application
[nick / name]: Muffin
[personal LJ name]: syntheses
[other characters currently played]:
N/A
[e-mail]: dancingdarkribbon@gmail.com
[AIM / messenger]: strikingthorn
[series]: Naruto
[character]: Sakura Haruno
[character history / background]: http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Sakura_Haruno
[character abilities]: Sakura, being a female in Naruto, has a myriad of interesting, special abilities.
Oh, who are we kidding. Sakura’s only stand out trait in Part 1 was her exceptional intelligence, which, was used to justify her role as Mrs. Exposition, which she shared with Kakashi. Her intelligence was considered on genius level, as Ibiki Morino, conductor of the written test, said no Genin should be able to answer all of the questions correctly. Our commonly shafted pink haired medic, however, was able to breeze through the test with ease. This trait has been recognized by her peers, as Ino possessed her because she knew she had the answers (on this note, it’s implied that Shikamaru couldn’t even answer some of them with Ino’s dialogue stating that she had to remember the test for both of them). Of course, like most of her talents, this was immediately eclipsed when it was shown that the test was really just a fraud to test how people can gather information off of each other. This means that she probably acted as a catalyst for a whole classroom to cheat off of her. This intelligence, along with her keen analyzing skills helped her overcome most forms of deception and genjutsu.
Because she focused on her studies so hard, she became memetically infamous for her lack of use on the battlefield for part one. Of course, this also helped seal the fanbase opinion that intelligence truly does mean nothing if you can shoot fireballs out of your mouth.
Also of note of her part one abilities, Sakura has amazing chakra control. She was able to use techniques as skilled as possible, without wasting any excess chakra. Kakashi even said her abilities in this aspect surpassed Sasuke’s. Unfortunately, Sakura had little to no jutsu so she could properly demonstrate this control with, unlike Sasuke. But this control did make her a badass, as covered in our next paragraph!
Then Sakura took consecutive Nintendo Lessons in Badass by taking boxing lessons from a woman, Tsunade the Sannin, that can wield a sky scraper sized knife. This seriously needed new upgrade also improved her in other areas, she could detect Kakashi when even Naruto failed, and, she was able to demonstrate her intelligence by manipulating two fellow Chuunin’s (her rank) into fighting with an ANBU (a rank supposedly above Sakura’s).
Of course, since Sakura is a female in Naruto, she’s been trained to be a heavily skilled medic, similar to half of the female cast. What makes her stand out from your average cookie-cutter medic-nin Kunoichi is that Sakura was trained by Tsunade, an exceptional healer whose skill helped win a war, and was stated by a fellow Sannin to be the only one that could repair his arms. Her skills as a medic are explicitly stated to be unsurpassed in the ninja world. Sakura, being trained by this extraordinary paragon of medical talent, has considerable abilities as a medic. She was able to heal a poisoned Kankuro, when Chiyo, your resident poison specialist, stated that the poison could not be counteracted and thought that Kankuro would die. Not only did Sakura heal Kankuro quickly but she also made antidotes for all of her friends! She’s also able to use poison offensively by Shizune, Tsunade’s former apprentice. It’s effects, like a majority of Sakura’s abilities, are implied to be deadly when Kakashi orders her to get the antidote or Naruto will die. She’s also able to make sleeping gasses by Tsunade, which were able make people drop to the ground near instantaneously.
As for actual healing abilities, she’s been shown to heal a little girl’s scraped knee very quickly, and she was able to heal herself while she had a poisonous sword, of all things, slammed into her stomach. This also demonstrates her intelligence, because, if anything 1000 ways to die has taught me, it’s that you do not remove foreign objects once they’re inserted into you.
Since Sakura has been taking combat 101 from a woman that decimated an entire city street with a kick, Sakura’s hand to hand combat has improved. She’s able to summon immense strength without even thinking about it, and, canonly, one of her punches has explicitly been stated to cause death if they’re struck at full strength. Thank god she knows her own strength, or Konoha would be trapped in a constant series of Earthquakes. Sakura has been shown to cause immense fissures in the ground with a single punch, and she’s been able to reduce hard, wooden puppets to rubble. Sakura can also evade a bunch of attacks. Sakura was able to fight 100 puppets without getting attacked once, while taking out a ridiculous proportion of them. She’s so skilled in evasion, she’s able to read attacks and fighting styles which helps enhance her dodging skills. With this, Sakura has the evasion skills of your opponent in a pokemon battle tower after about 7 double teams. Good luck hitting that.
Sakura has also increased her endurance, because she’s been training with the previously mentioned woman who survived getting stabbed in her torso multiple times! She’s able to survive explosives to the face, being stabbed by multiple poisonous blades, and being strangled by Sasuke Uchiha.
Sakura has been stated to be exceptionally skilled at Genjutsu, which really does explain how, in the series, the only thing she ever did involving Genjutsu was dispelling it (the video games have her use Genjutsu that seems to involve Inner Sakura, which, in the video games, is ...Sakura except about 50 feet, in black and white, has writing on her forehead and is constantly hellbent furious. Sakura would crush or punch the opponent, only to have the stimuli revealed as genjutsu).
[character personality]:
To understand what and why Sakura is the way she is today and the canon point I’m taking her from, we have to look at her from part one for a brief second. In part one, Sakura’s only skill that was noted frequently was her astounding intelligence, and, without any other skills of her own, Sakura used this to explain to Naruto the importance of the plot and general settings in a holier-than-thou manner. This is exceptionally evident in part one when Naruto, for the viewers benefit, was absolutely clueless on most things relating to the Ninja world (even the term kill in action) and Sakura would display self-righteous irritation before explaining to him and demeaning him at the same time. She was somewhat temperamental and quick to punching or yelling at Naruto, and pretty much had every little thing revolved around being a smitten doormat for Sasuke.
