Naruto: Sakura Haruno

I knew I would have to cover this character sooner or later, so today is the day: Sakura Haruno from Naruto!

Naruto is a manga series by Masashi Kishimoto, and also happens to be my favourite manga of all time! Anyhow, Naruto had its premiere September 21st year 1999 in the popular Japanese magazine "Shueisha's Weekly Shounen Jump Magazine", and got very positive reviews, which made Kishimoto and a studio make an anime out of it. There's also games, movies, cosplays, merchandise... everything!

But something that most of the anime community agrees on is that Sakura is, in one word, useless. She is one of the most hated characters ever, and if you ask me, for good reasons too... I may explain more and give my opinion in another blog post, but I don't want to hate on something someone worked so hard for, so I probably will just leave the information like this. If you are interested in why she is such a strongly disliked character, look it up and take your time to read.

Let's get into the practical facts about Sakura Haruno!

Sakura Haruno is a kunoichi, meaning female ninja, from Konohagakure, meaning Village Hidden In The Leaves. I'll be talking about Sakura in both Part I (Naruto) and Part II (Naruto Shippuuden). I am excluding Boruto because it would most likely be too long of a blog post.

Personality: As a child, Sakura was very insecure about her appearance, especialy her large forehead. She got constantly teased for it by being called "Forehead Girl". At the start of Part I, Sakura typically greets superiors in polite manners, considerant to her peers and confident in herself. Often though, Sakura switches on a button that reveals all of her jealousy, delinquency and anger. These are her "Inner Sakura", and feelings she prefers to keep to herself to not have bad reputation among friends, her crush, other Shinobi, etc. As Part I progresses, Sakura begins to become more and more aware of the world and the life as a real Shinobi. She often lets her teammates be the ones to save her whenever she is in danger, making her feel disappointed in herself, and the insecurity comes rushing back. She finally feels reality kick in; she needs to change for the better, not the worse, so she trains hard under one of the most powerful medical ninja in the world, caled Tsunade Senju. In Part II, we can see that her training under her mentor paid off, as she is able to finally fight and heal others properly and professionally, making her a stronger kunoichi than she was in Part I.

Appearance: Sakura has fair skin, green eyes and shoulder-length pink hair. In Part I, Sakura is 12-13 years old, 148-150 cm tall and weighs 35 kg. She wears a red qipao dress with a white cirle on the back, which is the Haruno clan's symbol, and short green pants under so she can move freely. She also wears the regular ninja sandals and a standard Konoha headband that she chose to wear as a hairband, that proves her being an official Shinobi, both in the colour blue. In Part II, Sakura is 15-17 years old, 161 cm tall and weighs 45 kg. Her appearance is fairly similar compared to Part I, except for a few changes such as changing her red qipao dress to a red qipao top and gray shorts underneath a gray apron shirts (the apron shirt and her elbow protectors are pink in the anime). She also wears gray boots and black gloves now, and she changed her headband colour to red. Her feminine side has not really changed however... neither appearance-wise or personality-wise...