Why Sakura Haruno is Useless

 Original Naruto

When I think of the most annoying character in anime, the first person that comes to mind is Sakura Haruno and rightfully so; In Naruto, she is always dreaming about Sasuke throughout the show even her crush finds her that way. She may be the brains and have perfect scores but when it comes to an actual fight she is outshined by the others. Even on missions she just tends to Sasuke in the Land of Tea escort mission while Naruto beats the bad guy; my opinion is that Sakura should have never been in the trio. Imagine how much better it would have been with someone strong and useful. The chunin exams she ties in battle with Ino a slightly better girl character than Sakura but Ino is just Sakura 2.0 and in the tournament, she adds nothing to it except cheering for Sasuke. I have never hated a character as much as her because of how her character is in general.

There are plenty of times where Sakura wasn’t needed or unwanted, for me because remember when Sasuke gets the mark and then tried to fight Naruto but Sakura got in the way and ruined the whole momentum of the entertainment. Sakura couldn’t even stop Sasuke from leaving the village and going rogue, she probably even made Sasuke go rogue lmao. In every situation she is a liability and I’m on Sasuke’s side she is very annoying, to the point that it just ruins all the good parts because she is in them. She is like that one person that just leeches on to any interaction in a group setting and tries to be the center of attention but everyone just wants that person to go away.

Shippuden

In Shippuden, forehead girl is even more useless than before but slightly not useless at the same time, it’s like pseudo-useful. What I mean by that, in the time Naruto was training Sakura wasn’t doing as much as he was even though she will never be like Naruto which is true because she is just there for the female audience or demographic. The anime shows that she can heal now but it is just for plot convenience. When trying to retake the bells from Kakashi, Naruto is the one who successfully does it and the only opponent she can beat is a puppet kid which she did by getting carried by the old lady. Naruto throughout the whole show learns lots of new Jutsu’s like better Rasengan and a whole massive list of them she only learns like a few dotted around (which is no match for the Akatsuki). She is so weak that when at the Tenchi bridge she is left awake because Sasuke knows that she is just a fly which is a perfect summary of her character, a fly. At this point, she is just Tsunade’s lackey staying with her while Naruto fights pain and she can only kill his centipede a literal bug, maybe good for a fly but not useful still as any others in the village could have done that.

The further we get into the show the more useless she becomes when Sasuke is a literal war criminal she cannot come to grasp with that thought and it holds her back when confronting him. When fighting the Akatsuki, Sakura is so irrelevant in power at this point she is unnoticeable and just demoted to a healer. Just like in RPGs Sakura would be the support, not the good ones but the fodders you use to make your better SS tier ones stronger. For a main character, Sakura doesn’t seem like one during the last half of Shippuden. She might have potential to be a great character, but she falls short. At times she seems like an extra in the anime like in fights she is hardly included just healing soldiers in the background, which is depressing. Now you might think “oh well, she can heal others so she is useful” but the thing is, she only heals the weak characters and nobody characters during the last arc, this is what I call pseudo-usefulness. She has to always rely on others to survive and she is only slightly of use when she gets the some of the nine tails power which wasn’t even her powers, so it doesn’t count to her being useful.

During the Infinite Tsukuyomi Arc, she tries to be her best but is outshined by Naruto and all she tries to be is Tsunade and her whole character is annoying so much that the creator of Naruto got fed up with it and changed her into a younger clone of Tsunade. Sakura alone is just a one-dimensional persona that adds nothing new and original to all the other females in anime. She has every female cliché troupe used in anime you can think of, overly tries too hard to be cutesy and crushing on the cool guy to name a few and can ruin parts of the enjoyment with her personality. When she matures and has this responsibility she is flipped in a 180 and now is too boring of a person, so much that she is now very bland and dull which annoys me even more. This anime is amazing but this is one of the only things that it gets wrong which is the female characters and could be expected from a shounen anime but that is no excuse for bad character building.

She is a prime example of bad character building, she doesn’t build as much as Naruto where he had a purpose, a backstory and a goal. Sakura has no purpose except wanting Sasuke and no backstory motivation that is canon, although she is born from an ordinary family and bullied for her forehead. However, this is a backstory but the mangaka didn’t expand on this at all or even make it obvious in later episodes for developing which is wasted potential. Her lacklustre traits come back after they beat everyone and she still likes Sasuke even though he tried to kill her and was a complete douche. Furthermore, she then marries him which is completely illogical, considering what he done. She never changed from her younger self and that makes her not feel realistic of a person like a yummy looking cheesecake that tastes like cardboard.

Thanks for reading!