Yeah, we’re quite clueless on why, in a world filled with strife from pretty much everywhere and high ambition at every other turn, Sakura’s main goal in life was... not even audible. She self-censored by giggling and looking at Sasuke while she put down Naruto, who obviously liked her. Such high ambition, right?
And then came the time when Sasuke and Naruto were out in the forest and three people of nominal importance attacked her. Sakura, only armed with substitution and some shoddy booby-traps that were instantly destroyed, decided to take matters into her own hands. For the very first time, she expressed that she recognized she was the load and that she wanted to fix that for both Sasuke and Naruto. Then Sasuke abandons the village to live with a gay snake man in a cave, and this fuels Sakura’s ambition to bring Sasuke back home, which she promised to Naruto.
Cutting to my canon point, Sakura is a young, optimistic and determined girl. The annoying, irritable, Mrs. Exposition load days are a thing of the past and she’s moved on to have some massive character development.
Sakura, while confident in her skills, has simmered down quite a bit. She still plays the role of explaining things for the titular character (and Audience’s) benefit from time to time, but it’s mostly through either self-monologues or firm explanation, like when she explains about Itachi’s genjutsu. It’s no longer a degrading session where she chews him out, unless he doesn’t understand or has some severe difficulty getting it. Sakura’s confidence has increased, she’s able to harden her stances on what she can do, as seen when Chiyo calls Kankuro a lost cause, only for her to adamantly state that she can save him (which, she promptly does). Her confidence is also displayed when she briefly headed a hospital to aid the wounded during Pain’s invasion, which definitely takes a lot of courage and patience. She does get a bit over-confident on occasion, and sometimes veers outside her limitations. This is evident when she believes she can attack and kill Sasuke, even though she does have emotional limits which ended up interfering with the battle. This is also shown when she found herself confident to disregard Kakashi’s orders. Sakura’s confidence has also affected her social situations, in part one, Sakura’s real outbursts of anger were often locked behind Inner Sakura, or a side of her only the viewer saw. Sakura, however, in Part II, freely expresses what she wishes to express. This is indicated on how she shouts at Naruto when he fails to grasp a concept, slaps him sometimes during his perverted moments, and punches Sai for attacking Sasuke. The lack of Inner Sakura’s appearances further indicate that she no longer needs Inner Sakura to express her true feelings, as Sakura does that quite well on her own. Naruto even states that Sakura doesn’t beat around the bush anymore. With these examples, it should be obvious that Sakura is blunt. She doesn’t really hold anything back and gives her honest opinion, but she can respect other opinions. This is evident on how even though she desired Sasuke to come back home, she respected Shikamaru’s decision to personally stop Sasuke and his actions. Sakura isn’t tactless, however, and commonly displays a gentle side. If people fail to understand or get her irritable, which isn’t too hard because her two and a half years of training have left her with Tsunade’s volatile temper, Sakura will just shout and reinforce her opinion with a more angry and stern explanation. She’ll even use this on Sasuke, who she personally tossed herself as a doormat as during Part 1. In fact, her confidence and her ability to give her opinion sternly even lends to talking down to Sasuke when he puts down Naruto, showing how she has truly developed from Sasuke’s biggest fan to a person that has well rounded values and cares about others besides her crush.
Sakura is also a determinator. She doesn’t ever give up, and this was a trait evident in part one if you glanced hard enough. This trait was first shown in her fight against the people from the Sound Village. Clearly outmatched, she still took them on and never, ever, gave up. She took punches the face, shurikens, and, when out of jutsu to use, just ended up biting a ninja on the arm as he punched her. Woo! Go Sakura! Her determination extends to the point where she took on a crazed Gaara with nothing but a kunai and... well, she nearly died but it’s the thought that counts! She didn’t give up! Even when she was being slowly crushed by sand for no reason other than Naruto to rescue her! This trait of awesomeness further extends itself to the battle with Sasori, and is especially evident with this quote, “I’ll get you!! Even if you blow off my arms and legs, if you take in your poison and it paralyzes me, I’ll get you, I swear it!! No matter how much you resist, no matter what you do! I’ll beat you half to death and make you talk about Orochimaru!” Holy son of a fuck. She said this to Sasori of the Red Sand. A man who killed the Kazekage, the leader of the sand village, and turned him into a puppet. He, most likely, without Chiyo’s assistance, could have killed her and yet she still stated that to his face. The quote itself states about her determination. She could be stabbed to the point where she isn’t even recognizable, and limbless, but she’s not going down until she’s dead. And even then, she’s still not giving up until you give her what she wanted. Another quote which shows off Sakura’s incredible determination is, “My flower is the daffodil. It’s a persistent flower that shows its gruesome face even in the blaze of winter. Patiently waiting for a reprieve without bowing to the monstrous savagery”. Have you ever seen something look more badass?. Her determination also convinced her to attempt to kill Sasuke, even though this meant forsaking Kakashi’s orders. She obviously was planning and had intentions to kill him, only for her determination to waver at the last moment.
