Naruto has some notoriously badly-written female characters, but none are hated more than Sakura Haruno. Even after years of analyzing and picking apart her character, the anime community continues to loathe her. It’s become abundantly clear it won’t stop unless they somehow rewrite history.
What fans fail to notice, however, is the distinction between how Masashi Kishimoto wrote her in Naruto and Studio Pierrot’s additional scenes that created this terrible reputation.
The main complaint about her character is how bossy she is, all of which were included in Pierrot’s version of Sakura. She isn’t nearly as hot-headed in the manga nor is she very callous with her words. Unfortunately, her character isn’t the only female character they’ve butchered.
Studio Pierrot might be to blame for Sakura’s reputation in the Naruto fandom
Sakura Haruno deserved better writing and that is a fact. She isn’t the most nuanced character and Masashi Kishimoto didn’t give her enough purpose in the overall storyline. She could’ve contributed a lot to Team 7 if he hadn’t sidelined her, but she’s unfortunately not the only victim of this writing.
Studio Pierrot, on the other hand, decided to take this to another level. Naruto was notorious for its filler scenes and Sakura’s character suffers the most from it. She’s hot-headed, mocks and beats Naruto a lot, and comes off as unintelligent at times.
Reddit fans have thankfully noticed it wasn’t Sakura herself at fault but rather the studio is to blame. Kishimoto had already ruined much of her development but the filler scenes were abysmal for her reputation. Moreover, the studio changed much of her dialogue to deliberately make her unlikeable.
In the manga, Sakura had a ton of positive points about her character. Where she lacks strength, she makes up for it with her compassion. She constantly tries to improve her skills. She’s wise beyond her years and fans forget she was trained by Tsunade herself, making her an excellent medical ninja.
She doesn’t stand out in Team 7 because of how extraordinary Sasuke and Naruto are. Despite being the brains of the group, her peers are the focus of the story. There’s nothing wrong with being ordinary but it caused an unfortunate sidelining of her character.
Sakura isn’t the only female character Studio Pierrot has ruined
Apart from Sakura, Pierrot has severely butchered other female characters outside of the Naruto universe. Orihime Inoue is another victim of the studio’s terrible representation of women.
Several of Orihime’s scenes in Bleach were given to Rukia Kuchiki. This caused major confusion in the fandom who truly believed Ichigo would end up with the latter. However, Kubo always intended him to end up with Orihime. She was just heavily sidelined by Studio Pierrot.
This pattern by the studio doesn’t bode well for them. Another example is Noelle from Black Clover. Her manga counterpart is way more likable and well-written. Pierrot has a penchant for twisting female characters into something they don’t deserve to be and Sakura got the worst treatment.
Naruto: Shippuden is available on Crunchyroll.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
