Made it Worse

In the history of Naruto, few characters have as much missed potential as Sakura, and unfortunately, that only gets worse in Boruto. While the series’ most prominent female ninja earned her fans for a reason, it’s difficult to deny that she had so much more potential than was ever realized.

Sakura is something of a contradiction in the original Naruto. She is one of the three most important characters alongside Naruto and Sasuke and is present for many of the series’ most important moments, yet the importance of Naruto and Sasuke’s relationship has a side effect of pushing Sakura to the sidelines. While her two male squadmates get huge transformations and important plot twists regarding their backstories, Sakura gets relatively little. The revelation that Naruto and Sasuke are reincarnations of powerful rivals only further cements this. Tragically though, few of these issues were fixed with the release of Boruto.

While Sakura does have some prominence in Boruto as a powerful healer and as Sarada’s mother, her role in the series is limited. Sakura spends most of Boruto either caring for Sarada or worrying about Sasuke while he’s away on missions. She has quite a lot of time to do that too, as Sasuke is gone so frequently that he barely has a relationship with Sarada, leaving Sakura essentially a single mother. Additionally, though she does have a few fights in Boruto, she is frequently left out of larger fights that the adults participate in, such as Naruto and Sasuke’s fight against Ishhiki. Even more than the original, Sakura’s role in Boruto is just as a caretaker.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with making Sakura a caretaker, the problem is that Boruto consistently fails to recognize her as more than that and doesn’t follow up on her character development from Naruto. She spent so much of that original series having a crush on Sasuke, and her journey was about learning to find value in herself. Now in Boruto though, she’s back to feeling lonely without Sasuke. Instead of this loneliness being an important point that causes tension in their relationship though, it’s largely ignored. No matter how important Sasuke’s missions are, it feels like Sakura should be more upset with him. Her arc in Naruto actually becomes tragic in this light. She finally married the man of her dreams, but he’s never actually around.

Still, none of that is to suggest that her appearances in Boruto are all bad. Her job as Director of Konoha’s Medical Department is a logical step forward for her, and she is arguably the series’ best parent. At least she’s a much better parent than either Naruto or Sasuke. Still though, with all of her wasted potential in Naruto, it’s undoubtedly disappointing that Boruto hasn’t done more with the franchise’s most important female ninja.

About The Author

Evan Mullicane
(362 Articles Published)

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Evan D. Mullicane is an editor, critic, and author based out of California’s Bay Area. He received his bachelor’s degree in creative writing from San Francisco State University in 2016. In his free time, he enjoys reading graphic novels and writing fantasy.

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