However, Sakura isn’t just about eating nails and steel for breakfast. She normally displays a calm, gentle, yet positive demeanor. This is shown to still exist during times of great stress, such as Pain’s attack on the village. She fiercely strikes a giant centipede, killing it. After this, Sakura calmly, and with a smile, turns to a little crying girl and begins to heal her knee. In fact, her usual demeanor is slightly upbeat and generally very kind. This is shown in her common interactions with Naruto, and the rest of Konoha. After Naruto is injured, Sakura even offers to help feed him since he can’t feed himself. A thought that both of them seemed pleased at. Sakura also hugged Naruto when he returned from fighting Pain. Sakura is also more patient and gentle when it comes to Naruto being...himself, rather than part one when it was just vicious tongue-lashings and girl on guy abuse. Now, she only gives him a slightly enhanced slap when he does something perverted, or when he really, really is acting thick headed. Sakura attempts to help multiple strangers. This was evident even in the far beginning of part one - when a starving kid grabbed her purse she, after nearly attacking it because she mistook the grab for a pervert, gave the kid some food and listened to Tazuna’s story. She felt sympathetic and rather disheartened by the hardships the children went through. This gentle sympathy allowed her to understand Naruto’s pain as a host to a demon fox that no one likes, and has even lent itself to occasions where she firmly consoles Naruto stating that tears won’t bring Sasuke back. She also has a kind, focused demeanor when it comes to dealing with patients. This sympathy even extends to her enemies like Sasori. She felt sorrowful that he had such a terrible background, but her sympathy is not boundless. She will still attack and fight an enemy, even if they had a horrible past if they’re still doing horrible actions. While it’s not clear why she does this, Sakura, as a very empathetic person, may not want others to be subjected to horrible lives. People will live awful lives if these criminals are still at large. Sakura also wishes herself to be as useful as possible, stemming from her genin days and her will to become stronger so she isn’t useless anymore. With this, not only would killing criminals that could terrorize others and have doomsday agendas be considered exceptionally useful, but, it’d also be of use to the community at large. In fact, Sakura’s motivation for getting stronger and maturing was to aid Naruto, who she felt guilty for doing next to nothing as he nearly got himself killed by fighting Sasuke. With this, Sakura’s personal goal was to get stronger for the sake of bringing Sasuke home. If she loses or screws up, it’s considered weakness. She doesn’t want to be the classic, and often hated by the fandom, neutral female. Sakura works hard to affirm herself and her use, even if it means helping out complete strangers to prove her worth. With this, Sakura’s greatest fear is explicitly letting down people close to her or being useless. This is seen when she laments that all she could do is heal Naruto when he ends up exerting himself by fighting as the four-tails. And this is also seen when Sai summarizes the anguish Naruto goes through for her, which triggers her guilt and makes her think that she hasn’t been pulling her weight (which isn’t exactly true). This motivates her to try to kill Sasuke. As stated many times in this, she doesn’t like being the load and she refuses with everything she has to be put back into that position, even if it means disobeying the occasional order from time to time. Besides a few slip-ups here and there, Sakura does mostly follow the order’s she is given by her commanding superiors. After all, disobeying them doesn’t really make her useful. In fact, she even states this about being useful, “Death is not something to be afraid of... Worse than death is a life that helps no one. I’m not afraid of giving my life if it’ll help someone important to me.”
However, despite all of these good, and somewhat negative traits, Sakura’s most interesting (and most divisive) is the occasional waver. Unlike most Shonen Manga where improvement is always steady, Sakura sometimes staggers a bit and takes a step back before proceeding. Sometimes, she’ll have total despair or a sense of depressing hopelessness, as seen with her awful, botched attempt to kill Sasuke. This starkly contrasts with her usual calm, yet joyful, hopeful, determined and confident manner. Sakura, despite her confidence, can also be self-conscious sometimes as seen when she reacts negatively to Naruto stating she hasn’t changed her looks and is still the same old Sakura, and her reactions to Sai’s statements about her state of appearance. She also sometimes frets over her usefulness. And, despite her maturity and her ability to take charge in hard situations (see Kankuro poisoned and taking over the Konoha Hospital as an invasion is going on outside), she can still sometimes make rushed, immature and rash decisions, such as her fake confession to Naruto. It is this waver, these brief moments where she gets into frustrating emotional lows, and her character development begins to grind before going backwards, that truly makes her represent the idea of human weakness. However, all weaknesses can be covered or at least persevered through and Sakura, once acknowledging that she made a mess, proceeds to veer forward and to improve next time. This is immediately shown after her distressing situation after attempting to kill Sasuke, where she begins to go back to kicking ass and taking names - mostly of extremely durable naked purely white half-plant clones but it’s the idea that counts here! She also wavers on her more prudish outlook on life, from condemning Naruto’s totally perverted trash to .... um, having thoughts about watching Sasuke pee and approving Konohamaru’s guy on guy sexy jutsu.
Yep. Do I have words to explain this? .... I’ll try and find some....eventually.
In short, Sakura is sort of like your average teenage girl except she’s a ninja that can heal nearly anything and has monstrous strength.
P.S She also wavers on her confident, upbeat day-to-day attitude but after some self-reflection she gets over it and she kicks ass.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Chapter 545, as she realizes some key information about Zetsu during the autopsy. What a moment to get kidnapped, huh?
[journal post]:
Seriously? I have to jump through a hole with an umbrella just to get clothes?! I can see why these curses aren’t well liked already... [ Only a week in the city and Sakura is a victim of a curse. She decided to get clothing because being in her standard Chuunin outfit for her days was really disgusting. She needed real clothes to use if she was going to be in a city, and not battle worn clothes.
Her tone moves to annoyance to her usual voice. It sounds rather gentle and positive, but there’s a tad hint of worry in it. ] Still, it sounds like I got off rather easy. [ Compared to other people at least. Sakura knows that there are all different types of people who fall on various points of the good and bad spectrum, but people could get injured doing these dangerous things in an unsuitable environment. She wants to be useful and helpful here. I mean, after all, she can at least help the good guys which would definitely be needed, or at least wanted ]
If anyone needs to be healed, feel free to contact me. No wound is too small for me to look at. [ And now her voice moves back to its usual positive demeanor, without a tone of worry. Now to bring up her second point. ]
Hey, would anyone want to hang out later on? I still need to grasp the basics of this place a bit more, and I’d like to make some friends. [ She figures she’ll most likely need them in this place. Being the only Konoha ninja is suffering ]
[third person / log sample]:
The infirmary was eerily silent. Besides some pained reactions to some tentative movements, most of the wounded soldiers lied still. The heavily negative atmosphere was nearly palpable. However, in this overcrowded infirmary during war there was some sort of positive determination. Sakura, with her hair pinned up for working purposes, was busy healing a man in the far right.
“I can’t afford myself to give up here; I have to heal him.” She thought as she applied the mystical palm technique to the guy’s stomach, which looked grotesque and torn open. Sakura’s self-musings kept her alert and focused, which is exactly the desirable effect for a medic-nin. Her confidence was a positive and welcoming thing that illuminated the rest of the sickly bodies. She was going to try to heal as much people as she could, and anything less than that would be unacceptable to her.
But still, even as her determination motivated her to move forward, she couldn’t help but to look back. She began to recall the plan for her to kill Sasuke and the utter heart-wrenching guilt she felt when she failed. She knew she still loved him, but she didn’t quite understand why she held back. He seemed all to eager to strangle and kill her. She could point a guess that she was too sympathetic towards him being his former teammate, which normally wouldn’t hold her back from attacking someone if they’d cause so much suffering to other people, and how she’d probably drive Naruto further into his pained life which consists of trying to bring Sasuke home for her. She felt even worse when Naruto rescued her, and her feelings quickly moved into an utter, hopeless, depressing despair when she ended up poisoning him with the kunai that was meant to kill Sasuke. If one word could some up Sakura’s view on herself in that moment, it’d be the word burden. She’s been trying so hard not to be one since two and a half years ago when she willingly sliced off her hair to protect her teammates, but in the end she still failed.
Luckily, for her, determination always preservers against wavering. Sakura, realizing she was becoming distracted, quickly set her attention on the wound and sped up the slightly lagging healing process. She knew she could heal this man, she’s healed herself with a sword lodged into her before.
“I’m not going to hold back anymore. I may not be as strong as Naruto or Sasuke, but I can still be just as useful as either of them. I won’t allow myself to be a burden any longer. I’ll make a name for myself right here and now and prove myself.” She forced herself to muse on the past to build a better incentive for her healing. She knew she was going to make rounds after this and heal every living person here. She was determined to do more than heal, she’d join her allies on the battlefield and aid them with whatever they needed there - be it combat or healing.
“I’m not going to give up ever again. I’m going try again until I can do it right!” By now, the smiling, weary and somewhat drained nightly look of Sakura’s exhausting work all over the infirmary turned into a very narrow glance of pure resolve. She continued to heal the man and made noticeable progress, within a half-an-hour, the man’s stomach was finally closed and it looked normal. Sakura was proud of what she just did and it showed brilliantly in her smile. She succeeded in what she set out to do.
With her smile of confidence and pride, she turned her face towards the man, “All right. You look all better, but try not to let yourself get injured again, okay?”. Sakura felt bad and empathetic towards his brutal injury and that the man went through so much pain, but she was exponentially glad he felt better. Not only did this prove to herself that she was a magnificent healer, but the man looked nearly unscathed.
Sakura’s positive energy became noticeably visible again, and, with this challenge that required focus and concentration accomplished, she felt she needed to precaution the man into one last thing, “Now rest up. You’re exhausted.”
She turned towards the entrance and began to think about how far she’s come. She went from a whiny, fiercely short-fused girl who did absolutely nothing to support her comrades, except Sasuke, to a girl who was more than powerful in her own right, and exceptionally gentle and kind towards nearly everyone. Sure she can get a bit frustrated and shout at Naruto, and maybe occasionally hit or slap him, but she felt that she had more lenience with him because they’re teammates and because it’s a hell of a lot better than the old beat-ups she gave him. Besides, someone had to keep his perversion in check. She’s mellowed out mostly since then, besides her occasional temper.
“I can’t believe how different I was back then.” Sakura wondered to herself as she began to move to the next patient. Of course, the memories of her days as a genin lead her thoughts back to Sasuke. She knew there was nothing she could do personally to bring him home, and that the rest lied with Naruto, but, she decided that she’d support Naruto and help him in any way she could. It was the best she could do regarding the situation, and, chances are, it’d help him out a lot. She needed to prove to him especially that she isn’t a burden anymore, and that she is still able to support him at the very least. Her latest interaction with him, which included poisoning him, was all the more motivation for her to make up for her past mistake and to help Naruto.
“Sakura, I need to see you.” Neji Hyuuga, one of her teammates from the Konoha 11 and therefore a loosely regarded friend, showed up at the doorway. He looked perfectly fine, wondering what he’d need to see her for, but Sakura decided she’ll find out anyways.
Sakura’s gentle and kind demeanor didn’t waver at the sudden appearance. She decided she’d caution him now about waking up the resting patients, “Okay, but be quiet. I don’t want any of the sleeping patients to wake up.”
[personal LJ name]: syntheses
[other characters currently played]:
N/A
[e-mail]: dancingdarkribbon@gmail.com
[AIM / messenger]: strikingthorn
[series]: Naruto
[character]: Sakura Haruno
[character history / background]: http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Sakura_Haruno
[character abilities]: Sakura, being a female in Naruto, has a myriad of interesting, special abilities.
Oh, who are we kidding. Sakura’s only stand out trait in Part 1 was her exceptional intelligence, which, was used to justify her role as Mrs. Exposition, which she shared with Kakashi. Her intelligence was considered on genius level, as Ibiki Morino, conductor of the written test, said no Genin should be able to answer all of the questions correctly. Our commonly shafted pink haired medic, however, was able to breeze through the test with ease. This trait has been recognized by her peers, as Ino possessed her because she knew she had the answers (on this note, it’s implied that Shikamaru couldn’t even answer some of them with Ino’s dialogue stating that she had to remember the test for both of them). Of course, like most of her talents, this was immediately eclipsed when it was shown that the test was really just a fraud to test how people can gather information off of each other. This means that she probably acted as a catalyst for a whole classroom to cheat off of her. This intelligence, along with her keen analyzing skills helped her overcome most forms of deception and genjutsu.
Because she focused on her studies so hard, she became memetically infamous for her lack of use on the battlefield for part one. Of course, this also helped seal the fanbase opinion that intelligence truly does mean nothing if you can shoot fireballs out of your mouth.
Also of note of her part one abilities, Sakura has amazing chakra control. She was able to use techniques as skilled as possible, without wasting any excess chakra. Kakashi even said her abilities in this aspect surpassed Sasuke’s. Unfortunately, Sakura had little to no jutsu so she could properly demonstrate this control with, unlike Sasuke. But this control did make her a badass, as covered in our next paragraph!
Then Sakura took consecutive Nintendo Lessons in Badass by taking boxing lessons from a woman, Tsunade the Sannin, that can wield a sky scraper sized knife. This seriously needed new upgrade also improved her in other areas, she could detect Kakashi when even Naruto failed, and, she was able to demonstrate her intelligence by manipulating two fellow Chuunin’s (her rank) into fighting with an ANBU (a rank supposedly above Sakura’s).
Of course, since Sakura is a female in Naruto, she’s been trained to be a heavily skilled medic, similar to half of the female cast. What makes her stand out from your average cookie-cutter medic-nin Kunoichi is that Sakura was trained by Tsunade, an exceptional healer whose skill helped win a war, and was stated by a fellow Sannin to be the only one that could repair his arms. Her skills as a medic are explicitly stated to be unsurpassed in the ninja world. Sakura, being trained by this extraordinary paragon of medical talent, has considerable abilities as a medic. She was able to heal a poisoned Kankuro, when Chiyo, your resident poison specialist, stated that the poison could not be counteracted and thought that Kankuro would die. Not only did Sakura heal Kankuro quickly but she also made antidotes for all of her friends! She’s also able to use poison offensively by Shizune, Tsunade’s former apprentice. It’s effects, like a majority of Sakura’s abilities, are implied to be deadly when Kakashi orders her to get the antidote or Naruto will die. She’s also able to make sleeping gasses by Tsunade, which were able make people drop to the ground near instantaneously.
As for actual healing abilities, she’s been shown to heal a little girl’s scraped knee very quickly, and she was able to heal herself while she had a poisonous sword, of all things, slammed into her stomach. This also demonstrates her intelligence, because, if anything 1000 ways to die has taught me, it’s that you do not remove foreign objects once they’re inserted into you.
Since Sakura has been taking combat 101 from a woman that decimated an entire city street with a kick, Sakura’s hand to hand combat has improved. She’s able to summon immense strength without even thinking about it, and, canonly, one of her punches has explicitly been stated to cause death if they’re struck at full strength. Thank god she knows her own strength, or Konoha would be trapped in a constant series of Earthquakes. Sakura has been shown to cause immense fissures in the ground with a single punch, and she’s been able to reduce hard, wooden puppets to rubble. Sakura can also evade a bunch of attacks. Sakura was able to fight 100 puppets without getting attacked once, while taking out a ridiculous proportion of them. She’s so skilled in evasion, she’s able to read attacks and fighting styles which helps enhance her dodging skills. With this, Sakura has the evasion skills of your opponent in a pokemon battle tower after about 7 double teams. Good luck hitting that.
Sakura has also increased her endurance, because she’s been training with the previously mentioned woman who survived getting stabbed in her torso multiple times! She’s able to survive explosives to the face, being stabbed by multiple poisonous blades, and being strangled by Sasuke Uchiha.
Sakura has been stated to be exceptionally skilled at Genjutsu, which really does explain how, in the series, the only thing she ever did involving Genjutsu was dispelling it (the video games have her use Genjutsu that seems to involve Inner Sakura, which, in the video games, is ...Sakura except about 50 feet, in black and white, has writing on her forehead and is constantly hellbent furious. Sakura would crush or punch the opponent, only to have the stimuli revealed as genjutsu).
[character personality]:
To understand what and why Sakura is the way she is today and the canon point I’m taking her from, we have to look at her from part one for a brief second. In part one, Sakura’s only skill that was noted frequently was her astounding intelligence, and, without any other skills of her own, Sakura used this to explain to Naruto the importance of the plot and general settings in a holier-than-thou manner. This is exceptionally evident in part one when Naruto, for the viewers benefit, was absolutely clueless on most things relating to the Ninja world (even the term kill in action) and Sakura would display self-righteous irritation before explaining to him and demeaning him at the same time. She was somewhat temperamental and quick to punching or yelling at Naruto, and pretty much had every little thing revolved around being a smitten doormat for Sasuke.
Yeah, we’re quite clueless on why, in a world filled with strife from pretty much everywhere and high ambition at every other turn, Sakura’s main goal in life was... not even audible. She self-censored by giggling and looking at Sasuke while she put down Naruto, who obviously liked her. Such high ambition, right?
And then came the time when Sasuke and Naruto were out in the forest and three people of nominal importance attacked her. Sakura, only armed with substitution and some shoddy booby-traps that were instantly destroyed, decided to take matters into her own hands. For the very first time, she expressed that she recognized she was the load and that she wanted to fix that for both Sasuke and Naruto. Then Sasuke abandons the village to live with a gay snake man in a cave, and this fuels Sakura’s ambition to bring Sasuke back home, which she promised to Naruto.
Cutting to my canon point, Sakura is a young, optimistic and determined girl. The annoying, irritable, Mrs. Exposition load days are a thing of the past and she’s moved on to have some massive character development.
Sakura, while confident in her skills, has simmered down quite a bit. She still plays the role of explaining things for the titular character (and Audience’s) benefit from time to time, but it’s mostly through either self-monologues or firm explanation, like when she explains about Itachi’s genjutsu. It’s no longer a degrading session where she chews him out, unless he doesn’t understand or has some severe difficulty getting it. Sakura’s confidence has increased, she’s able to harden her stances on what she can do, as seen when Chiyo calls Kankuro a lost cause, only for her to adamantly state that she can save him (which, she promptly does). Her confidence is also displayed when she briefly headed a hospital to aid the wounded during Pain’s invasion, which definitely takes a lot of courage and patience. She does get a bit over-confident on occasion, and sometimes veers outside her limitations. This is evident when she believes she can attack and kill Sasuke, even though she does have emotional limits which ended up interfering with the battle. This is also shown when she found herself confident to disregard Kakashi’s orders. Sakura’s confidence has also affected her social situations, in part one, Sakura’s real outbursts of anger were often locked behind Inner Sakura, or a side of her only the viewer saw. Sakura, however, in Part II, freely expresses what she wishes to express. This is indicated on how she shouts at Naruto when he fails to grasp a concept, slaps him sometimes during his perverted moments, and punches Sai for attacking Sasuke. The lack of Inner Sakura’s appearances further indicate that she no longer needs Inner Sakura to express her true feelings, as Sakura does that quite well on her own. Naruto even states that Sakura doesn’t beat around the bush anymore. With these examples, it should be obvious that Sakura is blunt. She doesn’t really hold anything back and gives her honest opinion, but she can respect other opinions. This is evident on how even though she desired Sasuke to come back home, she respected Shikamaru’s decision to personally stop Sasuke and his actions. Sakura isn’t tactless, however, and commonly displays a gentle side. If people fail to understand or get her irritable, which isn’t too hard because her two and a half years of training have left her with Tsunade’s volatile temper, Sakura will just shout and reinforce her opinion with a more angry and stern explanation. She’ll even use this on Sasuke, who she personally tossed herself as a doormat as during Part 1. In fact, her confidence and her ability to give her opinion sternly even lends to talking down to Sasuke when he puts down Naruto, showing how she has truly developed from Sasuke’s biggest fan to a person that has well rounded values and cares about others besides her crush.
Sakura is also a determinator. She doesn’t ever give up, and this was a trait evident in part one if you glanced hard enough. This trait was first shown in her fight against the people from the Sound Village. Clearly outmatched, she still took them on and never, ever, gave up. She took punches the face, shurikens, and, when out of jutsu to use, just ended up biting a ninja on the arm as he punched her. Woo! Go Sakura! Her determination extends to the point where she took on a crazed Gaara with nothing but a kunai and... well, she nearly died but it’s the thought that counts! She didn’t give up! Even when she was being slowly crushed by sand for no reason other than Naruto to rescue her! This trait of awesomeness further extends itself to the battle with Sasori, and is especially evident with this quote, “I’ll get you!! Even if you blow off my arms and legs, if you take in your poison and it paralyzes me, I’ll get you, I swear it!! No matter how much you resist, no matter what you do! I’ll beat you half to death and make you talk about Orochimaru!” Holy son of a fuck. She said this to Sasori of the Red Sand. A man who killed the Kazekage, the leader of the sand village, and turned him into a puppet. He, most likely, without Chiyo’s assistance, could have killed her and yet she still stated that to his face. The quote itself states about her determination. She could be stabbed to the point where she isn’t even recognizable, and limbless, but she’s not going down until she’s dead. And even then, she’s still not giving up until you give her what she wanted. Another quote which shows off Sakura’s incredible determination is, “My flower is the daffodil. It’s a persistent flower that shows its gruesome face even in the blaze of winter. Patiently waiting for a reprieve without bowing to the monstrous savagery”. Have you ever seen something look more badass?. Her determination also convinced her to attempt to kill Sasuke, even though this meant forsaking Kakashi’s orders. She obviously was planning and had intentions to kill him, only for her determination to waver at the last moment.
However, Sakura isn’t just about eating nails and steel for breakfast. She normally displays a calm, gentle, yet positive demeanor. This is shown to still exist during times of great stress, such as Pain’s attack on the village. She fiercely strikes a giant centipede, killing it. After this, Sakura calmly, and with a smile, turns to a little crying girl and begins to heal her knee. In fact, her usual demeanor is slightly upbeat and generally very kind. This is shown in her common interactions with Naruto, and the rest of Konoha. After Naruto is injured, Sakura even offers to help feed him since he can’t feed himself. A thought that both of them seemed pleased at. Sakura also hugged Naruto when he returned from fighting Pain. Sakura is also more patient and gentle when it comes to Naruto being...himself, rather than part one when it was just vicious tongue-lashings and girl on guy abuse. Now, she only gives him a slightly enhanced slap when he does something perverted, or when he really, really is acting thick headed. Sakura attempts to help multiple strangers. This was evident even in the far beginning of part one - when a starving kid grabbed her purse she, after nearly attacking it because she mistook the grab for a pervert, gave the kid some food and listened to Tazuna’s story. She felt sympathetic and rather disheartened by the hardships the children went through. This gentle sympathy allowed her to understand Naruto’s pain as a host to a demon fox that no one likes, and has even lent itself to occasions where she firmly consoles Naruto stating that tears won’t bring Sasuke back. She also has a kind, focused demeanor when it comes to dealing with patients. This sympathy even extends to her enemies like Sasori. She felt sorrowful that he had such a terrible background, but her sympathy is not boundless. She will still attack and fight an enemy, even if they had a horrible past if they’re still doing horrible actions. While it’s not clear why she does this, Sakura, as a very empathetic person, may not want others to be subjected to horrible lives. People will live awful lives if these criminals are still at large. Sakura also wishes herself to be as useful as possible, stemming from her genin days and her will to become stronger so she isn’t useless anymore. With this, not only would killing criminals that could terrorize others and have doomsday agendas be considered exceptionally useful, but, it’d also be of use to the community at large. In fact, Sakura’s motivation for getting stronger and maturing was to aid Naruto, who she felt guilty for doing next to nothing as he nearly got himself killed by fighting Sasuke. With this, Sakura’s personal goal was to get stronger for the sake of bringing Sasuke home. If she loses or screws up, it’s considered weakness. She doesn’t want to be the classic, and often hated by the fandom, neutral female. Sakura works hard to affirm herself and her use, even if it means helping out complete strangers to prove her worth. With this, Sakura’s greatest fear is explicitly letting down people close to her or being useless. This is seen when she laments that all she could do is heal Naruto when he ends up exerting himself by fighting as the four-tails. And this is also seen when Sai summarizes the anguish Naruto goes through for her, which triggers her guilt and makes her think that she hasn’t been pulling her weight (which isn’t exactly true). This motivates her to try to kill Sasuke. As stated many times in this, she doesn’t like being the load and she refuses with everything she has to be put back into that position, even if it means disobeying the occasional order from time to time. Besides a few slip-ups here and there, Sakura does mostly follow the order’s she is given by her commanding superiors. After all, disobeying them doesn’t really make her useful. In fact, she even states this about being useful, “Death is not something to be afraid of... Worse than death is a life that helps no one. I’m not afraid of giving my life if it’ll help someone important to me.”
However, despite all of these good, and somewhat negative traits, Sakura’s most interesting (and most divisive) is the occasional waver. Unlike most Shonen Manga where improvement is always steady, Sakura sometimes staggers a bit and takes a step back before proceeding. Sometimes, she’ll have total despair or a sense of depressing hopelessness, as seen with her awful, botched attempt to kill Sasuke. This starkly contrasts with her usual calm, yet joyful, hopeful, determined and confident manner. Sakura, despite her confidence, can also be self-conscious sometimes as seen when she reacts negatively to Naruto stating she hasn’t changed her looks and is still the same old Sakura, and her reactions to Sai’s statements about her state of appearance. She also sometimes frets over her usefulness. And, despite her maturity and her ability to take charge in hard situations (see Kankuro poisoned and taking over the Konoha Hospital as an invasion is going on outside), she can still sometimes make rushed, immature and rash decisions, such as her fake confession to Naruto. It is this waver, these brief moments where she gets into frustrating emotional lows, and her character development begins to grind before going backwards, that truly makes her represent the idea of human weakness. However, all weaknesses can be covered or at least persevered through and Sakura, once acknowledging that she made a mess, proceeds to veer forward and to improve next time. This is immediately shown after her distressing situation after attempting to kill Sasuke, where she begins to go back to kicking ass and taking names - mostly of extremely durable naked purely white half-plant clones but it’s the idea that counts here! She also wavers on her more prudish outlook on life, from condemning Naruto’s totally perverted trash to .... um, having thoughts about watching Sasuke pee and approving Konohamaru’s guy on guy sexy jutsu.
Yep. Do I have words to explain this? .... I’ll try and find some....eventually.
In short, Sakura is sort of like your average teenage girl except she’s a ninja that can heal nearly anything and has monstrous strength.
P.S She also wavers on her confident, upbeat day-to-day attitude but after some self-reflection she gets over it and she kicks ass.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Chapter 545, as she realizes some key information about Zetsu during the autopsy. What a moment to get kidnapped, huh?
[journal post]:
Seriously? I have to jump through a hole with an umbrella just to get clothes?! I can see why these curses aren’t well liked already... [ Only a week in the city and Sakura is a victim of a curse. She decided to get clothing because being in her standard Chuunin outfit for her days was really disgusting. She needed real clothes to use if she was going to be in a city, and not battle worn clothes.
Her tone moves to annoyance to her usual voice. It sounds rather gentle and positive, but there’s a tad hint of worry in it. ] Still, it sounds like I got off rather easy. [ Compared to other people at least. Sakura knows that there are all different types of people who fall on various points of the good and bad spectrum, but people could get injured doing these dangerous things in an unsuitable environment. She wants to be useful and helpful here. I mean, after all, she can at least help the good guys which would definitely be needed, or at least wanted ]
If anyone needs to be healed, feel free to contact me. No wound is too small for me to look at. [ And now her voice moves back to its usual positive demeanor, without a tone of worry. Now to bring up her second point. ]
Hey, would anyone want to hang out later on? I still need to grasp the basics of this place a bit more, and I’d like to make some friends. [ She figures she’ll most likely need them in this place. Being the only Konoha ninja is suffering ]
[third person / log sample]:
The infirmary was eerily silent. Besides some pained reactions to some tentative movements, most of the wounded soldiers lied still. The heavily negative atmosphere was nearly palpable. However, in this overcrowded infirmary during war there was some sort of positive determination. Sakura, with her hair pinned up for working purposes, was busy healing a man in the far right.
“I can’t afford myself to give up here; I have to heal him.” She thought as she applied the mystical palm technique to the guy’s stomach, which looked grotesque and torn open. Sakura’s self-musings kept her alert and focused, which is exactly the desirable effect for a medic-nin. Her confidence was a positive and welcoming thing that illuminated the rest of the sickly bodies. She was going to try to heal as much people as she could, and anything less than that would be unacceptable to her.
But still, even as her determination motivated her to move forward, she couldn’t help but to look back. She began to recall the plan for her to kill Sasuke and the utter heart-wrenching guilt she felt when she failed. She knew she still loved him, but she didn’t quite understand why she held back. He seemed all to eager to strangle and kill her. She could point a guess that she was too sympathetic towards him being his former teammate, which normally wouldn’t hold her back from attacking someone if they’d cause so much suffering to other people, and how she’d probably drive Naruto further into his pained life which consists of trying to bring Sasuke home for her. She felt even worse when Naruto rescued her, and her feelings quickly moved into an utter, hopeless, depressing despair when she ended up poisoning him with the kunai that was meant to kill Sasuke. If one word could some up Sakura’s view on herself in that moment, it’d be the word burden. She’s been trying so hard not to be one since two and a half years ago when she willingly sliced off her hair to protect her teammates, but in the end she still failed.
Luckily, for her, determination always preservers against wavering. Sakura, realizing she was becoming distracted, quickly set her attention on the wound and sped up the slightly lagging healing process. She knew she could heal this man, she’s healed herself with a sword lodged into her before.
“I’m not going to hold back anymore. I may not be as strong as Naruto or Sasuke, but I can still be just as useful as either of them. I won’t allow myself to be a burden any longer. I’ll make a name for myself right here and now and prove myself.” She forced herself to muse on the past to build a better incentive for her healing. She knew she was going to make rounds after this and heal every living person here. She was determined to do more than heal, she’d join her allies on the battlefield and aid them with whatever they needed there - be it combat or healing.
“I’m not going to give up ever again. I’m going try again until I can do it right!” By now, the smiling, weary and somewhat drained nightly look of Sakura’s exhausting work all over the infirmary turned into a very narrow glance of pure resolve. She continued to heal the man and made noticeable progress, within a half-an-hour, the man’s stomach was finally closed and it looked normal. Sakura was proud of what she just did and it showed brilliantly in her smile. She succeeded in what she set out to do.
With her smile of confidence and pride, she turned her face towards the man, “All right. You look all better, but try not to let yourself get injured again, okay?”. Sakura felt bad and empathetic towards his brutal injury and that the man went through so much pain, but she was exponentially glad he felt better. Not only did this prove to herself that she was a magnificent healer, but the man looked nearly unscathed.
Sakura’s positive energy became noticeably visible again, and, with this challenge that required focus and concentration accomplished, she felt she needed to precaution the man into one last thing, “Now rest up. You’re exhausted.”
She turned towards the entrance and began to think about how far she’s come. She went from a whiny, fiercely short-fused girl who did absolutely nothing to support her comrades, except Sasuke, to a girl who was more than powerful in her own right, and exceptionally gentle and kind towards nearly everyone. Sure she can get a bit frustrated and shout at Naruto, and maybe occasionally hit or slap him, but she felt that she had more lenience with him because they’re teammates and because it’s a hell of a lot better than the old beat-ups she gave him. Besides, someone had to keep his perversion in check. She’s mellowed out mostly since then, besides her occasional temper.
“I can’t believe how different I was back then.” Sakura wondered to herself as she began to move to the next patient. Of course, the memories of her days as a genin lead her thoughts back to Sasuke. She knew there was nothing she could do personally to bring him home, and that the rest lied with Naruto, but, she decided that she’d support Naruto and help him in any way she could. It was the best she could do regarding the situation, and, chances are, it’d help him out a lot. She needed to prove to him especially that she isn’t a burden anymore, and that she is still able to support him at the very least. Her latest interaction with him, which included poisoning him, was all the more motivation for her to make up for her past mistake and to help Naruto.
“Sakura, I need to see you.” Neji Hyuuga, one of her teammates from the Konoha 11 and therefore a loosely regarded friend, showed up at the doorway. He looked perfectly fine, wondering what he’d need to see her for, but Sakura decided she’ll find out anyways.
Sakura’s gentle and kind demeanor didn’t waver at the sudden appearance. She decided she’d caution him now about waking up the resting patients, “Okay, but be quiet. I don’t want any of the sleeping patients to wake up.”